New Blog Look

Given that baby boy will soon be joining our family, I've changed the look of the blog to be a little less gender specific.  Not sure if I love this one, so it may change again.

Elizabeth's Gymboree Birthday Party

 Elizabeth celebrated her 2nd birthday with a Gymboree party.  If you've never been to Gymboree, its like a gymnastics studio for infants to 5 year olds.  We went to a party here earlier this year and it was fantastic.  The kids get to climb all over the fun stuff, they do parachute games, sing songs, and then we eat cake, open presents and go home.  Perfect party.  We had 10 kids - a few of the kids from her class at school and our other friends and family.  It was great.

Juliette came to help celebrate.

 Our neighbor friend Sean taking it easy.

 Cousin Alec.

 Seth.

 Our friend from school, Andrew.

 Maracas!

 Parachute time!

 Isaac with Pa-Paw.

 Elizabeth was not a fan of the candle - here she is hiding from it.

Elizabeth is 2 (and a little more)

Well, now that it's been exactly 1 month since Elizabeth turned two, I've decided to do a 2-year old post. It's really so hard to believe we've had her in our lives for 2 whole years! But it also feels like she's always been with us.


Let's start with the basics.  At 2 (and a few weeks), Elizabeth weighs 25 lbs and 10 oz (30th percentile) and is 35 inches tall (75th percentile).  Somehow Eric I produced a tall skinny child!

She's talking up a storm -using sentences and really communicating with us.  Often this ends up being "commands" - "Daddy sit floor."  "Mommy carry E-zabeth".  If we remind her, and sometimes on her own, she adds a "Please" to these commands - but it is clear, she thinks she's the boss.  Earlier this week we had a whole meltdown b/c Eric was driving and for some reason she wanted me to drive.  (Obviously there was no good reason for this, other than she wanted to be the boss.)  The whole 10 minutes we were in the car, she cried "Mommy drive!  Mommy drive!" I hope that having a baby brother will help Miss E realize she doesn't always get to be the boss.

She knows all her friends' names, words for most animals (including octopus and zebra), all her body parts, colors, shapes, food items, pretty much anything that is part of her life.  And she knows concepts too "off" and "on" for the lights,  "coffee is hot" "milk is cold".   She also can sing all the ABCs and count to 10 in English and Spanish. We love our school!

I bet we understand 85% of what she says.  Of course that makes the 15% we don't get very frustrating for all involved.

We thought we were parenting geniuses on the potty training front for a few weeks, but have now been humbled.  Several months ago she started using the potty regularly (for tee-tee, never poo-poo), like 5 of 6 times a day.  At first, she'd just go a little bit, but then she was really going and having dry diapers.  We thought we'd be potty trained by age 2!  But now she seems to be over the whole thing - will use the potty at school, but rarely at home.  She just says "no" when we ask....sometimes, she'll even tell us "no potty, change diaper" actually choosing to keep wearing diapers instead of using the potty.  Everything I've read, which is confirmed by our pediatrician, is to let her go at her on pace and not push.  So we are not.  Although last night I told her if she used the potty she could have a stamp (Cousin Boston gave her a stamp set and she loves it). We're going to try to make the stamps into "potty stamps" for using the potty only.  Some people have great success with stickers this way, but stickers are a part of her everyday life now - lots and lots of stickers - and I'm not sure how to back up and make them only for using the potty.  So we'll see if we get anywhere with the stamps.

She's still in her crib, but we are starting to talk about the big girl bed and I ordered bedding for it last night.  That was a chore - her room is lavender, but her favorite color is clearly green.  So trying to find mostly green with a little lavender was hard.  Pottery Barn Kids had the perfect one but was out of stock.  So I found it "new with tags" on ebay...we'll see how that turns out.  We're planning on getting rid of the paci the same time we move to the big girl bed.  She only uses it in her crib - at school she naps just fine without it.  And she knows its only for the crib - she takes it out when she's ready to get out.  So once the crib is gone, no more paci.  Doing these two things is either a great plan or a horrible idea.  We'll see.

She's a very big helper at school.  Often the report is she was the only one of her friends to help the teacher clean up after an activity.  She's pretty good at home too.

Her school gets the credit for the good manners she is developing.  My favorite is she says "excuse me" when she burps.  She's very good with "thank you" and off and on with "please."  If she thinks you hurt yourself, she'll come over, put her hand on you and say "Mommy ok?"  

Her favorite toys rights now are her babies and all their gear.  She loves feeding the babies, putting them to bed (on their tummy, with the blanket covering their heads and forcefully patting), burping babies, taking them for stroller rides.  It is so cute! Although I have been resistant to gender-stereotyping toys, I love how sweet she is with her babies.  And hope baby brother will enjoy nurturing the babies just as much!  Boys and girls need to learn how to take care of babies.  But still no princess stuff for this girl!

