McNabb Family Blog

Will has been on the border of needing a haircut for a while now. I just loved his cute little curls–I couldn’t get myself to cut them off. Twice in one day people referred to Will as a girl. He was even wearing a blue airplane shirt. I decided the time had come–we needed to cut those little curls.

Here is Will right before his hair cut. He looks pretty excited about it. Oh, just looking at a picture of his cute little curls kind of makes me sad.

Evan held Will while Mrs. Betty cut his hair.

As a side note, I will forever have a special place in my heart for Ms. Betty. Ms, Betty was bold enough to tell Evan that his parted haircut looked bad. I don’t even think she gave him the option of a new hair style. I begged Evan to change his hair for years! I even made a deal to trade his hair style for a new computer. Luckily, Betty saved the day (and possible our marriage j/k).

Will got a lollipop on the way out. I don’t think he had ever had one before. He was in heaven. He actually licked it all the way down to the tootsie roll center. I don’t know why I didn’t take a good “after” pose. I guess I was too distracted by Will’s death grip on that lollipop.

Posted on June 29th, 2010 by Lisa
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I was making (Ensley was tasting) chicken pot pie. Ensley wanted some more dough. I told her I had to put the top on the pie first. She looked at me and said, “Mom, I can help. I’m a great topper!”

As Evan is leaving for work, “Daddy, stay away from lions and bears.”

Mom, come here! Look, there is a hexagon in our bathroom! (She actually was right, the vanity light fixture was a hexagon–that Dora, she really knows her shapes)

“I’m not grumpy. I’m just mad.”

If you say “potty words” in our house you have to go the bathroom. One day while changing clothes, Ensley was running around naked.
Mom: Ensley, go put pants on your bum.
Ensley: Mom, don’t say bum. Do you need to go to the bathroom?

At dinner one day Ensley told us all “Baby Will is a loser.”

Ensley and “the girls” were playing dress up one day. Ensley came running downstairs saying, “Mom, look I found my marry dress.” I couldn’t believe it. Ensley had found her blessing dress in her closet and was wearing it! She is a little obsessed about getting married these days (well, the flower and dress part at least) so she was so pleased to have found “her” dress.

Ensley has some serious bedtime delay tactics. Some of the best so far are:

We were trying to get Ensley to go to bed one night. My sister Rachel was in town and was mixing up some brownies (they weren’t cooking or even smelling yet). Ensley came running downstairs thinking she had come up with the perfect excuse “I smell brownies.”

“Mom, can you lay next to me?” “Mom, (rubbing my hair) you are so sleepy. You need to lay right here by me and go to sleep.”

We refer to head bands as “head bandaids” at our house.

Evan got up and left for work early one day–the bathroom still smelled like his deodorant. Ensley came running into our room yelling for Evan. I told her he had left for work. She said, “I know he’s here. I can smell him.”

Ensley starts and ends a large number of her sentences with “Actually”. For example, “Actually, Mom, I really wanted to not take a nap today, actually.”

Ensley loves overalls. One day she came into our room wearing Will’s twelve month old overalls. Sad part is, they actually (kind of) fit. They were giving her a major wedgy and complete high-waters, but not too tight. She didn’t quite understand why I wouldn’t let her wear them to run errands. She kept agruing that they fit because she could button them and “I really yuv dese.”

It ouches me!

That’s not fine!

I asked Ensley to carry something downstairs for me. “Sorry mom, but my big strong muscles aren’t awake yet.” Later that day she wanted to help with something and said, “Mom, my big strong muscles are awake now. I can help you.”

While we were driving, we started saying some tongue twisters. Evan said to Ensley: “Ens, how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” Ensley thought about it for a minute and said, very proudly, “Five!”

My parents came up to see Ensley’s dance recital. This was her second dance recital. Ensley had a dance recital right before Christmas. My parents had given her flowers after her Christmas performance. As we were walking out from her spring concert she said, “I miss getting flowers.” Of course you know my parents stopped by the store on their way home and picked up a bunch of flowers.

