Presenting Betsy: The Terrib...errr... Terrific Two Year Old!

Betsy on her 2nd birthday!

Betsy turned 2 on Mar 4th. We had a small birthday party for her at Josh and Amberly's house (we currently don't have a dining table, so it's hard to host things at our house). Her cousins in Laredo were all in attendance. While we were living with Josh and Am last fall Betsy really got into the show Team Umizoomi on Nick Jr. So I decided then I would make her cake the character Milli from the show.

This is Milli from the show... and This is the cake I made.




Betsy, in my unbiased opinion, is a complete doll, FULL of personality, hilarious, and extremely stubborn. She likes to put things inside other things... for instance, toys into the laundry hamper, legos into her purse, etc. She is totally a little girl and LOVES all things princess, to put bows in her hair, dress up, and have her nails painted. That's not to say she doesn't extremely enjoy cars and balls, which makes her daddy happy too. She loves to play with her cousins and asks for them each day, but plays well by herself as well. She finally has the attention span to make it through a movie. Her favorite tv show at the moment is "Duper Why" aka "Super Why" from PBS. She asks for it SEVERAL times a day. She talks up a storm and can say anything you can imagine... she surprises me often with her vocabulary. She LOVES music. She requests that we sing with her often and anytime music comes on TV or radio she just can't help herself and her little hips start shakin'. She's so funny to watch and she has got some moves.

She has many quirks which crack Eric and I up. She is very sensitive to the way things feel. She still doesn't care for sticky things, such as stickers and freaks out if one touches her. She rubs things on her lips absent-mindedly. She HATES tags in her clothes and complains that they "hurt". We try to explain to her that they don't "hurt" they are "itchy"... we're making progress here. She is a child of routine! We started saying prayers before bedtime a couple of months ago. She is very good at repeating them and has even started to add in her own thoughts every now and then and can foresee where you're going and sometimes complete the thought on her own. Last month Eric's parents got us the animated scriptures as part of her b-day present and so we added in reading scriptures each night. She'll repeat anywhere from a few sentences to a paragraph depending on her mood. So each night I'll give her the cue and say "It's time." and she knows to go get her diaper and pjs. As soon as she is changed she says, "skiptures, skiptures" and after we read scriptures, she immediately begins asking for "pers". After prayers she runs to climb into bed. For all the heck she gives me during the day and displays her little defiant personality, she makes nighttime a dream. She has also gotten to where she demands to say prayers before her nap in the afternoon.

As far as her physical appearance goes, she's finally starting to grow a little hair. The back is FULL of curl when it's wet or if I put product in it, but if she sleeps on it she flattens it out and she just has a mullet. She's still a pretty petite child. She weighs 24lbs and can still wear some 12 mo clothes. I just barely moved her out of size 3 diapers and we are hoping to get the potty training thing underway soon.

That is basically my Betsy in a nutshell. She takes up all of my time and I wonder how she will adjust to the new baby... Time will tell. We talk to her about him a lot, but I don't think she really grasps the concept.

I know... You'd written me off as dead, so to prove you wrong....

Here's a post!

Alright, when we last left the Johnsons they were plunging head first into craziness... and not much has changed!

In two weeks time we received a job offer, accepted job offer, rented our house, and packed up and moved 16 hours to Laredo, TX. Here is a fun bulleted list to summarize our lives from then to now.

• We moved in with my brother's family while we looked for a place to live... this arrangement lasted 4 months, which was longer than we actually lived in the house we owned in Tupelo...
• Eric started his new job as office manager for Southern Tire Mart, same company he was working for, just a much better position. He loves his new job and that makes us all happy.
• Laredo is less a city in Texas and more a city in Mexico and Mexico isn't really a stable place right now so we had to be pretty selective in our housing... we decided to stay safe and look for houses in the same neighborhood as my two brothers.
• We found the perfect house on the same street as one of my brothers and just a street over from the other! We closed in December and have been settling in since... Yes, we do own two houses at the moment, not ideal, but something we felt necessary.
• In October, Eric and I celebrated 5 years of marriage by getting away for a weekend to San Antonio... It was fabulous! We had even bought season passes to Six Flags and had planned to spend a whole day there, but...
• The weekend before our anniversary we found out we were expecting baby Numero Dos! We are super excited, but it kinda put a squash on our Six Flags plans... oh well....
• For two weeks after we found out we were pregnant I was feeling just fine and pretty confident I was going to skip the sickness I experienced with Betsy...
• The last week of October the sickness hit and boy did it! I was grateful we were living with my sister-in-law... she took care of Betsy and I everyday on top of her five kids and everything else she does... She was amazing!
• This time the doctor prescribed me some medicine to help with the sickness. It didn't do away with it, but I was able to eat and hold it down most of the time, but the nausea was still ever present.
• As I said earlier, Laredo is pretty much a part of Mexico and if you don't speak Spanish you are in the tiny minority. Eric and my two brothers who live down here speak it, but none of us wives do... it makes things interesting sometimes.
• When we moved down here there were 3 branches in the church in Laredo and we are only a district... I'd never even heard of that before we moved here... Two of the branches were Spanish speaking and one was English. They struggle for leadership down here so if you are white they attack you immediately... Within one month of moving here all of us had at least one calling... poor Eric had 4!
• In November they redid boundaries and added in a 4th branch, now it is two English and two Spanish speaking branches... they are trying to get people to use their English more and quit relying on their Spanish. We are in the branch that used to be Spanish speaking, but is now English speaking (by definition of the Church), but they really struggle with stepping out of their native language, which results in many lessons and talks being given in Spanish, which means Sarah no understandy...

Ok, that gets us pretty close to present day... I'll do separate posts about Betsy and our new house, but just quickly... Betsy is growing like a weed and becoming a little person, not a baby anymore. We spent Christmas in our own home for the first time in our marriage just our little family and it was nice. My parents came to visit for New Year's and it was so good to see them again. Betsy is CRAZY about her Papa and Grandma Brown and was heart-broken when they left at the end of the week. While they were here I had a doctor's appointment and found out Baby #2 is a BOY! We are so excited to have one of each... Eric is on cloud 9. He is due sometime in June, but they keep changing the date, so only time will tell... We do have a name picked out, but are not sharing at this time... My sickness has FINALLY started to subside... Some days are still no fun, but I'll take what I can get. That's it for now and if you made it this far you OBVIOUSLY had nothing to do with your time... haha, j/k. Thanks for caring enough to read!

Here we go again!

So my last post was about how we just bought a house, repainted the WHOLE thing, and were finally settling in for the long haul.....

In this post, I have an important announcement to make...

WE'RE MOVING!

Close your mouth. It's gaping a little.

Yes, it's true. No, I'm not kidding. Yes, we are insane. No, I don't know when the madness will stop.

So, Eric was offered a job in Laredo, Texas that was basically just too good to turn down, even if we did just buy a house. We are definitely sad about leaving our first home (even if we did only live here for 3 months). We will miss my family here, but we are super excited for this new opportunity. So if you know anyone wanting to move to Tupelo, MS. We have a super cute house for sale....