Princess

Grandmama sent Emily and Abigail some valentine cards yesterday. Emily's had a cool bracelet and crown that you could decorate. She enjoyed wearing them today with her pretty princess gown:
I bet you can guess what movie she wanted to watch while dressed up! Thanks Grandmama!

4 Months Old!

Abigail is 4 Months Old Today!!!!

My baby is getting too big too fast! Sweet Abigail is 4 months old today . . . she is trying to sit up more and is definitely going to suck her thumb. She is getting better at using it but still has to be laying down to find it best. She loves to put her left hand up on her hair and put her right thumb in her mouth for comfort. If she is fussy all Emily has to do is come into her view and she smiles . . .

She is happiest right after a nap and a full tummy and loves to smile and giggle. She has just recently started going to bed around 7:30 and sleeps until 7:30 the next morning. This age is the best sleep time ever for a baby! Here is Abigail in action this morning sucking her thumb. After that photo shoot I put her thru she needed to lie down and suck her thumb for a little bit : )
With Emily I remember getting so excited with each month that she grew to see what she would do next . . . but with Abigail I get a little sad because I won't have my baby to love and cuddle with each month that she gets older. I do look forward to having two young girls that can play together but I also hold Abigail a little closer from time to time to remember that sweet feeling of holding a baby.

Projects

I bought lots of my favorite t-shirts the other day and decided to go ahead and embroider all of them in anticipation of warmer weather. Here are some shirts for Emily:
Here are a couple of shirts I did for birthday presents for friends:
And here is daddy with his girls. Since Abigail has been sucking her thumb a lot, Emily decided to give it a try to see what all the fuss was about : )
Yesterday at church Emily looked at me and said, "Ah . . . me and Abigail don't match!" I guess I better start getting some more dresses together for them to wear!

Snow Snow Snow!

On Friday the south got snow! We don't get to play in the snow very often and this time we got lots of it. It started snowing on Friday afternoon around 1:30 and didn't stop until well after dark. Emily and I went outside when it first started snowing:
Abigail hung out in the swing while we played outside:
I did take her outside later that afternoon and she enjoyed watching Emily and the neighbors run around in the snow.

We even attempted to make a snowman. Emily and I were so proud of our accomplishments . . . and then we went to the front yard and saw all our neighbors snowmen! Needless to say . . . our snowman was much smaller than everyone else's.
We went back inside to warm up and the snow kept coming. By the end of the day we had lots of snow to play in:


The next morning we enjoyed playing some more:

And our neighbors invited us over to play in their backyard too. They had played in our backyard Friday night and then called Saturday morning because Julie wanted us to play in her snow in her backyard:
You can hardly tell that we had any snow to play in now . . . but it sure was fun while it lasted!

Big Girl!

I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing about the potty . . . but this is one happy mama and I just have to write about it! Emily has done so well since Friday. We have been so proud of her. She even went to school today in training pants and stayed dry! I spoke to her teacher to ask her to take her about every 90 minutes if that didn't disrupt class, and they said she went each time and stayed dry!!! Yea!!!! So we didn't even use the p@ll ups that we bought. I noticed on Saturday and Sunday when we used those that we never could get Emily to go to the bathroom. I think it's because when she has those on she can't tell when she needs to go . . . I never thought this would happen so quickly. I'm so excited. I even got rid of the little potty yesterday! She is going on the big potty with the little chair on top.

Last night during bath time she put all her clothes in the hamper, got on the potty and went, flushed and got in the tub all by herself. It's like . . . one day you help them with everything. . . and the next day they are doing it by themselves . . . I just marveled in that moment : )

Well if Abigail never really takes to the chair we bought this weekend, we are definitely getting our money's worth with Emily:

She sat in this chair today while she watched T$nkerb@ll. She has to put the tray on there too. When she gets up she tells me it's Abigail's turn to sit in the chair and when Abigail's turn is over it will be her turn again. "We have to take turns mom". She's a hoot. The girl hasn't taken a nap since Saturday . . . I think she is too hyped up on chocolate from all her treats : ) I think it's time to phase those out . . .

New Baby Gadgets

This weekend we went to our friend Korrigan's 3rd birthday party. He had a firetruck come visit and the kids took a ride on the truck.

Emily decided she wasn't going to get near it though. The siren scared her so she decided to stick close to dad instead.

Here is the birthday boy climbing on the truck:
We got Abigail all bundled up to go check everything out:
Korrigan's mom made the cake. I was SO impressed!

