The Thinker

For about a month now, if you ask Lily something and she does not know the answer, she will cross her arms across her chest, then tap her forehead and say "Hmmm, think, think, think." Those of you who happen to watch "My Friends Tigger and Pooh" realize this comes from their song "Now's the time to think, think, think..." It cracks me up though, and each time she does it, it makes me think of the famous statue "The Thinker" by Rodin.

Big Sister Love

Lily really seems to love being a big sister (most of the time anyway). She is always checking on Amelia and asking "where's Mia?" when she doesn't see her close-by. This weekend, while the grandparents were keeping the girls, Amelia started crying. Lily immediately started saying "Lily here Mia!" because she hears me saying "Mommy and Lily are right here Mia" if we're nearby when she starts getting fussy. Also, Ryan went to get Amelia from her crib to eat on Saturday, and when he returned to the living room, Lily was sitting in a chair with the Boppy pillow around her waist holding Mia's bottle and saying "Me do it." Ryan put Amelia on the pillow, and Lily proceeded to give her the entire bottle while she watched Mickey Mouse! Ryan got some really cute pictures while Bama took an adorable video. Hopefully I will get some of those up soon. Lily has also learned that she is the big sister while Mia is the little sister. For awhile she would walk up to Mia and say "Hi big little sister!" but now she properly says "Hi little sister!" She also likes to come up to her and say "Awww" and gently touch her hair. She is such a sweet little girl, and I am so proud of how she loves on Amelia.

2 Month Check-up

Ryan and I took Amelia to see Dr. White this morning for her two month check-up. We can't believe that it has already been two months; time if flying by! As expected, she got a great report. Dr. White said she is hitting all the milestones (smiling, cooing, holding head well) and that she has beautiful skin. She also said Amelia seemed happier and perkier than she would expect a 2-month-old which is great. She is certainly a growing girl too. She now weighs 11 pounds, 6.5 ounces which moved her up to the 75th percentile; I had told Ryan I thought she hit a growth spurt last week. It also made me realize though that she is about to outgrow all her newborn clothes; they go up to 12 pounds! She is about to be in the 3-6 month clothes which I just can't believe! Amelia also jumped up to the 75th percentile in height at 23 inches. She actually went down to the 25th percentile for head size which is 15 inches, but that isn't anything to worry about.

Amelia also received her first round of vaccines today. She gets the rotavirus one by mouth which isn't bad, but she had to get three shots in her leg. One of those shots contains the vaccine for three diseases, so she ended up with a total of six vaccines this morning, including the oral one. She was a happy little girl until those shots went in; it was so sad to watch her little face as you could see the pain and bewilderment set in. She cried with big tears for a few minutes, but Daddy helped soothe her. Though she normally hates her car seat, she was asleep within just a minute of being put in it; it is almost like a small trauma sleep.

We also asked Dr. White about Lily's behavior. We never know if the way she is acting is because of jealousy over Amelia or if it is just normal 2-year-old behavior. Of course, it is probably a combination of the two. Her main suggestion that we are going to try our best to do is to emphasize to Lily having time alone each day with both of us. We try to do this anyway, but she suggested making it a big deal in Lily's eyes that this is one-on-one time, and the other parent will handle anything Amelia needs while we have that time. We can see a huge difference in Lily's behavior on days when she has spent some of her day playing with us instead of just playing while we cook dinner or letting her watch Mickey Mouse. Becoming a big sister and being a two-year-old is a tough transition for her sometimes!

Name Change

Ryan and I had not planned on giving Amelia a nickname; we really like that name and assumed that is what we would call her. We knew we were going to go with the nickname Lily instead of her given name of Lillian, but we thought we would stick with Amelia. However, we have grown really fond of "Mia" which is the nickname Lily has given to Amelia. We still really like Amelia and will often call her that, but if you hear us talking about Mia, you'll know now who we mean!

Pictures to Share

I wanted to share a few pictures from the last couple of weeks...

Amelia is ready for her first day at church.

We were so glad to have Grandpops visit from Chicago. He treated us to a wonderful dinner at The Capital Grille; thank you!
Grandpops and Amelia.
Amelia is really starting to smile and coo a lot which is absolutely adorable. She loves her baths, and we have fun "talking" to one another.Look at those sweet feet!

Is that smile precious or what?

Checking herself out in the mirror.

Lily is such a big girl these days!

Amelia and Macey Henderson are only 5 days apart. I'm sure they will be great friends!

Lily and Parker Henderson had a great time playing together. Thanks to Brian and Jill for bringing the kids over, cooking dinner and hanging out with us; we had a great time and look forward to doing this again soon!

I don't know how in the world she can be comfortable, but she slept for just over 2 hours like this in her swing.

Papa and Meme came by to visit for a little bit. They always enjoy getting to hold Amelia.

