A Growing Little Dude and Potty Updates

Matthew is still cruising. He has learned to be happy and play in his bed when he wakes up. On top of all of that, he is eating everything and anything. He will eat anything I feed him. He will only turn down food when he is stuffed and then half a hour later he will eat again if he sees something else.

We can officially say that Sophie got the hang of potty training ... most of the time! As a result she is now a candy monster and will tell you about her potty success but quickly ask for a piece of candy to celebrate.

Grace has started sleeping through the night without a pull-up!!! She does this about half the time but is doing really good with it. She is very proud of herself in the mornings so try to make a really big deal of her success.

Growing = Updates

Grace's preschool update - I had a parent/teacher conference with Grace's preschool teacher recently. Grace has finally started talking a lot at school. Thank goodness. The child talks up a storm so it is good to see she is finally comfortable with talking at school. (This is part of the reason is in preschool so it good to see it paying off.) I was also told that Grace loves individual quiet play. We knew that. She loves to quietly play at her doll houses. Sometimes she asks Sophie or daddy to play with her but she is most often happy there by herself. In her self portriat, she now has six identifiable body parts (arms - 1, legs - 1, face -1, eyes - 1, mouth -1, hair - 1). This up one from her fall picture. They like kindergardners to have seven so she is really on track there!

Sophie is a big girl. Sophie has taken interest in going potty again. Grandma has been a big encouragement on the days she is here. Sophie seems really excited about going potty which is great. She is still working on it but is on her way to being potty trained. This is good so she can go to preschool in the fall too!

Matthew is growing up on me. Matthew is making more noises. I got a mama finally! I was even around to hear it!! He has also started saying "bu-bu". Maybe I call him Bubba too much? Maybe. He is also say "ga" when he sees Grandma. He knows how to get what he wants! Matthew LOVES to stand which is great except he expects to do this a lot which means you have to hold or be ready to catch him a lot. He still has one super sharp bottom tooth. The only picture of said tooth is on Uncle Greg's camera. It sure is hard to get a picture of it!!

Color of Sweet Success and Growing Pains

"Colors": (Color) Both of the girls are into coloring with the effort being led by Grace. Grace calls crayons, "colors". We have learned to love washable crayons (Brian tells me I say "crayon" wrong but I can't figure out how else to say that word! ugh!!) We have cleaned crayon off the tv (several times), the wood floor, the coffee table, the dining room table, the glass storm dorm, our bedroom window, and continuously off Sophie's face. I do believe that Sophie's favorite place to color right now is her face. Grace will sometimes ask someone else to color. She assigns you colors to use and time limits for each color. If you don't participate, she gets very upset. Needless to say, Brian and I have been working on our coloring skills lately.

Grace's First: (Sweet) Tonight, Grace got a beater from the mixer. I made my grandma's banana cake which in my opinion requires cream cheese frosting to go with it. Grace got the frosting beater. (Just to set the record straight, Sophie was offered the other one but refused it.) She licked that beater for 30 minutes trying to get every speck of frosting off it! Of course she screamed when I took it away and had to get the icing out of her hair. I think she could live off frosting. I have threatened to give her a tub of frosting for her birthday since she will eat the frosting of any "happy cake" and leave the cake there. Maybe I should ...

Sophie's Strives: (Success) Sophie has been working on potty training for over a week and a half now. All her own doing. Some days she does awesome. Other days she drives Brian and me insane by not telling us she needs to go and the clean up duty that is required after accidents. She is trying though and for 19 months, we aren't expecting anything so this is all on her desire to strive to be big. Of course, our diaper budget will gladly take earlier potty training by her since we will be using more small diapers here before we know it.

Little Guy is Growing: (Growing Pains) That is about the only update I have on him. He is growing. He is still a pain in my hips. I wonder how my hips will ever function correctly again. The pain did come and go but now it seems to be here to stay ... well I am hoping it goes when he is born. We did make it to 36 weeks on Sunday so that means this coming Sunday will 37 weeks and he will be full term. I am getting very anxious to meet this little man and carry him in my arms or sling instead of my spreading hips!