She's TWO!

Remember this post? Can you believe that was already TWO YEARS AGO??

That's just crazy to me.

And yet, if I were to go down the hall and into her room (which I would never do right now because she's sleeping!) I would find a beautiful two year old in my house. Oh, where does the time go?? I tell ya, with having had my last baby and seeing her fly through the newborn days faster than my heart can handle and then having my baby girl turn two, I just can't stop thinking of how fast my kids keep growing up and wishing time could slow down just a little bit (I dont want it to slow down TOO much, or my kids and I might not make it through some of our days alive)

But since that will never happen, let me tell you a little about this awesome two-year old I've got (who is currently full of the two-year old attitude, fyi...)

Emilia loves to have her nails painted. Almost every day she walks up to me, holding out her hands and says, "Fix it?" and then we fix all the chips from the day before. When we first started painting her nails a few months ago, she liked having flowers on her nails, too, but now she just likes having the color on them. Mostly she picks pink, but sometimes she'll go for purple or blue (and those are currently our only "Instant Dry" options)

As you've seen, she gets to choose her own clothes. Although she still likes stripes, she's been choosing flowers for the last week or so. And she's into the layered look (that sounds nicer than saying she can't decide on just one shirt) because every day she wears at least one shirt, sometimes three.

She doesn't like having her hair done lately. Which is really too bad because her wispy mullet is starting to hang in her eyes, but she wont let me put a clip in her hair to hold it out of her face. She did wear pigtails for about 30 minutes yesterday, but that was the first time in about a month that she let me do pigtails. I'm going to try making some fabric headbands and see if she'll wear those.

We've been trying to potty train because she's been dry at night for almost 2 weeks now. That's not been so successful. She REALLY resists the potty. She doesn't even want to sit on it. I've bribed her into going on the potty a few times, but mostly she just screams, "NOOOoooooo!" at the mention of the potty. We've tried pullups and training pants and are making no progress. Yesterday, she got so upset about sitting on the potty that as she was trying to climb off, she slipped and fell and her arm went in the potty and then we had the trauma of having to change her 3 shirts....I've decided to postpone potty training for awhile.

Emilia L-O-V-E-S her sister. I mean, *LOVES* her. I think she gives Audra about 100 kisses a day. Everytime Audra cries, Emilia says, "Kisses?" and gives her kisses. She gives kisses when Audra's sleeping and when I'm rocking her and when she's getting a clean diaper and when she's swinging (those are interesting) and when she's just sitting...LOTS of kisses. :) Emilia likes to help burp her and likes to sit and hold her. As a matter of fact, right now she's sitting with Audra (in John's lap) and saying, "Audra. Awww, Audra. Mile. Mile, Audra."

She obviously has older brothers because she'll pick up one of their light sabers (she calls them "savers") and come up to you and growl, "Fight." And she knows that if there is a disagreement about a toy that it is much more effective to clutch the toy to her chest and say, "FIRST!" No one cares about "mine" around here, what matters is if you had it first!

If the old adage "You are what you eat" is true, then we can expect Emilia to turn into a yogurt fruit bar (NutriGrain Bar). Almost every morning (it was EVERY morning until recently) she asks for a fruit bar for breakfast. She asks for one for lunch, snack and dinner, too, but usually only gets them for breakfast. As for the yogurt, well, she'd eat that any time, any day. Sometimes, she gets so insistent about having one that she goes into the fridge and gets one herself...as if that would change my answer. :) Now, she likes fruit bars and yogurt A LOT, but what she really LOVES is chocolate, particularly my grandma's brownies. (And why is it that I can't make brownies that taste like hers? I use the same recipe!!) We eat at my grandma's every Friday, and one Friday my grandma got the brownies out a little too soon...Molly was chewing a bite of broccoli (which she does like...I think it's her favorite vegetable) but once she saw that brownie container the half-chewed broccoli was spit out on her plate and pushed away to make room for the brownie. As far as she was concerned, lunch was OVER. It was really funny, and we've never made that mistake again!

She is very into playing with her baby dolls. I expected that, since everyone said it would happen when we had the baby. She changes their diapers and rocks them to sleep and puts them in the baby swing and holds them close and says, "I gotcha. I gotcha." Her babies get almost as many kisses as Audra and get burped (probably a little harder than Audra). When they are sleeping, we have to be quiet...although I'm not sure what Emilia thinks it means to be quiet, because when I ask her to be quiet she says, "Ok" and then goes and says something at normal volume directly in Audra's ear (usually, "Kisses."). But then, this morning when we were leaving John had to go in her room to get her jacket and she ran after him saying, "Baby sleeping! Shhhh!"

