Big Girl

So much for the 4 packs of training pants I bought. Page is doing such a great job with the potty training that we went shopping tonight for big girl panties. She wanted some just like mommy. Of course once we got to the store she wanted everything she saw. Mostly the pink ones with princesses, but we settled on the purple ones that you see. I wish you could see her wearing them with such a smile on her face. It is priceless, but I would say in poor judgement to post such a picture. The past two days have brought only 1 accident per day and one was in the midst of a complete tantrum so I don't really count that one. She is very excited about big girl panties because I have been telling her that once she was pottying on the potty every time and wearing big girl panties that she could go to school with the boys and girls. This has been a great motivator. Every day she sees a school bus pick up the kids across the street and asks when she can go to school. I guess I will be looking for a mother's day out program now!

Emma has a tooth!

You can imagine our surprise to find a tooth in Emma's mouth yesterday while I was removing a sticker! Yes, she loves to eat stickers and Page loves stickers, so you can see the problem. Page did not get a tooth until the week before her first birthday so I was not even thinking about teething yet.




I have been trying to get a picture of Emma standing alone since the weekend before Easter. She always sits down whenever I grab the camera and starts crawling towards me. So here is the picture of her sitting down from her stand. Page walked at 8.5 months so we weren't surprised when she started standing alone. The cute thing is that she does a squat first and then stands up.

The girls at play

Page pulled down the gate to the play room and made it into a pretend bedfor her and her dolls. Emma wanted in on the action and the pictures are the result of the play time. Emma is trying to get Page's pacifier with all her might!

Page's Bad Day

We call Page a monkey around here because she climbs everything and hangs from everything like a monkey. Well she was climbing at church onto a rocking horse to get into a crib to get a pacifier that was not hers and she fell. The result was a very busted up tongue. She had blood on her dress and face and cried for a while. Unfortunately, the beeper we were given was not on and we did not know until some time later. I felt pretty bad for her, but by the time I got to her she was fine and just wanted to show off her bad bobo. She had things like yogurt and apple sauce for the day. She is fine now, but she enjoys showing everyone who will look at it.

Training Pants

We bought Page training pants AGAIN to try the potty training thing again. We bought princess training pants this time. Wow, what a hit! She came home and was so excited to open them up and put them away "by myself mommy" that I had to take a picture of her work. The second pic is of course what the diaper cart looked like after I arranged them. She was so excited about the princess on the training pants that she went to the potty 2 times tonight by herself! She didn't even tell me she had to go! We are so excited here in Dallas tonight. What a day it will be when I don't have to buy diapers for 2 anymore. I can't stand the prospect of buying diapers for 3! By the way, the diaper cart is what we had to do because of so many diapers and wipes with both girls. It may look silly, but it works great.

Page at gymnastics

Tumbling

Page following Coach Tori

Jumping on trampoline

crawling out of foam pit only to jump in again and again

Swinging on the rope over the foam pit

walking sideways on balance beam

SURPRISE

Boy were we in for a surprise on March 31! We are expecting again! You can only imagine how shocked we were to find out that we have another addition to our quickly growing family. I had an ultrasound today that is showing I am quite a bit earlier than we had originally calculated. I will have a better idea in 2 weeks when I am scheduled for another one. The doctor seems to think mid December. We are really hoping for earlier than later so that we can be somewhat back to normal for Page's birthday and Christmas. I am feeling terribly sick, morning noon and night. This "morning sickness" is even waking me up at night. We are in shock but we are also grateful for this new gift of life. I would be happy to share more of the details one on one is anyone is curious. Just email me or give me a call.

Easter Day

Today started out quite early - 6:00a.m. We got up and were going to have breakfast before doing the Easter baskets, but Page saw them and said "look mom, presents for me!" So we did the baskets and you can see that Emma is in her diaper because it was too hard to get her to stay still after thte diaper change once she saw what was going on. Page was so excited about the candy. Emma loved the quacking duck her Nanin sent. Then we got dressed and went to church. Maw Maw and Paw Paw sent over some beautiful matching dresses for the girls. Page did not want to take a picture unless her dad was holding her, so you can't see them too well but I think you get the idea. They looked adorable dressed alike in their pretty dresses! Thank you Maw Maw and Paw Paw for the beautiful dresses. The nursery was full at church so we had both girls with us during hte service. They were quite a handful to say the least. After church we had lunch and then a great nap! We even slept through the Easter egg hunt our subdivision was putting on. After nap time we went to a park to feed some ducks and then headed home for some fun in the pool. Emma still did not want to go in, but I got in with Page and it felt great. The first picture is of Emma so exhausted that she just slumped over and went ot sleep like that. We did miss our families, but hopefully we will see them soon.

