Potty Training Book

My friend Cami told me that she creates a potty training book for each kid to get them excited about potty training, so back in July I decided to try it. Cami sent me the text and I took some quick snapshots of Anna, which I then printed off and we pasted into a construction paper "book." It's very slap-dash, but Anna still loves her book. 

As for the potty training, we are still working on that. The book probably helped in what is becoming a long, slow process, but we're not quite done with diapers yet. I really think that Anna has figured out the basic mechanics, she's just not motivated to keep her panties dry. I know she tries, but I'm also pretty sure that she regularly puts off sitting on the potty until it's much too late and then she can't help but wet her pants. I keep telling myself that as long as she's potty trained before kindergarten, that's all that really matters.

Below is a very abbreviated version of Cami's text. I figured I'd spare Anna the embarrassment of any potty photos.

I must learn to use the bathroom and go all on my own.

Mom and Dad will help so I don't have to be alone.

Pulling pants and underpants right down to my toes.

I climb the stool up to my seat and make sure I'm all set.

Anna's pretend poopy face

It's time to do the fun part now and hear the pee pee drop.

And if I have to go some more my poopy will go "plop!"

The next step is to wipe myself and make sure I'm all clean.

And then I get to flush and watch it all go down the drain.

I wash my hands and dry them having pulled my pants right up.

I did it! YAY! I used the potty! Now I'm all grown up.

Dad's Birthday

 Dan turned 34 last Monday. We did most of our celebrating on Sunday night. He got lots of accessories for his new road bike.

These days Evie's favorite phrases are, "me!" "I did it!" and "stop singing!"

She is entering the phase of life where she wants to do everything all by herself. Usually she yells "me!" when I try to help her. The other day she insisted on getting her snow boots off herself (her favorite shoes even though we hope that snow is still a long ways off). She yelled "me!" for awhile and then it turned to "help!" These days she also insists on buckling the top half of her car seat belt and she's pretty good at it. As soon as she hears that click, she likes to yell, "I did it!"

Saturday afternoon we had family pictures taken up in the canyon. On the way up, we started singing Old MacDonald. Imagine my surprise when I heard Evie yelling, "stop!" and then "stop singing!" I try not to take it too personally. We sang Old MacDonald again this week when I hosted preschool at my house and again Evie yelled, "stop singing!" As I write this, I'm beginning to wonder if it's just the song she hates and not my voice.

She's also beginning to recite numbers. I started counting in the store the other day to speed Anna up. I said, "one" and Evie jumped in with "two." She doesn't always get them in the right order, but she knows those number words are connected.

Smores and Green T-shirts

My parents and sister went to San Francisco this summer while visiting family in California and my mom brought back matching t-shirts for Anna and Evie. 

 For our Fourth of July barbecue, I bought ingredients for smores, thinking we could just wrap them in foil and put them on the grill. I think we had so much sugar though that we didn't really bother to make the smores that night, but a few days later, we thought we'd make some for the girls. Since smores are a sticky mess and because the weather was so nice, we ate them in the backyard.

 Yum!

Evie's all ready to wash off the stickiness.

Twenty-One Months Old

In just two days, Evie will be twenty-one months old. I'm not quite sure where she got it, but Evie has started doing this thing where she will spread her legs apart and hold out her arms and declare, "huggy!" She did it the other day when Anna was on the floor crying. I think her intent was to give Anna a hug to comfort her, but Anna just ignored her while I got out my camera and tried to capture her huggy stance. 

Along with the huggies come kisses. Evie has finally learned to pucker. She used to just put her face next to mine and call that a kiss and a hug meant that she'd snuggle her head next to my chest. Now she sticks her lips out, but they still look kind of flat like a duck's bill, and like Anna she prefers to give kisses on the lips, presumably because that's how Mom and Dad kiss each other. Anna grew out of the lip kisses awhile ago though, so when Evie tries to kiss Anna though, Anna always turns so that Evie has to kiss her on the cheek, which I think is a little confusing to Evie, but she seems to figure it out.

