My Cailyn Delly Dolly

I am just so in love with this girl! These are a few of my favorite things about her. Well, my favorite physical things about her anyway.

I love her big blue eyes.
I love her chunky chipmunk cheeks.
I love her toothless smile. (Although I am surprised that it's still toothless...Rylee had 6 or 8 teeth by this age!)

I love that she loves to stick out her long tongue.

I love her freakishly flexible shoulders.

This is what I call the Delly Belly. I love it.

And I love the rolls of chub on her knee caps.

(I love this so much that I thought it deserved several pictures...)

Things that don't belong in your mouth

Today as I was walking down the stairs, I saw a bunch of colorful little circles all over the floor a the bottom of the stairs. I couldn't quite place what they were at first, but it didn't take me long to figure it out. As I turned into the family room at the bottom of the stairs, I saw Rylee sitting on the couch with a bunch of wrappers all around her, and then I glanced quickly into the kitchen and saw that one of her little red chairs was pushed up against the counter in the corner by the sink. Rylee had climbed up onto the counter and taken a bottle of Tums and a pack of gum out of the cabinet and was enjoying the fruits of her labors. I estimate that she downed probably 1/3 a bottle of Tums and close to an entire pack of gum. At first I was worried because I remembered calling the pediatrition when Rylee had diarrhea a month or so ago and thought that the pediatrition had told me not to give her Tums because it has aspirin in it, but then I remembered that that was Pepto Bismol. I decided to call the doctor anyway, just to make sure that I shouldn't worry but, when I called, the doctor's office was closed for lunch. I decided I'd just call again later. In the mean time I got lunch for Rylee and played with her a bit. Then, about an hour later she told me she had to go "potty poo poo" so we ran upstairs to the bathroom. I've never heard such a runny explosion out of a little bum! It took me a few minutes to remember the Tums and gum incident, but when I did, I figured that this must have been the cause. This reminded me to call the doctor's office; they referred me to poison control. The lady at poison control told me not to worry, that Rylee would be fine, but said that the sorbitol in sugarfree gum would definitely cause diarrhea.
Shortly afterwards, Rylee and I were painting with watercolors. She started putting the paintbrush in her mouth, so I told her to take it out and warned her that if she did it again I would put the paint away. A few seconds later the brush was back in her mouth, so I quickly grabbed the paintbrushes, paint, and coloring book from her to put them away. When I turned back around 10 seconds later, I saw Rylee drinking the water from the bowl that we'd been using for the watercolors!
It's going to be a miracle if this girl makes it through her childhood without having to get her stomach pumped...

Caterpillar Sandwich?

I posted this on Facebook the other day, but thought I'd put it up here too because it's pretty funny. Rylee's pronunciation of the words "caterpillar" and "peanut butter" are pretty much identical!

The whirlwind that is our lives...

Well, it's been about 2 1/2 weeks since I've put any pictures up on my blog...a combination of being busy and having computer problems is the reason. I feel like I should have a lot to say in that time, but for some reason I can't really think of anything very exciting. I do have pictures, though, so that's always a good place to start.

A couple Saturdays ago, I took the girls to two birthday parties back to back: the first was for our 2 year old neighbor, Braxton, the second for 1 year old Priya (Quinn's cousin Hillary's little girl.) Rylee took the treat bag from Braxton's party with her in the car as we drove to Priya's party. I looked back while we were at a stop light, and this is what I saw: Apparently, one lollipop isn't enough.
Priya's party was jungle animal themed, and the girls had lots of fun there.
Here they are with a lion mask:

Priya was very cute with her cake; she just stuck her index finger in and then sucked it off over and over again.

The kids got to decorate their own cupcakes and put plastic animals on top.

I'm not sure whether Rylee wound up with more frosting on her cupcake or directly in her mouth (I'm thinking she might not have gotten enought sugar that day, what do you think?)

By the way, Rylee turned 2 1/2 the day after these parties, so I taught her to say that she is 2 1/2. She kept saying "Paya (that's how she says Priya) one, Rylee two half, Aya three!" She still takes every chance she gets to tell people "I two half!"

Cailyn was among lots of cute babies with a lion nose and whiskers painted on her face. She was having lots of fun being tickled and playing with her dad (and, of course, showing off her tongue) She thought the balloons were awesome!