Abigail has been wanting to sit up more so I've been propping her up on the edge of our chair. She found her thumb while sitting up:

Because she has been wanting to sit up more I went to my favorite web site: cr@igs list and bought her this chair:
Emily had to try it out too:
Last night we sat her in it during dinner. She even played with some linking letters:
Don't let this contentment fool you though. She lasted in the chair about 5 minutes and then got REALLY loud until someone got her out. So we still haven't been able to all eat dinner at once together : ) But I know that this too shall pass . . .

Our friends Jason and April let us borrow this jumpy seat for Abigail. Here she is checking it out today:
It sure does take a lot of contraptions to keep a baby happy!!!!

Emily has continued to do well all weekend in potty training. I'm so proud of her! We had a dry weekend and we are dry today!

Mismatched clothes

Emily has been wearing mismatched clothes all week . . .but all for a great reason! I decided to take the plunge again into potty training and this time I decided I was going to stick to my guns and have no turning back. No matter how many accidents . . . Emily wears training pants at home . . . no diapers (except during sleep time). So I have a laundry basket at the foot of the stairs with lots of knit pants and training pants. When she has an accident she just goes to the laundry basket to get a new pair of everything. I've been doing lots more laundry this week but I don't care.

And we are F-I-N-A-L-L-Y making progress!!!!! I know I've made every mistake in the book and have lost my cool when I wasn't supposed to and wasn't consistent before . . . and we have a VERY stubborn child : ) So hopefully after all of the learning on both our parts, we are now on the road to having 1 child diaper free. Emily has accidents and still only wants to go on her little potty . . . but hey . . . the girl is going. She wants me to set the timer for her and still puts up a little fight from time to time . . . but she has had numerous successes this week. Hallelujah!!!!

I've cleaned up some messes this week I thought I would never be able to handle . . . but I've gone to my "happy place" and cleaned them up. Last night for the very first time ever Emily pooped in the tub . . . gross!!!! Thank heavens Joe was at home and tackled that mess for me . . . I just couldn't do it.

Here is my sweetie pie in her mismatched clothes for the day. Way to go Emily!!!! We are so proud!!!!

This is the best smile I could get out of her this morning . . . .she is already hyped up on M and M treats this morning from her 3 successes before 11:00 a.m.!
So what have I learned thru all of this? To let go of trying to control so much of the situation myself. To not hang over her all the time to make sure she doesn't have accidents. If she does, she does. I've also learned to make sure she is setup to try to go and then walk away to give her some privacy. The whole hanging out and reading books strategy just distracted her from what needed to be done. This works great for some children but not Emily. I also learned not to make her sit there forever hoping she would go. I have her try to go and if after a minute or so she hasn't gone, then get up and reset the timer. I also learned from someone yesterday NOT to give her a ton to drink. I had heard to let them drink alot but that just seemed to cause more accidents for Emily because she was going every 15 minutes and believe me . . . trying to get her to go every 15 minutes was not helping the situation. So now I limit her intake of liquids and we try about every 45 minutes . . . I get a much better response from her then because I'm not interrupting her play time as much. We are also finally switching to P@ll Ups for school next week. I said I would never use these but we need to move away from diapers all together. It will be easier for her teachers at school if she has one of those on instead. I also learned to give her choices in the situation. If she doesn't want to try to go on the big potty then don't make a big deal out of it. I will just have to get over the grossness of cleaning out the little potty because she has chosen to use that one. I also let her choose what treat she wants when we have success. This has helped too in the motivation. I'm also now firm about it. When it's time to try I don't ASK her if she wants to go . . . I tell her it's time to try. If she doesn't move towards the bathroom then I give her a choice of trying to go to the bathroom or choosing to give up a toy that she is playing with. She gets to choose and I'm not pleading or arguing with her about trying. Because the girl is smart . . . she'll drag it out forever if I let her. In fact the other day she chose to give up her toy so I took her toy and moved on.

I hope all this info helps someone who is just as clueless as I am about how to do this! And I hope to read this again in a couple of years when we try all this on Abigail : )

I know this is just a journey and it will be a while before she is in underwear all the time with no accidents . . . but at least we are finally on THAT journey!

P.S. Update. February 5, 2010 will forever be the day that it "clicked" with Emily!!! She had 1 small accident this morning but I'm happy to report that the rest of the day was accident free!!!!!!!!!!!! She even stayed dry during her nap and went to the bathroom right when she got up. YEA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!