Welcome To My World

I have been trying to get C to run with me for awhile now but it never seems to work out. He promised me we’d run Sunday and we did! We compromised on a pace, his long legs makes a faster pace and my out of shape heart makes a really slow pace. He ran with the stroller to give me a break. I have to admit I like running pushing the stroller but I think I was able to run faster without it. We ran an average 15 minute/mile pace which is much faster than my usual 17 minute/mile pace I do to keep my heart rate where it should be.  I made C run 4 miles before we walked our cool down pace. Which turned out to take 1 hour. So proud of us!  The girls were great and sang part of th way together. Melts my heart!

Ok everyone, the Muddy Buddy is coming up on Sunday so think of us while you are still in your beds sleeping! My sister and brother-in-law and our BFFs are running with us! I should say probably ahead of us. Hehehe WE CAN DO THIS! Team Chaotic Mudsharks!

Sorry still no pics, our server has been down from all the storms and then the flooded basement and on top of all that our internet needs to be rewired in our house so it has been broken more than it has been working, but had to do a quick post on all the new things the girls are doing! Warning: Proud Mama bragging.

Lillian has hit the do everything new all at once phase! I love and hate it! It is so neat to watch her do and figure out all these new things but I wish she;d slow down and stay a baby awhile longer! She is so smart and it is so neat to watch her think about things and then figure it out. Much more of a thinker than her creative sister. My favorite new thing is she puckers her lips and makes the kissing sound as she kisses you! So cute! She also now can climb onto the couch. She has choosen the corner to be her favorite spot. But It’s pretty scary since she has almost fallen off several times! grrr She really dances now. Arms flailing about, bouncing up and down, shakes, foot stomps, and twirls! Hilarious! She loves to dance holding our hands too and tries to get us to play Ring Around The Rosie. She is loving singing! Well it is more of a humming since she doesn’t really talk yet. At least she signs a ton! On our family run yesterday Charlie was singing a made up song and Lillian joined in! It was the cutest 5 minute song I’ve ever heard! And made the run more bearable ha! She loves to walk around with the toy microphone and sing into it or the one connected to the piano. I caught her one day all of a sudden “singing” at the top of her lungs in the playroom. Hilarious!!!! I almost forgot to tell you about her new coordination of walking backwards! She walks around the house backwards and just grins thinking she is so funny! And she is! She knows that when I say going for a walk to go get her shoes. She walks to the back door and gets her shoes and sits down to try to put them on. She places them on top of her foot but can’t really put them on yet. So cute! She also knows how to undo the velcro to take them off. She can undo the Velcro on her diaper covers too so I have to make sure she has pants on over them so she doesn’t take it ha. The latest funny thing is she knows that wash cloths are for cleaning and when she finds one or a wipe she starts wiping things down. The other day I had the laundry basket on the floor and folding towels and she took the ash cloth out and started speed cleaning the floor! Then she moved over towards the playroom and started wiping toys down! What a character!

Charlie is turning into a very smart little girl! I think she is going to love preschool in the fall! She did math the other day! Well kind of. She told C that we bought 4 cupcakes (From the local Vegan bakery) and that 1 was for her, 1 was for him, and 1 was for mama. Then she tells him “That leaves 1 left to share”. My mouth dropped! Wow! She is talking so smart now too! I swear she has the most creative mind for a 3 year old! Of course I can’t remember what she said right now. ugh! We were practicing her gluing skills the other day and she did awesome figuring out which way was up and figured out how to flip the pieces over without getting glue on her! She loves to sing and is now making up her own songs about life and things she does. She also is singing real songs all by herself from memory! She is going to love singing at her new school! She is still dancing around the house every day but is now putting in real dance moves into her routines. She is even doing floor movements! hahaha Her drawings of people now consist of real eyes! Another mouth dropper when I watched her draw this! She draws a circle for the outer eye with 2 more smaller circles for the iris and pupil! She even drew stick bodies the other day!  She has started to hold my hand now! Not my finger but my whole hand! Makes me sad that she refuses my finger now. What a big girl!  And get ready folks!… She is going poopy on the potty a few times a week now! Anyone who knows her knows that is a very big feat!

They are still pretty good with each other and LOVE being around the other for the  most part. They are growing up so fast now and I just keep reminding myself to sit back and watch all the cuteness.

I was feeding Lillian at my parent’s house this weekend and she looked up at me and signed “Milk” several times! She later was walking around and turned towards me and signed it to me. She now signs it most of the time when she wants mama milk. It looks a lot like her waving hi and bye so I have to put it into context of what we are doing which is a little confusing sometimes but so cute! hmm, what should I work on next? I think Water?

