Christmas Pictures

Here are a few of our Christmas pictures. These are the raw images without any cropping and such. I think they turned out really cute. Last time we had Macy's pictures taken she refused to smile. She had a great time this time. We actually went in mid-November this time so we avoided the craziness and I've had plenty of time to work on addressing envelopes for Christmas cards.

Potty Training Day 4 and Update on Day 7

I think we are pretty much done! Wow! Once we got over the hurdle of the first 2 days things have been so great. She still doesn't understand how to tell us when she needs to go, but as long as we take her to the potty every couple of hours she will go. Not one accident today! We are planning on venturing out for a while tomorrow, so hopefully it will continue to go well.

UPDATE: Here we are on Day 7 and things are great. She has been telling us pretty much every time she needs to potty. A couple of times a day we see "the look" and ask her if she needs to go. She always says yes and will go. The only problem we have is she is refusing to have a BM on the potty. I know she has to go, and she went a little bit in her pull-up this morning. At least that is easier to change than going in her panties. She has only done it once and it's been a while. She loved the lollipop we gave her that time, but now she doesn't care about it. Today I am taking away all TV time until she goes on the potty. Something has to work!

Kids Say the Darndest Things

These are a couple of Thanksgiving Day quotes that had us rolling on the floor several times yesterday. Of course you probably had to be here for them to be that funny, but we'll be laughing at them for quite a while.

1. The turkey was set up on the metal stand that keeps it upright. Marc was getting ready to start prepping it. Macy walks in, looks at it and says, "PIG! oink, oink!"

2. Marc was getting the turkey ready for the grill. He had the butter slathered on it and was about to rub the seasonings on. Kayla comes in and says, "can I help decorate the turkey?"

3. In a previous post I mentioned the potty training and our issues with having given Macy Miralax several days ago. To put it mildly, I couldn't see well and my finger got a little messy. Marc was helping me get her cleaned up when it happened. He grabbed a baby wipe to help clean it off and I told him not to get it on my nail because it's hard to clean it up from nails. Kayla, being her sweet and helpful self says, "mom, you can use our nail scrubber to clean it."

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We sure did! My mom, grandmother, and Marc's parents came to our house. Everyone brought something to eat and it was all delicious. Marc cooked the turkey on the Big Green Egg which freed up oven space. Plus the turkey just turns out better that way - so yummy! We also had the usual dressing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn casserole, macaroni and cheese, jello salad, and gravy. Dessert was delicious too with apple cake, gooey butter cake (oh, I could eat the whole thing myself), turtle pumpkin pie, and some fun stuff the girls made (turkey cookies and pilgrim hats).

All that yummy food and Macy ate maybe 3 bites. One day she will have to start eating!

I think she was holding out for dessert. Usually she doesn't get anything unless she eats something for dinner, but on Thanksgiving we give in. She LOVED the marshmallow pilgrim hats!

After everyone went home we took it easy. It was too late to put Macy down for a nap, so we opted for an early bedtime. They were both out early and fast tonight. Anyway, we let them watch a couple of movies while Marc and I dozed off. Of course you can never get much sleep when you have wiggle-worms next to you and a 2 year old who thinks you can't nap if she is awake so she keeps telling you to wake up. After the girls ate dinner we turned the Wii on. We haven't played it in a while because we had power cord issues, but all is well again. The girls had a BLAST playing Mario Kart and bowling.

Now they are asleep, I'm blogging, and Marc is looking through sale ads for all of the places we will not be going tomorrow. I hope everyone had a wonderful day. We have Thanksgiving dinner #2 tomorrow. My sister had to work today so it's off to mom's house tomorrow for dinner.

Potty Training Days 2 and 3

Since this is my blog, and my way to document our lives, and since potty training is taking up our lives right now, I am choosing to blog about it. Sorry it's not too exciting. We almost gave up yesterday. She wasn't having any accidents, she wasn't going at all. She would fuss and cry every time we put her on the potty and I was afraid she would end up with an infection from holding it. Add all of this to my pregnancy hormones and aching back and it was not a combination for success. Things got a little better as the evening progressed, though. This morning she woke up in a dry pull-up, but she refused to go to the bathroom. We finally made some progress as the day went along. She would still fuss when we put her on the potty, but every 3-4 hours Marc would notice "the look" and run her in there. She is so proud of herself when she does go. Amazingly she has only slightly wet her underwear a few times today before we got her on the potty. She is going about every hour or so now, but she is staying dry!! No accidents!! She isn't to the point of telling us when she needs to go. Marc has figured out "the look" - probably because he is more observant than me. In a perfect world she would be accident free and telling me when she needs to go before Monday morning! haha

One little word of advice, and as a reminder to myself when we do this with Brooke, DO NOT give a child Miralax 3 days before starting potty training. Postpone if needed. It is not worth it. Blah!

Potty Training Day 1

And so it begins. Another child, another adventure in potty training. We thought we'd give it a try since Marc was off the rest of this week. If it works, great. If not, we'll wait until the spring. Going into this we both figured she'd either do great since she has a big sister or she would completely rebel. We didn't think there would be anything in between.

