Has it really been 2 months??

So much has happened in the past 2 months it's hard to know where to begin. Let's see......there was Easter. It came and went so quickly but Liv had fun at 2 Easter Egg Hunts. One was at the Hershey Outlets and the other was at daycare. Addie was too little to enjoy it but we did let her grab an egg or 2 at the Hershey hunt.

On Easter Sunday, they both looked beautiful in their dresses. It was nice to visit with my family and, as usual, the girls were spoiled with gifts from Grandma & Grandpa, Aunt Tori, Aunt Molly, and Aunt Meredith & Uncle Michael. It was fun to see everyone but a special treat to see Meredith and Michael because they don't get to see the girls too often and Addie grows so quickly. Liv too but Addie changes a lot more from visit to visit.

Did you notice Addie's tongue? She went through a faze where her tongue was always sticking out of here mouth. Why? We don't know but Billy blames his dad. He said whenever his dad is deep in thought, his tongue is usually out the same way.

This faze has passed. We're now onto raspberries. She is the queen of raspberries. Watch out if you get too close, especially when she has food in her mouth!!

Sometime in March, Olivia realized that she is now tall enough to turn on and off the lights. Once she learned it, she had to make sure she didn't forget how to do it. Lights on, lights off, lights on, lights off, on, off, on, off.......she perfected her skill!!

In March, we decided that Bill would take a 13 week voluntary layoff. The girls were sick with cold after cold and virus after virus and work has been crazy for me and he wanted to spend time with his girls. A couple of hours in the evenings and weekends that fly by just isn't enough time with Liv and Addie. While he's fortunate to have the ability to take the layoff, we decided to go for it. The first week he spent doing some chores around the house, including painting the bathroom. After "school", Liv helped.
After that week, the fun began. Bill has been a stay at home dad and is loving it. There are days when he's really glad I'm home from work but most days are fun. I remember the first week, there was lots of Easter candy in a candy dish in the living room. Liv would sit and eat the entire bowl in one sitting if we would let her. Unfortunately for her, one piece every once and a while was all she got. One day, I came home to her crying and throwing a bit of a temper tantrum. All over.....you guessed it.......wanting another piece of candy and being told "no" because it was too close to dinner. She stomped her feet and cried and screamed. It was so weird but the words, "Go to your room!!" just came out of my mouth like I had said them hundreds of times before. I hadn't. It was the first time but it rolled right off my tongue and better yet, she listened. After about 2 minutes of falling apart in her room over the little piece of candy, she calmed down, we talked about it, and life went on.

Anyway, now Billy has a good routine and is enjoying every day with them. I think it's going to be hard to get him back to work when the temporary layoff is over. I think it would be hard for anyone to not want to be with these angels every day!

Addison is tired of crawling. She still crawls to get around to all of Liv's toys and anything else she wants to get her hands on but she is standing (occasionally on her own, no hands) and she is cruising along the furniture and with the walk behind toys. What comes along with learning to stand?? Well, learning to fall on your butt properly and forgetting that you need to hold on in order to remain standing. What happens when you forget? We'll, you get your first shiner....

Fortunately it didn't take her long to learn she needs to fall back on her bottom. I guess smacking my face off the coffee table would teach me something too!

I remember when Liv was Addie's age and my Dad said I developed a stuttering problem. It sounded like, "No, no, no, no, no.......". Well, my problem is back and Bill has it too. Now that Addie is mobile, nothing is off limits to her.

It was a shock to Liv when she found out that Addie could get all of her toys. We've had to work on not pushing Addie out of the way, not pulling toys out of Addie's hands, and we've had to teach her that she won't die if Addie plays with some of her toys. Most of the time she likes to play with Addie and show her how different toys work but sometimes she can get a little bossy. I'm sure that's something she gets from her dad, right?!?

