Mmm cookies....

Do you ever sit there and watch something happen, all the while your insides are screaming "Clean up that mess! Don't let it happen! Ooh there goes the flour..." Welcome to my world of making cookies with Malachi:) He has always enjoyed "helping" but even more so lately. If I give him a job to do he is content to do it for a long time. So today it was scooping flour. Not actually into the cookie dough, just scooping. And scooping. And scooping some more.

Now don't misunderstand, I am not a clean freak. Actually I almost laughed out loud right then at the thought. But as good as Malachi's aim is, it got lost every time he said anything. "Hey Mom!" equalled flour on the floor. "Mom look at me!" Another scoop on the counter. "Look at me scoop Mom!" And Jaxon (our dog) suddenly had a very nice powdered toupee. To which I responded "You're doing an awesome job bub" and I laughed.

So here's a little slide show of my ever-so-eager helper. And although I forgot to take pictures of the final product, the cookies were delicious:)

Now that you're all sufficiently hungry, I'll satisfy your appetites with another list of all things Malachi:

• You get smarter and smarter every day. Two nights ago you were playing cars with your dad in your room, and when you came out you showed me how subtraction and addition work with your cars. Your teacher dad was so proud:)
• Since I already mentioned cars, I'll say that you are obsessed right now! You love anything on wheels but especially the endless supply of hot wheels at your Grandma Susie's house and your growing collection at home.
• You skied behind the boat all by yourself on vacation. As your mom, I was freaking out (but I'm sure I acted cool as a cucumber) and you did amazing!! You skied around the entire lake and loved it!
• You are fighting nap times and bed times right now. You usually have to be put back down a couple times before you'll stay. And you do fight it more for mom than anyone else. It's awesome.
• You are doing so good being potty trained! We still have some poop issues but they are so so so much better.
• The other day I commented that we needed rain, to which you said "Yeah! The grass and plants are dry and they need rain to drink through their roots!" I love your brains. And I love that you're learning from others - thanks Gma's and Gpa's, Aunts and Uncles for being such good teachers.
• You are FAST.
• I am SLOW.
• We were snuggling on the couch and you felt Jericho kick you from inside my belly:) I pointed out that he had kicked you and was saying "hi!" The next day you ran up and said, "Remember when Jericho kicked me?? I want to kick him too!" I said no.
• Your favorite Bible story is David and Goliath. We have an amazing kid's Bible that makes it easy to understand but stays really accurate. However, your favorite quote from that story is Goliath telling God's army, "I'll rip your heads off and have you on toast!" I really love when you yell that at the pool. Once more, we want to be like DAVID. Not Goliath.
• You are going to be an amazing big brother:) You talk to my belly and hug on it and kiss it all the time. And you can't wait to teach Jericho SO many things! How about we leave Goliath out of it though?
• I'm so proud of your manners. You do such a good job of saying "May I..." and "Please and thank you." It's amazing what a difference those little things make day to day.

Goodness. When I don't post for 4 months my lists could go on forever! The first 16 wks of this pregnancy I was extremely sick and couldn't handle looking at a computer screen. So here's hoping that the holidays/giving birth/having a newborn will provide much more free time for updates! I'll get the hang of this someday...
I hope you all have a wonderfully blessed day!!!

I Have a Booger...

How do kids get so smart? Not necessarily in the intellectual book-smart kind of way, but in the ornery 'I can pull one over on you' way? He obviously didn't learn it from me...

Last saturday night we had a group over to watch UFC and Malachi was having the time of his life. He was such a ham! And somehow he kept finding his way in front of a couple of pretty girls and was very quick to turn on the charm. (Never mind being ornery - how do they learn that so young!?)

Aaron and I put him down to bed about 9:30 or so and it wasn't 10 minutes later I hear a voice from the top of the stairs... "Mommy! Daddy! I have a booger!! I need a tissue please!!!" Aaron goes up the first time, helps him with a tissue and puts him right back down. Fast forward about 20 mins this time and we hear the same desperate cry. "Mommy! Daddy! I need a tissue - I have more boogers! Please!!" This time I come to his rescue, help him with a tissue (sidenote - I saw no boogers) and put him back in bed with a stern, but loving, speech about it being bedtime and we need to stay in bed.