Yesterday I took Macy to the store to pick out her new underwear (Tinkerbell, Dora, and Minnie Mouse) and her treat of choice (skittles and peanut M&M's). Because I worked this morning we started after her nap. For the first 2 1/2 hours I was sure this would fail. It didn't help that I wasn't feeling well. She fussed every time we put her on the potty and refused to go. By dinner time I was sure she would end up with a UTI or something. FINALLY she went and of course we all made a huge deal out of it. She was so proud of herself. She got her 2 skittles and Kayla had a basket of little stuffed animals for her to pick 2 of them. We just kept setting the timer for 20 minutes. After that first time she finally got it. We can see the concentration on her face and she has been going every time we put her on there. We had 3 little tiny accidents, but that's all. Kayla has been such a HUGE encourager and has not once asked if she can have some candy too. I'm so proud of how well she is doing in helping teach Macy how to use the potty. Hopefully by the end of the weekend we won't be so paranoid and reminding her to stay dry every 3.2 minutes!

I'm Not Offended

The other day Kayla decided to draw a picture for her daddy. She worked on it for a while before deciding she wanted to take a break. She had drawn a picture of her family, and honestly it was the best one she has ever done. She put a lot of thought into colors, clothes, hair, etc. Today she gave it to her daddy, but I reminded her that she wasn't done. She asked what she didn't do, and I reminded her that one of her people didn't have a body, just a head. I couldn't remember which one, so I looked at the picture and showed her that she has only drawn my head. Her response was, "but I don't know how to draw a big tummy." Considering I'm 33 weeks pregnant I'll let that one slide.

33 weeks

Tomorrow I will be 33 weeks pregnant. THIRTY-THREE WEEKS! Okay, that's out of my system now. It's not so much being 33 weeks, but only having 7 to go. Realistically I probably won't be having her early, but I've known plenty of people who have their 3rd babies earlier. Her room is mostly ready. Amazingly we didn't have to paint the room. Brooke's room is Kayla's old room and the blue color matched perfectly with the new bedding. I haven't washed anything yet, but I'm not in a rush to do that. My mom said she'd come over and help with that. We still have to hang things on her wall, purchase a few needed items, baby stuff to pull out of the attic and get cleaned, and I have a stack of thank you notes that I need to write and get in the mail. Normally I wouldn't be worried at this point, but throw in Thanksgiving, potty training, and enjoying the Christmas season with my family and time seems to fly by. Hopefully by the end of this weekend I can post some pictures of the nursery. Oh and usually I don't like decorating for Christmas until after Thanksgiving, but since we have so much going on and will probably be putting the decorations up a little earlier this year, I told Marc we could put the trees up this weekend. Remind me, how many hours are in a day?

You Are Getting Very Sleepy...

One trick we found with both our girls when they were babies was to softly rub from the center of their forehead down cheek. It calmed them down fast and put them right to sleep. Now that we have a 4 1/2 year old and a 2 1/2 year old we haven't done that in quite a while. For some reason Marc started doing this to Macy while we were waiting in the car one day. I'd say it still works!

All Alone

UPDATE #2: I finally managed to fall asleep around 2:00, heard them inside around 7:00, and went back to sleep until 10:30! Marc said they slept pretty well. Kayla was hot and cold all night. She'd get hot in her sleeping bag, so she'd open it up and then wake up cold and cover back up again. Marc woke up at one point and Macy was on top of her sleeping bag. While he was trying to move her she woke up and said "no, I sleep here, I sleep here." She crawled right back to where she was on top of her sleeping bag. Not 15 seconds later did she say she was cold so Marc helped her get tucked back in. He said they all fell asleep by 9:30, Macy woke up at 7:00, and Kayla woke up at 7:45. I'd say it was a pretty successful adventure, although the tent is being retired until at least the spring.

UPDATE: It's 1:30 and I can't get to sleep. They are still outside, and it's about 47 degrees. I had a minor breakdown about how bad of a mother I am allowing them to sleep out in the cold and how they aren't dressed warm enough. After some prayer and a mindless computer game I think I might be able to fall asleep now. Am I totally crazy? Should I blame it on the pregnancy? I tend to do that with a lot of things - poor Brooke takes all of the blame these days!


ORIGINAL POST:
I am alone in the house tonight, well just me and Brooke. I am alone because the rest of my family is doing this:

Kayla has been wanting to go camping FOREVER. Well unfortunately her mama is NOT the camping type. Besides, I think it is against the law for a pregnant woman to have to sleep on the ground. So Marc got a tent from his parent's basement, bought them some sleeping bags, and now the adventure begins. It was just going to be Marc and Kayla camping, but of course Macy has to do what big sister is doing. It has taken us a while to find a night they could do this when we didn't have anything going on the next day. Unfortunately the low is supposed to be 43 tonight. Of course I'm worried about them being too cold, but Marc assures me they will be fine. I trust him, but I still worry about it. Here are the things that are keeping me from going crazy about it:

1. It's a small tent so they will be keeping each other warm.
2. Kayla is old enough to understand that when you wake up cold you pull the covers back up.
3. Macy is her own personal heater just like her daddy.
4. They are just in the backyard, so they can come inside anytime.
5. I'm sleeping with the telephone in case he intercoms me in the middle of the night.
6. I fully expect the girls to not be able to settle down and they will be inside shortly.

Going against me:
1. Kayla is super excited about finally being able to camp.
2. Both of the girls are totally worn out from today and could probably fall asleep anywhere.

I know they are having fun, and I love that they have a daddy who wants to do this with them. It's just the 43 degrees that worries me! I'll keep looking on the positive side: if they do stay out all night they won't be waking me up bright and early and Daddy will keep them downstairs so I can sleep. That I can deal with!