The next day we went to my cousin, Matt's, mission homecoming report, which was nice. Afterwards we went to Joe and Kathy's home for refreshments and visiting with family that we don't see very often. Rylee had a blast playing with her cousins and seeing the ducks on the pond at Joe's house. She especially liked petting the mommy duck who was sitting on a nest of eggs. For once, I actually didn't really take many pictures that afternoon (I think because I felt like my need to make sure the event was well documented by several of my Heiner uncles with their fancy cameras! There were certainly lots of pictures taken that afternoon, I just didn't take many of them.) The ones I did take though were of Cailyn and Joe just as we were leaving. Cailyn was SO tired...she hadn't gotten a nap all day. Joe asked to hold her for a minute as we were leaving...

...she snuggled right up with Joe...

...and fell asleep.

Cailyn is getting much more interactive these days - she likes doing the things her big sister does, including reading and watching her favorite shows. Here she is looking at the big Elmo book.

She also knows what food is now and tries to eat anything that she can get her hands on. She LOVES avocado!

And she is steady enough to sit up on her own in the bath now.

Rylee (who isn't so fond of baths these days) can usually be coaxed into the bath if Cailyn will be there as well.

Rylee really likes to help take care of her sister.

She also still likes to eat her veggies (she snagged this broccoli stem off the counter after I had snipped the flowers off and started eating it!)

She is definitely a funny kid. This weekend we were planning on going to a wedding reception for one of my old roommates. I had the girls all ready to go and we were just waiting for Quinn to get home, but then he called to say that a car was on fire on the freeway heading North (he was headed home coming South, but the reception was North) and traffic was backed up for 2 miles. So then I started rethinking our plan, and when Rylee had the runs all over her dress, I decided that we definitely weren't going to go. Rylee, however was excited about the party that I told her we were going to. When I told her we weren't going to go she was sad and started talking about cake. So I asked her if she wanted to make a cake and she perked right up! She started talking about making a cake and blowing out candles and singing happy birthday. I figured what the heck. We wound up making a blonde brownie (since I knew Quinn would be more likely to help eat that than a cake) and then put two and a half candles on the cake and sang (about a week late) "Halfy Birthday" to Rylee (this is a tradition my family had growing up.) She really needs a haircut...


Rylee loves doing crafts these days. I'm slowly getting better at coming up with crafts for her to do. Here are a few of her latest projects:

Fireworks

1. Color on cupcake wrappers...

2. Eat the markers (she actually bit off the tip of the green one...what will I do with this girl?)

3. Have mommy fold and cut them, and then glue them onto some paper.

D is for Duck

E is for Elephant

F is for Feet

Smart Girl

I need to catch up on my blogging and plan to do a long one with pictures soon...but Rylee just made me laugh so I thought I would write this down real quick.
I turned on Sesame Street for her (hmmm...this has been the setting for my last 2 posts...) and the KBYU logo was on the screen. It's all in lower case letters, and as far as I know, she's not very familiar with lower case letters. But she said "Look Mommy! Letter k! Letter b! Letter y u!" I said "Rylee, you are such a smart girl!" She looked at me and said "Thank you much!"

My Elmo!

This morning I turned Sesame Street on for Rylee while she was eating breakfast. Cailyn was sitting on the floor playing with toys and also watching the TV; she was really having fun with it! She especially loved Elmo and was flapping her arms up and down and squealing.
Rylee finished her breakfast and got out of her hight chair and came over by Cailyn and said she wanted to play with her. Quinn told her "Cailyn is watching Elmo - why don't you come watch Elmo with her?" Rylee said "No! My Elmo!"
I guess we have some work to do on the concept of sharing and enjoying things together.

4th of July Weekend

We've had such a fun weekend! Brett, Allison and Colin surprised us and came up Wednesday night to stay for the holiday weekend. It was so nice to be able to spend time with them and our other family and friends while they were here!

