Little Big Girl

Elise is 18 months old. That girl has been on a cute streak lately. She had some very whiny/sick times in October, but then I found out she had gotten all her molars in, like, a week so I forgave her. She's up to 10 teeth now with 2 more about to poke through.

Lou is also on an independent streak. When we go outside she pretends to just be playing and then sneaks her way over to the street and runs into the middle of it. I cannot get her to stop doing it. When Sadie started doing that I gave her a soft spanking one time and she never did it again. A soft spanking on Elise made her giggle. Of course, would I really want to spank her hard enough she cried about it? I don't really want to get into the spanking debate, but spanking kids mostly makes me uncomfortable.

Anywho, I gave her her first real haircut last week. Couldn't deal with the mullet anymore. I am pretending she still fits into her 12-18 month sized winter clothes because it just barely got cold enough she could wear them. Some of them were too small before she even wore them. Elise's length is down to the 70th percentile and up to the 60th for weight. 

One final thought, I have been trying to stay out of fights between the girls. Elise generally only cries if she thinks a parent witnessed it. I don't want to dismiss Sadie's behavior, but I think a certain amount of parental ignoring is good. And in that picture they are sitting in the recliner sharing a tortilla. Such interesting children.

Elise's interests:

-Tickling. Both receiving and administering.
-Books. When I haven't seen her for a while she's usually reading books in Sadie's room

-Slides.
-Dancing. She high steps with her right leg and turns in circles.
-Sweets. Halloween was amazing for her. The other day she stood in front of the oven door and whined "cooookieeee" as they were baking.
-Babies. She feeds her babies and gives them lots of kisses.
-Sitting in a booster seat at the kitchen table. She only sits there for dinner and she feels like such a big kid not being in her high chair.
-Wandering away from her mom in public. She whines to get down and then just walks in the opposite direction. It doesn't bother her at all that she's alone, unless someone tries to talk to her.
-Popcorn. She clutches her little bowl and wanders around the house eating. She is pretty good about not spilling. She also loves to suck on the kernels. Last night I saw her chewing something (an hour after we ate the popcorn) and pulled a wad of crushed kernels out of her mouth.

-Baths. A bath will cheer her up any time. She actually likes getting water dumped on her face too. I think she may be the fish in our family.
-Shoes. She takes after my Grammie. And so does Sadie for that matter.
-Bags. Anything with a handle that she can put over her shoulder will do. I actually remember Sadie going through a similar stage where she put a whole bunch of random crap together in a bag and carried it around.
-Play food. She's started to force feed me plastic toy food when we play in the toyroom. She hasn't gotten the concept yet that when you pretend with food you don't actually have to eat it. Actually, Sadie still doesn't have that down either. She does sip on tea cups and say "Mmmm mmmm".
-Sadie's bed. She feels like such a big girl when she plays on Sadie's bed. I told her she may get to move into one....in like a year. I heart cribs. And I heart kids who don't even attempt to climb out of their cribs (both of my kids).
-Berries. Any kind.
-the word "no". She frequently says it when she means yes, she is just that excited about it. 

So long, Farewell

See ya next year fall! We've had a great few weeks of weather leading up to snow this weekend. 

Our afternoons at the park and playing outside with Emma are just about done for this year.

The leaves are all covered by snow now.

But I have to admit it was kind of great to watch the girls walking around in snow pants in the snow.

Sweet Sadie

Have I mentioned how much better behaved Sadie has been since she turned 3? The terrible twos were just that for us. Elise being born months before Sadie was even 2 really threw that girl for a loop. Sadie has been mostly adorable and delightful for the past few months. She occasionally throws a tantrum but I can usually reason with her to get her to stop. She does still hurt Elise sometimes but it's always when she is tired. We have learned Sadie needs to keep to her sleep schedule in order to keep Elise from getting hurt. 

A random list about Sadie:

-insists on calling it a "piggy bank ride"

-can write Sadie and Dad by herself. She recognizes the names Sadie, mom, dad, Elise, Hillary, and sometimes Mimi, Nana, and Papa. We're working on reading the rest of the family's names.

-told me she wanted to look at some people on "Stacebook"

-likes to play super hero princesses

-frequently asks me to take pictures of her (like the picture above)

-loves the library

-has started to sound out the beginning of words and guess the letter they start with

-enjoys making cuts around the edge of paper with her scissors. Still working on getting her to actually cut something out instead of just creating a fringed edge. Also cannot convince her that you don't need to use a glue stick on both sides of the item to be glued

-favorite shows are Super Why and Ellen (yes, Ellen Degeneres)

-has been picking out presents to ask Santa for since September

-told me that wearing sunglasses makes her "warm and healthy"

-not a picky eater. I am very grateful for that

-forgot about her Halloween candy within a few days

-has become scared of the dark

-frequently tells me what I say "sounds like a great idea!"

-asks to do dishes every day.

Officially Official

The basketball season is upon us. Daniel has been getting home after 6:30 PM for a month now, but the games are here. Only 4 months until it's over.

 Sadie looked forward to his exhibition game all day on Saturday. When we got to the game (after half-time- I am very strategic about when we arrive), Sadie immediately started complaining about the buzzer. She usually only gets sensitive to noises when she is exhausted. Who knows where that sensitivity came from? :) She got so upset about the noise that she asked me to cover her ear. She climbed up in my lap and laid against me while I covered her exposed ear. And she promptly went to sleep. 

