Almost there

We are almost to Christmas! The girls are loving every ounce of the festivities! They wake up every day asking for the tree, they loooove Santa and spend half the day hugging the Santa we have at the house & they really love going on Christmas light walks! What ever will we so when December ends!? They are gonna be crushed! So now just a praying Daddy can get some decent time away from work and we are all ready to celebrate! 🎄❤️🎅

Enjoy a few pics from our early Christmas last weekend with my parents and our cousins and aunt and uncle! We ate and stayed in pjs for 1.5 days! Heavenly! 

Agan life update :)

I just returned home from a "tapas progressive dinner". It was hosted by our mentor for my table at MOPs and was so nice. It was a quiet evening in her beautifully decorated home and we went from room to room eating delicious fancy horderves. Seriously good for the mom soul! No kid toys or hiding messes that you are pretending not to see in sight! Just grown up chatting and eating. Refreshing for sure! 

So now that I am refreshed I thought I could muster up a little blog post. 

Although there isn't a whole lot new to share, there is still a very busy life happening here.

The girls: 

These two little girlies are just getting so big. They tell us what they want now and can more or less communicate everything they want to get out. It just kinda happened over night and we now live with two little speaking humans. Weird. One of those little humans crawled out of her crib last night and opened her bedroom door as if she'd done it 100 times and walked to the refrigerator and asked for a snack. It was kinda of a terrifying and confusing event to be occurring at 3am. I surely do not have a plan in place to deal with a recurrence of this. But I'm pretty sure we are doomed! 

The girls are so much easier these days. I feel like we have kind of hit our stride and seem to do life together fairly easily throughout the day. Mealtime is the exception and I kind of dread it! We do way more car eating than I would like to admit because mealtime is chaos. It's when the battle of the wills really comes out and it's hard. We have a lot of highchair/booster refusal and lots of food throwing and screaming "all done" after about 1 bite. Which then leads to begging all day for snacks because they just won't.sit.and.eat! Mainly Zoe. Nora is pretty good at meals. When I let them sit at the big chairs they fall off or crawl onto the table and jump up and down so really I never win. Which is definitely not how things should go!

Mealtime aside, our days are usually really great. Messy and hectic and calm and sweet and really fun! I think daily that there is just no place I would rather be. Watching these little babies turn into sweet little toddlers before my eyes is priceless. It really is just amazing. 

Me:

As I mentioned before I am truly so content with my role as mommy. I still work a couple hours Tuesday and Thursday afternoon and it's nice. It's pretty hard to get the girls fed, down for naps and out the door looking half way decent by 2pm, but once I'm out it is ok. Not too stressful. I see my couple kiddos and head home. But it's so few hours that I have to be really careful not to let little things like notes and time sheets fall off my radar. Because they really do just slip right out of my mind sometimes and I forget I have this little job, which although it is only 4 hours a week it's not really that "little" of a job and I need to do better to treat it as such. 

Along the lines of this "job" thing, I have been having some inner turmoil lately about being a pretty much stay at home mom when I have this wonderful, great paying job at my disposal. We are on a budget. A tight one and it is because I don't really work. My struggle lately is whether or not I am being selfish by not helping to secure our kids future financially when I could be. I have always felt that what was best for my kids was for me to be home with them. Whatever the cost. We would make it work. And we do and I am thankful. But I often wonder if I am giving myself too much credit insisting that they are best off with me at the expense of things like saving for college (or anything for that matter) and taking some of the pressure off Lance. But I think for me and our family this is best. I'm trying my best to just take things as they come and staying open. Maybe when the girls are in school work will be a reality for me. Maybe not. I was sharing this with some friends tonight and one brought up a good point. She told me that everyone defines success differently. And although being successful in a career and having money for trips and savings and college is considered "success" for some that the definition can be different for everyone and that's ok. So for now my definition of success is going to continue to be "just making it work". Nothing more and nothing less. 

Lance:

Lance would be totally weirded out if he knew I wrote about him on my blog, but he's part of the family and should be included in a "family update" right!? But Lance is great. Still with the same company and still loving being transferred back to Houston, as we all definitely are! He is super dad. He works loooong days and walks in that door every night at 6:15 ready to work! He cleans and does laundry and dishes. I couldn't do it without him! Unfortunately for Lance, I have turned the girls into me and they sleep until almost 9am and go to bed that late too. So while the three of us sleep peacefully until after 8am each day, Lance is up and out the door by 6:30am and then has very little "kid free" time in the evenings, so he is pretty much on all day. But he's awesome and I try to convince him that the girls schedule is awesome because it allows for weekend sleep. Right!? 