If you know me at all, you know that I am addicted to taking pictures, and holidays are just excuses for me to whip out the camera and take even more pictures than normal, so here they come! (By the way, Cailyn wound up being the subject of most of my pictures since she is basically immobile; her sister and cousin are very independent these days and are not nearly as cooperative when it comes to being photographed!) On Friday night, we went to the Provo Freedom Festival. It was really crowded and the kids rides were ridiculously expensive, so we wound up not doing much there, but we did have a yummy dinner at La Dolce Vida and Allison bought the cute red-white-and-blue flowers that Rylee and Cailyn wore in thier hair the next day, plus we got to visit, so it was a good evening anyway. I took this picture of Cailyn at the festival while she was being pushed around in the back seat of the double stroller. I think it is my favorite picture from the whole weekend! If not my very favorite, it is certainly in the top 3 (:

Saturday morning started at 6:30 with a canon going off in our neighborhood! Rylee (who was sleeping at the foot of our bed since Grandma and Grandpa were sleeping in her "big girl bed") jolted, but stayed asleep, but it woke Cailyn up...I just brought her in bed with us and she went back to sleep. Quinn and I weren't sure that it really was a canon until we talked to our neighbors later on - apparently it's a Lehi tradition. I guess I can appreciate it's patriotic value, but would it really be so hard to do it at say 8 or 9 instead of 6:30? Oh well.
Everyone but our little family of 4 went down to the parade in Provo that morning - we had originally planned on going, but Rylee hadn't gotten to bed until midnight for two nights in a row, and I knew it would be hard on Cailyn, so we decided to stay home. As it turns out, it was a wise decision; the reports were that the parade was overly crowded, poorly organized (big gaps in between floats) and, most importantly, they did NOT throw candy! Rylee would have been very disappointed in that.
So the photo shoot began that morning with Cailyn...

Good a sport as she was, she did lose it at the end...

Early afternoon, we headed up to the Draper pool to meet with our good family friends the Bundersons. We picnicked at the park outside the pool and then swam.

Cailyn has discovered what food is and likes to try to taste whatever she can these days. She loves watermelon, although I don't think that she was as successful as she hoped at this attempt to get it in her mouth:

I spent a little while chasing the older two girls around to try to get their pictures, but they were fast, so this is the best I was able to get. I think it would have been cute if it weren't fuzzy...

Here's Rylee trying to hide from the camera in Quinn's arms and waving me away.

Eventually, I gave up and we went swimming, which of course, was fun! Afterwards, Cailyn passed out wrapped in her blankie on the grass.

Rylee at some chips (she hadn't eaten much of anything before swimming, so this was her meal.)

And then, Rylee and Ava discovered water balloons! They watched the adults have a water balloon toss and managed to get their hands on plenty of balloons themselves.

I love this picture of Ava in action - the tongue is the best!

Then we went over to the Bunderson's house to hang out and wait for fireworks. I managed to get a photo shoot in on the back porch while we were there. I love this one of the 3 girls!

This is my favorite of Rylee

but I like this one too. (She really needs a haircut. I'm hoping that at some point in the not too distant future, the hair on top of her head will finally catch up with the rest of it, but I'm not holding my breath...)

And the sisters...

and Ava and her lollipop.

So, even if it did take some work, I wound up with some cute pictures of each girl.

Fireworks were fun and, of course, loud. Ava covered her ears a lot at first. Rylee just kept saying "fireworks screaming!"

They both loved the sparklers!

It always makes me laugh how different Rylee and Ava are. They had these glow sticks, and as you can see, Ava got all dolled up with them. She had them around her hair and all chained together around her whole body like some kind of tribal headdress.

Rylee, on the other hand, ran around pulling them all apart and throwing them. But they're best friends anyway, and I love it!


Today, everyone came to our ward for church. It was a really nice testimony meeting, and both Brett and Allison gave wonderful testimonies.

Here are the girlies before church in their matching dresses.

This evening we went to Annette's house for dinner, so we got to visit with more wonderful family. I managed to round up Colin and his three nieces for a quick picture while we were there.

We had lots of fun sitting outside and playing on the lawn and talking.

Brett, Allison and Colin will go home tomorrow, so the weekend is over and things will go back to normal. Oh, and Cailyn will be 7 months tomorrow! Wow.

Sometimes I feel silly being attached at the hip to my camera. But what can I say...I love taking pictures! I have my Heiner genes to blame for it. My dad always got teased by our family for taking so many pictures. Emily especially hated it for several years. But I think she appreciates having the pictures now. And hopefully Rylee will be glad to have them someday, too.