Phone Pics

When Elise was first born I was very conscious of taking pictures of her so she doesn't feel neglected when she grows up and finds out there are thousands more pictures of Sadie. Well, for our anniversary a few weeks ago (yup, we made it one more year married to each other) we got new fancy phones and now I am lazy and I take most pictures with my phone. Here are a few of them:

Pretty much how Elise looks half of the time

This is how Elise looks the rest of the time

See?

Tummy time- usually only lasts about 5 seconds before Elise rolls over.
My children are smart- they hate tummy time so they learn to roll over immediately

This day she opted to fall asleep rather than do tummy time
(Yes her hair looks wet and it is wet- from spit-up- yum)

Watching Beauty and the Beast together.
Sadie insisted they sit like this together.

Struggles

I needed to look at this picture today to make me smile.

We are having some sleep struggles with Elise. By some, I mean she wakes up about every 45 minutes at night and we have to spend 20 to 30 minutes putting her back to sleep. Then we get another 45 minutes of sleep and it starts again. That's worse than a newborn. I don't deal well with sleep deprivation.

While I recognize and appreciate I do have a great life, in the middle of the night I feel like I have the hardest life ever and I might die of no sleep. And maybe we should sell Elise. And I will never have another child again.

But Sadie has been amazing lately so things are balancing out. Actually, no, things are not balancing out because getting no sleep is awful, but Sadie does make it slightly easier to deal with when she is cute.

Sadie's Favorite Things- 2 Year Old Edition

Sadie loves...

1.
Coloring. She prefers coloring with pens and pencils. She will occasionally ask for "cwawns and books"



2.
Whining


3.
Smothering Leesie/Forcing Leesie to do what she wants



4.
Anything that is "special". One day it was eating Otter Pops on the back steps. Another day it was eating the Blow Pop she got for her birthday.

5. Reading books (and reciting them to us). She loves Dr. Seuss books. On Sunday during Sacrament meeting her first tantrum was about the fact that I didn't pack "Pop on Pop" in the church bag.

6. Mr. Duck. {not pictured} Sadie now lies to us if we ask if she has gone #2- says no every time, even when the entire house stinks from it. But whenever Mr.Duck asks (she has a duck puppet but we also use our hands as a duck when needed) she will admit it and agree to have her diaper changed. Mr.Duck has also been successful in getting her to take a bath, eat her dinner and go to sleep when she has already told us no.

7.
Washing her hands

Temples

For FHE last week we went to the Mount Timpanogos temple. Sadie has learned about temples in Nursery a few times and constantly points out things that look like temples to her (the organ pipe icon on the front of hymn books, the Disney castle at the beginning of every Disney movie, and pictures of actual LDS temples).

At first, Sadie was only slightly interested in the temple. She was more interested in running back and forth across these benches.

Once we pointed out the Angel Moroni statue on top Sadie was all about the temple. According to Sadie, Moroni is "cute" and "pretty". She would go to a bench and then find "awoni" again.

We did that for a while

We then moved to the big lawn in front. Sadie just ran and ran.

And hid behind a tree.

And ran.

And stopped to examine the letters on the sewer cover

And ran.

And stopped to pull bark off a tree

The only way we could get her to leave was to tell her the temple was going night-night.
(We use that trick for everything. In fact, literally, right now Daniel convinced Sadie to put away the bag of pretzel m&m's because they needed to go "nigh-night". It is only going to work for so long before she starts figuring out that inanimate objects don't need sleep.)

Tres

Hold the phone...we've got a 3 month old here. A 3 month old who slept for 10 hours straight three nights ago. That may or may not have been due to the fact she had a stomach flu and hardly slept at all during the day.
In any event, Elise has been sleeping more and crying less and we all love her lots for it.

Elise smiles way more than Sadie ever did. It makes you feel like a great parent when your kid is constantly smiling at you. Elise giggled for the first time the other day when I sneezed. I pretended to sneeze over and over and she thought it was hilarious. The other morning I left Elise laying on the couch and Sadie playing in the living room while I was getting ready. (Probably not a great idea) A few minutes later I heard Sadie pretending to sneeze and giggling. Sadie really does love her Leesie Lou. That's why she insisted on getting in on 3 month pictures.




The official 3 month photo:

Maybe one of these months I'll get a photo of Elise NOT in pjs

Sistahs

Just two nutty sisters enjoying sitting in their green chairs together.

Party party party

The face of a 2-year-old

Sadie will probably always have at least 2 big birthday days. The first super fun day being her actual birthday. The second fun day being whenever Daniel gets back into town and we celebrate as a family. Unfortunately the last few days of July are open recruiting time for college basketball so Daniel will pretty much always be gone on July 29th- but that's ok, just more celebrating!

First up in this report- Sadie's actual birthday.

We went to one of Sadie's favorites- the Bean Museum at BYU. Tyler came with us and stayed with Sadie while she ran around yelling "big one!" over and over. For lunch we went to the Creamery on 9th. Sadie got a few balloons and we made the mistake of telling her she could have ice cream after lunch. Sadie threw a huge, whole-restaurant-staring-at-us tantrum when I attempted to have her eat a grilled cheese. Tyler took her outside while I finished my meal and packed up. Meanwhile, Sadie calmed down and decided she wanted ice cream after all. I normally do not give in to Sadie, but since it was her birthday I let her be a big brat and get ice cream after the huge meltdown. I only felt slightly judged by the Creamery patrons around me who witnessed it all.

Then Sadie had a LONG nap.


Following the epic nap we went to the Scera Pool with Alicia. Sadie decided that not only does she love jumping off the side of the pool but she loves swimming without help. All the sudden she started saying "kick kick kick!" and swimming around all alone.

Here she is with both feet off the ground kicking. I am so proud of her.

Next up- Sadie's little family birthday party on August 6th.

I kept her cake real simple and made a little design with her favorite candy- "m's". (Apparently she doesn't like that the real name is so repetitive).

Sadie's main present was a new-to-us kitchen and market. She loves it.

It has already gotten lots of use


Sadie was excited about the bags until we started showing her there were presents inside.

Then she got super excited and tore her way through them

We gave her awesome presents like candy and a big Magna doodle, but her favorites were two cars from Cars 2 from the Gessells.


Sadie ate a few bites of cake and then picked m&ms off the top. We were all satisfied with that. Sadie did, however, ask for birthday cake multiple times this week and then cry when I told her it was all gone.

Here she is getting happy about people singing to her and then finally blowing out her candles:

PS- super cute moment at 0:08, like super duper cute

Skype

Meredith captured these pictures while we skyped last week.




That sums up my life with these 2 pretty well.
#1- The second Elise is getting attention Sadie has to get involved
#2- All is right in the world again- Sadie is the center of attention
#3- Elise not sure if she should smile or cry about whatever Sadie is doing to her
#4- Sadie "sharing" play donuts by shoving them in Elise's mouth
(All with a mess in the background)