Ensley and Evan butted heads one evening getting ready for bedtime. Trying to make things better, Evan decided to make up a good night story. Evan: “Ensley, what should the princess be named?” Ensley: “Princess Ensley” Evan: “Ok, what is the dragon’s name?” Ensley: “Dragon Daddy”.

Ensley talking about her dance teacher a few days after I broke my arm: “I love Mrs Michelle. She has two arms.”

Ensley thinks will has a “piggy tail.” She also thinks it’s removable. One day in the tub she said, “Mom, I promise, I wont pull it off. I just want to touch it.”

One day I was over at a friend’s house picking some of her strawberries. I thought Ensley had gone inside of her house. Well, a few minutes later I noticed she was missing. She had walked home, opened through the back gate, went into the house, got out a plate and placemat, and the strawberry cutter, and was sitting at the table having sliced strawberries while talking to my mom on my cell phone. She told my mom she was home alone. I’m so glad it was my mom who called and not anyone else–another event to put on my Mom of the year application.

Sometimes I’ll “call up” people and tell them things like, “Ensley isn’t being nice so she can’t play” or “looks like the park is closed today.” I thought I was so tricky. One day we were planning on going to the Farmer’s market. Ensley grabs my phone and says, “Hello, Mr. Farmer’s market man, we’re not coming because Mommy is being bossy.”

I had asked Ensley to not cut with my sissors. I walked past her in the kitchen and started talking to her. I didn’t even notice anything. All of the sudden she said, “Mom I am not cutting with your sissors.” Then she started to look a little more guilty and said, “Mom, your sissors are not behind my back.”

Ya mom, great idea! (I think it’s so cute when she says this. I guess I just have to savor the moments she actually agrees with me)

Ens: Mom, hurry up. We need to win Grandma home.
Mom: Ens, I’m driving fast. We can’t go too fast.
Ens: (Trying a different tactic) Mom, rapido, rapido. Did you know that means fast in Spanish?

After I had my first cast put on Ensley really wanted to go with me to the doctors to see them switch out my next cast. Once the doctor came into the room she pretty much never stopped talking (she was really excited) despite my best efforts. Some funny things did come out of her mouth:

“Hey bone doctor, look, my arm isn’t broken, all of my bones are inside me.”

The doctor was putting on the white inner layer of the cast. Ensley yelled at him. “Hey bone doctor. We want pink.” It look a little time to assure her that he hadn’t messed up and my cast would be pink in the end.

Ensley “prised” me by making her bed. One day she’ll regret this decision–once your mom knows you can make your bed you’re stuck doing it for the rest of your life.

Posted on June 29th, 2010 by Lisa
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One day (while Evan was at work) my friend Addie and I took some birthday pictures of our little men. Will was happy to get a whole cake to himself. I was happy he decided to pose.

Posted on June 22nd, 2010 by Lisa
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I’m so grateful that when I called to tell my family about my broken arm, thirty minutes later my sister was planning a trip to come up here and stay with me. She saved the day. She changed dirty diapers, cooked dinner, let me sleep off my pain-killers and even got the offical welcome of Ensley throwing up on her. She even drove me around town in a very stylish mini-van.

One day, we decided we needed a little field trip out of the house. We headed up to Duke Gardens. It was beautiful.

The kids had a wonderful time running around on the grass, smelling the flowers and being outside in the perfect spring weather. I dreamed about how “one day” I’m going to have a beautiful garden full of amazing flowers.

Thanks to Dora, Ensley nominated herself the map navigator and made sure to “make sure we were going the right direction.”

All Rach wanted was one cute picture with the kids. I guess that was a little too much to ask for. Sorry Rach, this is as good as it got. I think we should have attempted this at the beginning instead of the end.

While Rach was staying here my parents came up for the weekend. Our neighborhood was having a big garage sale, so they were really good sports about helping me get rid of some of the junk I came across while unpacking. It was a really short trip for them, but we were so glad they came up (probably for the dance recital and not the garage sale). We managed to snap this picture before they left Sunday afternoon.

