woyak.com

I’m not feeling too creative right now, and I’ve been trying to write this post for 4 days.. so forgive me if it’s short and boring! I can’t believe it’s March already, and I’m SO HAPPY it’s March already!! I have had spring fever SO BAD for months now. I think this winter has been so long, so cold, and so snowy and I just can’t wait until it’s over! Ok, that’s enough of that!

Updates on Lily - she is adorable as ever, but we are COMPLETELY in the terrible twos. She argues with us for the sake of arguing, she wants to do everything herself, she’s belligerent and doesn’t listen, and she isn’t SLEEPING. This Mama is exhausted, people! We still put her to bed by 7:30 but for the last 3 weeks or so she doesn’t fall asleep until 10-10:30 or so, then I have to wake her up by 6:15 so I can go to work. I tried skipping her nap hoping that it would help her fall asleep earlier, but then she was just about falling over by 5pm and STILL wouldn’t go to sleep until 9-9:30! One night she came walking out into the living room and handed me the bulb from her night light - she unscrewed it! The next night she walked out and handed me her entire night light, unplugged.. then she chucked it down the hall into her room and shattered the bulb. Needless to say, she no longer has a night light in her room.

I love so many things about this age - I love seeing her incredible personality, having conversations with her, and hearing how her mind works. I love watching her learn something, and the things that come out of her mouth are just adorable (see “Lily-isms” on the right-hand side of this blog)! She makes me laugh almost every single day! However, there are certainly a lot of challenges with this age as well. She completely knows all of her letters and the sounds they make (she quizzed me the other day and said I did “pretty good”). She is starting to sound out words, and is learning to write a few letters (”O” being the most common, though she has written an “L” too). She can’t go to bed at night without at least one book in bed with her and sits and “reads” it before she goes to sleep, and lately has added more and more stuffed animals into her bed at night so you can hardly find her in the middle! Word World is still her absolute favorite show, and I think her favorite people in the world (outside of Mommy and Daddy) are her cousins Claire and Abby, and Grandma and Grandpa. Oh, have I also mentioned she’s a shoe fanatic? I have NO IDEA where she gets that from - really!

Ok, well. I ATTEMPTED to do a very “ghetto” photo shoot of Lily, so if you want to laugh at that, click on the album below! I hung a sheet over her door as a backdrop but didn’t realize HOW BADLY the sheet was wrinkled until I really looked at the pics and they’re all pretty horrible. Plus she wouldn’t stay in the right spot, or wouldn’t look at me, or wouldn’t smile! Then she kept running over to me after every picture and saying “did you take a picture? Can I see?” This is one of the best ones -

From Lily Feb 14-21 2010

Finally, I’ll leave you with a few snow pictures from our yard this weekend. Jason took Lily out into the yard and they went sledding down our front hill, built a snow tunnel, and an ice sculpture! They had a great time.

From Lily playing in snow - Feb 2010

There went January..

January 30, 2010 Blog, Lily, birthday 1 Comment

From 2010-01 Big girl Bed and joint Bday Party

Well, we had even MORE birthday celebrations this month, beginning with a joint birthday party for Lily (2), Claire (2), Abby (2), and Uncle Greg (30) on January 10th. It was mostly family at the party and we had a great time! Hopefully I can teach Lily that birthdays don’t TYPICALLY last well over a month! The following weekend we had a surprise party for Uncle Greggy for his 30th birthday. It went well, and we pulled off the surprise after a number of close calls! I think Greggy had a good time, and that’s the most important part.

From 2010-01 Big girl Bed and joint Bday Party

Finally, the tale end of the “big girl bed saga”. If you remember from last post, Lily learned to climb out of her crib so we converted it to a toddler bed. In doing so, we found out that her crib had been recalled and needed to be “destroyed” (we had to send in all screws and support plates as proof we weren’t using it). After much debate, we decided to use the crib as the “full-size headboard and footboard” and just buy her a full size box spring, mattress, and rails. We went out and did that the very next weekend, and ended up having to rent a truck to pick up the mattress, drop them off at home, and return the truck (mostly to avoid the $90 delivery fee). We also went all the way down to IKEA to get bed slats only to find out the rails we bought were “slatless rails” so we didn’t need them and need to go return them to IKEA. After all that running, Jason put together the new bed and we realized the bed was SUPER high off the ground. Lily couldn’t even climb up on it with the little steps we put near the bed and I was really afraid of her falling off the bed from that height since she had been falling out of bed pretty frequently since the conversion. Jason and I discussed our options, and finally decided to disassemble the bed, disassemble our guest bed upstairs, and swap the frames. So the guest bed frame is in Lily’s room now with her NEW mattress and box spring, and the guest room has Lily’s bed frame with its original box spring and mattress. PHEW! Way too much drama for a “simple” change! The good news is that the transition is going very well. She sleeps really well in the bed, doesn’t flip around as much as she did in her crib (even keeps her blankets on some nights!) and hasn’t fallen out of bed once. She loves the new bed so much that we must do EVERYTHING in bed - change her diaper, read her books, play with dolls or games - everything. I’m sure the novelty may wear off at some point!

