Picnic and Hikes

July 15

The same week that we drove up to Bear Lake, Katie and Jack came to visit, so on Friday night we all got together in Provo Canyon for a picnic and then the next morning, some of us hiked Stewart Falls.

Evie loves to chew on carrots. She will often take a bite out of one and then reach for another one, but it you look closely, you'll also notice that she has a piece of pizza tucked next to her tummy.

I'm not sure if she ever actually ate this slice of pizza, but she did take several bites out of different carrots.

July 16

Now that Evie is too big, in my mind, for the Baby Bjorn, we borrowed a neighbor's hiking backpack so that we could carry Anna and Evie if necessary.

Anna walked about half way up and about half way down.

The spray from the falls was amazing. With all the snow melt this year, once we got down by the falls, it was hard to find a place where we couldn't feel some mist from the falls.

Katie and my Mom walked over to the base of the falls and came back soaked.

My kids hated the spray and couldn't wait to get out of there, but Lauren walked over to the base of the falls with me.

Anna hated the spray, but loved putting her feet in that ice cold water. I was terrified that she was going to slip and float away from me, so I stayed pretty close to her.

During the last part of the hike up to the falls, Evie fell asleep in the backpack, but the spray from the water fall woke her up and she wasn't happy about it.

Hanging out with Uncle Jack

About half way back to the car, Anna melted down. She didn't want to ride in the back pack, but she didn't want to walk either. She wanted me to carry her. I was feeling pretty tough, having carried her in the backpack up to the falls, but I wasn't that strong. So we had a bit of a stand off. Luckily for all of us, there was a nice grandmother who was resting near where Anna threw her fit. She spoke very soothingly to Anna and calmed her down and, if I remember right, I think I eventually got her into the backpack and that's how we made it back down to our car.

Bear Lake

July 13, 2011

In July, Heather and her family spent a few days at Bear Lake and they invited us to come up and join them for the day. So right after swim lessons, I put the girls in the car with lots of snacks and we drove up to Bear Lake. If I remember right, we made it there around two or three and then stayed until about six or seven before heading home. It was a long day, but what kid doesn't love playing in the water and the sand/mud? I've been up to Bear Lake pretty regularly over the past several years and I was stunned by how high the water was. All the "beaches" I'm familiar with were well under water, but Heather's family had set up camp on North Beach up in Idaho and it was the best beach I've ever seen along Bear Lake because it was more sand than mud.

Evie is clutching some sort of candy, like jelly beans or something. I can't remember now what it was, but I do remember that she kept dropping them in the sand, and rather than let her eat sand covered candy, I kept taking them away from her.

Swim Lessons

Some day I will be all caught up with my photos, but until then . . .

It took me about half of the summer to decide, but I finally put Anna in swim lessons. We had just enough of the summer left for her to do two sessions. The first was at a city rec center and the second was at a private pool. Anna loved being in the water and by the end of the first session, she was great about putting her face in the water and jumping in.

Poor Evie got stuck on the side with me. I should have thought to sign her up for a Mom and Me class at the city rec center, but by the time I thought about it, the classes were all full. Evie was a pretty good sport about watching Anna, but some days were harder than others.

I the second session, Anna was the only girl in her class and the youngest one, so her teachers probably didn't push her as hard as they could have, but she had a good experience. By the time the session ended, she was still trying to figure out how to coordinate her arms with her legs so that she could swim across the pool. I'm sure the pieces will all fall into place this next summer.

More Potty Training

For the past two or three weeks, it has been hard to get a night of uninterrupted sleep around here. There are the usual things like Anna's growing pains and the fall flu season that wake my kids and me up at night. On top of all that, I decided to potty train Evie and now she wakes up at night because she needs to go potty.

I admit that my reasons for potty training Evie weren't good. She was showing signs of interest, asking to wear panties and sit on the potty, and she was keeping her diaper dry most nights and during her naps. But mostly I thought she would be fairly compliant and I was desperate to find some way to get Anna's potty training finished. By this fall, Anna understood the concept of using the potty but it still seemed like she wet her pants every day and often more than once in a day. I figured Evie's success would shame Anna into getting control of herself, but luckily for me, it worked out better than I expected.