Fast forward a little more than an HOUR and I see Jaxon's (our dog) ears perk up and he looks up the stairs. I listen for a moment and I hear feet running back and forth! So I quietly creep up the stairs, round the corner and see none other than Malachi James in the middle of the living room rocking out with his guitar. He turns, sees me, drops his guitar and says "I have more boogers!!" Lol...yeah right. So my kid finally goes to bed - for good - at 11:30! Boogers huh? Yeah...



So here's another update on the wonderous workings of Malachi - hope you enjoy:)

• You and your daddy LOVE to wrestle. I mean hard-core crash and burn wrestling. Your dad has even taught you how to put him in an arm-bar and is working on the rear-naked choke. (For those of you non-UFC fans they're only wrestling moves:) I have to admit sometimes I'm a bit nervous watching this action - which is proof to me that little boys need their daddies, and if you were left up to just me you'd probably end up a pansy. Love my hubby.




• You still eat applesauce for breakfast every single morning and have for the last I don't know how many months.




• You still eat a peanut butter and jelly every single day (that you're home at least) for lunch and have for the last I don't know how many months.




• I am this close to saying that you're potty-trained. You have been doing awesome for a few weeks now and I am SO proud of you.




• This isn't so much something you're doing as it is something you did, but it made me smile:) the morning after Easter when I went in to get you out of bed, you sat up and said "I had a good Easter mommy! I had a really good Easter!"




• You are still incredibly independent. Nighttime is a great example, you want to turn on your sound machine, turn off your light and pull your blankets over you "all by yourself." And you do get quite upset if we do any of the above for you. But you do still need me for some things like feeding you, bathing you, dressing you....just saying...




• I was really sick last week and when I started crying you ran over and said "what's wrong Mommy?" When I told you I didn't feel well you gave me a bunch of kisses and said, "It's okay mommy, I'm right here, it's going to be okay. I'll make you feel all better." I love you.




• You don't have as many boogers as you think.




• You love to scoop poop. I have plans to take video record of that and hold it against you in your teenage years.

We'll leave it at that for now:) I'm going to snuggle my son and watch an episode of Bubble Guppies. If you've never seen the show, it's little kid genius! Absolutely hilarious - I do actually laugh out loud at times. My name is Sage, and I am the mom of a toddler.

God bless everyone:)

Our New House!

Ahhh...our new house:) It makes me smile so big! I was going to wait and do this post when I had some more pictures to show you, but that's not going to be for another week or so - and once moving starts I'm not sure when I'll get to post next. So consider this a little teaser:)

This first picture is the view from our master bedroom into the backyard. You can see our deck on the right and the patio underneath it. The picnic table doesn't stay unfortunately but we'll get proper seating there eventually!

This is the second bedroom upstairs which might temporarily be Malachi's room until another baby comes along. The house is a split-level with 2 bedrooms up and 2 down.

This is the view of the master bedroom from the doorway, the window on the far wall is huge! And we will be changing the colors in here...not sure what to yet, I'm still waiting for my 'sue the napkin' moment. (If you have no idea what that means check out http://www.younghouselove.com/ and search sue the napkin - it'll make a lot more sense).


And this is my beautiful white kitchen:) It makes my heart happy!!! The colors in there are pretty, but the wall behind me that you can't see is red like the area above the sink and my current kitchen is red. So I'm changing it:) I'm going for a white/grey/yellow scheme in the kitchen. White cabinets with gray walls, and then using accessories to do awesomely bright pops of yellow! Already have a plan for painting our dining room table that I'm really stoked about, I'll make sure to document it for you:)

And that's all the pics I have for now sorry! I can't wait to see the house empty and then even more so with our stuff in it! I've finally started packing as of yesterday, and I must say I'm pretty proud of how much I got done! But there's so much more to do....thankfully my amazing mom is coming over Monday to help me. Shout out for all the amazing moms out there - love you!!!