From 2010-01 Big girl Bed and joint Bday Party

Now that the big girl bed transition is done, I think our next big milestone is going to be getting rid of the “binky”. It’s starting to drive me crazy! We’ve been really good for quite some time at restricting the binky to sleeping times - naps and bed time - but lately Lily is going in reverse and wants the binky 24/7. I’m sick of trying to find them, and listening to the whine when I tell her binky is only for sleeping! So, I think we’re going to give that a try in the next few weeks - wish us luck!

From 2010-Jan Binkies

Let’s see - on Thursday the 21st I got a call at work from daycare saying Lily had hurt herself. Apparently she was jumping on the couch at daycare and Jen yelled at her to get off the couch and Lily didn’t listen. Jen was walking over to pull Lily down and Lily decided to JUMP OFF THE COUCH and hit the side of her face near her eye on the coffee table. I took her in to Urgent Care and the Doctor was very kind, told me we could do a stitch or two because the cup was somewhat deep, but after talking about the pros and cons I decided against the stitches. Her eye swelled up pretty nice the next day (about half-way shut) and she had a nice black eye but I was really impressed at how quickly it healed. Unfortunately, the “jumping” lesson was NOT learned as she continues to jump on the couch and on the bed and is way too acrobatic and daring for my comfort!

Right after injury:

From 2010 Jan - black eye

Next Day:

From 2010 Jan - black eye

Day 3:

From 2010 Jan - black eye

Finally, last weekend we took Lily out to her first movie! We went to the Cinema Grill where Lily got in free and Jason and I were only $2.50, and saw “The Princess and the Frog”. It was actually a great way to try out going to a movie because it was cheap so we weren’t wasting much if we needed to walk out and leave, plus she was somewhat distracted by food, and we sat on a bench in the back so she had more room to move around. She did REALLY good the whole time - at first she was so amazed she was just STARING at the screen with her mouth hanging open. It was so much fun to watch! She was perfectly well-behaved through the whole movie until about half an hour before the end when she stood up and announced to the theater “I’m ALL DONE with this movie!”. heheheh

From 2010 Jan - surprise party

Random updates - Lily has been getting argumentative over every little thing lately. For instance, reading one of her books that mentions a cow eating grass and she tells me “No, Mommy. A cow does NOT eat GRASS.” And I’ll say “I think he does, honey” and she says “I think he does NOT.” (Then she went on to say a cow eats fruit snacks - HA!) She also loves her new bed, which I mentioned above, and she is still doing amazingly well with her verbal skills and word recognition. She knows all of her letters and what sound they make, and she’s starting to recognize some words when written down (Lily, hat, water to name a few). She LOVES pointing out letters on ANYTHING anywhere we go and always wants to know “what is that spell?” when she reads them aloud to us. Lily loves to call some of her scribbles certain letters, and Jen said she’s going to start working with her on writing her name. I just can’t believe how big she’s getting! It happens so fast. I saw a 6-week old baby today and can hardly remember Lily being that small already, and sometimes can’t believe she’s not STILL that small - how does the time go so fast? Hope things are well with you all and I’ll try and update again sooner rather than later!

Happy New Year!

January 5, 2010 Blog, Lily, twins 4 Comments

Good thing I didn’t make a resolution to blog more in 2010, because I’d already be in trouble! We had a FANTASTIC Christmas (many Christmases!) this year, and it was so much fun for me to see Lily really get into it this year.

So.. in case you didn’t notice - we got some snow! The Christmas 2009 Blizzard did it’s best to mess up our Holiday plans, but we still managed to fit everything in.. just sometimes a day or so later than planned.

We went over to my parents house on Christmas Eve and spent the whole day there with Grandma and Grandpa, Great-Aunt Pat, Auntie Lisa, Uncle Ryan, Cousins Claire and Abby, and Uncle Greggy. Lily was somewhat sick and didn’t nap AT ALL so by the time we ate and started opening some presents, she was having a bit of a meltdown. The meltdown only lasted through the 1st present, then she realized that all those presents were for HER and she got to open them and keep them and somehow she got a second wind!