Last Friday we met up with Heather and Grandma Tamara at the park. Anna was very excited to see them, but Evie was a little shy at first. After spending some time on the slides, the girls headed over to the swings and Evie let Heather push her in the swing. When I try to push Evie from the front of the swing, she yells, "stop!" at me and tells me to push her from behind, but she let Heather push her from the front. Heather was tickling Evie as she pushed her and at one point Evie yelled out, "You're funny!" in between giggles. It's something that I say to my girls when they are being silly, but I was surprised to hear Evie say it and it cracked me up. Later she yelled out, "funny Heather." After some time at the park, we decided to go get some ice cream.

Sunday morning Evie was babbling away and I realized that she was singing part of "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam." Mostly she just walks around saying, "sun-beam" really loud, but I caught enough of the tune to catch the song. Grandma Tamara brought the girls some puzzles on Friday, and while I was making dinner last night, Evie brought a puzzle piece with a sun on it and said, "sunbeam! sunbeam!" She also brought me some of the farm animal pieces and told me, "sheepy, cow, buck buck!" She also loves the piece with the grapes on it, saying excitedly, "gips, gips!"

This has been a tough year for Evie. She had her ear tube surgery in February, got stitches in June, and yesterday I dislocated her arm. We were walking out of the library, so I had a stack of books in my arms. Evie's flip flop had fallen off, so she wanted me to put it on her, but I wasn't sure how to do that while holding onto the books and figured, I'd just carry her by her arm to the car. I didn't make it very far before I decided to put her down and she kept screaming. She cried and cried and wouldn't use her arm. I felt like the worst mom ever. I was hoping I just pulled it a bit and she'd eventually settle down, but when I tried to change her out of her leotard, from gymnastics, she cried even more and so I decided to call the doctor. Apparently I dislocated her arm just below the elbow and it's something called the nurse maid joint. I guess it also happens to kids all the time and when it happens once, it's likely to happen again, so the pediatrician tried to show me how to pop it back into place before she did it to Evie. I'm just hoping it doesn't happen ever again, but if it does, I think I'll just pay the copay to have the doctor do it. At first when hen the doctor took Evie's arm, she didn't say anything, even as she turned Evie's arm. Then I heard a little crunch and after a few seconds Evie started to scream, but when the doctor gave Evie the choice between two stickers, she used the arm I had dislocated, so it seemed to be all better.

While we were there, I wanted to get the girls their flu shots. I had been intending to come in later that week, but was having a hard time figuring out how to get there during their flu shot hours. I thought I was doing Anna a favor by choosing the flu mist option for her, but when the nurse told her she wanted to put something up her noise, Anna screamed and gave the nurse a crusty look. Finally I had to hold Anna's head against my chest so that the nurse could shoot the spray up her noise. Anna cried almost as hard as if the nurse had given her a shot. I guess next time we'll do the shot until she's a bit older. At any rate, it was a traumatic day for all of us, so I bought the kids some candy for the ride home. Because that's how I deal with difficulty--sugar.

Neat Freak

I know that Heather likes a clean house, so I probably shouldn't be surprised by Evie's recent tendency towards cleanliness. A few weeks ago Evie decided that she likes her binky rinsed off before she puts it in her mouth. So every time we get ready for a nap or bedtime, the only time I let her have a binky, we have to go wash it. At first she would hold it up and say, "hands" and that meant that she wanted it washed. I guess maybe it's because when she says "hands" near the sink, we wash her hands. Now whenever I hand it to her, she hands it back and says, "yucky" and then we go rinse it off.

Last night Dan, in a moment of capriciousness, told Anna that if she ate all her food on her dinner plate then we'd take her to get ice cream for Family Home Evening. He didn't think she'd really do it and it did take some encouragement to get Anna to actually eat all her food, but after she latched on to the offer, I think we both realized it would be easier to encourage her and follow through than tell her that we weren't going.

