It's Not Fair

Sunday when I was making dinner for my family, Emily comes over with a chair and stands next to me by the stove. "I want to help," she says. I love having a little helper, and she really is just a joy to have around in the kitchen, but I had just burned my finger so I just wanted to get dinner done so I could sit down and keep my finger in freezing cold water (I got it pretty good). So I said, "You would help Mommy most if you would go sit down in your chair." Well, Emily wasn't happy with that answer so she says, "It's not fair. I want to help." I couldn't believe she said that. It's not fair? Where did she get that. I finally remembered where that came from as I was putting the DVD into the player. The Evil Magician on "Frosty the Snowman" says to Santa, "It's not fair. Evil magicians have to make a living too." The positive side of things, Emily getting better and better and being able to carry on a conversation.

Funny Counting Stories

I have been working with the girls on their counting. My Mom bought Emily a little counting book for her birthday and I realized that I definitely should be teaching her how to count. So we've been counting ALL the time. It's actually saved me a couple of times too. Like when I'm making the girls their sandwiches. What 3-year-old or 1-year-old do you know that is patient? I tell them, "Ok, I'm making sandwiches. Let's count to ten. What's first?" Meredith likes the game the best so she starts it out. "One." Of course, Emily is not about to be outdone by the one-year-old so she says, "two." And then so on until we finish to 10.

Meredith at one point was in trouble for something (like I could possibly remember ALL of the things these girls get into or get in trouble for :) so I said, "I'm going to count to three." (I can't even remember what she was supposed to do by three.) "One...Two..." and then Meredith says, "three, four!" LOL. She says the cutest things.

Last night when we were picking up Nathan at the school (we don't do this very often) Emily and Meredith were pointing to the cars saying, "Look, cars" So Nathan says, "See all of the cars. Look, one car, two cars, etc. So this morning I told Emily, "let's count". Emily starts out, "One car..."

Meredith is really pretty good with her animals and their sounds. When Emily isn't there she says them all so fast, but when Emily is there she has to say it really fast so she can beat Meredith to it, so Meredith doesn't do it when Emily is around.

Painting and Talking

This is really the first time I've let Emily color with a paint brush and with very messy paints (painting is messy, these really aren't any messier than others). She LOVED it. And I think she could have spent at least 30 more minutes sitting there painting (now for a 3-year-old, that's something.)
Emily has pretty much gotten over the "terrible two's". We only have a moment here and there. Can't really think of one for this week and that is something. But Meredith...I'm afraid it's only just begun. Meredith does some absolutely adorable things though. Like this morning.
Me: Do you want socks?
Meredith: Yes, please.

She has lots of words down, and she is pretty vocal. She uses please quite a bit which is definitely a plus. Like, "shoes, please. shoes, please" until I put on her shoes. Or eat, diaper change (yes, my little 17-month old has been asking for a diaper change for a couple of months now. And no, it's not because she sits in it for a while. She asks RIGHT after she does a job. Now all I need to do is have her tell me about it BEFORE and we're good to go :)

Colds

Two weeks ago we got really busy and I didn't have much time to blog so I didn't put up alot of the updates. Now, the task seems slightly overwhelming. So if the posts seem a little scrambled and out of order I'm just trying to remember it all. The girls have been sick for the last week which is the reason for the shortage of pictures. And we're still sick :(

Walking Backwards - Yesterday Nathan and I were just sitting on the couch talking and enjoying being with our girls. Meredith is so entertaining to just watch. She just jabbers away and runs around. At one point we were watching her walking backwards. Every once in a while she'd turn around to make sure she wasn't going to run into anything. It was so cute. The girls love it when I turn on the music because we dance and sing and run around and do all sorts of tricks - like walking backwards. I take both of their hands and we practice walking backwards, sideways, twirling and any sort of tumbling I can think of that I think they can do. It was fun to watch Meredith do it on her own.

She also says the funniest things. Like, "Here you go baby." LOL. I call her "baby" still. I really need to stop it. But, I'll hand her a snack or a drink and say "Here you go baby." Now, she'll bring me something and give it to me and say "Here ya go, baby." Both of the girls say funny things, but right now that's the only one I can think of. Meredith has a lot of animal names down and their sounds. I have their little halloween bags out, because they are cute and I let the girls play with them. They are little felt bags. One of them has a cat on it and Meredith grabs it and says "meow, meow". Bird is probably her best animal. I like to keep bird food out on the porch because the girls LOVE to see the birds and point them out to me. Meredith is always saying "see, see". Or "look, look." I'm always pointing out things to them and saying "Do you see that?" or "Look at that.". That's typically followed by what it is, either me asking and they tell me, or I tell them what it is, or what color it is, etc. Meredith is growing so fast, but she's still very much my baby, especially when I compare her to how big Emily is. Meredith gets treated more like a baby at her age then Emily did at her age. Probably just because I had nobody else to really compare her to.