Lily got so many presents - I don’t even know where to begin! She got very excited to open each present and sometimes didn’t even want to look at what it was for more than a minute because she was anxious to start opening the NEXT present!

Due to the weather, we all ended up spending the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house (except for the Lambert clan), and amazingly Santa found us there on Christmas morning! We woke up Christmas morning and were just doing normal stuff - I had to change Lily’s diaper, etc, waiting for everyone to get up and moving and I think Grandma was almost more excited to go see what Santa brought than Lily was! Finally, we did tell her that Santa came and we should go downstairs and see what he brought and then she got really excited!

Our original plan had been to drive down to Jason’s Moms house on Christmas Day, but because of the bad weather we decided to push it off one day. We ended up spending most of the rest of the day at my parents house, then met the extended family at Aunty Pat’s house for pie in the afternoon. The most exciting part of that was getting to meet my newest 2nd cousin - Alexander Lawrence! He was only 1 week old at Christmas and SO good - he slept through the whole thing. He’s adorable!

Christmas evening we went home and unpacked all of our stuff from that sleepover, and repacked for our trip to the farm. Right away Saturday morning we headed out to Jason’s Mom’s house and met up with Jason’s family (Grandma Gayle, Grandma Jim, Uncle Shawn, Aunt Shannon, Cousins Arian, Tali, Eanna AND even the Wilkemeyers (Aunt Chandra, Uncle Aaron, cousins Akasha and Aria) were in town from VA! We had another great Christmas down at the farm, and Lily got to sit on and pet a couple of horses!

Overnight at Grandma Gayles, Lily made a new discovery - that she could climb out of her pack-and-play without help. I was really hoping she’d never discover this! We would put her in it to go to sleep, and she’d climb right back out. One time she climbed back out immediately, before I could even sit down again. Finally, she did sleep well but it was only a few days later at home that she decided to try it in her crib. I heard her waking up and went into her room and saw her with one leg on top of her crib rail up to her knee, and trying to hoist herself on top of the rail. She looked over at me and said “This is scary!”. You’re telling me, kiddo! So, that night we converted her crib to a “toddler bed” (day bed kind of thing). In doing so, we realized that her crib has been recalled so we’re trying to figure out exactly what we’re going to do. I think we might end up getting her a new, full-size bed, and use the voucher we get to buy a new crib and just leave it in the box until we need it again whenever we have another baby. I can’t believe how fast Lily is growing up! This “big girl bed” has been quite an adventure, and she seems like such a big kid to me. It’s so bittersweet!

The only unfortunate part about her new bed is naps. They have been pretty hit or miss for the last few months, but since switching her crib to a bed she hasn’t napped in it once. She still naps at daycare, and she napped at my parents house once, but she won’t nap at home which has been frustrating - I’m not ready to give up nap time yet!

From NYE 2009 and big girl bed

Sorry, I rambled off there - once we got back from Grandma Gayle’s (that Sunday) our friend Travis came to visit from New Mexico! It was nice to see him, even though I didn’t get to spend much time hanging out and I had to work the next day. I think he’ll be back this summer, so I’ll look forward to hanging out with him more then! Now, let’s fast-forward to New Years Eve. We had spent so much time running over our long Christmas weekend that I think we were all in need of a more low-key weekend at home, and to just spend some time together without things to do all the time. We went to the Beaverson’s for the 2nd Annual NYE sledding party on Thursday afternoon, and that was fun (though COLD) and our only real planned event for the whole long weekend!

From NYE 2009 and big girl bed

We had a really nice, relaxing long weekend that we spent together. Lily did really good in her new bed (she slept in until 9 am - twice!), we did a few casual errands and got some things done around the house, took down Christmas decorations and found a way to rearrange the toys in the Living Room to incorporate all her new Birthday and Christmas toys.

