At thirteen months Maylee's vocabulary is starting to explode. All of the sudden she went from saying no words, to saying a lot. Her vocab now consists of :

ball

Dutch

please (which she also signs)

cheese (for the camera)

Mama

Dada

Her little girl personality is really starting to shine. It's amazing how at such a young age girls and boys differ so much with out any encouragement. Maylee loves baby dolls, she carries them around with her and pats their backs. She loves to play with shoes. If I leave my flip flops within her reach she sticks her little arm through them and carries them around like a purse, speaking of which she loves purses. She doesn't actually have one but anything that has a strap that can be carried like a purse, Maylee is sure to be carry it around. Dutch has never really tried to put his shoes on or be interested in shoes, but I already find Maylee trying to put her shoes on. The funniest thing about a second child is how much quicker they catch on to everything from watching there older siblings. Maylee already folds her arms for prayer. We never even worked with her on that one, just one day she folded her arms and now she does it every single time. And Dutch just recently started the, oh so enjoyable stage of taking off his shoes and socks every time he gets in his car seat, which is really annoying when I have a ton of errands, with a ton of stops and I have to put his shoes on five different times, but the greatest part of it all is that Maylee rips her shoes off in the car now. Every time, just like Dutch. It took Dutch two and a half years to figure it out and Maylee is doing it at thirteen months.

Shake Your Body

This morning I was standing in the living room and I was putting on my sports bra.

Dutch says to me, "Workout."

Me, "Yep Mommy is going to work out."

Dutch, "Shake your body."

I started laughing. It was so cute. I guess you have to understand that the workout video that I do is Turbo Jam and the song that is playing on the main menu is Shake Your Body (or whatever the real title is). And Dutch and I usually dance to that before I state the video. But today I realized that is what he now associates me working out to. It was pretty cute.

I took my kids over to my moms house yesterday, she was baby sitting Tara's boys and so I figured it was the perfect opportunity for Dutch to play with his cousins. He loves Maxx and Jace so much and I love letting them play together. I am going to be really sad when we move to Nevada and Dutch asks to go play with Maxx and Jace and I won't be able to just take him over there. So I am trying to let him get a lot of Maxx and Jace time.

When the boys are at my parents house they pretty much just live in the backyard the entire time we are there. My dad has a tractor out there that they play on and a lot of dirt that they play in. Well yesterday Jace learned how to turn on the hose and he watered or I should say flooded Grandpas garden. Jace loves to play in the dirt in mud and once he got enough mud made out there the boys went to town. They had so much fun playing in the mud. Maxx and Jace of course got way more dirty then Dutch did because Dutch has the really weird thing about hating to get dirty but they all had a ton of fun. I love for Dutch to be able to play with boys. He doesnt' really have little boy friends in the ward. A ton of great girl friends, but we are lacking in the boy department. And I baby sit a little 4 year girl four times a week. So Dutch has really picked up on playing house and with dolls. He needs some boy influence. So I love seeing him play all rough and tough with Maxx and Jace.

I have to do a quick Dutch update because the kid is saying some of the funniest things lately, things that I never want to forget. I can't remember very many right now, I think because I am actually trying to think about them but I'll share what I can remember. First off, his new saying that he says all the time is, "Oh crap!" and personally I think it is hilarious. We have discovered where he picked the word up from and believe it or not from me. Apparently I say it all the time. I have never noticed how much I say the word until my two year started mimicking it. But he says it at all the right moments and it makes me laugh so hard. I try really hard not to let him see me laughing because I don't want to encourage it but it's so dang funny. My parents baby sat for David and I the other night and while we were gone they were playing with a car ramp and my mom said he just sat there and said "oh crap" over and over again when the car would mess up but she said the funniest part is he doesn't even change the expression on his face. He just says it to say it. I am trying really hard not to say crap any more and hoping the he will kind of forget about the word. But in the mean time, I am just going to continue to laugh every time he says it. I'm thinking that the less we pay attention to him saying it the quicker he'll forget about it.

