I've been putting off blogging for a while, but if I don't get some of these cute things down, my non existent memory will not be able to hold on! it's like a very limited memory card. if they keep doing cute stuff, SOMEthing is getting deleted.
So a week ago or so we were driving home from Disneyland, and Porter was exhausted (it was around 9:30, so well past bed time for him) and in his sleepy voice he says: We all love you mama.
me:you all like me?
P: no, we all LOVE you.
me: oh thanks honey. you and Nomi love me?
p: and daddy. We ALL love you.
me:thanks Porter, that is So sweet! What a nice thing to say sweetheart.
p: THat make you happy mama? you is happy now?
(I'm thinking, geez, i must be a grouch these days if he's wondering if i'm happy now.)
me: yes Porter, that makes me very happy.
p: Jesus is help you? he helping you?
me: Yes honey, Jesus helps me be happy.

man- it was such a sweet conversation. he's really been talking about Jesus a lot lately. Sometimes I see where it's coming from. Like when driving through St. George on our way to see the folks, and we stop by the temple, and decide when we leave to say a little prayer, where we remind Porter to thank Heavenly Father for the temple. It was such a sweet little prayer:
P: Dear Hedenly Dahder
Dank you for temple
Dank you for Jesus giving us the temple
In the name of Jesus Christ
amen. (he's pretty good at getting right to the point, which is great for prayers on the food. A good 10 seconder.)

other times Porter's thinking and talking about Jesus comes from total left field. i totally get a kick when i feel like I get glimpses into his thought process. Like sometime last week, Porter was taking his time on the pot, and he says "Jesus helpin us pay for our house? He helping us mama?'
haha. Sure Porter. He helped daddy find a job, so yeah, he's helping us. (not a house quite yet...but maybe someday when we can hold a job for longer than one contract at a time...)
anyways, it's fun to see his mind wonder about spiritual things, and formulate ideas or questions. i feel like he's growing up so much and every day becoming more and more independent of me. i love that is so self sufficient (I sometimes forget to give him a break when he's overtired and having a hard time listening because he can do so much on his own), but it makes me sad how much he doesn't seem to even need me anymore. can i have a kiss get a 'no thank you' response, or most likely, an air smack sound, as he quickly runs outside to play with Berto or Brittanie. Holding hands is quickly retrieved as soon as we sufficiently crossed the street, and after nap hugs and our traditional 'what did you dream about' game been subsituted with Good Morning as he runs past me saying he dreamed about 'nudin' from over his shoulder as I'm left on my knees by his bedroom door hugless.
i'm loving his developing mind, but i'm a mama, and i can't help it. i miss my baby.

of course i have another one, but she's growing up too. i don't know where the time went, and now my smiley quiet girl is furniture surfing and jabbering to herself. (just started with the dadadadadas). she's not so consistent with her signs, but we're not so consistent with teaching it, so go figure. she does love to mimick though, and will shake her head and stop, waiting for you to copy her, and then do it again and again. she's also a big clapper. loves to clap and grab, which wouldn't be so bad if we were better at cutting her nails, or if she didn't love peoples eyes so much:) she's been a bit more clingy which could be the fact that she's moving so much more, or because she likes climbing up me for leverage. either way, it's killing me, because Porter decides he wants to me a baby too, and clings to the other leg, and with a body twice as big, tries climbing or jumping on me (whatever he sees Nomi doing at that instant) and at the end of the up close and person-ally ammoying day, i don't even want a hug from mark. Just let me go into my room, close my door, sprawl on my bed, and be by myself.
yeah. just thinking about it makes that bed call me right now.
Before I go, here's pictures of my growing all too fast babies, and their grandma's.

life in snipits ... mostly for me...