From NYE 2009 and big girl bed

Just general Lily updates - She continues to amaze me constantly. She knows all of her letters, the ABC song, and the ABC song with a word for every letter (A, “ah” alligator, B “buh” ball, etc). Today her daycare woman told me she was playing Boggle Jr. with two of the preschool girls and actually PLAYING it! She has been very concerned with feelings lately - understanding her feelings, and ours. She says “I love you” and “I love you so much” and gives us giant hugs. SHe asks if we’re happy, or upset, and tells us “I’m so happy!”. She’s had some cute sayings, most of which I haven’t remembered to write down in time, but I did catch some of them! Yesterday she said to me “Mommy, can I have a nest like duck?” I said, “Don’t you want to sleep in a bed like Mommy and Daddy?” And she said, “No, I want to sleep in a nest. Like Duck.” A few weeks ago, Jason and I were talking while Lily was playing near us in the Living room, and Jason said “well, in one of the most under-reported scientific discoveries of the year - ” and Lily interrupted with “the sun is HOT!” which just made us laugh like crazy. I am still just absolutely loving this age!

Finally, I’ll leave you with a video of Lily singing her ABC song, but be sure to stay tuned until the very end when she has a big announcement to make - “My Mommy is _____!”

Lily sings the alphabet with Words from Jill W on Vimeo.

Trick and Treat

November 10, 2009 Blog, Lily, twins 1 Comment

From 2009-10-31

A bit late, I realize. Consider that your trick, and this massive update post with THREE (Count them, 1-2-3) albums of pictures, as your treat.

From 2009-10-31

The night before Halloween, Lily and I got to hang out with Auntie Lisa, Claire and Abby! It was a really fun day and the girls had a great time hanging out together, and we even had a first-annual (maybe) super-special Halloween sleepover party!! Once the girls were in bed, Lisa and I got to hang out and drink wine cider, eat junk food, chat, and watch cheesy movies (like 2gether)!

From 2009-10-31

The next day, I made a special Halloween breakfast for the crew (Baked Apple Pancakes - yummy, but not at all healthy other than the apple), and we got all the girls ready and headed out. After running a few errands, we headed over to my Aunt’s house to show her the girls in costume, then over to Grandma and Grandpa’s house to see Grandma home from the hospital (surgery the day before) and trick-or-treat at their house as well! All three girls were dressed up in these adorable matching Lamb costumes made by Lisa’s step-mother-in-law(?), which were a huge hit!

From 2009-10-31

At that point we parted ways, and we each went home to get our respective kids ready for the real deal - their first “real” night of trick-or-treating! After dinner, Lily changed into her Frog costume and we headed out on the streets. We first went to Derek, Alix, and Sebastian’s house where Lily took the candy Alix offered and then declared “I come in!” and tried to force her way in the house. Luckily we did know them, and Lily got the hang of it after that, so she wasn’t barging into strangers houses all night long! The rest of the neighborhood was pretty dark, but as soon as we rounded the corner onto Zenith I could not BELIEVE how many people were out! It was like being in a mall. I have never, in my entire life, seen that many people out trick-or-treating and it was incredible! We went to about a dozen houses, then ended up running into our friends The Beaverson’s and went back to their house to hang out for a bit. We didn’t end up getting back to our house until 8 or so, so I ended up shoveling 3 bags worth of halloween candy into the bags of 7 trick-or-treaters that came to our house just to get rid of it!

From 2009-10-31

Now I’m going to skip forward to the weekend after Halloween. On that Friday, I brought Lily to Kid’s hair in Maple Grove and got her hair REALLY cut - into a Bob! I think it turned out really cute, and it looks thicker and will hopefully all grow out at the same length now and be less of a mullet. Here are some before and after pictures -
Before -

From 2009-11-06

After -

From 2009-11-06

More excitement last Saturday when the weather was 60s and BEAUTIFUL so we packed up and went to the MN Zoo! It was the perfect day to be there (apparently everyone else thought so, too, because it was packed!). Lily really got into seeing the animals this time and I think she had a REALLY good time! Her favorite part was the tiger, because we went up to the glass partition at the tiger area and there was a tiger RIGHT on the other side of the glass, pacing back and forth. He was literally INCHES away and I think it about blew Lily’s mind. She’s still talking about it! Since she was such a good girl, I even gave her an ice cream cone (her first whole ice cream cone, and she devoured the. entire. thing.). Sunday we just did outside chores and got some Christmas shopping done.

From zoo 2009-11-07

Random Lily updates - her vocabulary and comprehension continues to completely amaze me. She routinely speaks in FULL (5-10 word) sentences already, and understands concepts (can switch your/my appropriately, etc). She has had a number of very loving moments lately, which completely melts my heart. I will never, ever tire of hearing her say “I love you, Mommy!”. The other day I was kissing her good night and she put her hands on my cheeks and said “I had fun with you today, Mommy.” Tonight as I was getting her ready for bed we were reading a book about Birthdays. I was telling her that she has a birthday coming up, and she’ll be two. She looked at me and said “No, Mommy! I don’t LIKE two. I am THREE.” heh

From zoo 2009-11-07

We have been having a bit of a sleep problem lately, and it seems as if Lily is trying to give up her one and only nap, but I am resisting! She has moved to sleeping in a “big girl bed” at daycare, and sleeps fine there so I’m wondering if she’s looking for the same change at home. I don’t feel ready for that, but if it makes her sleep again, I’ll convert her crib into a toddler bed ASAP! We have another exciting weekend planned this weekend, so I will try and update much sooner next time!