Adoption:

Oh adoption how you can be a roller coaster of emotions. We had a hard month in the adoption world. I don't think I can say much, but we essentially lost a referral for an 8month old little girl and it broke my heart. I cried and cried and cried and when I wasn't crying I just kinda sat and stared at the wall not sure what emotion to even feel. The deep level of sadness it caused caught me off guard. But we've gotten some answers on the situation and I can truly say I am at peace and know that child was not meant to be ours. So now we just wait for the next call. I am primed and ready at all times day or night for that phone call. I jump with anticipation every single time my phone rings. Which is why I use the word  roller coaster to describe adoption. It's just flat out hard. So much disappointment each time the phone rings and you rush over to see its not "the call". One day it will be "the call", but the not knowing of it all is hard. So hard. We are so ready. As full as our family seems at times, it is not complete. We see the world with this third little girl in it. We know we are meant to have this third baby here with us and are so anxious and excited to finally have her join the family. The other hard thing is that based on the timeframes of all this it is almost certain that this child exists. She is out there. And this mama lays awake at night wondering where her sweet baby is. Is she safe? Is she loved? Is she hungry? Have the events of her being placed for adoption already occurred or are they still to come? It's just a weird feeling having these two little babies tucked safely under your roof and knowing nothing about the whereabouts of their sister. I think God must handpick ultra control freak moms for adoption. I cringe at the thought of relinquishing control of my girls, even for a few hours, totally my issue I know! It's like he is taking my biggest struggles and forcing them on me for my own good. So adoption is kinda hard and I'm sure will be even harder once she is home. But we'll take it. We signed up with God on this one for the long haul! 

So there's our little life update! Like most posts, this is mainly for me so bless you if you are still reading!! 

Hopefully a BIG EXCITING adoption post will come soon! 

Enjoy a few pics. 

They love to eat their snacks on the window sill. They also love hugging. Too much I must say! 

The excitement of the Christmas decorations in the neighborhood is just about too much for them. They are in love! 

She has no idea how wonderfully unique she is. She marches to her own beat for sure! 

Cutie Zoe in her Christmas get up for church!

Lunchtime monkeys! 

Little loves. Definitely not easy to get a good picture of 4 kids under 4!

After making our wagon rounds by day, we head back out with daddy at night to look at lights! 

Never known girls to love baby dolls more! We've decided that if we present new baby sister like a new, but even better doll we will be in business!! 

She is a jolly soul all day long! Bless her! 

My cousin Amy came in town for my other cousins wedding. We hadn't seen each other in years and it was if no time had passed! She was pretty amused by our lives!

Trying to get new sheets on the bed for the in laws. It was like they were puppies and knew I was about to leave them and were trying to sabotage my every move!

Morning snuggles. It takes them a good hour to part with the blankets and lovies each morning. Especially Nora. 

My sweet sweet Nora. This was the night the whole adoption thing came crashing down and this little love bug just snuggled with me for an hour. 

My sweet little piggies at the park! 

Twin mom moment

No time for a big post so I will leave you will a slightly humorous "twin mom moment" of the day.

Just finished a massive grocery trip because we will be leaving the girls at home with my inlaws this week while at a wedding. Get done ringing it allll up and know  immediately that my credit card is in the car. Dang! 

Leave the basket, but have to take the children. I am now carrying two 30 pound toddlers to the car. They are in an awkward phase where they are still not quite safe to hold your hand and walk. Put them down. Open the door. Look behind me and both and laying flat on their backs yelling "poo poo" in the middle of the parking lot. They won't get up. They are demanding clean diapers and I am for real stumped. Cars driving around us. So NO exaggeration I have to pick up one and drag the other screaming and yelling "mamaaaaaaa poooo poooo" all the way back in. Get in. Sweating. Put them screaming back into the cart. Apologize to the line that has formed and pay for the groceries. People either looking at me with pity or rolling their eyes. And side note, the eye rollers are almost always 20ish girls, dressed perfectly, likely just on a quick lunch break. I just laugh on the inside. They have no idea what is coming for them! 

Anyway, I guess moms just can't afford seemingly simple mistakes like leaving a credit card in the car. It can and usually will spiral into something worse!!

Hope this gave everyone a good Tuesday   afternoon laugh! 

Right now...

I'm running the risk of sounding so cliche and cheesy. But I don't think I care enough not to post it. 