Well now that makes 3 signs Lillian can do back to us. I was breastfeeding her and she kept having to stop and sign “Eat” to me. hahaha I’d say and sign back yes, eat. and she’d eat again only to stop a few seconds later to sigh eat back to me. So funny! So now she can sign to us , “More”, “All Done”, and “Eat”. I’ve been working on “Milk” with her for awhile now so hopefully that will be next but who knows since we sign so many other words to her.

So I only ran once on vacation and one other time since I’ve been home! It’s been so hot it is hard to motivate myself! But the Muddy Buddy is coming up real soon so I am kicking my butt into gear! I must get Back at it!

I decided last night that I would run this morning and so we got up, dressed, and fed the girls breakfast. I do much better when I decided the night before that I am going to run! It wasn’t to bad when I started but at about the 3 mile mark I couldn’t keep my heart rate down so I stopped and walked from there. Better than nothing right!  As I ran at my terribly slow pace I was passed up by many! I just had to keep laughing!

I used my new I phone’s runkeeper app for the first time to track my mileage, run pace, and calories burned. It will be nice to keep track of everything and compare and hopefully see that I am getting better! I still had to wear my chest band to keep track of my heart rate though. I need to work on getting some music on m phone so I can have some tunes while I run, other than Give me that fish from Charlie. hahaha

The funny part of the run is all of a sudden Charlie decided to sing “Give me that fish!”. Which is really the give me that fillet a fish, give me that fish commercial that she hasn’t seen in months and months! It was cracking me up.

I just wanted to get down some cute things the girls are doing right now while I have 5 mins!

Charlie was telling me a made up story today, as usual, and said at the end “That is Sooo hilarious!” and started laughing.

Lillian was in the living room and I looked over and she was dancing all by herself to the radio we had on in there. She was doing twirls and leg lifts and tilting her head to the music. As soon as she saw I was paying attention she stopped and ran over to me for a hug. It was so cute!!!! I guess I’m going to have 2 dancing girls around the house all day! hahaha

I caught Charlie signing to Lillian the other day! It was so cute to see her trying to teach Lillian some signs! SUch a great big sister!

Lillian and I were looking at her blocks the other day and I was saying the letters and running my fingers over the letter to follow the letter. She would then put her finger on the letter and try to trace it too! Wow!

Charlie was sitting doing puzzles this morning and actually put together a really hard one! It’s a wooden handmade puzzle we got from a fair of a grasshopper. There is no hint of lines or running over of colors as hints! I am so proud of her!!!

Lillian has started to do zerbert sounds with her mouth. She does both combinations with just both lips and with lips and tongue.

The girls favorite thing to play together right now is to hold each other hands facing each other and walk around pulling the other. It gets them in fits of laughter! Makes my heart melt! Carl got them both to play ring around the rosie the other day. Lillian doesn’t quite get the fall down part but is starting to figure it out!

Lillian had her 1 year checkup today and is doing great! She is actually 13 months but I couldn’t get her in earlier since we were on vacation.

Her stats: Without a diaper she weighed 17lbs 8ozs. Which we thought was wrong because then she didn’t gain any weight at all. So we weighed her again with her fluffy cloth diaper on and it said 18lbs. So she is somewhere in between the 2. ha! 18lbs puts her in the 10%. (ETA: Actually I looked at the chart and it is really at the 5% line. I just wanted to note this for myself in case she doesn’t start gaining more weight at her next checkup. But I’m sure it’s fine.) She is 30″ long which is the 60%. So our tall skinny baby. I’m actually surprised she gains any weight with as much as she moves/climbs around! Ha! At the same time, as much as she eats I am surprised she isn’t a chubby baby!

Language: Lillian says Mama but she has said Dadada a few times. She mostly just babbles and squacks! She definitely understands what we say and sign and follows directions very well. She actually stops when I ask her to stop! A pleasant change to her sister.

Physical: She is great with her motor skills and has the pincher grasp down pat, walks, climbs, and has even tried to jump! She climbs up stairs well but we are working on going down on her tummy. She loves to try to hold your hand and step down. She loves slides but still needs to hold my hand down them. SHe has figured out that she push something next to something taller and use it as a stepping stool. Several toys have been put away because of this!

