Something rare has happened: the sun has been shining in Pittsburgh!

This calls for celebration! Or at least a walk outside to collect pinecones on a street in our neighborhood that the kids call Pinecone Forest.

It’s funny, before having kids, I always told Jimmy this street was my favorite in our neighborhood. It’s a back street that is canopied by big pine trees. It feels like a beautiful, shady tunnel. Now our kids love this street because they enjoy picking up fallen pinecones off the ground. They delight in finding the perfect one! One time, we took them home to paint and now Mordecai thinks we must get a pinecone to paint on every. single. walk. It’s cute!

We are finding so much joy in just being outside lately. There’s nothing like a long winter to make you appreciate when spring arrives. I can smell flowers in the air, our dogwood trees are blooming, and the sun has made an appearance. What a blessing!

I will admit walking in the grass in the picture above totally had me on edge about the kids getting bit by a tick. We will have to be ultra vigilant this spring and summer. Have you seen insect repellent bracelets? I am thinking about buying stock in them because we struggle with mosquitos so badly here, too!

I’m curious, do you have an insect repellent remedy? Bug spray, citronella candles, essential oils? I want to hear about it!

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Over the past few days, I’ve been going through Sadie, Mordecai, and Dakota’s clothes to see what is too small, out of season, stained, what will fit next winter, etc.

I found a couple of Mordecai’s shirts that were stained and asked him to throw them away. Then I paused and was like Wait… Sadie, do you want these for a craft?!

She snatched those shirts right up and got totally immersed in making clothes for her Sonic the Hedgehog stuffed animals (they still go everywhere with her!). I absolutely loved watching Sadie be completely focused on a creative task and I was so impressed when she had the idea to make a backpack from the chest pocket of Mordecai’s shirts! Like how did she think of that?!

She also pulled out our fabric markers and colored + stapled together a dress for Amy Rose. It’s amazing what kids can think of when they are given the tools and freedom to experiment.

Sadie girl wants to learn to sew so badly! I didn’t have any sewing materials on hand so she just improvised. I think it’s time I learn right along with her 😂

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I mentioned I had an eye doctor appointment in my last post. It went well! I was having random eye pain in both of my eyes and it kind of freaked me out. A year ago, I had numbness and tingling on one side of my body for like two months. This led to a neurologist appointment. The neurologist wanted me to have a brain MRI with contrast dye to rule out multiple sclerosis. We also figured out one of my vitamin levels (I think B6?) was super high, which can cause numbness. I ended up postponing the MRI because I got pregnant with Dakota the next month and because the numbness went away after my vitamin levels evened out.

I know autoimmune conditions like MS can go into remission during pregnancy and then flare up postpartum, so when I started having symptoms in my eyes the past week, I was like oh no, what if this is for real?

Anyway, the eye doctor just said the oil glands in my eyes were clogged, which is what happens before you get a stye (I’ve had plenty of those for some random reason, lol). It was such a relief to hear nothing serious was going on with my eyes! I do have my MRI scheduled for next month, just to be completely sure everything is normal in my brain, though. Hopefully that all made sense 😂

I got in the car to head home from the doctor appointment and Jimmy and Mordecai FaceTimed me so I could share the good news that I was just having dry oil glands in my eyes. This was our screen….

Jimmy made Mordecai’s face a warthog?! I told him I feel like Mordecai’s spirit animal just might be a little warthog haha. Jimmy and my sister decided like 10 years ago that my spirit animal is a deer and I feel like that is so accurate 🤣

What would your spirit animal be?!

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Guess who got to be an only child for a day? Miss Dakota! My mom brought Sadie and Mordecai to her house for a sleepover and since Dakota is breastfeeding and we don’t do bottles, she had to stay behind with me and Jimmy.

First, we took her on a coffee date. We must have been boring company because she fell asleep!

Afterwards, we went to the library (I picked up this memoir!) because I’m almost finished reading Resurrection and I feel panicked if I don’t have another book lined up to read right away. I was telling Jimmy that breastfeeding helps to me read more because I have to sit down to feed, say eight times a day? If I read for 10 minutes 8x a day, that’s 80 minutes of reading! He was just shaking his head and laughing.

Reading is just ingrained in me. Nobody has to tell me to do it. I just have to!! What hobby does nobody have to tell you to do?

We also stopped by the home improvement store (his and hers errands right there… library for me and Lowes for Jimmy!) so Jimmy could grab insulation for a project he’s doing with our garage.

Once we were home, Dakota supervised me folding laundry outside. I think she approved?

The little seat she’s sitting in has a flamingo on it, so we call it her flamingo seat 🦩 It has a button on it that vibrates the seat (I guess to make it soothing?). Once, Sadie turned it on for us because Dakota was crying and instead of saying she turned on the vibration she said “I turned on the generator!” so now we put Dakota in it and ask if someone can turn on the generator 😆

That little seat is so handy! It reminds me a little of the bumbo seat we had when Mordecai was sitting up on his own but not steady yet (you can see him in it near the end of this post). We would pop him in the bumbo so he could sit on the table and watch us do everyday life stuff and I think he spent half of his waking hours in that thing! I ended up passing it on to a friend who had twins, so I will have to get another one when Dakota starts sitting up.

While I was folding laundry, the kids were off fishing with my mom and dad! Sadie: loved it! Mordecai: freaked out by fish. Classic Sadie and Mordecai right there!

In the evening, Jimmy, Dakota, Niva, and I took a walk because it was so nice outside–temperatures in the 70s! The walk started out well. Dakota was hanging out in her stroller and Niva was prancing through the neighborhood like only a husky can.

Then Dakota decided she was done. So Jimmy was pushing an empty stroller while I held Dak. We figured she was tired.

She was not impressed!

Our plan was to go home and put Dakota to bed so we could go in the hot tub. So, we got home and I changed her diaper, put her in a swaddle, and fed her… and then she was wide awake! I walked out in the kitchen to show Jimmy her big owl eyes and she looked at us and smiled SO BIG hahah. It was adorable.

So we changed our plans and brought her along while we went in the hot tub!

When I was newly postpartum and it was cold out and I so badly wanted to be in our hot tub, I told Jimmy how in just a few weeks it would be warm, our dogwood trees would be blooming and we would be in the hot tub. It was that moment last night and I thanked God for the joy of it! I am a big believer in acknowledging those moments that we pray for and look forward to even if they’re as silly as getting in a hot tub 😬

Now it’s a new day with another Hello Kitty mug with frothed half and half in my coffee. If the day starts with Hello Kitty and coffee, it has to be good, right?!

What is your spirit animal?