A busy day part 3

Lenise and I have been friends for 25 years now! We were Page's age when we met and have stayed friends since then. She was in Grand Prairie with her fiance and son this weekend and stopped in for a visit this evening. Marcus is 14 months old and so full of personality it makes you smile to just be around him. I am so grateful that we got to spend some time with them, it was truly a great visit. The kids played and screeched together for hours. Page now "loves" him and wanted to go bye bye with him. Lenise and her fiance are both lawyers in Lafayette now and getting married in August. here are some pics including one of Page taking a picture of Lenise.

A busy day part 2

Today was also a great Easter Egg hunt. It was given by a Lutheran church about 20 minutes from the house. It was well worth the drive. All of the children were gathered into a large room and shown a short cartoon about the meaning of Easter. Then they were divided up into age groups and sent to the hunt accordingly. There were actual eggs at this one and it was even ahrder to get Page to pick them up because she was trying so hard to get the first one she picked up open to eat the candy! Emma was a great sport again and sat in the stroller while Page picked up the eggs. After the hunt there was what seemed like a small fair in the parking lot. The church had space walks for all ages, icee's, face painting, raffles, balloons, pictures and other things that we did not even get around to. Page had so much fun and Emma almost had a little fun herself while Page was jumping in the space walk Emma found her way to the basket of candy. She had her hand on some candy when I saw her. Luckily I got it away before it made it to her mouth, but I just had to get a picture and take my chances on getting there quickly enough!

A busy day part 1

Well today is Emma's 8 month birthday! For those of you who don't know we celebrate each month for the first year with cake and presents. It may be a little overboard, but the girls love it and so do we. Emma's 8th month has been characterized by some sort of oral fixation. I have included snap shots of her around the house with toys in her mouth. She finds something she likes and keeps it in there while she plays with other things or just crawls around the house. It is really pretty funny to look at. Her favorite is the turtle. Hopefully she will grow out of this soon.

first swim

I know it must look funny to have the girls in coats one day and in bathing suits the next. Welcome to Dallas weather. It was in the 50's the weekendof the egg hunt and this entire week it has been in the upper 80's to lower 90's. Page had a blast in her pool while Emma looked at us like we had just thrown her in a pool of fire. She hated the pool and raised her arms up to be taken out just moments after she was put in and cried until we took her out. We sat her on the porch and she was all smiles until she made her way to the garden and started sampling the dirt! Thank you Nonna and Poppy for the new bathing suits.

Easter egg hunts begin!

Page and Emma enjoyed their first "egg" hunt of the season. I use the term loosely because there weren't actually any eggs. It was a bunch of candy thrown all over the ground and a mad dash to get it. Page did not even want to collect the candy once she saw it. All she wanted to do was sit down and eat what was around her. It took some coaxing, but she finally agreed to gather some candy and eat it after we were done. Emma was a great sport and was in a very agreeable mood for the morning. There were also pony rides, which we did not stand in line for, a petting zoo and face painting. As you can see by the pics Page was not too eager to get involved in much of anything except the candy. On a side note, Page keeps saying that Emma is her little sister day after day. So I said and that makes you a big sister. She said "no mama, that makes me happy." How sweet is that!

dinner time

We started buying biter biscuits for Emma to munch on in the high chair while we finish our dinner. She really loves them. Bath time immediately follows meals now!
Page finished her dinner and asked for a treat so Will decided that since there was only a little bit of ice cream left in the container he would let her eat out of it instead of a bowl. She thought this was absolutely the best thing ever! It sure is fun to experience such joy so often with small kids around.

settling into our new home

Here we go with our first blog! We are settling into our new house and very excited to be out of our apartment. Sorry for not keeping in touch lately. Things have been exceptionally crazy since Emma's birth 7.5 months ago. Anyway, here are some pics of Page in her favorite pink boots after adding a few flowers to the garden last weekend. And of course a picture of Emma for everyone to see how big she has gotten. She is trying to walk these days and I can't even tell you how many times she gets pushed over by her "loving" sister when she attempts to get going!