Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from us to YOU!

Here is our Christmas card/letter this year.

I’m sorry if we didn’t get one to you before we left for Utah. (It’s a big step in the right direction that we even got one made this year!

Love to all!

Click on the link below to open the letter… (it won’t download to your computer)

Lowry_Christmas_2011

Our favorite photos of Hannah Joy

These photos are some of our favorites. It shows her personality, daring, fun-loving, darling little girl from birth to present we’re sure gotten a kick out of her in our lives!

Summary of our last 8 months!

Well, our little Kaiya is now 8.5 months as of this post, and I feel as though I’m just coming out of weird black hole. For the past 6 months I’ve daily thought about topics or thoughts I’d like to blog about but actually sitting down to get it written is a different thing all together!

A few times this week I was ready to give up (like when I was biking downtown for the 3rd time in one day – we live at the TOP of a big hill – to another meeting for my job after teaching badminton, picking up Kaiya from the babysitter, after dropping Hannah at her daycare – which I HATE doing – before dinner) or pull my hair out (like when I thought Hannah was napping but to my horror found she had spent the time taking off her poopy diaper and smearing her poop all over her room!) but alas today is a better day so I’ll write.

I think I’ll use this opportunity to give a little update about our lives and then I really hope to be better at this whole blogging thing in the future! Sorry to all for being so miserable at keeping in touch!

I’ve had a few ahh-ha moments recently that has made me realize how all emcompassing having children is as people have commented on something that has been happening for 2.5 years and I feel like it was yesterday!

When I try to figure out where the time has gone, I realize Mike’s and my life has really changed in the last 2.5 years!

Here’s a quick summary of what I mean, more details on #1 below and #2-#5 will be described in following posts:

1. The adjustment of mommy-hood as we’ve become parents of 2 beautiful girls!
2. Becoming house owners (we love our house!)
3. New jobs for Mike and I (UI professor/Daddy and Safe Routes to School Coordinator/badminton instructor/Mommy)
4. Adjusting to small town Moscow Idaho (we’re not in Oslo anymore!)
5. Lots of visitors and traveling (which we love but it’s a whole other ball game with babies!)

1. The adjustment of mommy-hood as we’ve become parents of 2 beautiful girls!

Well it’s true, with the arrival of Kaiya (she didn’t actually just arrive on our door-step like this, although that would have been alot more pleasant!) two kids is indeed an adjustment from one. But… sometimes I feel lucky to say that two feels easier than one! I think that is because Hannah is to the age the she doesn’t need to be held all the time and Kaiya can crawl around already longer than Hannah ever could be left alone, so I already have more arms to myself than I ever did with just one child! Plus, Kaiya sleeps! (Thank you God!) so less time is taken trying to cox my baby to sleep, and since Hannah is weening off her naps (I’m terrified to say it!) there is way less time being wasted fighting over sleep!

  Hurrahh Kaiya! We love you! Super-baby sleeper extraordinaire!

No doubt about it, Kaiya is the happiest, more smiley baby that people have ever seen. I tell people that she smiles at people she likes because I want them to feel special instead of telling them that she really does that to everyone! She wakes up smiling and every time she sees a face she smiles and scrunches up her shoulders to just lure you in even more! When she smiles from across the room she’s like a magnet, I can’t help but go over to her and snuggle her!

I think pictures speak a thousand words when it comes to our girls. Their smiles and laughs get us up in the morning (I’m not a morning person! but I’m amazed at how readily I get up at 7:00am with them!)

The other day Hannah came into our room in the morning saying “Here comes Hannah!” like we should be excited! I’m never amazed to experience how I’m am actually excited to see my girls…even at 7:00am! For no other thing in the world do I like getting up in the morning!

The other day I woke up with both girls in our bed.  We had all 4 slept in together until 8:30! Kaiya was nursing in her sleep and Hannah was curled up on my other shoulder like a cat. It felt wonderful and cozy. A morning to remember….until I looked down to see Kaiya’s puke all around her head and Hannah’s milk bottle leaking all over the bed on the other side of me (I was surrounded!) A wonderful moment quickly brought to reality!

All in all, I LOVE being a Mother. Mike and I often comment to each other that these 2 little girls have added more laughing and joy into our lives than we could have ever experienced without them. Daily we laugh and smile WAY MORE than we would have without our girls. And that’s the reason we all sign up for parenting isn’t it!

Our friend Kate Jennings took these photos for us near our house in Moscow. We think she did a great job. The fields are canola seed. Thanks Kate

http://katejenningsphotography.blogspot.com/2011/06/lowery-family-summer-2011.html

Kaiya Leone Lowry’s birth

 

Kaiya Leone Lowry

6 pounds, 14 oz.

19 inches

Born Jan. 28 2011 at 2:50pm.

 

Wow! Wow! Wow! Baby #2.