From zoo 2009-11-07

“Lily do it!”

October 2, 2009 Animals, Blog, Lily 2 Comments

The thing I’ve really noticed about this age is that Lily seems to alternate between absolutely, incredibly, indescribably adorable and insanely frustrating, with very little in between. She is very insistent about doing everything herself, which is good and can be cute, but at times can be so frustrating! Like when we’re in a hurry and need to get out of the house, but Lily insists on putting on her own shoes for 10 minutes. Or brushing her teeth for half an hour before bed.

But the adorable times completely make up for it. Like when she sits down and pulls off her shoes, then grunts and struggles for five whole minutes to get her socks off, and when she finally succeeds she announces “My sock FELL OFF!”. Or pointing out animals in some of her books where there is a Mommy animal and baby animal, and she points to each one and says “Mommy bear. Lily bear. Mommy sheep. Lily sheep.” and on and on like that. Today Jason was carrying her through the doorway that has his pull-up bar on it and she grabbed onto the handles and shouted “I do HANG-UPS!”.

She is getting to be such a big girl - I can hardly believe it. In just over 2 months, my baby girl will be two years old! It makes me teary even thinking about it. I don’t know how it’s possible the time has gone that fast. This past week Lily has graduated from sleeping in a pack-and-play at daycare, to sleeping on a cot. Jen says she has done REALLY well with the transition, and doesn’t even get off the cot when she wakes up - she just sits up and does her normal babbling. This is encouraging for when she makes her switch to a big girl bed, but I am nowhere near ready to make that change yet! As a reward for doing so well with the cot, she’s also graduated to a big girl chair (no booster or anything) at daycare so she can sit right at the table with all the other kids. She LOVES this! Now at dinner she climbs up on my chair and I have to fight her for it, so she might be making a similar transition at home soon.

(Lily proudly showing off the shoes she picked out and put on herself)

The other day she wanted to play with our digital camera, and take some pictures (all by herself, of course). She was very, very closely supervised - mainly because I was worried about something happening to the camera - but she did a good job. And now, Internet, I present to you one of Lily’s first solo pictures -

Isn’t that lovely? And now I’ve put it out on the internet where it will exist forever across the world.

She even attempted her own version of a self-portrait, of only her leg -

Backing up a little bit, let me talk about what’s been happening lately! A few weeks ago Lily and I met up with an old high school (and college!) friend named Becky, and her two kids - Alexandra (3), and Noah (1). It was fun to see her again and catch up, and Lily and Alexandra really seemed to hit it off! At one point, after watching Becky struggle to carry Alexandra (who didn’t want to walk anymore), and push a sleeping Noah in his stroller, I came up with the suggestion of improvising a double stroller out of mine. Alexandra sat in the stroller and Lily sat on her lap! They got a kick out of it long enough to get us most of the way back to the entrance, and I just chuckled listening to their little conversation on the way there! We also got to feed goats, and see two bears fighting - click the link for more pics!

Finally, last weekend we took a trip into the past and went to Winona for the first time in close to 10 years! We went to see a couple of college friends (Blaze and Kelly) get married, and it was a lot of fun! We saw a ton of old friends we haven’t seen in a long time, some who have moved as far away as Pennsylvania. It’s interesting to see how much people have changed, and how much some people haven’t changed!

This weekend is our first weekend in close to two months where we have NO MAJOR PLANS and I have been really looking forward to it! Lily, Jason, and Uncle Greggy might go to a Twins game tomorrow (and I will have 3 hours to myself! in the middle of the afternoon!), and other than that I’m just hoping to catch up with some stuff around the house - a little cleaning, laundry, sorting out fall clothes, etc. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

From Lily July 29 - August 8, 2009 and first haircut!

Busy, but fun busy!