disneyland gets into most of porter's prayers. and pocket tales/library. porter, more complicated sentences;'finger hurts, pull out my nail off.' 'bye park, see you after go to gym now' 'what happened on car, you open door mom?' also- very observant; always knows when someone is 'not happy' daddy: i'll close this door so nomi doesn't wake up. mommy to daddy: she's just talking to herself.' porter takes this indication to RUN and almost busts in on nomi (content in her crib). daddy:no no no shhh- nomi's sleeping. Porter: no daddy, nomi just talking to herself. or relays messages 'daddy, MOMMYs CALL YOU' 'nomi's eyes closing NOMI"S SLEEP!" great comprehension, which we see the most when we ask him why he's on timeout (which on certain days seems to happen all day) "i run way" "i push nomi' 'and what did mommy say? "STOP (2 hands up in air)." and did you stop? "noooooo" will you stop when mommy says stop? " ooooohhhhh, YAAAAAAA (starting to lose concentration, using a silly voice--which tells me it's time to wrap it up or it's all in vain) ok say sorry mama "sorry mama" i love you-hug. last morning at myles and elly's house - time out's all morning, with at least 3 times for running out the front dorr. having heard the lecture after the timeout at least twice already that morning, daddy asks 'why are you on time out? ' I run way out front door, no mommy daddy' and what is dangerous out front that could hurt you? (correct answer from previous time outs : cars) this time porter takes a second to think about it; ooooooh SNAILS! dad ends that time out with laughing and agreeing that snails are very dangerous...following up with telling me porter's way past nap time, and the behaviour will not be improving any time soon. porter learning the art of picking on people as he tortured cousin myles with a hose. unfortunately took me a min to get in on the action...but i came out to this diolouge; porter stop. pause. sound of spraying water. PORTER STOP it. pause. sound of spraying water. I SAID STOP IT! ....whew- i got there by that time to see myles soaked, but also half smiling as he told me porter kept spraying him with water. i make the short lived mistake at a small good hearted laugh at the dripping half smiling myles, which is all it took for porter to feel enough stamp of approval for one last spray before all good will went behind a veil of mean mama face, and time outs. kids at the beach, so fun. 1,2,3 jump! myles searched for shells as porter and elly and me -content to hold hands and jump over every wave. porter not quite as brave as myles. still pretty jittery unless we held hands (death grip) - uncle penny frightened him again with the boogy board, "was that fun" ya! he said as he looked terrified and ran to me and lisa as fast as possible. mark- great work around the house, and i got to stay with the kids- so fun. and read books during naps. elly and porter spent hours together building sand piles (not in the sand box) and playing different version of 'baby' and 'house'. .. but all three at soccer game played a porter classic, 'monster'. somehow, at every family function, porter has managed to be the monster, and every other child, the screaming running away victims. we tried to switch the roles, but within seconds of myles being monster, porter turned from victim into scarier monster, making myles monster squeal and run away... i really hope porter has friends in elementary school, not just kids that he thinks are playing with him, when they're really just having fun running away from his crazy 'monster' antics. i think we've set him up. every time we eat, juices turn into monster juice, and food into monster food. and we're constantly play 'eating' each other as scary monsters, telling each other that we taste like ice cream. i first realized this was not normal when doing it to nomi at the beach with becca's baby elliot, who when hearing a loud scary monster voice didn't giggle like nomi, but looked terrified and started to scream in fear. hmmm. porter's been known to put kids in sleeper holds when hugging them, or pinching them when tickling them, but mostly he is just in every other kids space, like one milimeter from their face with his face and hands as he loudly and excitedly says helllo. who knew we would quite literally create the best monster ever. 'want to play quiet cricket game'
nomi is almost crawling-gets up on knees or toes for a second before dropping back to belly. eating much better, but still takes about 3 spoons to distract her to get through feedings. loves to lean into us when sitting in front of us, but can tell we're laying behind her. first 'dadadaba' but doesn't sustain them for long, unless completely ignored. starting to pull my hair as well as eat my face. likes being thrown in the air a little. loves loves loves porter. sits up like a champ. dives and eats people. loves when she wakes up and porter comes in and yells 'good morning nomi!' as he gets in her crib, half sits/lays on her and "reads" her books. i scold him as i pull him off saying 'get off of nomi, it hurts her body!' but the reality looks tells quite the opposite story as nomi laughs while i pull him off of her arm which is getting it's circulation back.