Posted on June 22nd, 2010 by Lisa
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For the first time in our almost five years of marriage we spent a major holiday at home. We had just moved into the house and since we had seen my parents the weekend before we decided to celebrate Easter here in our new house. Just the four of us.

Ensley loved decorating the eggs. I guess like all kids she enjoyed dipping them more than actually decorating them.

Will, on the other hand, liked eating them more than decorating them. He wanted to drink the colors as well as eat the egg. Oh the life of a almost one year old–if it can’t go in your mouth, don’t waste your time.

Evan and I were excited to have Ensley (and Will, but mostly Ensley) find her basket left by the Easter Bunny. Unfortunately we forgot that she takes a while to “wake up” in the mornings and become happy, and Will wakes up in a ravenous state. They did good following the trail of jelly beans to their basket, but we had to break for breakfast before the kids were willing to participate in an Easter egg hunt.

I think this was the first year Ensley actually hunted for eggs. It was so fun to watch her scramble around the yard looking for eggs.

Will was just barely starting to crawl and he wasn’t so sure about crawling on the grass. He decided after he Mowgli-style crawled (like the character in The Jungle Book) to the first egg that he’d just sit and smile and watch. I guess both kids were completely happy so the hunt was a success.

Posted on June 22nd, 2010 by Lisa
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I guess after having a pair of glasses for half your life it’s time to get a new pair. We noticed that Ens’ glasses weren’t covering her entire eye any more–I swore it just happened overnight.

When Ensley first got glasses we didn’t realize we had vision insurance so we just paid for them. We bought Solo Bambini glasses that our ophthalmologist recommended. Those glasses were wonderful. People who had little kids with glasses were always asking about them. They were one piece of indestructible plastic. She could bend them, put them around her waist, step on them and they never broke (we did go through a few sets of lenses though). If you ever know anyone who has to put glasses on their very little one I would definitely recommend them.

The following year when we were reviewing our health insurance we noticed we actually did have coverage. Oops. This time around I was determined to use that insurance. Well, it turns out that’s harder than I thought. We had a few criteria that made finding glasses difficult. It turns out that if you are an adult there are many places that carry our insurance, but if you want to use the insurance and need small pediatric frames the number of locations is very limited. We also needed plastic frames because her prescription is so strong (aka thick) the lens would fall out of a wire frame. On top of that the frames out there for little kids aren’t really all that cute and are either crazy colors or take up their entire face. Oh, the stress I get just thinking about it. I bet I called or went to 10 different places.

On a whim I checked out the glasses at BJ’s one day. Lucky day–because it was some sort of mega eye wear sale and they had one pair of glasses her size and they were cute!

I’ve often thought about writing a blog post titled “Yes they’re real” because practically every time we went out people would come up to Ensley and ask us if her glasses were real. I’d usually think to myself, “You obviously have never had a two year old. Would you ever decorate your child with something that makes her eyes look like the size of limes?” Or people would come up to her and start talking about how they loved her glasses, thinking she was sporting some sort of princess with pink glasses look. Somewhere in the middle of the conversation they’d realize they were actually real and would try to make it look like they knew the whole time. I always had to laugh. It’s true, it’s not too often you see a little one with big thick glasses. My favorite comments of all were from other kids. The most common question was usually something like, “Why is she wearing goggles?”

Since Ens has gotten her new glasses no one has asked if they are real of not. I guess it solved that question. But I was still sad to see those little pink glasses go. I guess it’s just seeing her get bigger. Oh my, I’ll be a mess in September when she heads off to preschool and doens’t even look back.

Posted on June 21st, 2010 by Lisa
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Ensley: (saying something completely non-understandable)
Mom: Ens, I can’t understand you. I don’t speak that language.
Ensley: That’s because I speaking ‘panish (spanish).

Mom: Pee-yew. Pee-yew. That is stinky
Ensley: Pee-me, Pee-me. I am very stinky

One night we heard Ensley’s door open and then shut again. (She was supposed to be in bed sleeping). There was a dirty diaper outside her door. I opened the door and she said to me. “I peed in my diaper, so I change it. Okay Mom?”