24 Hours and Counting

She did it! We are so excited. We've made a new record for potty training. Emily has now gone 24 hours without wetting her pants. Last night Nathan put a diaper on Emily because we didn't want her to wet her pants in the middle of the night. But, this morning I heard her being frustrated and I was afraid she would wake up the baby so I hurried out to see what was wrong. She was trying to pull her pants down and couldn't because of the diaper. So I helped her and she went potty. Her diaper was DRY!!! We're celebrating today.

How it finally came around to be. Well...two cold showers. Someone told Nathan that they gave their kid a cold shower to rinse off in. (In Tucson though, cold water doesn't exist. So it was more of a luke warm water.) She HATED it. I asked her while she was in the shower, would you rather go potty instead? And she said, "potty, potty, potty" OK. So she'd sit on the potty for a while. After two of those, we've had a 24 hour stretch. It's been 24 hours since her last shower. I tried the whole "be nice" thing about accidents. We've sort of been trying off and on, and then recently I've just been going at it (I don't even know how long it's been). I've sort of just let her run diaperless (but with a dress on just in case anyone saw her). I don't know what I'll do with a boy if we ever have one. Obviously not put him in a dress :) We sort of got tired of the whole potty training thing, thus the "cold" shower (which I will repeat was not cold, but it wasn't very warm either). We were going to the zoo today anyway, but I'm going to tell Emily we're going because she's such a big girl going potty. We'll make a big celebration out of it.

Cans (the favorite toy)

It's amazing that stacking the cans never gets old. The toys get old, but definitely not stacking the cans. Blocks, that was so yesterday. Here is Meredith's new way of stacking the cans.

Handing them to Daddy! "Here you go Daddy." Hmmm, I wonder how many he can hold.

Ok, let's see if he can handle another one.

What will we come up with next?

"Star Fish"

Emily has so many signs that she does. Among her favorite are the aquarium animals, such as shrimp, dolphins, whale, definitely fish (she's been doing that one forever) and starfish. Starfish is probably the one she signs the most because every time she sees a star she signs "star" but says "starfish". We're still working on the fact that it is a two part sign. I think that is probably a little difficult for a 2-year-old. But Meredith has even started to sign it too, and it is sooo adorable. I tried for a few minutes to get it on camera, but didn't quite get the whole sign. I'm just not fast enough. But you can see the very last part of her signing it at the first of this video. I tried to ask her to do it again, but half way through asking her to do it I realized that she would not. So, I just turned off the video. But it is still very cute.

"Peek-a-boo"

I finally caught Meredith playing "Peek-a-boo". Boy was that hard. She really wanted the camera, but I finally got it. The first one I put on here because she just said "Peek-a-boo" so well. The second one is the whole thing. We had been playing and trying to record for a while by the time I got a good one and Emily was starting to play in the background too. I didn't realize it until I was stopping the video though and I didn't get them to cooperate for another one like that :( But I'm sure glad I've got something though :)





I put the label as milestone for this post. It is a milestone though I got a picture of it late. As long as I have something at one point I'm happy.

My Reader

Meredith loves to read. I have to read a book many, many times before we can go on to something else (typically another book). Emily did this about the same age. It's so cute. Meredith comes to me with a book and says "book, book", so I take the book. Then she says "up, up", so I pick her up. Then we start to read the book. If I say "the end" to early (even after we've read the whole book and I get to the last page and say "the end") she cries. But, I love to be able to hold my baby and read to her. It's the best way to get her to hold still.

Emily's Milestones

Well, Emily can now lock and unlock the bedroom and bathroom doors. There are a few that you kind of have to lift the handle on before you can lock it, so that doesn't work, but it's a good thing that we found out how to unlock our doors pretty early. The place we moved into didn't had the handy little key. I called the hardware store and they couldn't get me anything. Finally, after major phone chasing, someone told me just to use a small screwdriver. At one point I lost the screwdriver (it got put into the locked room) so I grabbed a spare pair of tweezers (a set of the cheap ones that don't work anyway) and unbent them and that worked too. So, just in case you lock your doors, there you go.

