Mommy hood

Yesterday was Mother's Day. I am so thankful that He chose me to be these girls mommy. It has been the most amazing (& challenging) thing I've ever done. Neal did a great job of making the day special. We also did something that I've been waiting for Reese to be old enough to do, a mommy survey...see her responses below:

1. How old is your mom. 3

2. How much does your mom weigh? 2 months

3. What is your mom's favorite color? Green

4. What is your mom's favorite food? Lunchables & apple sauce

5. My mom always says? Listen & obey

6. What does your mom cook the best? Lunchables & cookies

7. What is your mom's job? The iPuter (?)

8. Your mom laughs when? When she goes home & then she goes to church (again, ?)

9. If your mom had time she would love to? Play with fish

10. Your mom & you like to? Play games together

11. What does your mom really love?playing games

12. You love your mom because? Games (I think she got stuck on games)

I think this survey is such a cute idea and look forward to doing this each year.

Random thoughts on a Monday

1. My mother in law took this photo of us before Reese's birthday party. I absolutely love this picture of my sweet little family.

2. Ella has a sweet little friend at school named Caroline. I think she has found her Reagan (Reese's bestie). They are so cute together and seem to love each other so much. She also lives in our neighborhood and get to play together at the playground, in the culdesac and at the pool. I am so excited to watch these two cuties grow up together.

3. I haven’t written a post on Reese’s 3^rd birthday party and am not sure that I am going to get around to it so I will make this a condensed version. We all had a blast. The gym that we did it at turned out to be a great choice. All of the kiddos seemed to have a great time and it was a perfect amount of space for the exorbitant amount of people that I ended up inviting. She even had a surprise visit from Rapunzel. I will probably upload a separate post of photos to remember in a soon to come post.

4. She looks so adorable in a bow but they only stay in for as much as 10 minutes. We need some bow training.

5. How did they get so big? They sat at a table by themselves, for a bit, at Sam's on Friday eating their pizza.

6. Ella's teacher sent this picture to me of her playing in the water at school. I love this cute picture of her and am so happy to have chosen a school that has teachers that will text me photos througout the day.

7. If you are ever in Little Rock All Aboard was such a fun place to take kids to eat. Your dinner is delivered by a train. This is Ella fascinated by the train delivery system.

8. We recently took Reese to Disney on Ice, dare to dream. Reese’s best friend Reagan went down too (her grandparent’s also live in the area) and we met my good friend and college roommate and her little girl. All 3 girls seemed to love it..and I think that all of us enjoyed it too.

9. We are 3 weeks in to having no binkys. I am so incredibly proud of this girl. She is getting so big. In this photo she is buckling her shoes all by herself.

10. In my last random updates I talked about our love for Barkley. We still love her to death but she is driving up crazy by getting food from the table any time we turn around. I recently made the girls a mini table and chairs and it is just at Barkley’s level, I think this has caused her to realize what exciting things exist on a kitchen table so she fights to get onto the mini table or the regular table now whenever she smells food.

11. The above mentioned table and chairs has worked out to be a really fun addition to our kitchen. I got the table at a flea market and the chairs from Walmart.com. Neal and I painted them cream, distressed them and I modge podged the top with scrapbook paper. I love how it turned out!

12. Ella fell a few weeks ago and, we don’t know how in the world it happened, caught her fingernail just right that it took her nail off. It was 45 minutes of top of her lungs crying, bleeding and a whole lot of family members with broken hearts for this sweet little girl. She wouldn’t even eat the smarties that I offered her in an effort to distract her from the pain, this means she was in a lot of pain. My co-worker and her pediatrician both scared me when they mentioned that it could have come out from the root and the nail may never come back. I am thrilled to report that she has a nail growing back now. This is not a great photo but it is close to impossible to get an 18 month old to hold her hand still to get a good shot of it.

The binky fairy

3 years ago, as a new mother I was determined not to offer my child a binky. That lasted about 6 hours. Reese had acid reflux as a baby and cried at the top of her lungs most of the time that she spent awake, which was around 18 hours a day. We quickly offered her a binky and it helped. She became deeply addicted to this binky. At around 18 months I transitioned her to only having her binky for nap time and night time. It took her about a week but she adjusted well to not having it during her awake hours. Once she turned 2 she began to attempt to manipulate us to get her binky during awake hours. She figured out that if she was sick we would let her have it so she would often say “I am really, really sick- I need a binky” or she would say “I am so tired- I need a binky”. We wouldn’t give into this but for the last year we would often have a lot of whining about wanting a binky.