I just love being a mommy. I'm posting right now from my sweet Nora's glider at midnight. She woke up screaming for no apparent reason and when I came in she calmed right down, grabbed her blankie and lovie and crawled into my arms. Like it was exactly where she belonged. And it was!

I know the day will come where I can't fix everything with a song and a snuggle. I know the late night rocking with my little babes curled up on my lap or nighttime movies with a warm little jammied munchkin nuzzled on my lap are numbered. I know the "mama hold you" days with little fat arms reaching up to me to be held are short.

I don't want to forget any of it.

Not the snuggles and laughs. Tantrums and black beans all over the floor. The fat babies sprinting to jump into my lap or running to the door to see Daddy. I want to remember every mispronounced word and cute jumbled sentence. Every outing where I had to search for missing water cups & diapers. Every sweet sister hug and hilarious over the top fight. Every smile & big eyed expression. 

I don't want to forget my two tiny girls who feel so pretty when I get them dressed and do their hair, pointing out their pink shoes to everyone they see. The girls who love to rock their babies so sweetly and in the next breath are throwing toys and dumping out everything in site! 

I don't want to forget how much love my heart feels every time they succeed and how hard and helpless I feel when I just can't figure out what to do. I don't want to forget how humbling it feels to do it wrong so many times, but how great it feels when I get something right. 

I don't want to forget this season with Lance. There is so much joy within our walls it almost doesn't seem fair. There is lots of stress, never enough money and my cute clothes only debut about twice a week, but we are in a season of JOY! I don't want to forget. 

So I may post things like this from time to time because even in my short (yes SHORT) 29 years, I've learned that there are seasons of good and bad, hard and easy. This season is so good and so hard and my heart really just feels so full. 

That's all. :)

Oh Christmas Tree

I'm pretty sure there is nothing more soothing than sitting in a room with just Christmas tree lights on! I seriously love a good Christmas tree! 

My plan this year was to do a totally kid friendly tree and decorate the whole thing with candy canes & red ribbon. I thought since we have a white tree this would be perf! However, the impulsive side of me wanted a tree up now & nothing had been purchased. So we have our same breakable tree up! 

Wish it luck! 🎄

My favorite view from the couch that I get to enjoy for the next month! 

This age, 18 months, is so far the most exhausting and equally the best age yet. I don't have time for a long post but will quickly update. 

At their 18m check:

Nora was in the 92% across the board. She lost 2 pounds since her last check up and I can only assume it's because she has one speed and that's running! Nora is keeping us on our toes. She's hilarious and so full of personality. She's an individual that's for sure, and continues to march to the beat of her own drum. She can be a handful with her strong will, but I also don't think a person has ever loved or needed me more than my sweet Nora. She can get quite worked up over things, but loves to rock and rock and rock. Every night she says "mama wanna rock" and it is so sweet. Our favorite nighttime activity is letting her lay on her back on my legs while we rock and I massage her little head with lavender oil. She LOVES it! She's smart, expressive, hyper, dramatic, sweet a crazy dancer and such a joy!! We love you Nora Beth!!

Zoe Rose was in the 92% for weight, 89% for head and 100% for height. So a little more varied than sissy! She also lost 2 pounds and I assume it's for the same reason. She is on the go! It's funny to speak in terms of "lost" with her because she still seems so chubby! Zoe is so so so sweet. I can't say it enough. There isn't a mean or confrontational bone in her little body. Her sweet hugs and kisses make you wanna cry they are so sweet. She loves to share and always wants to make sure Nora has what she has. She loves to take her sissy snacks and toys and her lovies. She is a TALKER and rarely stops talking. Literally. Sometimes, as much as I adore her, the constant chatter right off the bat in the morning is a bit much. But she is such a smart girl and I love hearing her thoughts in words now. She's smart, loud, sweet, also dramatic and loves her family. Zoe Rose we can't imagine life without you! 

And third baby girl. We know nothing about you. We don't know your age or what is happening in your little life right now. It's not easy for Mommy. But we are praying for our paths to cross very soon! We love you so much already too. We truly do!

Happy half way through the week everyone! 

Twins!?

The most recent picture I've taken of my children REALLY just really proves they do NOT look like twins! Really, not even siblings. Zoe is getting more and more fair, eyes couldn't be more blue and hair couldn't be more blonde! Nora is getting more of an olive tone to her skin everyday, that dark brown hair is here to stay and her amazing eyes are so dark brown. A brown I've only seen in one other person. Her daddy. 

I told Lance it looks like two little best friends that asked their moms to dress them alike. 

Both perfect in their own blonde and brunette kinda ways! Love it.