Sunday Style Section

Lots of cuteness this week plus we got to break out some different outfits with the warm weather! Ellie loves to sit on the couch and have her picture taken and since Ellie has so much fun Emmie has decided that she once again likes to have her picture taken...so glad  we're out of the running away and screaming faze...at least for a few weeks..haha!
On a side note I realized the other day that at the beginning of the winter Emmie was wearing 2t shirts and now she's wearing size 4t, she's gone from 18-24mo jeans to 2t, and she's gone from 24mo dresses to 3t. Needless to say we've gone through a lot of clothes this winter! The good news...she's worn a size 6 shoe the entire time!!

Ellie's outfit is one that I made when Emmie was little and I just love the fabric and the pattern is super easy!

My friend Kristy made this onesie dress when Emmie was a baby and it still barely fits Ellie...LOVE it (wish I could have gotten a better pic but Ellie was getting tired and Emmie kept rocking the hammock).

Look at this little chunky monkey...so girly and sweet!

I wish I could have gotten a better picture of Emmie's outfit...the skirt is super cute...but really with polka dots and bows it has to be cute! My mom found this back in the fall at a consignment sale in Greenville and the weather is finally warm enough for Emmie to wear it (it was too big in the fall). (btw, Ellie was not so happy about having to do tummy time, or it could be that she was upset that her sister was pracically sitting on top of her!)

I love this pretty blue dress my mom made and it's sooo soft!

This is the first time Emmie has worn this purple smocked dress. I didn't realize until I uploaded the pic that the smocking doesn't show up well but it's pastel flowers. I always think of Emmie looking better in dark, bold colors(and blue of course with her big blue eyes) but this light purple looks so lovely.

So a few weeks ago I mentioned that I was hoping to get Ellie into one of my favorite Emmie outfits from when she was little and here it is!

This is Emmie wearing the same outfit when she was 5 1/2months old. You can definitely tell they're sisters but they each have their own unique features!

Sweetness

Picnic

The other day Emmie drug out half her toys and set them up on the table outside and then put her dog in the chair. At one point she was sitting in a chair and her doll was in the other chair...it was super cute.

Ellie's First Facial

Ellie read somewhere that yogurt facials make your skin feel baby soft...she thought she'd give it a try...it worked ;)

Playdate

We had a playdate at the Children's Garden with some awesome friends. It was 70 degrees and we had a lovely picnic and then the kiddos played and played and played. After we got home Ellie went right to sleep and I read Emmie a book and then while I was rocking her she completely knocked out! It's been almost a year since Emmie fell asleep in my arms! She took the best nap and even after she got up it took her another hour or two to comepletely wake up and have some energy. Plus since both girls took good naps, I got a nap...yay!

Kenzie...they had to leave early but she and Emmie had a great time playing before they left!

Emmie and Will

Jackson

Will and Carissa. Will was so cute...when I was changing Ellie's diaper he came over and asked me if I needed help...he's going to be such a great big brother! He also sang to Ellie and she just smiled and smiled at him...so sweet!

The kiddos had the BEST time playing on the slide!

We spent a long time trying to get them all to look at the camera at the same time. Will was quite cooperative and we could get either Emmie or Jackson to look at the camera but not at the same time!

Ellie had so much fun playing in the pinestraw!

Will and Jackson

Monday Musings...on Tuesday

• Sometimes when I've had a really tough day at work or I've worked a lot of days in a row I come home and get Emmie out of her crib and rock her. I've been doing this for quite awhile...maybe since she was around a year old? I can't remember exactly. She sleeps right through it all and it makes me feel better. It makes me think of the children's book  Love You Forever where as the little boy grows up his mom comes into his room at night when he's asleep and rocks him...it's so good for the soul to rock a sweet baby! I look forward to when I can do the same thing with Ellie...right now I barely even breath in her room when I check on her at night for fear of waking her up!

amazon.com

• I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo awhile back and just finished The Girl who Played with Fire....SO GOOD...the second one was better than the first which doesn't happen very often in sequels! I just started The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest...hopfully it'll be excellent as well. 
• Last night I made Pioneer Woman's hamburgerwith caramelized onions and bleu cheese....SO GOOD.

• On the way home from church Sunday Paul and I were talking about how happy Ellie is on the way home from church every week. From the time Emmie started going to church at 2months until she started taking one nap a day, around 9 months, she screamed all the way home from church almost every week...and I mean SCREAMED. This is the one instance where Ellie's ability to catnap works in our favor. She gets her little 20-30min nap at church and is good to go until the afternoon nap.
• Emmie still screams a lot when she gets too tired. Sunday she didn't take a nap and was EXHAUSTED by bedtime. I was feeding Ellie and Paul was trying to get Emmie ready for bed and she just got hysterical. She ended up coming in Ellie's room and just screaming the whole time I was feeding Ellie and then she crawled up on my lap beside Ellie and cried the whole time I sang to Ellie. Sweet Ellie kept trying to pat her back and Emmie got so upset everytime Ellie touched her. Ellie had good intentions and I love that at so young an age she was trying to comfort her sister!
• Every year for Valentine's Day Paul gets me one of the Russell Stover heart boxes of chocolate. The chocolate's really not that good but it's kind of fun to eat half of each one to find the good ones! This year the box had the chart in it that tells you what each chocolate is...NO FUN...takes all the mystery out of it.
• Emmie's doing so well with the potty training...every now and then she has an accident if she waits too long to go to the potty. She's doing great with the pooping in the potty too now...it didin't take her too long to figure it out! I really feel like I didn't do much at all to help her...she was soo ready to do it on her own!
• Sometimes I wonder what our life would be like if we'd decided to wait to have another baby. I know it would probably be a lot less hectic but I just can't imagine not having my sweet Ellie-belly (a mean nickname I know but it's' such a cute rhyme!) and I love having the girls so close together in age...I hope they will be the best of friends as they grow up!