 

She was out less than 5 minutes after arriving. 

Elise happily snacked away and clapped when anyone around her was clapping. I don't think she even noticed there was a game going on. 

I woke Sadie up when the game was over. We went and played on the floor until Daniel came out. 

I would call our first game attendance of the season a total success.

Hyrum

One of Sadie's favorite kids in the world is Hyrum. His mom, Naomi, watches the girls every morning. She is a friend of mine and she watched Sadie when she was a baby and we went back to her when all of our family moved away. She is like a second mom to our girls and we are so grateful for her. It can be difficult to be a working mom, but it is so nice to know my kids are at a home where they are loved, not just babysat.

 But back to Hyrum, we went to his 5th birthday party last week. They had a super hero theme and there were different activities training the kids to be super heroes. Sadie was in a shy mood and wanted to sit on my lap most of the time even though we were at a house where she spends a lot of time. She perked right up during present time.

 Sadie took about 30 minutes picking out his present at Target. She studied each item and inevitably chose it as "the" present. Then moved onto the next one and changed her mind. She settled on some hybrid Batman transformer thing. I don't really know what it was.

Sadie jumped up and down as Hyrum opened his gift. Then she ran to me and exclaimed that he loved it. 

Then she asked if we could go home. 

Halloween '12

Well, Halloween is over. My friend Margaret commented that it seemed like the Halloween season lasted for weeks and weeks and I totally agree. It felt like it took forever to get here. Of course that could be because we got the girls' costumes at the end of August and we started going to pumpkin patches in September.

On our last trip to Jaker's Jack-o-Lantern's

We had our church Halloween party the Saturday before Halloween. Sadie could not wait. We invited the Faucettes to come along, which made her even more excited. We had some extra time so we curled her hair (with my new curling wand, which I cannot recommend enough) and put on a little sparkly make-up. 

What is going on here? Maniacal laugh while strangling?!

We had the kids take a little Halloween costume pic and off we went to the party. 

The kids had a great time. We came home and put the 1-year-olds to bed and talked while the toddlers played in the basement until way past their bedtime.

Dance class was another chance to dress up this week. I loved all the kids in dancing around in costume.

On Halloween itself the girls and I went around UVU visiting various co-workers. 

 We always have employees with amazing costumes in the library so we stopped there first. Sadie got scared so we rode the elevator up to my office (a favorite activity of both girls) and ate a little candy. 

We took 20 minutes to walk across campus to Daniel's office because Elise insisted on walking by herself.  We bothered the other coaches for a bit, picked up some more candy, and headed on our way. Daniel had a game that night so this was his chance to see the girls.

Sadie had gymnastics in the afternoon so I dressed up Elise in her skeleton pjs. She spent the entire class walking around the corner and then popping back around, trying to scare me. 

 Sadie's teacher transformed her leg boot into a ruby slipper and the girls all loved it. Sadie doesn't know who Dorothy is but she can get on board with anything sparkly.

We rushed home after gymnastics and grabbed some pizza before heading out for trick-or-treating.

 My girls. They are dressed up as Tiana (Sadie's choice) and Louis the Alligator from Princess and the Frog. Unfortunately, Elise's costume is kind of more a dragon than an alligator. Oh well. 

 Sadie and Claire were not excited about taking another picture. Get candy!!!

 Sadie and Claire ran from house to house, both knocking/ringing the doorbell. Sadie showed me each new piece of candy she got and yelled, "I got more candy!!!!" Hillary came with us and carried Elise to most of the doors. After about 20 minutes and Elise attempting to eat several pieces of wrapped candy, we just put her in the stroller with a lollipop. She couldn't have cared less about picking up more candy.

The girls with their Hillary at the end of the night. 

Sadie helped me give out candy until the late hour of 7:40 and then went to bed. She woke up crying out later for chocolate and candy, so I think we'll call Halloween a success. 

Til next Halloween! Think we can still make Elise be the goofy sidekick to whatever Sadie chooses in 2013? I sure hope so. 

Goobs Part II

Lately Elise:

-is still hilarious. She tries to make us laugh all the time. She put on these glasses and left them on until we looked at her. Then she'd laugh hysterically and rip them off

 

-will only eat raspberries off her pointer fingers

-loves animals. She gets down on all fours and lets dogs lick all over her face. It's cute, but I'm still not getting a dog. We returned to Jaker's Jack-o-lanterns in Springville last week and she pet the donkeys for a while until we all got a little spooked when it started chomping on poor little Emett's hand and wouldn't let go. She cried when I took her away from it.

 

-tries to pull her pants and diaper off constantly if not wearing a onesie

 -enjoys a little light reading. She let Sadie brush her hair for a good 10 minutes while reading this book. If I try to actually read a book to her she only allows 10 seconds per page. Either that or she turns the pages until she gets to one she likes. For example, her favorite page of Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See? is the second to last one with the pictures of every animal from the whole book.

-is saying words we can actually understand. Added recently: hi, doggy (calls all animals dogs), Sadie, banana, more, daddy, no, mmm (means moo for cow). She signs: more, thank you, please, dog, fish, star, baby, banana, mom, dad, all done, eat, cracker, milk, water/drink, dog, and actually pretty much anything I sign to her she will do it back. Now we just need to turn signs into actual spoken words.