January Pictures

sweet Molly

Colleen is not really interested in doing art projects with me, and this is how we play markers.

Molly in her exersaucer

singing a song

silly girl

This is the kind of pictures I get of Colleen these days

Molly's two teeth!!

January Updates

What have we been up to this month?

I love Colleen's world. It is so easy to entertain a 2 1/2 year old. This morning, I cut three pieces of ribbon (well Colleen asked me to) and we played with pieces of ribbon all morning. We went fishing, we covered our eyes, we covered our mouths, we named them Daddy, Mommy and Colleen.

Also, according to Colleen, there is nothing that scissors or kisses cannot fix.

Colleen sings lots of songs to herself. Most of these songs, I do not know the words to (I think she sings to her toys, so it's not a familiar song), but there are a few songs we like to sing together. She knows the words and tunes to 'happy birthday', if you're happy and you know it', 'twinkle, twinkle', just to name a few. I try and sing more songs to her to, like ABCs and the patience song, but we don't have all of that down yet. When I got her up from her quiet time the other day (we do not nap, but we do have quiet time), I was singing a song from the brady bunch movie (you gotta keep on, keep on, keep on, keep on dancing all through the night....) and she decides that she loves this song. Go figure.

Molly cut two teeth in January. She is eating the baby solid foods, but her little stomach is just so sensitive. To be brief, Molly eats prunes every day. I kept prunes in the pantry and only used them in an emergency with Colleen. Molly is a pretty good eater, but definitely prefers the fruits to the vegetables.

Pictures to come...

You Mess with the Bull.....

OK, I am still giggling over this one.

Kevin, Nelia, Colleen, Molly and I decided to have lunch at McDonalds. It was crazy busy, so we grabbed a table in the play area and Kevin went to buy lunch while I watched the girls. The play area was a little crazy and over run by boys when we first got there. Nelia jumped right in and started climbing through the tunnels. Colleen was interested, but still a little nervous because (let's face it) boys can be rough. After Nelia's first pass through, she flags down some of the boys and tells them not to scream. These boys do not really appreciate being bossed around by a little 3 year old blond, so they basically ignore her and keep going. Colleen joins in the tunnels and definitely gets overwhelmed. The next thing I see is my two little blonds in a face off against two 8 year old (ish) boys. Nelia tells them again not to scream and Colleen adds her two cents ('no screamin, no screamin). The boys tell the girls that they do not have to listen to them and they can scream if they want to. The girls make their points again, 'do not scream, no screamin'. The boys respond as before. Colleen then shows them she means business by shoving one of the boys. (I don't even know if the kid knew that he was shoved, but I definitely recognized it- Colleen meant business)

Now, I know that shoving is wrong and Colleen knows that we only use nice touches for our friends, but I am still giggling over the mental image of the 2 year old/8 year old faceoff.
Colleen took on an 8 year old boy and won the playyard!!

January

Happy New Year!! In the spirit of the new year, I like to think about where we were this time last year (only one baby), two years ago (Colleen's first Christmas), and 10 years ago (Dan and I were dating, but not yet engaged). I adore this time with our family, but it really does go by too fast.

Colleen's imagination is so amazing. A few days ago, she told me that Grammy was stuck on the roof. She said, 'Grammy, get down' and 'Be careful Grammy.' Tonight she told me that she was fishing and she kept throwing Dan's belt over the side of the chair and she would 'wind it up' and tell me what she caught. She caught a tire, a stinky boot and a gooey fish.

I love her little words. Dan decided to let her watch Dumbo, so he put on the movie and he was watching it with her and she said, 'this is a nice show, Daddy.' We were playing later and I was pretending to cry and Dan asked, 'why is Mommy crying?' Colleen said, 'I'm not sure.'

She plays so well independently, but she's not very interested in doing art projects with me. If you look at the pages of her coloring book, most of them are done by me. A few pages have some scribbles, but she prefers to take all the tops off of the markers and wear them on her fingers or line them up.

Poor Molly is teething. It is so painful for the both of us. She does not sleep for more than an hour at a time during the night. She has been napping ok during the day (1-2 hours) and she is so happy and playful when she wakes up, but you can tell she's in pain at night. Her little moans are heartbreaking.

We started Molly on solids a few weeks ago and she's already become my little baby bird. We've only tried rice cereal (eh), carrots (yum), apples (yum) and oatmeal mixed with apples. Tomorrow, I think we'll try peas.

Pictures to come!

snow

Here are two recent pictures of the girls. Dan thinks Colleen looks sad in the first one, but I still love it. We are getting ready for Christmas and it's so much fun this year. I still don't think Colleen gets it all, but she is definitely more aware of the season this year. I made an advent calendar that she enjoys opening everyday to get a treat and counting down until Christmas. She recognizes Santa and Snowman and baby Jesus too. We went to see Santa and she sat on Santa's lap with Nelia and Molly and told him that she wanted a puzzle for Christmas.

I'll post more pictures of the holiday season soon.

Some of my favorite Colleen words--

ellybator-- elevator
Moddy- Molly
piddows- pillows. She loves to play piddows, which means that she collects all of the pillows from the family room and piles them onto the chaise and hides it them. We have a floor piddow, which is quite hebby and sometimes when it falls off the chaise, she tant reach it.

Conversation with Daddy-
D- did you poopy?
C- not yet.

November Update

Always, always more to update.
Molly loves to squeal and talk. She went through a small phase where she seemed to growl a lot, but she's found her voice now and it's a happy, high pitched squeal. She has rolled from both back to belly and belly to back, but I usually only catch her doing the back to belly roll. Once, she rolled over from back to belly, threw up (Molly is definitely known for this), smushed her face in her baby spit up and looked like a little monster. Poor thing- she had it in her eyelashes!

Molly sleeps pretty well during the night. She has good days and better days. On her good days, she'll go to bed between 7:30-8:30, wake up and eat between 12-2am, wake up again around 4-6am and usually wake up around 7am. On her better days, she goes to sleep, wakes up and eats around 4am and wakes up for the day around 6:30-7am. It can be hard, but it's not too terrible when you get to wake up to squeals and smiles.

Colleen and Molly are starting to interact more. They will make eye contact and giggle at each other, which is completely contagious. Colleen still hasn't shown much jealously towards Molly. Once, I was getting Colleen from her room after 'quiet time' and Molly was crying in her crib and Colleen stood in Molly's doorway and said "What's wrong? What's wrong?'. Every once in a while, she'll tell me to put Molly down, so that we can do something, but for a 2 year old, she is adapting amazingly well.

Dan's new favorite phrase from Colleen is "I tant reach it". Sometimes, she'll see something across the room, stretch and groan a little bit and say "I tant reach it". Sometimes she says it in an exorcist voice too.
Colleen plays so well independently. She loves to collect animals or figures and play with them for hours. She has sea animals for the bath, but the orca, whale and shark have special priviledges (I don't know why she picked them) and she plays with them all the time. She also loves her Donald, Goofy, and Snow White. Her favorite dwarf is Basbul. That one took me a little while to figure out.