August 9, 2009 Blog, Lily, twins 1 Comment

August is flying by faster than any month so far. I love this time of year, and hate how quickly it passes! We have been keeping very busy, which only makes the time pass faster. Last weekend (August 2nd), we had Derek, Alix, Sebastian, and “Ace” over for dinner on the deck. It was a great night, and I think Lily had a great time hanging out with Sebastian! We had fun chatting with Derek and Alix, and were even able to keep eating on the deck during a short bout of rain, thanks to our gigantic umbrella! I completely forgot to take ANY pictures, but Alix was nice enough to send me some that she took. She also made a really cute post about the visit on her blog.

From Lily July 29 - August 8, 2009 and first haircut!

This Thursday, I took the day off work to use up some comp time I’d earned by working a long Sunday a few weeks back. My friend Nora and her 11-month old daughter, Juniper came over to visit. We went to the splash pad, but Juniper wasn’t a huge fan. It was still fun, though! Then Nora and I hung out and got to chat for a while, which was nice. It gets so hard to find the time to hang out with people when you both have kids, so it’s nice to take that time and catch up - especially nice when you can get outside and do something together! Of course, I COMPLETELY forgot to take any pictures.

From Lily July 29 - August 8, 2009 and first haircut!

On Friday, Lisa and the twins came over to hang out! We wanted to go to the splash pad again, but of course it was POURING RAIN the whole day. We have yet to actually get the twins TO the splash pad, because every time they’ve come over to hang out it has rained. Oh well, we had a fun time hanging around the house and Lily was SO excited to see her cousins again! Amazingly, we even got all three babies to nap at the same time for a while, and Lisa and I got some time to sit and catch up without chasing babies.

From Lily July 29 - August 8, 2009 and first haircut!

(Please ignore the back of Lily’s shirt… it’s a long story!)

On Friday night, our friend Travis came to visit. He hadn’t met Lily yet, so it was a fun trip. He lives in Madison, but has just joined the Americorps program for a year and is moving to some small town in New Mexico next week, so he made one last visit up here to say goodbye. It was nice to see him again, and hear what’s been happening in his life! I wish him all the best in NM, and hope to keep up with his adventures somehow. Again, I forgot to take any pictures, but Travis took at least one (Lily was throwing a fit so I don’t know if she made it in the picture at all) so if I get a copy of it I’ll try to post it. Travis spent the night on Friday and on Saturday morning we all went out to half-price books, then Travis left for Rochester to continue his goodbyes.

From Lily July 29 - August 8, 2009 and first haircut!

Yesterday, we took Lily to Kid’s Hair in Maple Grove to get Lily her first haircut! She did REALLY well, but she hated the blow dryer. The hair dresser gave her a lollipop to suck on, which worked wonders in distracting her, but Lily figured out how to pull the whole sucker off the stick, so we had to take it away. She gave her a second one, but Lily did the same thing so that was it for her! I hesitate to even mention this, because I feel like a dork, but I should try and remember it anyway. While Lily was getting her hair cut, I don’t know what came over me exactly but I almost started to CRY. I know, such a wuss. I don’t know if it’s just that she’s getting so big, or the fact that those were hairs she was born with that were being chopped off or what, but I wasn’t expecting to get teary about the process. Don’t worry, I pulled it together and didn’t actually shed the tears. Here are some pics of the excitement:

From Lily July 29 - August 8, 2009 and first haircut!

AFTER:

From Lily July 29 - August 8, 2009 and first haircut!

On Saturday night at dinner, Lily told me she had to go potty. I kind of thought she just wanted to go and play with the toilet paper, because she’s done that a few times before, but I brought her in anyway. I put her on her little potty seat and she started playing with the toilet paper, just like I thought she would. I stopped her from unrolling the whole thing and said “no, no, Lily, the toilet paper is only for AFTER you go potty. Do you have to go potty?” and she said yes, then she started to pee! She was so proud of herself! She grinned up and me and said “Peeing! Peeing!” I was totally amazed! She’s getting to be such a big girl!

From Lily July 29 - August 8, 2009 and first haircut!

Just to end our day of excitement, we had to have a tornado warning at our house on Saturday night. It sounded like it was getting pretty close so I ended up getting Lily out of bed and hanging out with her down in the basement for about half an hour. It ended up missing us (Thank God!) but it was one more adventure for a pretty packed day. Today, Lily got to hang out with Daddy and go on a long bike ride and to a new (to her) park while Mommy went and did some shopping!

And, now, we begin another packed week - I will try to update again soon with all our excitement!

