Yes, it's been about a month since the last post, but I do have to say that the weather here has been kinda throwing me off. One day it's nice, sunny, and hot; the next day it's windy, cold, and...snowing? OH man, did we have some crazy late spring snow storms come through. I never thought I would say it, but I was sick of snow. I'm sure my Alaskan family can say, "You ain't see nothing," but there's something about 78 degrees one day, and 35 degrees with snow the next.
Besides the insane weather patterns, April has been a pretty decent month. I have really enjoyed watching the trees bloom (finally). There are some beautiful trees around here. I was brave and took the girls to the zoo via the metro. I had a friend join us, thank goodness, but I am happy that I finally took both of them on the metro by myself. We bought a double stroller (life-saver), and I also took them to see the cherry blossoms in DC, also via metro. That was kinda crazy since there was an elevator broken at the Smithsonian station and I had to lift the stroller over my head as we went up the escalator. Talk about upper body strength. We were there most of the day, along with thousands of other people. Lily only ran away from me twice, which wasn't so bad...uh hum. One time was almost in the river just so she could see some ducks. I honestly thought I was going to beat her from me being so angry, but luckily my dear friend was there to save the day and I watched her kid while she was on Lily duty for a bit. I'm still having issues with that girl obeying me when we are out in public. It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but it's mostly when she's extremely tired or hungry. We'll work through this...deep breaths.
Speaking of which. We have started to teach Lily about expressing her feelings (strong feelings) with words rather than crying or screaming. We've been trying to do this for a while but she is now catching on to the idea. Now, when she gets a strong emotion she tells us and usually makes a grunting noise. "URRRRGGGGHHHH!!!" "Mommy, I'm mad at you." "Ok, Lily, why are you mad at me." "You are talking to me, and I'm mad." Daniel says I do the "URRRGGGHHH!" thing too when I get mad. ;)
It's working, and she is very communicative with it. Daniel is so patient with her. He will ask her what caused her to be mad and keep asking until she says, "Nothing else, Daddy." "Are you ok now?" "Yeah, I'm ok." Then we hug and sing "Kum ba yah." haha
Ok, this is too funny. For Easter, my mom sent Lily and Lena a huge box of treats. Lily still hasn't seen everything in that box; I'm saving it for next year. Any way, she sent her a bazillion boxes of Peeps, and one in paticular was a peep-on-a-stick. Lily was overjoyed and wanted to eat them (there were 5) then and there. I told her she could have one a day. I thought that was reasonable, but she kept asking. I said, "After you go to bed tonight and wake up, you can have another one." After more times of asking, Daniel said, "Lily, remember what Mommy said?" "After you go to bed and then wake up, you can have another."
Light bulb! "Ok, Daddy!" "Mommy, I want to go to bed, I'm tired." (It was 1:00pm--a typical nap time when she actually takes a nap.) She went right to bed...and went right to sleep. The first thing she said when she woke up, "I'm awake, now! It's Peep time!" Good one, Lily, good one. We gave her the Peep.
On to some Lena goodness:
Lena is growing up way too fast. She is sitting up by herself. She does fine, but sometimes she intentionally will fall backwards. Kinda funny/strange, since a couple of times she has done it, she has hit her head on our not so soft hardwood. I thought she would learn after once, but then it happened twice. Now, she is guarded with about 10 pillows or stuffed animals. She is a little social butterfly like her sister. She loves people and she will people watch when we go anywhere. I remember Lily being just like this, and nursing had to happen in complete silence and darkness. Well, even with that, Lena will latch off midstream and look around the dark room cause she sees her daddy stirring. That girl. Oh, she will always, I mean always get distracted when Daniel is in the room. It doesn't matter if he is walking sitting or what, she will stop nursing and just watch him.
She is also eating solids now. She loves sweet potato, and doesn't like banana, avocado, oatmeal, and pear. So basically, I'm feeding her sweet potato. She was really into eating the first couple of weeks, but then she threw up one day, and after that she wont eat a lot. She still nurses fine, but doesn't really want to eat as much. She is good on weight, so I'm not concerned. Lily didn't really get interested in food until she was about 9 months old.
Lena doesn't have any teeth yet, but she grabs everything and gums on everything. She really doesn't care what it is, she just wants it in her mouth. She also loves to play peek-a-boo.
I was just thinking about how much time we get to spend with Daniel. It really is a blessing in our life right now to spend time with him even though he is in Med School. Lillian loves to be with him and they both love to be out in the garden. She will be out there with him looking at flowers and talking about how the strawberry and blueberry bushes will grow. She will be digging in the dirt right along with her dad. I love watching them play.
I'm not really into the doing-some-activity-a day-along-with-a-letter yet. I tried for a while, but it got hard....ok, I got lazy is more like it. I decided I wanted to start with small steps. I like listening to NPR's Science Friday program, so I got my inspiration there. Now we have Science Fridays! It's really helpful since the latter part of the week is when my patience is starting to run thin. It's pretty cool, actually and I even look forward to Science Fridays. So far, we have made volcanoes, blew bubbles, talked about shape/color/size of objects, and used telescopes (toilet paper rolls) to study biology (the back yard). I kinda patterned it after FHE (family home evening): we have a lesson where I'll show her a video of the topic at hand; an activity where we actually go and do something; and a treat...ok, that's not really food, but we usually draw what we've done, or make it with playdough.
Life is pretty good, and I'm happy with how things are going lately. I feel like I got the two-kid thing down finally. Daniel is doing well in Med School and we even got to go on a little vacation to Virginia BEACH!! I haven't been to a warm beach in so long! It was so fun. The first time for the girls and Lily loved every moment of it. She especially loved playing in the sand and the surf. Oh, my water baby. She is my little Marine Biologist. :) Lena didn't like being out in the sun, but she is getting used to it. :)
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