Weekends...

Weeks around here have been awfully busy these days. Speech practices have been nuts at school as I worked with students to get ready for district speech last weekend, and tennis (plus his regular job) is going full swing for Brian. Despite the busy days, our weekends have been nice. Here's an update on what the last couple of weekends have entailed (although unfortunately I don't have any pictures of my mom, Thyme, and the girls...my mom and Thyme watched them while I was at speech last Saturday and Brain was in Indiana for tennis).

#1 - Potty Training: Hmmm...how do I describe how this is going. Well, after holding her potty for nearly 3 hours in the morning, Grace had an accident. About one hour later, when I ran downstairs, I heard Grace saying "poopy." Yikes! I ran back upstairs as fast as I could only to discover that Grace had gone on the potty - no accident! "Wow!" I thought, "I have a miracle child who potty-trained herself!" Well, three accidents later, I realized I wasn't quite so lucky as I thought. :) Anyways, Grace, I've decided, will potty-train when she wants to - that's just her personality. We've been doing a lot of "no-diaper times" in the evenings and have had no accidents and 3 volunteer potties - not bad, I guess. We'll keep working on it. (And a random fact - Grace weights 25 pounds (25 percentile) and is in the 25 percentile for height too, but I can't remember how tall that is right now.)


#2 - Drawing: Liv is so into drawing these days. Lately I've been trying to get her to draw objects. While she's mostly into experimenting with various letters and is fairly obsessed with her name, I finally got her to draw a picture of our family. Pretty cute. (BTW - She also counted to 40 for me tonight - so cool to hear!)


#3 - Playing outside: We've been cooped up in our house for too long! I'm so ready for spring, and so are the girls! We've been doing our best to get outside for periods of time in the weekends, and I hope we'll be able to do the same after school hours fairly soon. (And, deep down, I know I should be thankful since in other winters we've still had a foot of snow on the ground at this time!)

Anxious for Spring

Maybe I really shouldn't say I'm anxious for spring because it felt like spring had already arrived today! After nap the girls and I headed outside - it was 47 degrees! I love being able to get outside with them - we have many great toys, but any toy gets old after being played with all winter. Plus, I've been feeling like the TV has been on a bit too much at our house these days, so it's great to be able to get outside to distract the girls from whatever it is they want to watch (Disney movies are a big hit at our house right now). I heard today that next week the 40 degree temperatures are to continue - sure, it may be rather brown and ugly out right now - but I'll take it!

The Many Faces...

The many faces of Miss Gracie...


Last weekend the girls and I spent some time at my parents since Brian was out of town for tennis. It worked out great - I got to spend some time with my friend Lindsay up in the Cities on Saturday, and then Sunday morning we headed up to Fridley for my niece's baptism. The girls were real troopers and did a great job with all the traveling. While visiting, Gracie had fun making faces in Grandma's big mirror and spending some time bonding with Simba the cat - and I truly to think they both enjoyed it. Maybe these cute cuddly pics will convince Brian to give another kitty a try! :)

Learning...

Olivia has started to share some of her learning with me. I've had to be quite creative to get this out of her on occasion - mostly pretending to miss-count, miss-match, and miss-identify in order to get her to correct me. It's been fun seeing some of her new knowledge and abilities come out despite the shyness - actually, I'm not sure it's always shyness, maybe it's more of a I-know-you-want-to-know-what-I-know-so-I'm-not-going-to-tell-you-ness. If that makes any sense at all!

Recently, Olivia's really been interested in showing me she can write her entire name. We have had lots of O's covering everything in the past, and many Ol's, and Oli's, a few backwards Olivia's, and some serious "a" practicing, but not much of the entire name (the right way, that is). But, this weekend, with the encouragement of some new markers, construction paper, and cards, Olivia went name crazy. We even addressed all of her school Valentine's Day cards - I thought we'd get a jump start and do a few, but Olivia stayed focused and enthusiastic, so we finished all 16. Regarding name-writing, she does pretty well - only needing the occasional reminder that the "l" doesn't need a dot like the "i" and a little help with the letter "v." We certainly didn't give her an easy name to learn to write with so many lower-case letters that have a lot of lines in them!

Not bad according to this proud mommy! :)
Notice the "O" practicing in the upper left.

Grace getting her 2-cents worth of attention!
And, no, she's not bleeding from the mouth...that's just marker - I swear.

More Birthday Pics

It's about time I download some of Gracie's birthday pictures! I think it's safe to say that everyone had a fun time! We'll definitely be making a few more trips over to the pool this winter! I'll let the pictures tell the story....

Olivia and Grace

Olivia's friend from Saint Benedict's - Kelby

More fun times with Miss Mya!

Time for cake!

Presents!

Snuggle time on the couch:
Grandpa Roger and Ivy, Mya, Olivia, Pat and Elliot, Thyme and Max

Another celebration with just the family on Grace's official birthday.
Grace needing a little help from Liv - those trick candles are tricky! :)

Happy 2nd Birthday Gracie!