update

Porter:
at the ballgame; 'hey little boy! how you doing?' "let's go dodgers. Let's go UncleChard' 'take me out to the ballgame' 'my bonnie lies over the ocean'
time out days: realizing how ridiculous i was being- both laughing.
I want to read to Nomi. My baby, my bear (my pee pee) nomi's yawning. nomi's sleeping. nomi's awake. Giving nomi a bath. "i'm tired, I take a nap" when he wants out of something. Prayer: blessing animals/girraffe, mommy daddy, porter nomi etc etc. what a wonderful prayer! shy smile aww "my heart mommy, my heart." 'my name is Porter Gems Penser. p-o-r-t-e-r (in church) PORTER! tickles 'eats' a bit hard- nomi loves him
Naomi: sitting up so well. 'ba ba ba ba" but when no one is talking to her. usually just smiles huge. or does one small loud cry. recently with crocodile tears. growl sound. just started opening her mouth for food. didn't like forcing it. (thinking we were behind) loves loves porter. always trying to eat him. she's starting to love board books and will let me turn the pages without eating. 'pat' and rubbing while breat or bottle feeding. a little sweet/obnoxious. cheecks so pudgy and cute. legs chubby. wanting to eat her toes. jumping CONSTANTLY and standing. once on hands and knees. stuffing EVERYthing into her mouth. tongue always out- even when smiling. shocking beautfiul eyes. just piercing. knaws on my chin. but still no teeth- yay. eyes wrinkle in sober concentration as she makes a long low gargly noise. so easy going, with everyone. sometimes feel like we ignore her so much more because she is so easy. rolls 360's on tummy and loves to reach for things. laughs hard at anything porter does. hardly laughs for us. can throw her around a little more. chunky and solid. loves water. does cry hard when hurt. had rsv twice, but hasn't had it for a long time. first time at 3-4 months. since has a sunk in chest. nomi's hair starting to come in. so soft, and blond. sweats when eats. clammy hands and feets. only pulls hair when trying to stuff your face in her mouth. hardly gets sung to or rocked to sleep. loves to chew on my phone.
porter, getting over facination of public restrooms, and starting to pee/poo by himself in the big toilet. only tragic someitmes. sticks belly out, leans forward on knees but makes it! great at night for a few months now. go to the library-pocket tales, loves his library books- porter climbs into crib (to my chagrin) reading stories to himself and her. even obnoxious books. he loves them and rereads. 'love you park, miss you park, can't wait to see you park.
a little jealousy over toys. minimal

Odds and Ends

Porter:
Dear evanly fahder
dank you day
peas bess daddy work (variation: daddy school)
peas bess mommy home
nomi home (variation: nomi nap)
porter home
amen

it usually takes a reminder to get him to bless the food or say 'Jesus Christ, Amen.' But we're still pretty proud of him. His night time prayer also usually includes 'sweet dreams'

These prayers are a perfect example of Porter's vocabulary up to now, where he seems to stick to very constructed two to five word sentences made up of words that he knows, like 'more food mama?' 'Nomi napping', 'Beautiful Night' or his favorite sentence after watching a curious george clip "Just OOONE More.' but more recently, porter's decided his sentences aren't long enough, or don't sound enough like mama and daddy's, so now he replicates our tones and dipthongs quite accurately, while throwing a bunch of jibberish into very full, and fast run on sentences. So while we were driving home past the park one evening this is what I hear from the backseat. "GOODNIGHT PARK! gogish deef SLEEP TIGHT DON"T LET BED BUGS BITE< IF DO, SPIT SHOE, BLACK AND BOO! jabsihsd, SWEET DREAMS, deba LOVE YOU MISS YOU BYE!" etc etc. I think he even sang that park some of "Barges" and "Twinkle Twinkle' before concluding with "WE"RE HOME NOMI!"
hmm- so you think i'm using my caps lock a lot? Well, i mean it. Porter's excited voice reminds me of Will Ferrel's snl sketch, "I HAVE A VOICE INNOCULATION PROBLEM..."


Also Porter's really into restating the most current events that he finds particularly exciting. And he likes to add sound effect amongst the jibberish and words he knows. Especially rides from disneyland. After clinging to us in fear on the Madderhorn, he not only wanted to ride it again and again, but he also spent the rest of the day, retelling us all about it; "jibberish jibberish ROAR MONSTER jibberish CLOSE EYES jibberish AHHHH SPLASH!"

daddy: We can only have one book and one song tonight porter, because it's late.
porter: 'Daddy, one book, one song, one nap' very seriously in his 'parent voice' while wagging his finger at daddy. He usually uses his parent voice when responding to our serious voices. For example, after Daddy said quite seriously, 'You may eat more food, or take your nap.', Porter (not liking those choices) responded in that same voice with options he liked better: "(jibberish) Play Nomi, watch Movie, okay?' so matter of fact. he also likes to use that tone while commanding baby sister in what she may or may not do. Whether he's yelling lovingly, or bossing her around, she seems to love both.

nomi used to live her life in fear- usually while breastfeeding, simply because she knew Porter could attack her with a spontanious hug or hit or excited scream or a monster roar at any time. she seems now to be taking it in stride and giggling at all his abuse. apparently she not only craves porter's positive or negative attention, but she also thinks it's ALL quite hilarious. mark and I vigorously do all sorts of energetic games to try and get just small gurgle laughs out of that girl, yet one punishing "BE HAPPY NOMI" yell from Porter, and the giggles just spill out of her.