She also love matchbox cars.  They are the perfect size for her hands and she loves the colors.  She'll line them up front to back and push the whole line of them around.  She'll also share these with you pretty well - unless you want the green ones.  Green is clearly her favorite color and all green things belong to her.

She's a great eater at school - almost always two servings of everything - main course, fruit, and veggie at lunch.  But at home, she is a bit pickier.  We are starting to get some things that we can eat together (which would probably be easier if I cooked more), but lots of nights she still eats something different from us. 

Her favorite treat is "pop-pops" (dum dum lollipops).  Although they've become more of an everyday treat than a special treat.  Somehow we got in the habit of giving her one everyday after school so now she thinks that's suppose to happen.  Since she doesn't eat any other candy and we don't keep cookies or other desserts around the house, I've decided to be ok with the daily pop-pop habit.  But am a little surprised I let it get to the point of a habit.

She still loves her kitties - or anyone's kitties - but does NOT like dogs.  Even little ones.  She pretty much freaks out if there is a dog around, even if it isn't bothering her.  I'm sure this is because we are hardly ever around dogs, but we probably need to work on this a bit.

She is so much fun to be around these days.  She really is a little person with thoughts and ideas.  It's so fun to talk to her about what she's thinking and what's going on.  Even though we do have occasional meltdowns over minor things, she is usually very sweet and a joy to be around.  Can't wait to see how she and her baby brother will interact!

Here's a few other pictures from our holiday/2-year old photo shoot.

Hayride at the Farm

 We had a great time at the farm last month.  Papaw took us on a hayride!  The toddlers thought it was pretty cool!

 Elizabeth cleaning the barn.

Halloween!

 Happy Halloween!

At first Elizabeth was not interested in putting her costume on...

 But as she noticed that the kids with costumes who came to the door got candy, she changed her mind.  She was a princess - with a one piece costume, no accessories - maybe next year we can convince her to dress the part a bit more.

We did about 10 houses in our neighborhood and then she was done.  Actually, she thought she was done after the first house where she got 2 pop-pops (dum-dum lollipops) after she got those - which she wouldn't put in the bucket, she walked on back up our sidewalk to the front door - she thought she was done.  I convinced her that she might get more poppops if we kept going.  Sure enough, she did.  It was a lot of fun.

Visit with Rachel and Bradley

 In October, we took a weekend trip to El Paso to visit our good friends Rachel and Bradley who are professors at UTEP.  They planned all kind of fun things for us and we had a wonderful visit.  Elizabeth really warmed up to them and was a mostly happy little girl.  She slept in a big bed all by herself which went great, except that she wouldn't nap.  (Hence "mostly" happy.)  She also was great on the plane.  This was her second plane trip and she is a good little traveler. 

We took this sky tram to the top of a moutain in the Franklin Mountains State Park and could see Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico all at the same time.  It was pretty cool.  Here we are getting off the tram at the top.

It was pretty windy at the top! Check out that hair!

 Here's me about 18/19 weeks pregnant.

 Our wonderful hosts!  Who found a great park near their house to let the toddler run off some energy.  They also taught her how to play frisbee!

 I had never been to El Paso and was so impressed with how different the landscape is from here.  There were moutains everywhere!

My pictures got out of order, but here is E and E on the tram. We had a wonderful visit and it was so sweet of Rachel and Bradley to come up with fun activities for a toddler!

Bad Blogger

Well it seems I have been a very bad blogger.  Here it is December 3 and I haven't even posted Halloween pictures! Or mentioned that Elizabeth turned 2 or that baby number 2 is a boy!  I thought about just giving up, but since Elizabeth (and probably her baby brother) doesn't really have a baby book, I've got to at least keep this sort of updated.  The problem is that I spend all day sitting at a computer trying to figure out the best way to say this sentence or that sentence, so when I get home, I just don't have it in me to sit at the computer and write more.  So maybe I'll focus more on pictures and less on the narrative.  Anyway, I am going to update this weekend, so check back!

Pumpkin Patch 2010

 Last year we went to a Pumpkin Patch that was just a madhouse.  It was close, but it took us 20 minutes to park, 20 minutes to walk from the parking lot and the line was too long for the hayride.  So this year, we tried another one - farther away, but well worth it.  We fed the goats, said hi to the sheep and cows, rode the hayride and played with the pumpkins.  E was not willing to sit for any posed pictures with the pumpkins though, so we have a lot of action shots.  Was a wonderful trip!