Loving Summer

July 28, 2009 Blog, Lily, twins No Comments

Whew! Life has been busy. A couple of weekends ago, Jason and I took Lily to Edinborough Park (where we got married) and ran around with her in the gym area and on the play area. She was too little yet for a lot of the play area, but she had a blast anyway! She even went into the inflatable jumpy thing, but there were a bunch of bigger kids in there so she just kept falling over. She loved it when we pushed her around in the little chairs with wheels, and helped her get the ball in the basket.

Lily has finally, FINALLY gotten used to her summer daycare place, which has made life a bit easier. She no longer screams and cries when we drop her off, and just last week started napping again! And apparently she decided she has to make up for all those naps she missed, because she’s been napping 2 1/2 - 3 hours there every day since then. THREE HOURS! She doesn’t even do that well at home! Of course she does get the hang of this new place just in time for us to change again. Her regular daycare woman is back on August 17th, so hopefully we won’t have a bad transition back to her. I don’t expect we will, because Lily already knows her and the other kids - and keeps asking about her even now.

Jason and I have started looking for a new car, to replace his Mitsubishi Mirage. We were initially hoping to be able to buy a Prius, but the price tag is just too high. Plus, we were thinking it might be smart to have at least one slightly larger vehicle, but we’re not SUV fans or anything - we want something with decent gas mileage and a low price tag. How hard could that be? We did test drive a Mazda 5 which we both liked pretty well, but I think we’d have to find a good deal on a slightly used one to make it work. Anybody drive anything they absolutely LOVE? Please share!

Lily has gotten very particular lately about having things in “their place”. Books must be stacked in a pile. Her little farm animals need to either be in the barn, or stood up in a line next to each other. Or, in this case, the cow and the horse needed to wear her shoes. Sure, why not? She worked quite hard to get the animals in the shoes just right, and the shoes lined up side-by-side, and was as proud of it as a 19-month-old tends to be with ANYTHING she accomplishes. Which reminds me of one of Lily’s newest tricks. Whenever she accomplishes something she sets out to do, she raises her hands over her head and shouts “DID IT!”. It’s adorable, and sometimes completely hilarious!

I am totally loving watching Lily with her cousins lately. She talks about them a lot at random times, and seems to understand when we’re going to visit them and she gets SO EXCITED. The first time they see each other they all start shrieking and running up to each other and giving hugs and kisses. It just melts my heart! It’s one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen. We were supposed to get together with Auntie Lisa and Claire and Abby last Friday for a playdate, but Auntie Lisa ended up getting pretty sick that day. Instead, my Mom watched the twins, and Lily and I went over to their house so Lily could still hang out with her cousins. It was a full day, but the girls had a great time together! Lisa and the girls ended up stopping by our house this evening for a minute, and I don’t even have words for the excitement pouring off of Lily from the moment she knew they were coming. I really have to video tape their reaction to each other one of these days, and share the cuteness with all of you!

That’s about all the excitement we’ve really had lately. This weekend should be fun (and busy!) as we are going over to the Osland’s on Saturday morning to get help replacing our bumper, and having Derek, Alix, Sebastian, and “Ace” over for dinner (on the deck!) on Sunday. I’ll try to remember to take some good pictures! Have a great week!

Cabin Adventures

July 12, 2009 Blog, Lily, cabin, twins, vacation 1 Comment

First of all, thanks Shannon and Alix for the anniversary wishes! We didn’t do anything too exciting. We worked, then picked up Lily and went to a parent meet-up for her daycare, to meet the other parents and kids. Then we ate at Wendy’s with a co-worker and her son before they went to kung fu. Guess the romance is truly gone! (Just Kidding!)

We had a FABULOUS vacation at the cabin! The cabin belongs to my Aunt, and is near Birchwood, WI. It was Jason, Lily, and I, plus Grandma and Grandpa (my parents), Uncle Greggy, Auntie Lisa and Uncle Ryan, Cousins Claire and Abby, and of course my Aunt Pat for just over a week. It was a little tough planning things around the napping schedules and whatnot for three one-and-a-half year olds, but we managed to have plenty of fun!

We left on Friday, July 3rd, and Lily was REALLY good and napped for almost the entire 2.5 hour drive (slightly longer than that because of bad traffic). We arrived at the same time as Lisa and Ryan, and just a few minutes after Grandpa and Greg (Grandma and Aunt Pat came up the day before), so that was about perfect. As soon as we got our things unpacked and settled a bit, we all went out to eat at a nearby restaurant (Bluegill?). The food was good, but they didn’t take reservations or call-ahead seating, and it took them FOREVER to seat us, even though they had the space. Oh well, we were on vacation - who cares about the time, right? Anyway, the dinner did take quite a long time but all three kids did pretty well. A little bit of fussiness, but it had been a long day for them so they did really well.