Ensley was very upset at Evan. She said to him, “I no like you. You not fantastic.”

Evan was helping Ensley get ready for bed. Ensley was being a bit resistant so Evan said, “Okay Ensley, no story.”
Ensley: I no like you. Yes story.
Evan: But you said you don’t like me.
Ensley: No, I said, I like you. Your are beautiful.

“Snake Habitate” that Ensley and her two girl friends made. It took days before she forgot about this long enough for it to find a new “home” in the Holly Springs Landfill.

We were talking about growing up. Ensley said that one day she’ll be a mommy. I added that I’d be a Grandma and Daddy would be a Grandpa. Ensley then added, “Tuxie (our dog) will be a Booty (Grandma’s dog).”

One day Ensley had just gotten out of the bath and was looking at herself in the mirror. She all of the sudden got very excited and said, “Look Mom, I have “baby eats.” “Oh, I so happy, now I can feed my babies.” “My babies wont be hungry any more.” Since that day Ensley is very proud of her “baby eats”–she makes sure they haven’t disappeared every time she gets out of the shower.

One morning Ensley woke up very worried about my ear (I was still coming home from work). She must have had a dream that a squirrel bit my ear. Evan tried to explain to her that it was just a dream and I was fine. But, as soon as I got home she was over checking out my ear. She talked about it all day. Poor kid–it must have been pretty traumatizing for her because the other day (two weeks later) she started taking about how she told me to run from the squirrel but it just kept chasing me. She also wanted to know if my ear was better yet.

One day after working the previous night I laid down to take a nap while the kids were napping. I woke up to find Ensley in my bed eating crackers and watching Maury. She had woken up from her nap got ritz crackers from the pantry, turned on the TV and climbed into bed with me. I slept through it all–nice one, huh? When I woke up she was wondering why all the people on the TV were fighting and yelling.

Some people read on the potty. I found Ensley with my missing iTouch one day.

My Dad recently broke his arm playing church basketball. Ensley and I had talked about it and called Grandpa to help him feel better. While we were driving in the car Ensley said, “Papa’s broken, maybe we should get a new Papa.” Sorry Dad, I guess we’re going to have to trade you in for a newer model.

I needed to run home really quick to clean up some stuff before a showing. As we were pulling in the driveway Ensley asked what we were doing. I told her we were “going to pick up the house real quick.” Ensley said, “I can’t pick up the house. It’s too big.” “I think we need Daddy to pick it up.”

What can I say? She gets her sense of fashion from me.

Posted on March 15th, 2010 by Lisa
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My parents asked me the other day if I had forgotten that I had another child. I haven’t. I just haven’t dedicated a post to this little man. Here’s the latest Will update:

Will is the most wonderful baby (seriously, I’m sure I am not partial at all). He’s a jolly kid and flashes a huge grin every time you look at him. Many times through out the day I think about how lucky we are to have him in our family. Ensley is such an opinionated, active, spirited little thing sometimes it’s just really nice to turn to Will and see this this cool, chill little man.

Will wasn’t always this way though. I think he is trying to make up for the first three months of his life that made me convinced that he might just be our last child. He was a grumpy little thing. I even called the doctor and told her I thought something was wrong–she told me he was spoiled.

Ensley crawed at 7 1/2 months. At 7 1/2 months, Will was still content to just sit and play. At 8 1/2 months, he was still content to sit and play. Now, at 9 1/2 months he is still content to sit and play unless there is some sort of electronic gadget in his reach or Ensley is playing with a toy he’d like to try and chew. He doesn’t scoot too fast. He’s still army crawling, but it’s so cute. He seems very pleased with himself every time he moves across the floor.

Ensley also got her first tooth at 3 1/2 months and had a full set of teeth by the time she was a year. Will got his first tooth at about 6 months and still only has 4 teeth to his name. At his nine month check up Dr. Ramsdell claimed she saw some coming in, but they’ve yet to make their official appearance.

