Aspirations

While I don't wish for my girls to grow up anytime soon, I do enjoy hearing about their future plans. Kayla has been adding to her list of "what I want to be when I grow up" for a while now. She started off by saying she wanted to be a mommy and teacher just like me. Ahh, how sweet. Well then we started adding other things in. Currently (in order) she wants to be a mommy, teacher, acrobat, doctor, school bus driver, and "cooker." Now, I have a feeling that if she had ever been on a school bus full of kids she would probably change her mind, but we need school bus drivers and I personally think they don't get nearly the credit they deserve. I have taught elementary school for many years, granted now it is just for a few hours a week, but I can say that I am NOT cut out for that job. It takes a special person for that.

So today she got started thinking about her list again and Marc asked her what my jobs were. She started with mommy and teacher, of course. Then she started thinking of all I do during the day and added driver and "cooker." I was surprised that she added "cooker" because lately there hasn't been too much of that. Well, she didn't stop there, she added "rester." Nothing like your 4 year old pointing out that you like to sleep! Thankfully she continued to explain that I was a "rester" because baby Brooke is growing and that makes me tired. I hope she doesn't expect my energy level to dramatically increase once Brooke arrives!

Our Little Elves!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Rainy Day Fun

While doing a little Christmas shopping the other day I came across these crayons. They are like half marker half crayon, but they are for drawing on windows. I thought that might be something fun to do one day, so I bought them and stuck them in our closet. So on this rainy day, and when I've refused to allow the TV to be on (see potty training post) I needed something to entertain these girls. Out came the markers and they were a big hit. I learned quickly that some supervision is needed, but they had a ball!

Kayla decided to draw "the man with the yellow hat." I think she was having Curious George withdrawal...
I have no idea what she was drawing, but this seemed to be the design of choice for every color she used.

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.