Food: She has been eating solids for awhile now. Her time with pureed baby food was very short lived when she figured out she could feed herself. So it’s been a challenge to find finger foods that are soft enough for her to eat. But now she has so many teeth she can chew most things if cut small enough. She loves most fruits and veggies and has become a very big fan of meat lately. We are slowly introducing her to foods with eggs and milk but haven’t given them to her plain yet, just in foods. She still can’t try nuts, strawberries, or shellfish yet. I tried giving her yogurt but she spits it out and gives me the look of death! I’ve tried a few times and she won’t even open her mouth for it anymore. So I guess yogurt is out ha! She seems like she prefers things that are more bland than too sour or sweet. But like her sister she is a great eater so far and loves to try new things! When she is full she throws her food on the ground. Fun Fun!

Teeth: Lillian has not been the best teether but I don’t blame her with all the teeth that she has and how fast they have come in! SHe has the 4 front top teeth, 4 front bottom teeth, 4 one year molars, and more that I can’t tell what they are any more since it’s hard to get her mouth open to look. She seems to get a fever every time like Charlie did so it’s normally a tell tale sign one is about to poke through.

Sleep: She still takes 2-3 naps a day. One long one in the afternoon and short morning and/or night naps. We do the on demand sleep and eating routines. She still sleeps with us at night and in our arms or the swing, car seat, or stroller for naps. I’ll be working on the crib for naps soon.

Other notes: She loves to sing and dance with us. She laughs with her hand over her mouth which I guess I must do. She loves to go up to other babies and “Talk” to them. She squats down and looks them in their face. But she isn’t so sure of other adults she doesn’t know and clings to us. She LOVES her sister and tries to do everything she does. She is starting to assert herself when she wants something and fight back when someone takes something from her.

I’ll be back with pics later but I just wanted to get this out there.

I have been so good about not letting Charlie do crafts unless she is supervised until today. We made decorations for “America’s Birthday” as Charlie calls it and we were using paper, glue, and kids scissors. You know, the dull kind. We’ll after awhile Lil got tired and so I cleaned up my stuff and left Charlie to craft by herself so I could feed and rock Lil. Charlie was happily crafting away. So I thought. Ha! C came home and I went to go pick up all the tiny pieces of paper on the floor so Lil wouldn’t eat them and I spotted some hair! It took me a sec to register where it was from. I couldn’t even look at Charlie and I just sent her out of the room so I could breathe and think through what I should do instead of yell at her. Thank God we just had out family pictures taken! I went around and collected the piles of hair I could see and cleaned up the rest of the mess before I went and got her again. I grabbed the brush so I could asses the damage. I was hoping it could be saved by just framing her face with layers! But she cut both sides and pretty far back so I don’t think it can be saved. It also looks like a lot more was cut than I found so I’m not sure if she hid any or maybe it fell under the furniture. I still need to look. I can’t believe she was able to cut so much since they were the dull kids scissors! Ha! So now I have to find a good kids cut place that knows how to do more than a trim.

Here is the hair I found. A little from each far end of the table. Ha!

This is her left side. This is better than her right side but she still cut far enough back and short enough to make it a mess.

Her right side. The picture doesn’t show it well but it so short so far back layers won’t work. It’s cut underneath too that you can’t see. Thankfully she kept her barrette in so she can still have no bangs which I have been growing out since she was born!

So there you go! Never leave your 3 year old with scissors even though they seem responsible enough with them and you had just told them not to cut the crayon. We only cut paper! Hmm, I don’t think that sunk in.

ETA:

I just wanted to add that I found most of the rest of the hair when we got back from her haircut. She had bunched it up and put it in the trash can in the living room next to the couch where she normally sits. She had snuck it over there and I didn’t notice since she normally sits there so I didn’t think anything of it! hahahaha She must have known it was too much and she was going to get into trouble.  I even later found more hair on the couch in the dining room! I hope that was the last of it!

I love that Lillian more than ever gets so excited to lay down and breastfeed! She fusses and lays down to tell me she wants to eat. We are working on her signing milk instead. And then as soon as I start getting ready to undo my bra she squirms and squeals in excitement! And has the biggest grin! So cute that such a simple thing can make her so happy! She, like Charlie, shows no sign of weaning any time soon which makes me happy. Although I am going to start working on night weaning her a little bit since she still wakes up every 3 hours to eat. Mama needs more sleep! ha!

On another breastfeeding note I am working on getting Lillian to stop eating so  lazily. I know she is doing it because her mouth constantly hurts from all the teething she is doing but it hurts me. So it’s been a constant battle the past couple of months. Ouch!

C is one of the best Dad’s in the world! He helps so much with our girls and is very hands on! They love him so much! We spent the day lazying around and just having fun!

My Girly-Girl/Tomboy. She has to wear twirly dresses but loves to get dirty!

Lounging Buddies!

A big Kid at heart!

Happy Father’s Day Babe!