A few days before I started to potty train Evie, Anna actually figured out how to go number two on the potty and she showed signs of consistency. In other words, it wasn't a one time fluke. When I started potty training Evie, Anna got excited about showing Evie how to do it, and in teaching Evie, Anna finally seems to have mastered potty training. Sometimes Anna likes to take Evie to the bathroom. She'll make Evie lie down so that Anna can get Evie's pants down, and then she'll shut the door and tell me to stay out while they go potty.

Evie's potty training didn't go as smoothly as I expected but had been much easier than it was with Anna. I decided to go for the whole Toilet Training in Less Than a Day program. I bought the doll that wets and I made arrangements for someone to take Anna until Evie's afternoon nap. I studied up, although perhaps I should have spent more studying. I really believed that when I told Evie to go sit on the potty that she would. Instead I ran into her own sense of independence. The book states that if they won't cooperate to gently guide them. Evie wasn't into being gently guided and it felt like I could choose between letting her have her way or physically forcing her to sit on the potty, which doesn't really work with the program since kids are supposed to relax in order to eliminate waste. Then there was the whole problem with her motor skills. She would get so frustrated trying to pull her panties down, but mostly it was pulling her panties up that was the hardest. Early on in the morning, Evie had experienced using the potty, which  was so much faster than my experience with Anna. I don't think Anna actually went number one on the potty until I sat her in front of the TV for several hours and gave her lots of juice and soda to drink.

I was so discouraged by nap time on Thursday, wondering if I had sabotaged the process by starting so early. But Dawn, who had watched Anna for me, gave me the courage to stick with it, at least for a few more days and my mom took Anna on Friday for a few hours so that I could focus on Evie again. I think it was Friday that I decided to just let Evie decide when she wanted to go potty. We had more than a few accidents and it was a little stressful at nap time and bed time, trying to get her to use the potty so that she could stay dry while she was asleep. Friday night I had the potty out in the living room and I was trying to get Evie to use it. She wouldn't sit down, and somehow she ended up without panties. But then suddenly she ran over to the potty and almost immediately after sitting down, she used it, suggesting to me that she could anticipate her need to go. That was a huge breakthrough for me and just the encouragement I needed to stick with all of this.

At this point, Evie is great at staying dry for hours at a time. She doesn't always tell me when she needs to go, but if she's ready and I ask her, then she will go sit on the potty. And sometimes she does ask to go. We're still working on number two, but most days Evie stays dry. The Sunday after we started this process, I put her in plastic pants and took her to Church. I stayed with her in nursery at first and then left her there. Her nursery leader thought she told them she was wet, but I think she told them she needed to go wet (my family's euphemism for pee--not my favorite word). When I took her into the bathroom to change her pants, they were still dry and she actually sat on the big toilet and used it. Of course, then she wet her pants as soon as I called my mom to tell her about our success, and last Sunday she had a major accident in her pants, but she is progressing so much faster than Anna. If I need to run errands, I just put her in plastic pants, just in case, and she seems to do ok, especially since she can hold it for several hours.

The hardest part in all of this has been nighttime. At first we wanted to capitalize on Anna's excitement about potty training, so we left both girls in panties at night. That led to several late night/early morning sheet changes. Poor Evie is still in blanket sleepers and she would wake up wet all over. Finally for the sake of our own sanity and health, we put Anna in pull ups and Evie back in her diapers at night. Anna doesn't wake up at night as much any more, but Evie still often wakes up and cries around three in the morning. She will usually continue to fuss until one of us takes her to the bathroom. I know I should be glad that she's so determined to stay dry at night, but these early morning potty trips are killing me. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that soon enough she'll be able to hold it long enough to sleep through the night.

Halloween 2011

I had hoped to carve pumpkins on Friday night, but instead found myself spending three hours trying to pick up my packet for the half marathon I ran on Saturday morning. With all the construction it took me about an hour to make it down to the University Mall in Provo. Then I stood in line for about an hour and a half before getting back in my car to drive another forty-five minutes home. The kids were pretty good sports about standing in line, especially when the couple behind me held my place so that I could go buy a pretzel and ice cream. I had thought picking up my packet would be a quick in and out, and then we'd go to Costco, so I hadn't brought any snacks. To add to the stress of it all, while I was holding Evie's hand, she decided to hang and then her arm started to slip out of socket again. I think it was the other arm, but I'm not sure anymore. As soon as she started to let out her wail that means she's in pain, I picked her up and pushed on her arm, hearing the crunch as it popped back into place. Then as we were almost to the packet pick up area, Anna totally disappeared on me. I had my eye on her as she played with a sculpture nearby, and then Evie blocked my view for a second and Anna was gone. Finally I found her holding the hand of a security guard.