After getting our soft-serve cones, we sat in a booth. Evie's was the smallest so she finished hers first and then she started amusing herself by taking used napkins to the trash can. Whenever we go to the bathroom, Evie always wants her own paper towel and she particularly enjoys putting it in the trash can, so I figured this was a similar sort of thing for Evie, except that she diligently found every napkin around our table and carried it to the trash. Then she started wiping up spots of ice cream with her napkins and taking those to the trash. She was like our own little custodian.

Evie is entering the stage where she wants to do everything like Anna and she wants to do everything by herself, even though she's not quite big enough and her motor skills aren't quite developed enough to do much on her own. It's becoming a tough time because when her language skills fail her or when we don't let her do stuff on her own, she throws a fit, often throwing herself to the ground even if she's on top of a chair. I can see that we are now really entering the terrible twos and I am not excited, but I'm feeling a bit of relief knowing that Anna seems to be on her way out of the terrible twos (now that she's almost four). I don't have to negotiate with Anna quite so much any more to get her to get in her car seat or to do other things, but now getting Evie into her car seat is a fight almost every time. But it was sort of sweet yesterday, as I was trying to get dinner ready, to hear Evie saying, "help you mom" as she followed me around. As usual I was running late, so she didn't get to help me, but I guess it's time to start letting her help add ingredients as I cook.

Fourth of July 2011

Because our front yard has a great view of the nearby fireworks show, we can usually get the rest of my family to come to us on the Fourth of July. This year, as with past years, we grilled up some meat and had plenty of food before heading out to our front lawn to watch the bigger fireworks show. My sister Erica brought some fireworks for the boys to light off and Jamie brought some sparklers for Anna and Evie.

Thanks to the change in laws about fireworks, several of our neighbors also put on some pretty good fireworks shows. Anna is still a little nervous about fireworks because they are so loud, but I bought her some earplugs, and we tried them out when our neighbors had us over a few days before the Fourth for their "Street of Fire" fireworks show. The earplugs were pretty ineffectual, but Anna loves being around other kids, so the our neighbors' show turned out to be a good warm up for the Fourth. Anna didn't want to leave the other kids, so she managed to overcome her anxiety about all the loud noises. 

On the Fourth, Anna and Evie were out in the backyard after dinner when our backyard neighbors started shooting off some arial fireworks. Christa and Shawn stood out on the back porch with the girls and I kept hearing Anna and Evie exclaim "wow!" 

Evie looks like she's running for cover, but I think I just caught her in a funny position. 

It looks like she's had one too many goldfish, but mostly I think she was just really tired. 

Our Garden

I planted a garden in raised beds again this year. This was the first summer I got started early enough to plant peas. I also planted squash, dill (to try and ward off the squash bugs--it didn't entirely work), tomatoes, broccoli, bush beans, carrots, lettuce, basil, green peppers, and marigolds. 

Our strawberries are continuing to grow, but the birds started to get them. I had some left over wire mesh, so I put that on top and it took care of the birds, but didn't stop Evie. She would dive under the mesh every time we went out in the backyard and since she doesn't really know her colors, she ate plenty of green strawberries.

Sweet success!

It looks like Anna got Evie with the hose. At first the kids didn't like it when I sprayed them, but by the end of the summer I couldn't stop them from turning on the hose.

They also love playing in the dirt. Some day I will plant something in these beds so that I won't have to deal with dirty, muddy girls. I guess we had been riding bikes and thats why they had their helmets on. They love their bike helmets.

Poor Evie: her helmet is a little too big.

One of our giant zucchinis. Despite my dill plants, I still ended up with squash bugs. I never found the eggs on the bottom of the leaves, but they managed to limit my zucchini production. I'm not sure we could eat all the zucchini a healthy plant could produce, but the bugs are gross and I'm tired of them destroying my plants.