Lily loves riding her rocking horse that Granna and Popa gave her at Christmas. Ryan tried to name the horse Roxanne while I tried to name it Cinnamon. Finally, we asked Lily what the horse's name was and she said "Umm, Dusty." Dusty it is!
Bama loves getting to hold Amelia. She has some kind of magic in her that calms Amelia down every time!

How adorable are they in their matching outfits from Bama?! Lily loves her paint with water Mickey Mouse book that Santa brought her.

Potty Training?

So I can't decide what to do about potty-training Lily. Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to have her out of diapers. However, I am absolutely dreading the actual "training" part. I hate cleaning up messes and this kind of "accident" will drive me crazy. Also, now that tax season is picking up, I am out of the house a lot more which means I would be pawning off the training to my mom and Kim the nanny (maybe this isn't so bad after all...).

Lily seems to have other thoughts though. Ever since moving up a class at school, she seems very interested in the potty. She usually tells us when she is about to have a poopy diaper by saying her tummy hurts, but she doesn't say anything if she is about to wet it. Also, she is now constantly trying to take her diaper off. In fact, the four of us were all taking naps this afternoon (what a nice treat!). We always hear Lily when she gets up because she loudly shuts the hallway door behind her; today she did not shut the door so we didn't wake up immediately. She actually walked through our bedroom into our bathroom, took off her diaper and put it in the toilet; we woke up to the sound of our toilet flushing and Lily was standing next to Ryan with her pants around her ankles. Thankfully the diaper didn't flush or clog up the toilet. Several other times today she will suddenly stop what she is doing, pull her pants down and attempt to take her diaper off.

I had planned on attempting potty training after tax season when I will be home more and the weather will be warmer which means she can run around without pants on a little more comfortably, but now I'm not so sure. I don't have the first clue how to go about training though. I would love to hear thoughts on this from other parents. Any suggestions on how to successfully train a little girl to use the potty?

Thank you girls!

We finally got a good night's sleep last night! You know that Lily has been having some sleep issues ever since we brought Amelia home from the hospital. Last night though, we put her down at 8 and she slept until a few minutes past 7 this morning; yea! Also, we put Amelia down about 10:30, and she slept without making a peep until 7:30 this morning. Ryan and I definitely needed this rest; it's amazing how much better we felt all day. Here's hoping this will continue!

7 Years!

Yesterday, January 12, was our 7 year wedding anniversary. It brought back lots of wonderful memories from our wedding day which is still the best day of my life. Are you curious to know where we spent our anniversary? After work, we met at Chuck E Cheese. That's right, the kids' pizza and play place. However, we did that because Lily has been staying in bed until she hears her music CD in the morning, and we promised her a big surprise after she had done that so many times; she gets stickers each morning to remind her how close she is to her surprise. She was thrilled because she got two new puzzles that morning and dinner at Chuck E Cheese! We had a fun time, it's just not how we ever really expected to spend our anniversary. After Lily went to bed and Amelia was asleep in the swing, Ryan cooked us a couple of filets (they were stuffed with garlic and herb boursin cheese and wrapped in pancetta - absolutely delicious!) which was a great way to celebrate.

We have definitely been blessed to have such a wonderful marriage. We have made so many great memories over these years, and we look forward to the years to come together!

Thanks guys

The last couple of mornings, Lily has stayed in her bed until she hears her music alarm go off at 6:45; yea! Then she comes into our room, turns on the tv and comes over to me so I can pick her up and put her in bed with us. Once she's in between us, I'll ask if she wants under the covers which she almost always does. She gets in and says "Thanks guys!" It's so funny to hear!

Counting and You

Lily counts EVERYTHING these days. For instance, she looked at the computer as I finished writing the last blog entry a moment ago...she counted the words. She walked up to our tv, saw the word "sony" and counted the letters. She takes her goldfish out of her snack bowl to count them. She counts the animals she has lined up on her Noah's Ark. She counts the picture frames lined up on our buffet. You get the picture. Usually, she counts to ten correctly and then will start counting from one again; however, if she's being silly she will skip numbers and look at me to see if I'll correct her. Also, she occasionally will say "...eight, nine, one ten" because she is learning that the number ten starts with a one.

She has also started referring to herself as "you" a lot of the time. It started when she would see baby pictures of herself which is probably because I would say "that was you as a little baby." Now, when she sees any picture of herself that's what she calls herself. For example, she will see our family picture and when you ask who is in, she'll say "Mommy, Daddy, You, Mia!"

So Considerate

Meme came by to visit and see the girls a little while ago. She always enjoys holding sweet little Amelia and talking to Lily. When she was ready to go, Lily walked over to the door and tried to open it for her; of course, our handles have protectors over them so she can't open them, but it was a nice thought. Anyway, Meme walked onto the doorstep and was about to step down when Lily called out "Watch step Meme!" I guess she is used to hearing us tell people to watch their step as they are leaving!

