For Mickell

My old roommate Mickell texted me and asked a few questions about the girls. I didn't have a better idea for today's post, so here you go Mickell!

How far apart are the girls?
- Alice and Elsie are about two months shy of being two years apart. Elsie turns two tomorrow and Alice is just over two months. It makes it easy right now that I can just say "They are 2 and 2", but that won't last long...

Does Elsie get jealous of Alice?

- All the time. It was worse at the beginning when we first brought Alice home. We went through a little phase where whenever Alice would cry or whine, so would Elsie. A few times Elsie stole Alice's binkey and put it in her own mouth. We've tried to include her from the "helper" stand point, and that works to a certain degree. She likes to get Alice's binkey for her when she cries and she tells us when "Alice spit up again" and goes to get a burp rag. Elsie still gets mad when I can't do things or when I won't let her climb into my lap when I'm feeding Alice, but it's getting somewhat better.

Does Elsie like having Alice around?

- Most of the time. She always gets concerned when she can't see her or if we put Alice down for a nap when she's not watching. Elsie will ask for Alice to sit down next to her on the couch, or try to bring Alice toys to play with. We have a lot of talks about how Alice is little and we have to wait until she is bigger for her to be able to do certain things.

Here is another little video. Sometimes it sounds like Alice isn't sure if she is going to whine or laugh, but there are a few little giggles in there.

A little too much love

Mish Mash

Alice is still pretty grumpy from her shots. This was how I spent most of my day. Not that I got to sleep all day. That would have been nice...

We figured out how to keep Elsie in her big girl bed and she has had two days in a row of successful naps. All it took was letting her take a book or two to bed with her. Before bedtime or nap time we let her pick out a few books and she lays down and "reads" them to herself until she falls asleep.

We spent the weekend with Alan's family watching General Conference. We realized late Saturday night that we somehow ended up bringing a whole bunch of Alice diapers, but only had two Elsie diapers left. Since we didn't want to go shopping and buy new diapers on Sunday, I tried to come up with a solution. I placed an Alice diaper on Elsie, then put the last clean Elsie diaper on top of it to hold it in place. I was surprised at how well it worked. We had to change Elsie's diaper a lot more often to swap out the Alice diaper, but we had no leaks all day long.

We finished Alan's creativity project today. We completely scrapped the old idea and came up with something new. It's pretty neat, but it deserves a post of its own.

I started packing today. I got one box of books packed. That's all I could accomplish before Alice needed me and Elsie got bored with packing. Good thing Alan is almost done with classes so we can start packing full time. One week of classes, two reading days, three finals, and he is done!

Super Gross

Alice and Elsie had doctor appointments today and Alice got her first round of shots. It made her a little sleepy, a little cranky, and very fussy at bedtime. I had just gotten her in her jammies and was walking around trying to calm her down when she got so upset that she threw up all down my front. I handed her off to Alan and headed to the bathroom to get cleaned up. As I was stripping down (it had pooled up in my bra...) Elsie looked at me and said:

"Love you Mommy, even though you're super gross".

New Hair Style

A little tired and a little grumpy, but still cute.

Elsie's first prayer (without any help)

"Heavenly Father
Thankful for this day
Say these things
Jesus Christ
Amen"

Big Girl Bed

Elsie has moved out of her pack 'n play and into a toddler bed. At least, she slept in it last night and is sleeping in it right now. We moved things around in her room and had a big talk about what it means to sleep in a big girl bed and what the rules are. The rules are really quite simple. Stay in bed and don't bug Alice. So far she's been really good at bed time... but nap time today was horrific. She wanted to sleep in the big girl bed, but if we put her in it within 2 minutes she was coming out of her room. We gave her a few chances then tried putting her back in the pack 'n play, which resulted in a 2 hour scream/whine fest with no nap...

Any ideas? She does ok without a nap and could possibly give them up, but I don't know if I'm ready for her to not take one. I really enjoy my little hour and a half siesta in the middle of the day. It tends to keep me at least a little sane...