We’re still feeling like we’re in stunned (and tired) stage of it all, but we have formulated these thoughts so far….

• we’re actually really enjoying baby-land again (sort of surprising and pleasing)
• we’re surprised at how we can love the second like the first!
• Kaiya and Hannah look almost exactly the same as new-born babies (it’s wild, same expressions, same movements, sounds etc.)
• we feel soooo incredbily lucky to have her here safe and sound

I also feel so lucky to be able to say that Kaiya’s birth was actually a great experience!

5:30am the first contraction, 2:40pm, the same day we had her in our arms! All in a day’s work:) The contractions progressed really well, we had amazing support from friends (thank you all!!) and our hospital stay was even nice because it was firmiliar from Hannah’s birth only 22 months ago. We arrived only 70 minutes before Kaiya was born!

Hannah update – 1 1/2 years old

Hannah is at a really incredibly cute age right now. She is starting to learn words which is so fun to listen to because she has such a cute little high voice! She squeals in delight when she sees anyting new and is very fond of animals.  She loves her Mommy and Daddy and she is the light of our day when we are together. Mike and I just can’t get over how much time we can spend just watching her. She’s growing so quickly that it almost feels like if we watch her we’ll literally see her growing before our very eyes so we had better watch her closely!

Here are some pictures and descriptions about Hannah now that she is one and a half years old!

She loves falling asleep in Daddy or Mommy’s arms at night And Daddy loves it too! Hannah loves swimming anywhere she can, (in the ocean near Boston was her first time, although the salty water made her make sour faces a bit:)She also loves swimming in the bath…especially if there are BUBBLES!:) Who needs the ocean right Moscow Idaho!

We have very few photos of Hannah in family photos actually looking at the camera but this is one of my favorites, on the ferry going over to Martha’s vineyard near Boston this past summer.

Hannah loves doing and wearing whatever Mommy does. Cool cat!She has turned into a total Mommy’s girl  She wants to be held my Mommy when we are walking, she wants to sit on Mommy’s lap when we eat, she wants Mommy to put her to bed and she wants Mommy to be near her at all times (which proves very hard to get any one project completed at one time!) And I’m the first to admit it, Mommy has become quite the sucker and conforms to her every whim (well, most of the time!)

The only consolation for Mike is that Hannah is somehow very confused when it comes to calling us the right name… so she calls me DADDY!!! I’ve given in and have started to answer to her when she calls “Dadda! Up, Daddy wa-wa please, Dadda, more!” “Ok Hannah” some-day my baby will call me Mommy, I trust.
Hannah loves helping with the yard work, especially if she can get wet during the process!Here she is trying on Mommie’s sock (two legs fit in one!) She’s so small it’s amazing and SOOO CUTE!!! Can you tell? I’m smitten? Hannah’s favorite snack is blueberries. Here she is with a whole bowl and wants to eat Daddy’s share too!If we were to discribe anything about Hannah, it would be that she is an explorer! She loves walking, running, climbing, jumping, picking things up, touching new things, hearing sounds, tasting things (dirt included!) and seeing nature. We are thrilled with how our little girl is developing and love her more than anything in this world!

That is our Hannah girl!

Women’s Voices for the Earth

I’ve come into contact with a really neat organization called Women’s Voices for the Earth.

They are focused on getting women and Mothers educated about the cleaning products that we use in our homes. We are often the ones using them around our children, when we are pregnant and they are often harmful.

Companies have done such a great job marketing that often we believe we need a certain strong product to clean our bathrooms, different from the product we need to use for our bathroom floors, different from our kitchen cleaning products.

So, Women’s Voices of the Earth encourage people to host green cleaning parties where women get together to make their own cleaning products that are safe and effective to use.

The analogy that they use is, if you want to kill a fly on the wall, you don’t need to use a sledge hammer; a small fly-swatter will generally do the trick. The same concept applies to cleaning products, often the industrial strength cleaning products are over-kill in our homes and are often more harmful than beatifically.

Alot of the ingredients are things our Grandmother’s used to use so here’s proof again that our Grandmother’s were so wise, what they did was often healthier for their families, healthier for the environment and healthier for their bodies.

I had a party at my house recently and it was alot of fun.

Here is the link for the web-site http://www.womensvoices.org/

and the link for the receipes anyone can make easily http://www.womensvoices.org/our-work/safe-cleaning-products/learn-more/green-cleaning-recipes/

My favorite is the Cream Soft Scrub! I love the smell (I use Peppermint Castile soap), I don’t have to use gloves to apply it, and I feel fine about putting Hannah directly in the bath after I clean it out (no need to rinse it 50 times because there are no harmful ingredients that would harm her!)

So, I just wanted to pass on the good news and use our blog as a way to get the word out!

School Pride

This new tv show begins tonight. We are excited to watch it. Even this short clip is highly motivational and inspiring.

More information here:
http://www.nbc.com/school-pride/