She really likes music. There are a few Sesame Street video clips that we watch on a regular basis. One is "Everybody's Song" and the other is a clip with Elmo and Whoopie Goldberg. She "re-enacts" these with our little music instruments. The Elmo clip has a drum and she uses our tamborine and two sticks to be her drum and sings the "La-la-la-la" part repeatedly. :) I've tried to video this several times because I think it is just so cute, but like all good children, she stops the performance as soon as the video camera is out.

And there you have it. My sweet and sassy two-year old. I love her to pieces. She is such a gift from God and has added so much to our family that I can't imagine us without her. We are so blessed to know her and to have her in our family. She has a huge heart, the sweetest smile and big ole blue eyes that you could get lost in. She is awesome. She is funny. She is a goober.

I still can't believe she's two.

First Bath

Emilia talked me into giving Audra her first bath yesterday. I mean, REAL bath, not the sponge-off kind they get until their umbilical cord stump falls off (Audra's fell off on Tuesday--I think it was Tuesday, could've been a different day). Last night I told Emilia it was time for a bath. She looked oh-so sweetly at me and said, "Both??" (and looked at Audra)

Ummmm...Ok?? (WHAT am I getting myself into?)

Acutally, it wasn't too bad. It was a little tricky getting them out because once Audra was out and dressed she was ready for bed, but I couldn't leave Emilia in the tub, so...Audra ended up crying for a few minutes while I got Emilia out and dressed, but other than that, a good time was had by all!

Audra in her first bath



The girls in their pink tub...Emilia helping me scrub Audra :)
(and yes, Audra's skin really is that red)



After I got Audra out, Emilia got in the baby tub



She thought she was sooo cute



And just because I thought this was way too cute not to share...I was taking pics of Audra laying on the floor the other day. When I picked her up, Emilia layed down on her blanket and said, "My turn?" That's when I snapped this beauty. If you ask me, this one is definitely a keeper (even if it is a bit blurry).



Ahhh....my girls. I love my girls. (I love my boys, too!) In two days my big girl will be 2 years old and my baby girl will be 1 month old. Where does the time go? It reminds me of the first post I ever made on here...Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away. Somedays I want to scream with frustration, but mostly I just want it all to slow down and bit so I can treasure each moment a little bit more.

Question

Can anyone explain to me why Emilia calls her boogers "flowers"?????

Close Call

Doing the dishes seems like a simple enough task, right? And yet, nothing is simple these days. :) I turned the water on to wash dishes this morning, thinking everything else was under control. (Why do I ever think that??) Not more than 5 seconds later, Audra was crying and Emilia had spilled her bowl of cereal. Our hot water runs R-E-A-L-L-Y slow, so I left the water running while I took care of the other issues, knowing it takes forever to get enough to wash dishes. I went and got Audra and cleaned up the spilled milk....and in the process TOTALLY forgot about my plans to do dishes, let alone the fact that I had left the water on! It was at least a couple minutes before I remembered. I ran back in the kitchen and found this:



And we have deep sinks! For the first time ever, I am thankful that our hot water runs sooooooooo slow, or I would have had a HUGE mess to clean up.

And why am I blogging about this? I mean, do you really care that I nearly flooded my kitchen this morning? Well, probably not. But I do. And this blog is as much for me as it is for you. This is one of those simple moments that I worry that I'll forget about my life with little kids. I want to remember that, yes, it actually is possible for me to forget--in a matter of less than 2 minutes--that I turned the water on and intended to wash the dishes. I want to remember the craziness of my days because it is my life right now and someday (all too soon) these kids will be grown and gone and no one will be here to distract me from washing the dishes and I just might not be able to fathom that I would have ever been as absent-minded as to forget what I was doing 2 minutes ago. I love my kids and I love my crazy life. I want to remember as much of it as possible because I know I'm going to be sad when these days are over. So there you have it. My almost overflown sink. And my heart so full of love for these little munchkins that I even want to remember my sink looking like this.

{this moment}

A Friday ritual. A (sometimes) single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. This week I couldn't decide on just one photo...so you get several. Happy Friday!