The other thing that he says all the time is "I don't want to". Which you are probably thinking why is that so funny. But when he says it with his cute little voice it's just absolutely adorable. Of course he still has to do whatever it is he doesn't want to but it's really cute when he tries to get out of things. Like yesterday we needed to go to the store so David said to Dutch, lets go bye-bye. He instantly replies, "I don't want to. " For bed he uses the same excuse. It's just so fun now that he is talking so much and talking in sentences so well. The kid loves to tell stories. Especially when something has happened to either him or Maylee. And he gets so dramatic while he is telling the story. Yesterday him and Maylee were playing in my room and Maylee fell over and hit her head. So I asked Dutch what happened. So he waves his arms in the air and says, "Maylee fell over," then he bends down dramatically and points to the ground and says that she hit her head. But what makes it so funny is he says about 40 words but you only catch about five of them. He always uses his hands when he is telling a story or just talking. My mom asked me one day where he gets that from and when I answered I kind of waved my hands and said "I don't know". My mom busted up laughing because it became very obvious where he gets that from.

Phoenix Zoo

Today was David's last day of Spring break and we didn't want it to end with us having done nothing fun. So we took the kids to the Zoo and it was great. We are so glad we did. It isn't very often that we take the kids out and just have a lot of fun together as a family, so I am really glad that we did it today. Dutch of course loved it. When we were walking into the zoo he was already so amazed to just watch the ducks and the turtles before we even got inside. We had to coax him away from those and promise him we would go see the bear and the tiger. That's what he was most excited for. He pretty much ran almost the entire four hours that we were there. Occasionally he would get in the stroller to rest but that lasted at most about five minutes and then he would be off and running to see the next animal. The bear was wake and active today so Dutch had a ball watching her. She kept pacing back and fourth and then she got a drink of water out of the creek and Dutch loved that. He kept telling me over and over, "the bear drink the water". She was pacing behind the bushes so she would disappear for a minute and then come back and Dutch kept saying, "where the bear go, bye bye bear", it was super cute. And lucky for us the tiger was awake as well. At first she was just laying there licking her paws, so we watched for a while and then we starting walking around her exhibit to see the lions. While we were walking she stood up and walked right into the middle and roared really loud twice. It was so awesome. And holy cow she can roar loud. Dutch loved that, so did I.

Maylee of course could care less about the animals. She was just upset to have to be in the stroller. So we held her a lot. But now that she is only walking, she just wants to walk. So we let her walk, a lot, which she loved and she got a ton of attention from the other zoo visitors when she was walking. We could have put her in a cage and let her walk around and I swear people would stop to watch. It's pretty cute. Dutch had the hardest time seeing what we were pointing at... Maylee keeping herself entertained by trying to buckle her straps... And if you know Dutch you know that we loves tractors and big trucks so when we came to the part of the zoo that had old tractors for the kids to play on Dutch could care less about the animals and only wanted to play on the tractors. Peeking at the sheepMaylee loved touching the animal And of course we had to let the kids ride the carousel. Dutch remembered riding one at the train park and really wanted to go again. So we took both of them. Maylee liked it for the most part but about half way through it she was done and wanted me to hold her. We had a great day and really enjoyed spending it together as a family. We know that it wore the kids out because they both fell asleep on the way home at about 5:30. Maylee woke up about 40 minutes later but went back to bed at 7:30 (her usual bedtime) with no fussing at all. And Dutch just woke up about 5 minutes ago at 9:45. We are hoping that we will be able to get him to go back to sleep and sleep through the night for us. Hopefully he'll eat something, get a full belly and sleep til morning. He probably will but it will probably have to be in our bed in between David and I, his favorite place to be.

Trains

David and I decide to spend yesterday as a family and actually do something besides sit at home with the kids. David had heard of this train museum on the radio and really wanted to take Dutch there. It was over in Chandler, so kind of a far drive and of course we got lost going there because well, David is terrible with directions. But once we got there we were glad we went. Basically it is just a big lot of old retired trains, that have been fixed up to walk through. Dutch of course loved it. He loved being able to walk through the trains and climb up on top. David enjoyed himself a lot too because to loves old cars and I guess trains fit into that category. A big train like that makes you feel pretty small... Maylee and I driving the train He thought there was going to be a train that we could ride on but there wasn't. So after we left Chandler, we drove over to Scottsdale to this train park that I knew about where there is a little train that you can ride. That was pretty fun too. Dutch would not say a word while we were riding the train, it was as if he was trying so hard to take it all in and not miss anything. I also got to take him on a carousel ride. That was pretty fun but again he would not talk, he was too busy making sure he didn't miss anything but he also did not want me to touch him. He kept pushing my hands off if I touched him or the horse, so I just stood close by and hoped that he wouldn't fall off.

Getting Ready for the train to take off.... Dutch on the horse

Playing at the park afterwards