By the time we made it home at 7:30 Friday night, we decided to just put them to bed after feeding them some late dinner.

Saturday didn't work out either for pumpkin carving and then on Sunday evening we went trick-or-treating at Grandma's, so that meant that we carved our pumpkins Monday afternoon.

Evie was supposed to be taking a nap while we carved our pumpkins, but for some reason she never actually fell asleep. About the time we finished pulling all the guts out of the large pumpkin, Evie's yells turned a little hysterical, so I got her up. I don't think Anna ever reached in a touched any of the pumpkin guts. She did try to use a spoon, but let me do most of it.

Anna recommended the square eyes and a silly mouth. She also decorated his nose while I went to get Evie out of bed.

We finished our pumpkins just in time to put on costumes and go trick-or-treating at Dad's office.

Evie refused to wear her hair, but she asked to wear the purple headband that came with her costume.

One of Dan's co-workers had a bowl full of Tootsie Pops sitting on a chair outside his office. When Anna saw them, she said with excitement, "Look Mom! It's like every day poop!" I think she was trying to express the idea that the Tootsie pops are just like the ones I reward her with when she goes poop on the potty. Of course, we laughed at her statement and so did the owner of the Tootsie Pops, and our laugher seemed to embarrass Anna a bit.

Monday was full of funny quotes from Anna. At one point she told me that I was "a bad parent." I guess I found it funny that she used the word parent, because she often tells me I'm a bad mommy. Then she got angry at me again when we were driving out of the Costco parking lot and said, "You are a sad little man." When I laughed at that, she said, "Stop your sillying, Mom!" But you know, if I don't laugh, I'll cry.

Evie's loves suckers most of all.

Trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. The weather was awesome and this year no one was sick.

One last picture at the end of the day with our Jack-o-lantern.

Halloween Ward Party

Saturday evening was our ward Halloween party complete with costumes, a chili cook off, and fun Halloween games like a cupcake walk, eating the donut off a string, and pumpkin bowling. I ran the Halloween Half that morning down Provo Canyon. I picked up my friend Kelli at 4:45 to make sure we would be able to get on the buses up to the starting line on time. Then we sat in a tent for almost three hours, waiting for the race to start. It was one of my best races ever in the sense that my knees never started hurting and when I finished I didn't feel like I wanted to die. Even better, I felt good the rest of the day, which doesn't always happen. But I couldn't move fast enough come up with a costume at the last minute, so only Anna and Evie dressed up for the party.  

 I got Anna's costume at Costco. They had a huge rack of princess costumes for a reasonable price, so I figured I'd let Anna pick which costume she wanted. She had a really hard time narrowing it down until she saw the Barbie costume. I am not so opposed to Barbie that I won't ever let my girls have one, but I was hoping for a princess instead of a Barbie. I bought her an Ariel costume in case she changed her mind. Of course, Anna did change her mind, but only after we'd already opened the Barbie costume and as she was getting ready to wear it for the first time. Maybe I should have jumped at her change of heart, but instead I made her stick with Barbie. I promised her instead that she could wear some of Mom's makeup.

 Costco didn't have princess costumes in Evie's size, so I did some shopping around and found that the Disney Store's infant sized costumes were about the same price as Costco's, but they only had two options: Rapunzle and Belle. I picked Tangled and decided to make Evie a wig out of yarn. This photo captures the only time she really wore the braid. Whenever I tried to put it back on her, she would push it off and loudly say, "don't want it." Oh well. It was still fun to make and I'll just stick it in a dress up box for them to play with later.

 The donut on a string game: When Dan set Anna up with a donut, he and I got coerced into racing each other. Needless to say, I won the race despite the fact that Anna kept putting the donut in Dan's mouth. I think she had a hard time understanding why he didn't just grab it with his hands and take a bite.

 We didn't make Evie eat her donut off a string. I just gave her one and she loved it.

 Anna with her cupcake from the cupcake walk.

 After the party, I had to take a few more photos. Anna was more than willing to wear the braid I had made.