God is so good, this house is beyond our wildest dreams and I'm so excited for Malachi to grow up there. Speaking of the kid, here's another list of all things done by Malachi

as of March 12th, 2010:

• You still love music. As I'm writing this post you are standing on a box pretending that the upside down laundry basket is your snare drum, your little chair is your cymbal and your lego table is your bass drum. You didn't want to look for your actual drumsticks so instead you're using the thermometer and ear-checker-thingie from your doctor kit. And yes that's a technical term.
• You are not doing well with potty-training right now. We're talking major regression and it's been awesome for testing mom and dad's patience. Yay.
• You are incredibly independent and want to do everything by yourself. We went out to eat tonight and you cut up your food with a knife all by yourself for the first time. Big kid.
• The other day you were a little too quiet in the other room so I asked you what you were doing and you said "I'm just relaxing!" I should have known...
• You are helping your dad remodel our master bathroom and are actually really helpful! You have your own hammer, wrench, saw, and screwdrivers, and you proudly gave me a tour of all of your hard work when I got home from work.
• You sang the "Have Patience" song at the top of your lungs in Target the other day. I liked it:)
• A volunteer worker at your BSF kid's class on Wednesday morning paid you a huge compliment; she said you were extremely attentive, you participated in everything and had great manners and she could tell that you belonged to someone in leadership (meaning your Grandma Susie). I thanked God for that and was so proud:)

Now we are on to a week of craziness! We close on our house on Friday so I welcome any prayers that our moving would be smooth and painless:) I hope you all have had a wonderful week! God bless!

This is my friend mommy...

I don't know where he gets this stuff, but I love it:) I think it's amazing...and scary...how much our kids learn from us and develop their own behaviors and speech patterns based on what they observe.

But I do have these moments when Malachi does something - and I have absolutely no idea where it came from! Here's the latest one: he has started referring to me as 'his friend mommy' and Aaron as 'his friend daddy.' So every morning when I get him out of bed one of his first questions is "where'd my friend daddy go??" And it makes my heart smile! I take my role as a parent very seriously, and I consider it much more important to be his parent than his friend...but if he chooses to see me as 'his friend mommy,' I am completely okay with that:)

Well the Leichner household has some exciting news - we're moving!! We have been blessed with an incredible house and our closing date is set for March 18th - I can't wait! There will be plenty of pictures to come. The house is in Valley Center and amazingly Aaron has come to terms with living in enemy territory:) I guess the right house will do that for you! I haven't even begun to pack...not exactly sure when or how to get started. Do you wait until the last minute so you don't have to live out of boxes any longer than necessary? Or is it better to start boxing things up now and not procrastinate? I welcome any thoughts and advice!

Now it's time for another installment of all things done by Malachi. Here goes:

• You are very independent. If Aaron or I pick you up off of the couch you'll immediately run back to it, climb up on it and proceed to then climb down yourself while saying "I can do it all myself!"
• You like oysters. Yep. Oysters. I came home from work last Tuesday night and your dad tell me that you had a spinach salad and then oysters for dinner - and loved it. Whaaat?
• You finally have your colors down!
• You have learned how to barter - Grandma Susie gave you your first coin bank and you love it! But you found our stash of loose change and I'll catch you (repeatedly) with a fistful of coins. When I say that you can only have 2 coins, you say "How 'bout 5 coins mommy?" I'll go up to 3, you stay at 5 and it goes on for awhile. You usually end up getting 3 - I'm so tough...
• You learned how to swim on your back in the bathtub and love it. Except you talk really loud when your ears are under water.
• You like American Idol.
• You are the ultimate backseat driver. If we're coming up to a red light you go "The light is red! It's red mommy! We have to STOP WE HAVE TO STOP!!!" And if it's green you say "It's green mommy we can gooooo!!!!!" Multiply this by a dozen and that's a typical car ride with you.
• You love running. Or 'zooming' as we call it.
• Your dad is teaching you how to do back flips and it makes you laugh so hard - I love it.

Man I am not good at editing these lists! I could go on and on! ::sigh::

Here's a few pics from the past couple of weeks:

My boys on on of the many snow days:)

Malachi fell asleep on the way to our realtor's office so we laid him down and wrapped him up on her floor and he slept that way the entire time...must be nice...

Trying on dad's Packer's superbowl champs hat:)

Have a blessed week!

That's Hot

For this post I thought I would pull a picture out of my archives that would bring those who see it a myriad of emotions. It might start as shock with a side of nausea but just wait - as you take it in and gaze at the reflective sheen of our oversized shoulder puffs, that nausea will become - wait for it - ah yes, pure joy.