We have been preparing her for the past 6 months that when she turned 3 she would be a “big girl” and wouldn’t have binkys anymore. She knew it was coming and I was anticipating hell for at least a week. She turned 3 on a Friday and her birthday party was the following day, Saturday. We had family in that weekend and a lot going on so we decided we would implement no binkys on Sunday night. That Sunday 2 sweet 6 year old girls that live on our cul-de-sac played with Reese all day long. They played babies, ran around, had a tea party and drew with chalk. Reese had a blast and felt like such a big girl. I used that to my advantage. That night I told her that those little girls let her play with them because she is a big girl now. They don’t use binkys so if she is going to keep playing with them she can’t use them either. She really soaked this up and did so well with it. We put all of her binkys on the front bench for the binky fairy to come and pick up. The fairy came and got the binkys while Reese was in the bath and she went to deliver them to the little babies that needed them. She did so well with this big transition and I am so proud of her. During the week one of her teacher’s forgot that she wasn’t taking binkys anymore and offered her one for nap. Reese responded “no, I don’t use binkys I am a big girl”. When I heard this I was SOOOOO proud of her and pretty surprised. That Friday we took her to chuck e cheese to celebrate the week without binkys.

Ella didn’t take a binky until her 1^st birthday. It was like she became aware at that point that her sister used them and her friends at school had them and she insisted on having one also. We planned to rid her of them last week also but we quickly gave up on that. Instead we have transitioned her to only having them at sleeping times. So far we have been able to hide the fact that she is still using them for sleeping from Reese. I don’t look forward to this conversation once Reese discovers this but we will cross that bridge when we have to.

I am so proud of Reese and cannot believe how big she is getting!

3 yr and 18 month update

Reese:

You just turned 3 (where did the time go)! You are such an amazing little girl. You have gotten so tall and skinny over the past year, I miss my cute chunky baby but you have turned into a beautiful little girl. We had such trouble getting you to poop on the potty but I think we have finally gotten there (or you are really close anyways). You have been peeing on the potty perfectly for months. You now weigh 35 lbs. (80th percentile) and you are 39.93 inches tall (97th percentile). You wear a size 4t and wear a size 8.5 shoe. You have long curly golden brown hair that was recently trimmed for the first time. You love your sister so much and are so quick to comfort or protect her when it is needed. You fight with her passionately but you also love her with the same passion and play with her so well at times. You talk often about our coke zero and say it is spicy but always want a sip, you love to dance, your favorite movie is Tangled, your best friend is Reagan, you still love Yo Gabba Gabba and you love chocolate like your mother. You absolutely love the color purple, you love to have me paint your toes and fingers and you like to beg to paint mine too. You began calling me and your dad by mom or dad months ago…what happened to mommy and daddy? You are becoming a better sleeper, you were a terrible sleeper as a little baby, became an amazing sleeper once Ella was born and became no so great around 6 months ago. You wake up really early and come down the stairs multiple times during the night sometimes. You are so imaginative and come up with such wild ideas. You are the best at naming your toys and other things, you come up with wild names…Chi Chi, sweetness, Squeakles, Balowich, James, Puppers, Lyla cow and Punzel- just to name a few. You are coming up with new things out of nowhere every day- you now say “that is amazing”, “that is awesome”,  or “that is ridiculous". You just got rid of your binky's last Sunday and are doing so much better than I thought you would have considering how deep the addiction is. There are so many more things that I know I am not thinking of but the bottom line is that you are the most amazing, loving, caring, beautiful, sweet, thoughtful little girl and your dad and I love you with all of our hearts.

Ella:

You are now 18 months old. You have made our family complete and are such a perfect addition. You love your sister so much and try to do the things that you see her doing. You definitely know how to push her buttons but at the end of the day you two have a bond that I pray is never broken. You now weigh 25 lbs. 9 oz. (70th percentile) and you are 32.68 inches tall (75th percentile).

You wear a size 2t and wear a size 6 shoe. Your hair is finally starting to get some length and is curling up just like your sister’s did at this age. You have around 10 teeth, most of which have come in the last couple of months. You wear a size 4 diaper. You love to play with babies and will talk to them and comfort them. You love babies that have pacifiers and always want help to put the pacifier in. Your vocabulary is really starting to take off, you are saying: ball, mama, dada, mommy, daddy, baby, night-night, bye-bye, hi, mine, no, Reese, Gigi, Emmie, Pop pop, Barkley, Chelsea, more, cow, bird and many other words. You can make many animal sounds including the cow, monkey, elephant, bird, dog, cat and fish (move your mouth like a fish anyways). You love to dance and you really get into it, you have moves and I don’t know where they came from. You are so much fun and I am so blessed to be your mommy.