•  I'm going to stop breastfeeding Ellie. I've already been supplementing after her 4pm feed and if she didn't eat lunch right after her noon feed I'd have to supplement then. She's clearly hungry after I nurse her and I just hate thinking that she didn't get enough to eat and then I have to get a bottle ready too so it's just going to be easier to give her bottle all the time and know that she's getting enough to eat. I think I have enough milk stored in the freezer for about a month and then we'll switch to formula...not quite sure what kind yet...maybe Similac Sensitive? I don't know much about formula because I never used it with Emmie...I think Ellie will need something on the "sensitive" side.
• Saturday Ellie ate 10ounces of baby food at lunch...HOLY COW! I didn't think she was ever going to stop eating! Usually I'm doing good to get 3-4 ounces in her at lunch...can we say growth spurt?
• Saturday I went to Publix and my bill was $245...I paid $115...a 53% savings...yay! They're having their italian days sale and I STOCKED UP. It was a good thing I didn't have the girls with me because there wouldn't have been room for either of them in the cart.

Sunday Style Section

I didn't take too many pictures this week but all the ones I got were ones of them together which I love!

Pretty in pink.

Bedtime story with Daddy...so sweet!

Scottie dog outfits.

7 Months

Happy Valentines Day...I'm 7 Months Old!

• I weigh 15lb 3oz.
• I wear 6-9mo clothes and a size 2 diaper.
• I take 2 naps a day, one at 10 and one at 2 I usually sleep 1 to 1.5hrs. I take my naps upstairs in the pack & play where it's quiet so that my nap doesn't get interrupted. This arrangement works quite well.
• I sleep from 7:45ish - 7:30ish. It usually takes me until about 10:30 to completely settle myself down for the night.
• I nurse 4 times a day and I also get a bottle after my 4pm feed...usually about 2 ounces...I just need a little extra! I eat 3 meals a day of baby food.
• I eat a wide variety of baby foods now (that Mommy makes for me) and one of my new favorites is yogurt (just to clarify, that comes from the store...Mommy's not that good..haha).
• I'm kind of a picky eater. I don't care much for bananas, carrots, or mango. I'm hit or miss on squash. When I don't like what's on my plate or I'm full I close my mouth and pretend I'm chewing when Mommy tries to feed me more.

• I LOVE to drink water out of a glass.
• Mommy's started giving me some finger foods. I've tried sweet potatoes and cheerios. I will pick them up in my hand (I do a REALLY good job picking up cheerios) but I haven't figured out the whole getting the food to my mouth part. I love when Mommy puts a cheerio in my mouth for me...they're yummy!
• I am becoming more and more tolerant of tummy time and I wiggle my legs a lot like I'm trying to go forward but I still do "flying" arms.
• I'm working on standing up and my legs are starting to get stronger.
• I'm really REALLY good at grabbing things...no matter how far away they are. Mommy's pretty sure I have gorilla arms!
• I can clap my hands...it's super cute!
• I seem to have great hand-eye coordination.
• We started going to the library for toddler storytime and I do such a good job of sitting quietly and listening to the story...I want to be just like the big kids!
• This month I got my hair done for the first time...at Salon Emmie!

• We had some beautiful days this month and we had lots of picnics and went to the Children's Garden. I played in the sandbox for the first time and LOVED it!

• I love my swing on the swingset. I like to go high.

• I've started enjoying listening to books and sometimes after Mommy does my bedtime feeding I get to go read with Daddy and Emmie and sometimes Mommy just reads me a book in my room.

• This month Emmie got pottytrained so I spent a LOT of time in the bathroom. Overall, I've been quite the trooper about having to hang out by the toilet.
• I'm learning the basics of peek a boo. I will turn my head away and then I love it when I look back at Mommy and she says "peek a boo"!
• I celebrated my first Valentine's Day today. My Daddy brought me a flower...he's such a good Valentine!

This was Emmie at 7 months and here is her 7 month post.

Mommy thinks Emmie looks a fair amount like me in this picture...we definitely have different head shapes though.

Comfy

The other day I was downstairs cooking dinner and Emmie was upstairs watching Winnie the Pooh (her new obsession...Pooh is right up there with Elmo) and I went up to check on her and this is what I found.

Emmie was super comfy sprawled out in the popasan chair (not sure if that's how you spell it but too lazy to open up spell check).

