A Very Special Guest

My parents came to visit and as I mentioned in an earlier post, they brought a very special guest with them, my Nanny.

 

Nanny, meeting our fur babies. Dixie, loved her, and I mean LOVED her.

 

During the visit, we blessed our sweet babe. We were able to do it in a beautiful intimate setting; right in our own home, surrounded by family and our dearest friends.

My aunt once again made a dress for our littlest gal. It was beautiful.

The desserts.

Son and Mother. 

(Only she understands his anxiety he feels prior to an event such as this).

 A proud papa. He did great.

The next morning we took my grandmother to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Broadcast. 

 We celebrated my dad's birthday while he was here.

Getting ready to say good-bye.

And the moment before my tearful good-bye. Good-byes are the worst. 

 

But it was a wonderful visit. 

We took Nanny to see all the places we once lived. 

I showed her my university. 

We toured the mountains. 

I was able to share with her the life I lived and live here. 

Thank you for coming Nanny, we love you!

xoxo

(Just as I type B is over my shoulder saying "Nanny. Nanny and Pop Pop").

Poached Please

I love eggs. 

However, I am very specific about my eggs. 

For example:

my yokes can't be cooked

i can't eat them without toast

i need two pieces of toast for every 1 egg

i am not a fan of scrambled

or omelet form

 

eggs Benedict is my favorite breakfast dish

I used to order my eggs sunny side up. Until I realized what I loved so much about the eggs benedict was the poached egg. 

I now order them poached.

And I just learned how to poach them myself from here:

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2008/08/how-to-poach-an-egg-smitten-kitchen-style/

And I am thinking, why didn't I learn this sooner???

Unbirthday

   

I am not one to celebrate half birthdays, especially since Pinterest has me now believing I need to make an all out celebration for every incy wincy holiday (St. Patrick's - really? I even have a fair amount of Irish blood- I am all for an authentic Irish meal and wearing green but that's my extent). 

But I digress.

I wasn't planning on celebrating a half birthday, but for this little gal, it actually seemed appropriate.

 These last 6 months she has grown and developed so much.  She has reached so many milestones in such a short period. She welcomed a new sister, she became potty trained (I say that loosely, because I still have to remind her to go), she changed beds, and she has taken these changes in stride.

Her vocabulary has expanded. She is recognizing letters. She is starting sentences. She fining tuning already developed skills. She is getting better at saying her 'please and thank yous" without being prompted. She has become such a great little helper with sister. If you need a diaper, or need to discard of a dirty diaper or trash she is your gal. She loves to feed the dogs and clean up spills. 

I needed to change laundry around so I ran upstairs leaving the littlest crying. I asked B to go sit by her so she didn't feel alone, this is what I returned to:

 Lil' C didn't have any thing on her or with her when I left, this was B's attempt to soothe her, and apparently it worked or she got lucky ;-) 

Our Sweet B is turning into a sweet and spunky girl

She loves candy and her Dixie

She never turns down grapes and cheese

She doesn't walk she dances, twirls and jumps

She gets thrilled when she sees other kids

She is sweet but a bit of an instigator 

She asks to color pretty much all day long

Her favorite thing is sitting on "mama's bed"

Her most common question is, "Where did _____ go?" (Usually it is Daddy, but it can be Sydney, Dixie, Uncle Chris, or her cousin Dakota)

She asks to wear "princess dresses" all.the.time 

She would watch Bo on the Go all day if I would let her

She idolizes Minnie Mouse 

I love the way she pronounces "hold" she says it likes this "hold-day" and usually it is in this phrase, "Mommy hold-day me." 

i love my girls. 

i love being a mom. 

i love the guts out of their dad.

 my life isn't perfect 

(awesome thing about a blog is I can pick and choose what I share)

 but if i had the choice to choose another i don't think i would. 

...

Sneak Peek

My grandmother (a.k.a My Nanny) came to Utah! My parents came too. here is a sneak peek. While they were here we blessed our sweet little babe, in our home - loved it.

More to come...

My Little Eater

Little C has been a great nurser.  I felt so proud of myself. 

And then, we went for a check up.

Not only had she not gained weight, she lost weight. 👎 Boo! so the doctor said, "Let's start cereal for her and some fenugreek for you to get your milk supply back up." So that afternoon I went to the store and bought some rice cereal. The verdict: We can't get it into her mouth fast enough. Literally. She cries in between spoon fulls.

Remember When?

Brad said to me, "Remember when you use to blog?" So something blog worthy, in my opinion. 

Home improvement. We painted the porch and the steps. I didn't realize just how bad it was until it was repainted.

You Will Miss This

i keep being told, "you will miss this." 

so I took a picture of it.
there she is leaving little finger and hand prints
on my fridge.
i will take a picture of it then clean off her hand/finger prints.

the filter i used makes them look vintage-y
it already makes me miss them.
but they will be back tomorrow
and i will happily clean them off again.
because it means she is active and alive and beautifully curious.