Reese's 1st hair cut

Reese’s hair has really taken off and grown extremely fast over the past year. Neal has not wanted to get her hair cut. A few weeks ago I blew her hair dry so that we could run a quick errand one evening when it was really cold. This was the first time that I had blown it dry and doing so caused it to be much straighter than when it air dries. Being straight made it evident that a trim was needed to even things up, even Neal agreed.

We went to the cutest little hair salon for children in Fayetteville, a couple of weeks ago, while my mom was in town visiting. Reese chose to sit in the airplane to have her hair cut. She did such a good job. Her hair really doesn’t look much different, just a little more even in the back. She felt like such a big girl and loves to talk about how “amazing” her hair looks. I love this child!

is the cold over yet?

When Fall rolls around each year I am really excited about the cooler weather. I get excited about wearing sweaters, boots, making warm soups and being able to open the windows on nice days. I also look forward to the really cold and having a couple of good snows to play in. I have purchased the girls new snow wear each year for the past 2 years. The problem with this is that we have not gotten nearly enough snow to really play in the past 2 years. Reese’s 1^st winter I didn’t get her any snow wear since she was so little and we got over 2 feet of snow that year. Last year we got a dusting, just enough to sled for 10 minutes. This year we got enough to play in 2 different times but not nearly enough to sled and really not enough to merit the snow gear, but they wore it anyways. I got some pictures of the last snow…it wasn’t really enough to build a snowman but we built a baby snowman. I wouldn’t mind a good snow that we could play in, and I guess it is still possible, but I think I would rather warmer spring like weather to play outside in instead.

 

change

My poor sweet preschooler is not very keen on change. She is also very stubborn and when she doesn't want to do something she just isn't going to. Her school has a system where when teacher's are fewer (lunch hours or end of the day) they will send a couple of kiddos to the class above or below in order to keep the ratios at a good level. Reese has been asked to go with a couple of her friends to the studio above hers. She is completely opposed to doing this and will let her best friends go, but. she. will. not. go. Her teacher's stopped even trying months back, even though she is the oldest and it makes the most sense for her to go to the class above for an hour here or there, because she would throw such a fit.

A couple of weeks ago we were alerted that she and her best friend Reagan would be moving to studio 7 permanently. AND this promotion would be happening while Neal was traveling. I have been trying to talk about how much fun studio 7 is and all of the big girl activities that she would get to participate in. I have also been praying with her about it for the past few days. Every time I bring it up she just fusses about how much she doesn't want to do this.

This morning Reese came to my bed at 3:30 in the morning, upset about having to go to studio 7. She is too young to have anxiety about something like this that causes her not to be able to sleep! One of her biggest concerns was leaving her friend Carter. I told her again that it was going to be so much fun and that she would get a prize when she gets home for being brave and going to her new class. I said that Carter will come visit her in her new class and we would invite him to her birthday party too. I told her she could get in my bed and thought she would go right back to sleep. She would lay there quietly but when I would move to see if she was sleeping she would say "hi mommy". She would then lay still for a while and I would think she was asleep but then I would feel her rubbing or patting my back. She never went back to sleep!

When it was time for me to get ready I turned a show on for her and told her to lay in my bed and watch her show while I got ready, and try to go back to sleep. A few minutes later she came to the bathroom and said that her throat hurt and she couldn't "snore good" (this means that her nose is stopped up). I told her I would get her some medicine. I gave her some children's zyrtec and she got back in my bed. She then came back into the bathroom, a few minutes later, and said "I need the green bowl, I need to spit up". I gave her the bathroom trash can and she coughed and spit into it a few times and then went back to watching tv. When we went up to get Ella I excitedly told Ella that Reese got to go to the big girl class today and was going to get to play really fun games. Reese looked at us and said "no I am sick I can't go to school, I am staying home with you". She is also to young to be so smart and manipulative with this sort of thing!

She did great at drop off. She has a great teacher and I think she will love the class, once she comes to terms with the fact that it is happening whether she wants it to or not. I picked up some hello kitty cupcakes for her today as a reward for being so brave this morning...this made her day.