Sunday Style Section - Sisters

I actually got some pics of the girls together this week...very exciting!

Love these matching Gymboree outfits!

Sweet girls together after church.

Potty Training

So I feel like I've written this post already but I can't find it so forgive me if this is the second time you're reading it! Just blame it on Baby Brain!
Emmie has been sooo ready to be potty trained. She would often go to the potty at bathtime and around her birthday randomly started telling us during the day when she needed to go and would go in the potty. We were busy with birthday and Christmas and then in mid January we went to the mountains but we're finally home and settled for a bit so two weeks ago we tossed the diapers (aka I hid them in Ellie's closet) and Emmie started wearing panties all the time. She had a few accidents at the beginning but after the third day hasn't really had ANY peeing accidents while she's been awake (every once in awhile she doesn't get her pants pulled down fast enough and has a little accident but that's pretty rare). I was going to put her in pullups for naptime and bedtime but the first day when I went to put a pullup on her at naptime she pitched a fit...when I said no diapers she took it to heart! So she's been wearing panties at naptime and every once in a while she has an accident...usually when she's sleeping really hard...but most of the time she just plays in her crib and doesn't nap so she just calls me if she needs to get up and go potty. The first night Paul went to go put a pullup on her at bedtime she got really upset (we called them nighttime panties hoping that would help but she's smarter than that!). She's so young and still in her crib so I was sure she would have an accident every night and I didn't want her to feel like she'd failed so we talked her into wearing a pullup with panties over it...pretty funny but it makes her happy! She's actually done really well at night and most mornings her pullup is dry. I was pretty impressed the other night when Emmie woke up at 4am (which she never does so I hustled into her room to see what was wrong) and she told me she needed to go potty. She got up, went to the potty, and went back to bed!
Overall Emmie has done so well and I only hope Ellie is as easy to potty train. I told someone that I wasn't so much potty training Emmie as I was breaking the habit of the diaper. She already knew when she needed to go, I just had to remind her that she didn't have a diaper on. So every 15-20min for about a week I would ask her if she needed to go potty. My independent child would almost always say no and then if she did in fact need to go she would tell me a few minutes later that she needed to go...she wanted it to be her idea! She's been so good about telling me when we're out and about that she needs to go. She's quite familiar with the Publix bathroom..haha. She doesn't like to go in many public bathrooms (not even the one at My Gym...she does however seem to have a certain affinity for the Publix one) but will use them if necessary. She's gotten pretty good at holding it until we get home though...whatever works!
Everything hasn't been smooth sailing though. We've been having serious issues with her pooping. I was prepared for this because I'm pretty sure every child has difficulty in the poop department. For awhile Emmie would just hold her poop and then go in her panties, often at naptime. Then she got to where she would just go in her panties on a pretty regular basis. Finally on Sunday I told her she was not allowed to poop in her panties and she HAD to go in the potty. So she held it all day Sunday and finally last night after her bath she pooped in the potty...YAY!  I WAS ECSTATIC...Emmie was pretty pround of herself too! She didn't go at all today but I'm hoping we've cleared that hurdle...we'll see but even if it's still an issue at least we're making progress!

Emmie time

I love having our girls so close in age but some days I feel like I'm so busy juggling children that I don't give either one of them enough attention and some days I feel like I've only given Emmie negative attention all day (those would be her "two year old" days!) and some days I feel like I've just been dragging Ellie around all day and haven't given her any attention at all. I look forward to the girls playing together and going places together as they grow up but I think it's equally important that they have some time when they get 100% of our attention and get to do something fun with either mom or dad (or both of us!). So, yesterday after lunch Emmie and I headed to Riverbanks Zoo for some mother-daughter time! I was so excited to spend the afternoon with my sweet girl and we both had such a good time. The trip was all about Emmie. We moved through the zoo at her pace and if she wanted to go back to an animal then we did and if she wanted to skip an animal then that's what we did. I love having a two year old because everything is new and exciting and so much fun to them. I wish I had video of how excited she was when she saw the little train and how excited she was when she asked to ride the train and I said yes. I also loved how much she laughed when she fed the goats...she thought it was great. I was super proud of how brave she was when we were feeding the little birds that land on you. They would land on me and she would stick her arm out every once and awhile like she wanted one to sit on her arm and she never was quite brave enough to have one sit on her but I was so impressed that she wasn't scared to death of how close they were. We had so much fun on our outing and I'm definitely looking forward to more fun outings with each of my girls!

getting ready to go

Emmie fell asleep on the way to the zoo (we went during naptime). She was sitting in her seat playing and then put her sunglasses on (upside down) and went to sleep...pretty funny!

The gorilla was right up at the window which was very exciting...many times we've been and not seen the gorilla at all.

The whole way through the zoo Emmie kept talking about wanting to see the elephants. We got to the elephants and as soon as she laid eyes on them she said "i want to see the giraffes"...funny girl! She did mention that the elephants had very big ears!

Riding the train!

We took a picture of the llama to show Ellie...she has a lot of the llama llama red pajama books.

feeding the birds...emmie loved getting to do this!