Movin' On Up

Lily started back to Parent Morning Out today. She was very excited! The director and teachers decided (with our permission) to move Lily up to the 2-year-old class. Because of Lily's birthday (they follow the Cobb County birthday cut-off for schools), she was in the toddler class last "semester." However, because of how great she was doing, they decided to promote her to where she would fit in a little better with the other kids. When I picked her up, the director and one of her teachers (who is a girl I went to elementary school with; small world!), both came out to tell me how great she did. She loved the new, bigger room. She told me about sitting on the potty and reading a book about Noah's Ark and his animals. They send home notes each day on what the kids did, and I have to say that I was very proud to see a check-mark and big smiley face next to "displayed manners" at lunch. She's such a sweet little girl! It also showed that she followed directions well, sat on the potty, ate most of her lunch, listened well during story time and that she mostly played by herself which doesn't surprise me in the least. As I picked her up, the teacher also commented that Lily seemed pretty tired (I pick her up at 1 which is typically the start of nap time); this isn't a surprise either considering she is waking up so much earlier. Oh, I want her to go back to her normal sleep patterns!

She Knows We Don't Like It...

So you know we are having issues with Lily waking up early, right? It's before the sun comes up which is just ridiculous to me! Well, she received a cute lift-the-flap book from Bama this past weekend, and one of the pages says "what happens when the sun comes up?" There is a cute little picture of a child in bed in a darkened room and when you lift the window flap, there is a picture of the sun and it's bright outside. The answer is "It gets light outside." We were looking at this book today, and when we got to this part, I said "Mommy doesn't like getting up before the sun comes up even though Lily does." She looked up at me and said "Daddy no like either." I couldn't help but smile as I replied, "You're right, Daddy doesn't like it either.

Birthday Party fun

Ryan and Lily went to her friend, Hadley's, 3-year-old princess birthday party on Saturday afternoon. Ryan said she had a great time! She enjoyed the pizza and playing with the toys they had. Of course, she really loved the cupcake too; that's my girl! Since coming home that evening, she has been singing "happy birthday" again and again; she corrects us too if we insert anyone's name other than Hadley (though she says it more like "Had-ee"). She was so excited about getting a goodie bag at the end of the party. She came running in to our house afterwards to show me. She has been having so much fun with the princess bubbles; the blowing end of the wand is shaped like a diamond which she thinks is pretty cool. However, her favorite goodie in there is a cherry-flavored dum-dum lollipop. She has never had a lollipop before, but I decided today to let her try. For about 10 minutes, she just carried it around saying how pretty it is. Finally, I showed her how to lick it, and she didn't stop licking it for probably 30 minutes (which is a really long time for a dum-dum!). The funny thing is she would take a little lick, then stretch it out to my mouth and say "Mommy's turn." I would take a little lick (I mean really, who can resist?), and she would say "Yummy treat!"

Another note about the party...Lily has always been pretty hesitant around dogs, so we weren't sure how she would handle their little dog, Indiana, who she has freaked out around before. I tried to remind her that Indiana would be there and he might bark a little, but he is a nice dog. Ryan said she started to get upset when Indiana licked Lily's hand, but once he explained she was giving her kisses, she liked it. Now, when I ask if she got dog kisses, she just laughs. Maybe she is starting to overcome this fear now.

Bath Time!

Okay, so maybe "bath time" isn't the right word; "shower time" would be more appropriate. I think Lily's favorite time of day is when she gets to take a shower. For a couple of months now she has preferred to take a shower with one of us instead of taking a bath. Each night we ask if she's ready to take a shower, she gets so excited and starts saying "Eat song!" Now you may not know what "Eat song" is, but we are very familiar with it as it gets requested every night before her shower, anytime we get in the car or we listen to the county Music Choice station on tv. It's actually the song "Chicken Fried" by The Zac Brown Band. I think it's hilarious that because this song mentions fried chicken, Lily assumes it is about eating! It's on Ryan's iPod, so that's the first song that gets played when she gets in the shower. She also has some toys in the shower that she loves. First is her "Water Water Everywhere" book; I tell you, the girl loves her books and wants them even in the water! For Christmas we gave her some farm animal bath stickers that she has fun playing with and stacking on the wall. Our Uncle Randy gave her some bath crayons for Christmas too and she has a great time coloring on the drawing pad. She usually tells me she is drawing the farm animals or writing "Mommy." I'm really glad she tells me what she is drawing because otherwise, I have might have trouble figuring it out! While she is doing all of this, it's easy for me to brush her teeth, wash her hair and scrub her down; of course, then she has fun playing with all the bubbles from the body wash. Really, she loves this time of the day, and since it is just before bedtime, we love it too!