Lack of teeth has yet to stop this boy from eating. We’ve nick-named him “Fattius Maximus.” Will can put down some food. This kid loves to eat. I don’t ever remember making Ensley a bottle bigger than 4 ounces. Will has been drinking 6 ounces since he was 3 months old. I guess that would explain why there is only a 5 pound difference between my three year old and 9 month old. And, don’t even think about putting him in the high chair and then not putting food on his tray–he gets upset quick. No time for prayer at this table. I don’t think we’ve found a food he doesn’t like yet. He even ate the pickle juice Evan gave him (sick!).

Food isn’t the only thing that makes Will giddy with excitement. This boy loves his Dad. When ever Evan comes into the room he’ll start bouncing and making all sorts of excited noises. (I can tell it makes Evan’s whole day). When I was nursing Will if he’d hear Evan’s voice he’d have to stop and smile at him. Eventually, I had to implement a no talking policy. Will makes one sound. Da! Da! Da! I don’t think my child is any sort of prodigy, but it is somewhat comical that his only sound is also the name of his favorite person. Maybe it’s their love for all things USB that bonds then together?

When I am cooking or doing something in the kitchen I’ll put Will in our Johnny Jumper that is in the kitchen doorway. Will loves that jumper. He’ll jump in it for an hour an never complain. Who knows how these little quirks start, but we’ll say “Bouncy, Bouncy, Bouncy” in this odd little voice and he’ll get so excited. He’ll jump higher and higher. I hope he doesn’t grow out of it any time too soon. Do you think it would be weird to see a three year old in one of those things?

Besides having amazing jumping capabilities, Will can also clap and wave. We get just as excited about him doing these things as we did with Ensley. In fact, it might even be more exciting because Ensley gets excited for him as well. I love little babies clapping.

As Will gets older, he and Ensley are starting to interact more and more. I love it–seeing them laugh and play together. Will loves Ensley. He smiles when she comes around. He laughs at her silliness. Ensley loves the attention. She still refers to him as “Baby Will”–hopefully at some point she drops the “baby.” Sometimes she’s a little frustrated by him. She’ll say, “Baby Will, I said stop crying!” Recently, since he’s started moving, I’ve seen her grab his legs and pull him back away from a toy of hers only to have to repeat it two minutes later. On the flip side, she’s quick to bring him a toy when he’s sad, share a cracker, or sneak in his room (and crib none the less) and comfort him when he thinks he shouldn’t have to take a nap.

As a Mom. I don’t think there are many things better than cuddling your baby. Will is a cuddler. He’ll let me hold him on my lap. He’ll cuddle up close to be and lay his head on my shoulder when he’s tired. I love it. Will also gave up the pacifier and traded it in for his thumb at about 5 hours of age. Despite my best efforts he is a thumb sucker. Secretly, though I’ll never admit it, I do think it’s really cute.

Because Will is so chill sometimes (not too often, I promise) I’ll realize that I should have fed my child a few hours ago. Or I’ll think, “He hasn’t slept much today. I bet he’s tired.” He doesn’t really seem to get too upset if he’s hungry or tired. He’ll want you to cuddle and hold him more, but he’s not too grumpy. I’ve been making myself put him down for a nap at a certain time each day no matter if he is grumpy or not. I decided that isn’t a very good indicator.

Can I brag? (I guess this is pretty much a bragging post, but I wanted to remember his little personality, so I have to write it down.) I love Will’s eyes. They are so blue. His hair (which is finally starting to come in) is a little strawberry blond and has some curl. I love it! Will also smiles for the camera (yeah!). Ensley does not cheese it up for the camera. I am so glad to have a child who will give me an easy picture.

I can’t believe that Will is already 9 months old. It feels like it has gone by so much faster than it did with Ens. I wish I could just slow down time because I am enjoying both Ensley and Will’s ages so much. I don’t want them to get big too fast. But on the other hand, some of the things that make being a Mom so great are seeing them learn new things. I guess I just have to learn to savour each moment.

Posted on March 1st, 2010 by Lisa
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