Naomi's also sitting up now. SO BIG! and the way she holds up her head while on her tummy, i know rolling can't be too far away:( She's still not a big talker, but always a big smiler. Someday Mark and I will get around to feeding her food, but for now, we keep wanting her to stay our sweet, small baby.

The Poop Scoop

TADA. Porter is officially an 'undies' man. It's been a pretty easy road with him so far. In fact, his independence is a little unnerving at times. "Potty. Bye mommy daddy. I go potty." after which he'd run to the bathroom and lock the door. At first this seemed like a great idea. He'd go potty, dump his potty in the toilet, wash the bowl out and his hands in the sink, then come back out yelling "I DID IT!" but it wasn't long before we noticed extra long visits in the bathroom, and find him (after unlocking the door) washing his clothes and overflowing the sink, getting poopy just about everywhere, or trying to stand and pee just a little too early. So now that we've roped him in a bit, we're back to potty trained angel, and we can look back on some of the funnier stories from the past few weeks.

porter singing 'poo poo hinu hinu'(mom's new favorite maori song) while trying to poo on the potty.

Porter 'showing' g-ma and g-pa his big boy undies by sticking the telephone down his pants thinking they'd be able to see them.

Porter trying to impress the missionaries by going poopy by himself and bringing his little potty bucket out to show them his good work.

Porter running out to a park tree at a play date, and feeling confident that he'd like to pee on that tree, pulls down his pants and does so. (Where do boys get that desire?? Is it just in their genes??)

The only real snag we've hit is the fact that no matter how gross it is, Porter loves public restrooms, and will cry 'potty' over and over again just to spend time in them. I just may die early from some unearthly disease for how many times he tricks me into those josie grossie potties. Well, I guess with that being our only snag so far, I'm ready to say what I hear Porter yell at me about 6 times a day: YAY!!! I DID IT!!! One down, one to go.And now, we leave you with the I'M AN UNDIES MAN DANCE!

'Wish it were Sunday'...

Usually it feels like Sundays are such marathons. Mark and I teach the 15-16 year old Sunday School class, which means we're doing jumping jacks and cartwheels just to keep our five boys' attention through about 3 verses of scripture. But for some reason last Sunday was just completely chill. It started with a sweet morning with the babies. Nomi gets up first. She just whimpers, but I get her right away so that the crying doesn't wake up Porter. So I've just gotten Nomi and am feeding her on my side of the bed, when in comes Porter sleepily over to Mark's side of the bed. He climbs in and starts to snuggle sleep. Porter's snuggling is the cutest. He reaches over his tiny arm until it completely wraps around your neck, which automatically, since his arm is so short, pulls your head right next to his, your noses touching. Then he falls in and out of sleep. So that is what he was doing with daddy for like two minutes before he saw me. He then let his eyes shoot open, take a huge dramatic inhalation before excitingly telling daddy, "Nomi's aWAKE!" (shocker. and yet he says it with new found surprise every morning.) but then he followed it up with "GOOD MORNING NOMI! So CUTE!"
haha. I LOVE him!! Mark and I start giggling, "You're right Porter, She IS so cute!" Still laying down, he pats Mark sweetly, and slightly condescendingly echos with, "Daddy. So Cute." and then with even more sap in his voice, "Porter. So Cute."
Unfortunately I didn't get in on the cute action. luckily I have quite the self esteem.
I'm not sure why, but the whole day seemed to have that kind of slow paced ease to it all. At church, our disruptive Porter is usually narrating events in his whisper/yell voice; "BREAD" "WATER" "PRAYER" "SONG" "NURSURY." Well, this time he quietly sat, until we let him whisper in Naomi's face, which got Naomi giggling for about a minute straight before we begrudgingly separated them. it was adorable, (and totally distracting). Our class felt effective for the first time in weeks, and the
rest of the day we just hung out. Naomi went into the bouncer for the first time, Porter and Mark wrestled, and Porter did the boogie with each bite and gave us "air hugs" throughout dinner. With Mark taking on nap time, and letting me ignore him and read all evening, the day on a whole pretty much rocked.
So Sunday they were my sweethearts, and today they're my minions. I guess that's reason enough to write about the good days.