Ok, after that, my timeline is going to get a little messed up. I was on vacation, and it was hard to keep the days straight, so I don’t remember exactly what we did and when, but I’ll try to hit the highlights for you. We set up a little plastic swimming pool on the deck, and had the girls do some finger painting (which they weren’t interested in because the draw of the pool was too strong), and then some “swimming”. The twins didn’t seem to care too much about the little pool, but Lily thought it was fun. She really liked it the MOST, though, the rest of the week when it was empty and she could crawl in and out of it and pull the pool all around the deck. Who knows? It kept her busy!

There is a beach club near the cabin, with a pool (and a lake), and a little park-type area. They had a play structure in the park area, but it was mostly intended for slightly older kids. The kids did go on the swings a couple of times, and I thought it was hilarious watching Lily on the slide. The slide is fairly tall, and much faster than the ones she’s used to. She would slide down and hit the sand at the bottom, and have so much momentum that she’d fly forward onto her hands and knees. For the most part, she’d just brush off the sand and do it again! But look at these next two pictures to see her face as she was going down the slide -

- isn’t that funny? Anyway, I believe it was Monday or Tuesday before we took the girls down to the beach club to use the pool, because it was just too crowded before then. They seemed to have a pretty good time! Claire especially seemed to love being held as far away from your body as you could reach and kicking around, to feel as if she were swimming by herself. Lily kept “forgetting” that she was in water, and wanting us to put her down so she could play on her own, but that was not happening! They also all spent some time in these inflatable boat things with their legs dangling in the water. I bet by next year they’ll be begging us to go to the pool and we won’t be able to get them out!

On Wednesday, I had kind of a rough day. Fairly early in the morning, I went to close our bedroom door, not knowing that Abby had snuck behind me. She had her hand near the hinge of the door and was grabbing on to it, and when I tried to close the door, I ended up pinching her fingers pretty good. She cried out and I scooped her up and kept apologizing, then let her Mommy cuddle the pain away. I’ll tell you, I know it was an accident but I felt SO BAD that I cried more than she did. Lisa put some ice on the fingers, and they did look much better just an hour or so later - and almost completely normal the next day. However, I STILL feel bad! That same day, Lily was sitting on my lap and went to jump down (forwards, with no hands or anything) and I grabbed her arm to keep her from falling. It ended up knocking her a little off-balance and she bumped her cheek on the wood part on the front of the chair and she got a bruise on her cheek. She didn’t even want to go to Mommy for comfort - she went to Auntie Lisa! Needless to say, I was feeling pretty guilty that day, but I know they were both accidents and everyone is just fine.

This is out of order, but two different nights “Uncle Ryan” had us gather on the deck and lit some sparklers and set off some fireworks he bought. So, we had our own personal fireworks show. The girls did pretty good with them, except for the loud noises they weren’t too fond of. Otherwise, they liked the lights and were clapping right along with the adults (and Lily chanting “fireworks! fireworks!”).

On Thursday, we rented a pontoon boat for the morning and took it out on the lake. It was nice to have access to such a large boat that we could all go on at the same time! The babies were tired, and got a little fussy about an hour into the ride, but it ended up working out ok. We brought a pack-and-play onto the boat, and Claire even took a nap on-board! Grandpa even let one of the twins help drive (I want to guess this is Abby, but I can’t tell for sure in this picture - Lisa??) and you can tell how exciting that is by the looks on their faces!

Lily had a pretty good time, but I think she was starting to get pretty bored about mid-way through the ride. She ended up eating almost her entire body weight in crackers (slight exaggeration) and getting into just about everything she could reach. She even grabbed the sunglasses off my head and tried to throw them overboard! Luckily they landed on the boat and I was able to retrieve them.

Those are pretty much the highlights of the trip. It was a LOT of fun, and I didn’t want to come back home. The only other funny thing I can think of was our last night up there we ended up going out to eat again and took the recommendation of the guy doing construction on the cabin and went to “Sportsmans Lodge”. If you guessed that’s just a BAR, you’d be correct! We weren’t quite expecting what we walked into, and I completely forgot that smoking isn’t banned in WI as much as it is in MN. The place was smokey, and pretty seedy. They had one highchair, no booster seats, no milk, no kids menus, no covers for their cups, and they brought us “bar straws” when we asked for a straw for Lily. It was quite an experience, but needless to say, I don’t think we’ll be eating there again!