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!

Sunday Style Section

I've been soo bad about posting the Sunday Style Section...mostly because I've been bad about taking pictures. We're at a hard time for clothes...we're towards the end of winter so the girls aren't getting new winter clothes (with the exception of some shirts for Emmie since she's now in a 4t!) and then the past week or two it's been so warm and I've been scrounging for clothes for the girls to wear (more for Emmie than Ellie...it was summertime when Emmie was 6mo and I have lots of her short sleeve onesies pulled out for Ellie but they're just not really that exciting.) If this warm weather keeps up I might go against the Southern dress code and put Ellie in one of my favorite outfits from when Emmie was 6mo (it's white). This outfit made me want to have another little girl so that I could pull it out again....so stay tuned to see the outfit perhaps next week!

LOVE this monogrammed dress that Emily gave Emmie...and she gave her the bow too!

Why I Love Living in South Carolina...

There are many reasons I love living in SC such as being close to family, great college footbal, sweet tea, and gritsl but a big reason I love SC is that we can play outside in FEBRUARY in 70 degree plus weather! The last few days have been GORGEOUS! The last 2 days  in fact have been over 70. LOVE IT!
Yesterday we ate lunch outside and then played for awhile. I hated to put the girls down for naps because I didn't want to miss a minute of the beautiful weather (but I wanted happy babies so we had naptime!)! Emmie is really big into picnics so she fixed us a "picnic" on Ellie's quilt outside (2 feet from the actual picnic table and I think there was some pretend cleaning products served at the picnic but whatev).

I feel like there will be many picnics in our future...love to see my girls playing together!

Today we went to the Children's Garden with my friends from work Christina and Lindsay and their kiddos Jackson (yes, THE Jackson that Emmie talks about all the time!) and Mason. We all brought lunch and had a picnic and then the kids ran around and played. Mason is sooo close to walking on his own and it's hard to believe that a year ago Emmie had just taken off with the walking. Time flys!

It was really nice that Ellie was big enough to somewhat participate in the activities and I can't wait until she can really get out there and play with everybody...so much fun! We decided that we're going to have to have picnics at the Children's Garden on a regular basis. I think the moms enjoyed it as much as the kids.

Jackson and Emmie are both newly potty trained and they have porta pottys there but Christina brought Jackson's potty too. Emmie decided she wanted to try the porta potty and she walked in and said "YUCK!" and turned around and went and used Jackson's potty. A wise decision my little friend!

Love this pic!

We tried to get Jackson back up there but couldn't quite get everyone coordinated!

It's been about a month since I've seen Mason and he's grown up sooo much. I think he's grown about 5 inches and he looks like a little boy instead of baby! It's hard to believe that Ellie will be at that stage in only 6 months...eek!

I love Mason looking at Jackson. This was the best picture I could get of all 4 of them...I'm pretty sure everyone is looking in a different direction...haha!

Jackson is practicing in case he has to wrangle the alligator in the lake.

This was Ellie's first sandbox experience and she LOVED it. It got to be her naptime and she was happy as could be playing in the sand. Oddly enough she diidn't try to eat it...I thought all kids tried to eat sand.

Yes, that is a bow hanging out in her hair without a headband...this is a super bow that only requires a few hairs to stay clipped in!

hi Christina!

Jackson was my little buddy. We hung out and layed in the sand together. He's such a sweetie!

The kiddos looking for alligators. Christina was worried about Jackson deciding to take a swim but all the pictures I took have Emmie about to climb over the fence!

Happy Birthday!

Sorry we're a day late!