The second thing is something that I've more recently learned to look for as a milestone. Emily was pointing to a picture of me holding her when she was about Meredith's age. She said, "That's Mommy and Meredith." And I said, "No, that's Mommy and Emily." We went back and forth a few times until she said, "No." She was laughing at me! She thought I was telling her something funny, like I had forgotten who was who. Anyhow, I don't know when children are supposed to cross the milestone, but lately Emily has covered leaps and bounds in her speech. I am so happy about it.

"I Love You"

The most precious words in the whole world are the words "I Love You" coming spontaneously from your two-year-old. On Saturday I was pretty upset. So, Emily came up to me and said, "I Love You. It's ok." And after she gave me a kiss, "it's all better." And it was definitely much better after that. That was the first time she's ever said "I Love You" spontaneously to me. She has since said it a couple more times and then I get a hug. My sweet girl.

Sick

It's been a while since I've posted something new, but we've all just been sick. Needless to say, we haven't really been feeling up to doing anything or even taking pictures. Emily was tested for development delays because she still isn't talking. They went well. Emily has a small delay in her speech (surprise, surprise) but not anywhere near enough to get into a program. Personally as her mother, there is really nothing wrong with her. When she wants to say something she will. Like the other day my Mom and I were walking down the hallway and Emily walks right up to me and says, "Go to your room." Or she even told Meredith, "Thank you. Say it, say it, say it. Say Thank you." or how about "No, I don't want it." She's come up with absolutely hilarious things to say. The first one is the one that sticks out though. When the lady came to test her she would do NOTHING. She was so ornery. Oh, well. At least they have determined she is ok.

"Teddy Bear"

I was putting Emily back in bed and I checked on Meredith and this is what I saw. It was so cute I couldn't resist taking a picture. She was holding onto her "teddy bear" (I think it is actually a dog) and then moved her arm before I could go get the camera, but it is still so cute. I give her the "teddy bear" just before putting her in her crib. And I say "good night" and she is a happy camper.

She did it! Yea!

We've been trying to potty train Emily in earnest now. I'm tired of finding wet diapers around the house. Once she does her job she just takes it off (and if the baby is lucky Emily will help her too), so enough is enough and we're potty training. Today we were sitting down at the table and she said "I need to go potty". So we took her. We left her there to do her job and she came back very excited pretty fast. One more big step in a very long process.

First Tooth

Meredith has her first tooth. I'm so excited. No wonder she has been so grumpy. Her first tooth is on her bottom right (my left when looking at it). She is progressing so fast and doing so much. She is such a busy little girl and has such a personality. Emily and Meredith get along well until the other has a toy they want. They can both be very sweet to each other, but the sharing thing is hard. Meredith likes to talk on the phone. She started it the Saturday after we got here, so two Saturdays ago. At first she couldn't walk and talk at the same time because she would run into the walls and corners. But she picks up the phone, puts it facing away from here ear just below her ear and says "haw" for her "hello" and then jabbers away. It is so cute. I love it.
Emily likes to play the piano and sing. After every ten seconds she turns back to make sure we are still looking and we clap for her. She enjoys the attention.

Walking

Yesterday Meredith decided to walk everywhere. She's been able to walk for a while now, but she just decided that she wants to be a big girl and not crawl. She also has quite a vocabulary and repeats just about anything like a monkey. I told her she was grumpy yesterday and she said "grumpy". She also says "Daddy" quite well now. "Yummy" she says pretty well and I have just completely lost track of all that she has said. I think I will try and post a little movie clip of her walking and maybe even talking.

New Discoveries

She said "Mommy" first! Our little Meredith is now 11 months and two days old. On her eleven month mark she said her sixth word. I don't really count a word until she has said it two or three times. But she says "Mommy" or "Momma", "more", "ouie", "amen", and "Thank you". When I ask her to say Daddy she still just says "D". Sorry Nathan. But if it is any consolation, Emily said "Daddy" first, so I guess it is my turn.
Emily has learned to jump like a frog. I was just playing with her showing her how a frog jumps and says "ribbit" and she just did it with me. She makes a great little froggy.

For Nathan's sake I'll write in that after I wrote this (later that evening) Meredith mastered "Daddy".