Laughing...

Elsie Started laughing today!  She has the cutest most adorable laugh ever!!

Here are the things that make her laugh...
- peek-a-boo
- pretend sneezing
- scaring her (BOO)
- Lee laughing
- Steve making her dance
- Liz and Spencer talking to her
- Shaking your head saying "no,no,no"

El's you are just way, WAY, way too cute!

We're almost there... potty training!

I hope I'm not shooting myself in the foot, but Lee is almost potty trained! He is a really deep sleeper, so he probably won't be trained at night for a while, but during the day he's 100% trained. I'm SO proud of him!

We started this task a year ago, because he was really interested right before his 2nd birthday. He wore underwear and loved it for about a month with hardly any accidents. Then independence set in and he wasn't interested anymore. So we gave up. Then over the last year about 7 times we would have "spells" where he would play around with the idea of going potty and underwear and then it would fade away... back to diapers.

I was telling my friend Stephanie B. about it and she printed this book for me about "throwing out all diapers" not having that option and then to teach Lee to recognize his body signs. He was pretty much trained after the first day. He definitely knew what he was doing.

He cried when we threw the diapers away... and he asked one time for them saying "mommy I want my diapers back". After I told him that they were all gone and that he was a big boy, he got a huge smile and said "oh yay". I'm just so proud of him!

He wears underwear to nap and nighttime. Naptime he's usually pretty good. He has very little accidents. Nighttime is going to be awhile. but I wake him up before I go to bed around 10-11ish. Steve them wakes him up to go at 4:30am. So he'll learn eventually.

One down... one to go in a few years :)

3 Months Old

My sweet baby girl. You are just so, so sweet. I love going to get you in the morning because you are all smiles. You smile all day long. You are quiet and watch everything to take in. You love your big brother. I can already see you following right behind him in all his mischief ;)

You're starting to teeth. I can feel your two bottom teeth right below your gums. They are RIGHT THERE. It's made you pretty crabby though. Not crabby all the time, but just more crabby when you get tired. Tylenol cures that pretty good though.

You are sleeping 12-13 hours every night now, straight through. You do amazing! Every 4th night you wake up in the middle of the night for a catch up feeding. You still have 3 naps a day, but your wake time is just about 2 hours now. You are also eating about 6 oz at every feeding too. Sometimes though you like to do 3 oz and confuse us, but mostly you're doing 5-6 oz every feed.

I'm still swaddling you and I'm wondering when you're going to give that up. You really do love it though... so probably not anytime soon.


I love you my little Elles Bells. Please don't grow up too fast. Ok? Thanks!

Something I don't want to forget...

Yesterday, the family (Me, Steve, Lee and El) all went to Morris to walk by the river. Something Steve had seen and wanted to show us. Plus, what 2 year old doesn't like throwing rocks into water? Or mud? Anyways, Steve thought that this particular area had a park. Lee perspective of a "park" is swings, slides and something to hang on.

So, we're all in the car and Lee has asked 34 times how much longer. Steve announced proudly that he did remember where the park was and that we were there. Lee then announces "sorry Daddy, there's no park here!" What 2 year old that had his hopes up for 30+ minutes just matter-of-factly explains that Steve was wrong? No crying, no fit. Just along for the ride.

To that Steve said... "yes, but there's rocks and tunnels that we can go and see". So the adventure began.

A few days ago I wanted to take a few pictures of Lee, because I don't have enough, and I asked if he would take a few. He said "no". So I said "how about if your playing something and you don't know I'm taking your picture". Lee said "How about a bath". Ugh, Ok, but that's more work for me though. Humph. At least he's clean, and I did get pictures of him. This was picture number 7 that I took. As you can see, when Lee agrees to pictures, that means 7.He's still pretty cute though ;)