Dreams

I saw World War Z. Brad asked nicely. It is not my kind of movie. It isn't really a horror movie per se, but it does have zombies, and I have a tintsy irrational fear of zombies. 

So what did I dream about that evening? Harry Potter meets zombies. 

My fear of zombies was stronger than my fear of Voldermort (Maybe because I was not his target, unlike the undead). Since in my dream I was walking right next to the Dark Lord himself, as he blasted zombies, not a bad guy to have on your side during a zombie apocalypse. 

My unprofessional survival guide to potty training

She is wearing new attire these days...

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I thought potty training was going to be breeze. Why? Because I potty trained a ton of other kids working in a day care. But apparently, it’s a little easier when you aren’t in your house, you are not the one doing the laundry and there is someone who can come in and clean up the mess for you, and you are only doing for 8 hours of the day.

 Lesson learned life.

I read the books “potty train in a day”. I pinned all the pins, “How I potty trained my 18 month old in a day”. I thought, “I can do this, easy.” WRONG. But we did it, and we survived, of course I had to be given a nice big slice of humble pie before it happened.  My pin description wouldn’t be so awesome as the 18 month old, mine would say “how I potty trained my 28 month old in 6 weeks and kept my sanity”

My tools for the successful potty training:

~Potty Books

~Candy lots of it

~A potty chart

~A timer

~ Big kid underwear

~A beverage and treat of your choice (this is for you to keep your sanity)

~Low expectations or none at all

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 (This one is a long one)

I noticed when I was trying to do the one day potty training method I was turning into the mother I never wanted to be. I would yell get frustrated and it would end in tears (the Miss’ and mine). I finally admitted this wasn’t going to work. The method doesn’t fit me. So we took a break.

I received the second best advice from my grandmother. As I was on the phone with her telling her my problems with potty training she said, “Julie she doesn’t care about wetting her pants she has done it for 2 years. Get about 10 pairs of underwear and as soon as she goes in them take them off right away and put dry ones on eventually she will start liking how it feels to be dry.” Seems easy enough?

Want to know the best advice I received? Again from my grandmother. As we finished the conversation my Nanny said to me, “Don’t forget they didn’t build Rome in a day.” To which I said, “Well according to Pinterest they did and when they are 18 months!” There was a second of silence and my Nanny said, “Well, that’s just bull$@*!” Best advice ever.

Once I accepted it wouldn’t happen in a day, I have to say it went much better and smoother than I ever thought possible.

If you would like to know you can keep reading.

First, I bought some potty books off of amazon. Once they arrived I stopped changing the Miss on the changing table. I moved her diapers etc into the bathroom. Every change took place in the bathroom, and she would sit on her little potty. I didn’t care if she went, in fact she never ever went in the potty. I did this for a month. We would read the potty books in the bathroom while she sat on the potty.

After a month we went to the store and I let her pick out her big kid “unnies”. Then one week we had nothing scheduled we began. That Monday morning I put her in her big kid unnies. Also I bought one of those toddler toilet inserts as well so in case we were upstairs she could use that instead of dragging her little potty. Well, guess what? She loved it so much that on the Saturday before we began I showed her it she got excited and sat on it and actually went! She never sat on her little potty again.

That morning we had about 6 accidents. The beverages and treat of your choice are for those moments. She would go in her pants I would take a swig of my diet coke and down a Reece’s peanut butter cup and say, “Okay let’s change”. All with amazing enthusiasm. 

The first three says were the hardest. And really it was exhausting. I would set my timer for every 30 minutes and make her sit on her potty. She hated getting on it every time because it was excessive but I used bribery. (As I was talking to another mother about this she looked at me and said, “I don’t use treats or any bribery for potty training. We just sing a song.” [insert eye roll]. If I spoke my mind I would have said, “Good for you, wanna cookie? Oh, you aren’t into that sorta thing.” But I don’t, I just give the i-am-tolerating-you-smile and pretend nothing happened). Also we only stayed in the kitchen because it has tile floors – easier clean up. We watched a lot of movies, coloring, puzzles, dancing etc.

After three days she was getting a hang of the potty. I could go longer about 45 – hour between the sittings on the potty. By Friday, she was coming to us and telling us she needed to go – the beverage of choice and treats are for those moments too when you can pat your self on your back. Take a swig and say “Yeah, I am awesome”. Don’t worry your own offspring will bring you back down to reality when they have an accident 20 minutes later.  We also did a sticker chart. The Miss loves stickers so she loved getting to put a sticker on her chart after she used the potty.

By the next week we were able go out. She was staying dry through out the night and naps (However, for my own sake I would put her in a diaper – you know just in case).

So that’s that. My unprofessional survival guide to potty training.

 Oh, and what does she get for being potty trained? Her very own bike. She has wanted one for soooo long.