Well maybe joy is a stretch.

But it is entertaining right? I love that somewhere in the world there are 2 self-respecting women that actually wore these and felt beautiful. And those same two women realized that the world of Goodwill would be benefitted by their sacrifice and fast forward 20 years my sister and I could look like this!

Now our mom truly deserves our gratitude - she decided to have a costume murder mystery party for her birthday a couple of years ago which gave Ginger and I the perfect venue to strut our Aquanet lovin, face paint wearin, shoulder pad packin' style. I'm not really sure if my mom knew her invitation would be responded to with such (cough) beauty - but I'm sure she had never felt so proud.

Go ahead and take one more look at this picture and savor the fact that 20 years from now our daughters and sons will be writing similar stories while wearing the outfits we drool over today. Yay for the ever evolving world of fashion. Yay for enough confidence to laugh at ourselves. But never yay for 80's fashions. I just can't do it.

(Oh and the kid is doing great - he woke up this morning 'baa-ing' like a sheep).

The Prodigal Blogger

"Good intentions are not enough. They've never put an onion in the soup yet."

Let's say my blog is a soup. At this point it is onion-less, meat-less, vegetable-less....heck I barely have the broth at a boil. So here I am, the prodigal blogger a bit terrified to make any promises - but inspired by other blogs to do a better job documenting my son's life. Oh sure, Aaron and I have lives too - but let's be honest it's a lot more fun to focus on the kid:)

I love how my friend Gina Dreher is so good at making lists about whatever Sutton is up to these days. I wish I had done that for Malachi earlier on! She and my sister both have advised me that I don't always need to have pictures to update my blog, that I should just write whatever is goin on with us. But let's be honest, how many of us love reading blogs without the visual aids? By the time you have your own family and are chasing a toddler around our preferences have reverted to "Wait, a book with no pictures? What's the point??" So I'm going to warn you that in an effort to be more consistent with my entries there may not always be pictures (gasp).

Here is my first official list of all things done by Malachi:

2 yrs 2 months old

• You are obsessed with music. You LOVE watching your daddy sing on the Asbury Christmas Special and never get tired of it....ever......
• You can count to 10 in spanish. Thank you Dora.
• You eat at least one Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich a day. Please don't ever decide you don't like them because your mom would be lost.
• You watch Dora the Explorer, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Special Agent Oso.
• You are taking your time with potty training, but we've been using pull-ups lately and you're doing awesome:)
• Chocolate milk is your favorite.
• You're really into the "thunder" setting on your sound machine.
• You are amazing at basketball - really! You can shoot a full size basketball into your hoop (on the highest setting) from about 5 ft away over and over. And over and over. And over.
• Your dad taught you how to 'jab and go' when playing basketball against a defender. Even though your jab doesn't really jab - you love it:)
• Dad taught you the 3 things needed for a fire: a heat source, fuel source and oxygen. Then you taught your mom.
• You weigh somewhere around 33 lbs and are actually taller for your age! How in the world did that happen?
• You think snow is awesome. Grandma Bubba taught you how to make and throw snowballs and you think it's the coolest thing ever. Until you try it without your mittens on.
• Everytime you hear sirens you ask mommy if you can pray for them and then you pray like this: "Dear Jesus thank you for my breakfast - I mean please help whoever's in trouble. Amen."

So obviously not posting in a year makes my initial list really long. I'll cut it off for now and save some for later:) I hope you all are having a blessed 2011:)

Who Me?

If you're a parent, have been around parents, have been a child or still are a child - I'm sure you know the "who me?" look. It's unmistakable...the wide innocent eyes and slightly pouty lips - and if it hasn't been used on you there's a very good chance you've used it on some unsuspecting prey. On this particular morning Malachi had eaten his breakfast and I was working on accomplishing the same. As I came into the kitchen to put my dishes in the sink I caught a glimpse of my son working very hard to acquire some last tiny morsels of honey nut goodness. I grabbed the camera and actually succeeded in getting a few pictures taken before he noticed me - hence the following:

"Ooh this is gonna be good..."

"Man I wish my arm was longer"

"Ah that's better"

"Just...a...little......further....."

Uh oh think fast! "Who me? Mom - I would never!"

I love him:) And I definitely can't blame him - those honey nut cheerios are delicious!