Swimming classes went very well. They finished up their last class last weekend and by the last class, Olivia was able to swim the width of the pool all by herself. Billy stayed very close but she kicked and wiggled her way across the pool all by herself. They both just started another 8 week session of swimming. Olivia also just started gymnastics. Tuesday was her first class and she looked so little next to the other kids. We put her in a class for 3-4 year old kids but they combine that class with the class for the 4-5 year old kids. She will be 3 in about 2 weeks so she's very young for the class. On Tuesday there was only one other girl in the class and she is 5. She looked so much bigger than Liv. Liv was exhausted by the time the hour class was over but she didn't want to leave. It was amazing to see how flexible she is!


Let's see....what else??


Exciting news, Jennifer (my sister) had her baby on April 11. Danielle is a happy, healthy, beautiful, and very tiny little girl. I'm used to picking up my 20+ lb "baby". Holding an approx. 6 lb baby was so different. She is so sweet and beautiful. It was hard to give her to someone else to hold. I'd put her picture here but I didn't ask Jen or Troy for permission yet so maybe I can put one in the next post. When we went to meet Danielle, Molly rode with us to their house. She sat in the back with Liv and Addie (voluntarily) and had fun. She had her camera all ready for the trip.

Addie had her 9 month check up at the end of April. At the appointment she weighted in at 21 lbs 7 oz and measured 29 1/2 inches long. She continues to be at the top of the chart for height. We're going to have 2 tall girls.

Just this past week she started babbling a little. She likes to say, "ba-ba-ba-ba" but occasionally we catch a "da-da-da" or "ma-ma-ma". She still only has the 4 teeth (2 up and 2 down) but I think there are more in the works. She tries really hard to eat the puffs but most times she spits them back out. She doesn't like the stage 3 foods with the chunks in it. I don't think I blame her. It looks pretty gross to me.

Another bit of excitement from this week revolved around Liv. Addie's excitement was good. Liv's, not so good. Just when we thought nose issues were a thing of the past, yes, she sticks something else up her nose. I got a call from Bill at work on Thursday to let me know that Liv was up her her room to get something and he heard her start to cry. He went up to see what was wrong and she said her nose hurt. Well, she has a hamper in her room and it's made of wicker. Somehow, a 1 inch piece of the wicker made its way up her nose. She pushed it so far up that it was really hurting. Fortunately Billy didn't panic and he held her other nostril closed and her lips together and made her blow out of her nose. The wicker....covered in boogers....flew out of her nose and onto Billy's arm. When will she stop putting things in her nose??

And the last bit of news I'm going to share before I end this crazy-long post and go to bed is................drum roll please...............

Olivia is no longer wearing diapers or pull ups. I wanted her out of diapers before she turned 3 and she is able to go on the potty but still does not stay dry between every diaper change. I heard some good advise from a friend and we decided to stop using pull ups and put her in "big girl undies". On Thursday we went to the store and she got to pick out the undies she wanted. She got undies with the Disney Princess on them....some with Dora.....some with Elmo and Zoe......My Little Pony. If they were her size and she wanted them, she got them. She was so proud to go to the register to pay for her new undies. We took them home and she opened every pack up and looked at them. On Friday, she helped her Daddy wash and dry them and we found a special drawer in her dresser for her new undies. Saturday (yesterday) we put them on and she was soooo excited and proud to be wearing her big girl undies.

At first it was so funny. You could see that they felt very different to her. We kept praising her and encouraging her to use the potty. She stayed dry until nap time. That's when things went down hill. First, she pooped in her undies when she was "napping". Then, because nap time was more play time in her room than it was sleeping time, she was over tired and had several more accidents as the day went on. We kept changing her and we put undies back on today. Today she had 3 accidents but we are not giving up. Today is May 4th. Her birthday is May 17th. I'm still hoping that she'll be potty trained by her birthday but at times I'm not so sure. There's no turning back now! Tonight we saw a bit of hope. We decided we would continue to use the night time pull ups until she seemed to do better during the day. Tonight, when we put the pull up on she didn't like how it felt. She prefers to wear the undies. That has to be a good sign.

Well, I'm off to bed. I took tomorrow off to be able to help with the potty training. I'm sure there are things I missed from the past 2 months. If I think of anything good, I'll add it to the next post. I'll try to write more timely. Wish us luck with potty training!