Check Ups

E & D both had their check ups today. They don't give me percentiles, so I had to calculate them online. Not sure how accurate those are.

Elliot Stats:

Height 37.21"= 81%

Weight 27 lbs 10.2 oz= 30%

Head 18.5"= 21%

She also has a UTI, so she is on antibiotics for 10 days. This is the 2nd time in 1 month that she's had this. And we're pretty sure she's had a few others that have gone undiagnosed by us. Luckily they don't seem to bother her too much. We're still going to schedule a renal ultrasound to make sure her kidneys are working properly.

Davis Stats:

Height 26.85"=94%

Weight 15 lbs 15.2 oz= 60%

Head 16.34"= 20%

No problems with little man. He still has no interest in rolling over. It will all come soon enough I'm sure. He's eating 6 oz plus rice cereal every 4 hrs. I did notice a brown spot on the back of his calf today. I have never noticed it before, but Lane says it looks like a birth mark. I'm going to keep an eye on it just in case. 

 Lane thinks it's mean of me to take a picture of them getting shots, but I disagree. Don't worry, this sad face only lasted 2 seconds.

I just liked this picture. We took the kids for a walk & they both passed out. Those blankets shoved around Davis are to keep him from falling over.

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

I realize that I paint a pretty picture of Elliot on this blog. While I really do feel that way about her and am so blessed to have good nature children, she does have her moments. Lately it's been more like days turning into a week. She is really well behaved during the day with the exception of nap time. Recently she has been turning into a demon child between the hours of 1-3pm. She is no longer wanting to sleep. Lane says to just let her not nap since she isn't grumpy without one, but I have always said that "my child will take a nap until at least kindergarten age". I guess I didn't take into account that she has a mind of her own. Yes, I'm the parent & she should do what I say, but I have tried everything with no success. I was even extra nice today and read her several books with the hopes of her thinking "I have the best mom in the world". Yes I sucked up to my own child. And it didn't work. I tried playing soft church music thinking it might soothe her to sleep. And while it did cause her stay quite the whole time, it didn't prevent her from getting out of her bed. I just knew she was up to no good. So when the time came to let her out of her room, I had my camera ready because I knew it would be a disaster. Case and point...

Seriously? Can you believe she has the ability to not only take the mattress off her bed, but turn it upside down as well? I just don't know what to do with her. We already told her no walk, movies or snacks if she doesn't take a nap. We've taken everything away from her, but it doesn't seem to matter. I think I'll still play music during this time since it did keep her quiet, but it may be harder trying to prevent the mess that follows. I guess it will now be a quiet time & if she falls asleep that will be an added bonus.

Potty Training Take 2

We picked potty training back up at the beginning of February. One day she came to me & asked to go potty, so I took her & she did it. So I figured I'd keep going with it as long as she would let me & we're still going strong! For my own sanity, I still keep her in diapers. It is a pain taking them on & off all day long, but I want to use up the rest of them before moving onto the box of Pullups that I have. And then after the Pullups are gone, we will go to panties. I feel at that point she will really have it down. But I have to say, she is really doing awesome right now. For the first week, she would never tell me she needed to go, but I would take her a lot & she would go. So I started making her charts. The first few only had 5 stickers to earn. She would do that in about 1 day & only have maybe 1 or 2 accidents. Not only would she earn stickers, but candy too & when she filled her chart up, she would get a bigger prize (whatever it takes, right?). Here she is with her first completed chart. The big prize was the movie Ponyo. She LOVES that movie.

I then started making 10 sticker charts & now we are up to 15 sticker charts. The good news is that over the past week she has finally started telling me when she needs to use the bathroom. That is huge. Even in nursery the other day, her teacher told me she asked her to use the bathroom. We still need to work on #2, but she'll get there.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! We started our day off with heart shaped pancakes with strawberries.

 Then Elliot & Davis both got their cards. Elliot also got the movie Tangled. 

 A little bit later we went to a Valentine's party at one of E's friend's house. It was so cute. Her friend, R, planned out everything. 

Since I only got to see Lane a total of 3 hours today (he got home this morning at 7:30am, ate, slept until 2pm, ran an errand for 1 hr, hung out with us for 3hrs & back to work tonight) we celebrated last Friday. We went to a Murder Mystery Dinner put on by Bedford's local community acting company. I have always wanted to do this and it was so much fun! I was so mad that our table didn't win because we had the right answer, but I got over it when I won the raffle drawing & got a free ticket for next month's show! And it just happens to be on our anniversary, so I'm looking forward to that.

We invited Jim & Lexi to come with us. The middle lady was the murderer. 

Even though Lane & I wouldn't be spending the evening together, I wanted to plan a special dinner. We even got out the good plates. We had mushroom soup, filet mignons, asparagus and frozen hot chocolate. Everything was so delicious! All of the recipes I got off of Pinterest :)

That blob of stuff on the asparagus is this glorious cheese mixture!

I have to say even with Lane's work schedule, today was wonderful. And even though we said we weren't doing presents, he got me a really cute Cowboys shirt, York Peppermint Patties & a card (He always writes the best things in his cards). I just got him a card, but I kind of consider breakfast & dinner to be his gift as well :)

Love is in the air

I have been crazy busy crafting lately. I realized I had no Valentine's Day decoration, so I needed to whip something up. I just finished everything today...4 days before Valentine's Day. Ha! At least I can keep them up the rest of the month. Anyway, I didn't want to spend a lot of money, so I went the way of felt. I love felt. It's so easy to work with and it's cheap. I'm very pleased with the way everything turned out. All decoration ideas came from Pinterest of course!

 Wreath and Heart Garland

 Here's a closer look at the wreath. This was very easy to make, but also very time consuming.

I wanted Elliot to do at least 1 Valentine's craft, so she helped me with the wax paper crayon hearts.

 And these cute envelopes are for the kids to get "love" letters in every day. I put them on the backs of their chairs.

I still would like to have more decorations for this holiday. Even Lane admitted we should do more. But this will have to do for this year because I'm spent. I'll add to the collection next year.

Davis is 4 Months

I can't believe he is already 4 months!

 He had his first taste of rice cereal.

This is what he thought about it. We'll just stick with giving it to him in his bottle (he doesn't mind it) instead of in a bowl.

As far as everything else goes, he's doing great! He is the sweetest little guy ever. He still eats every 3 hours. I'm hoping now that he's getting rice cereal that it will spread out to 4 hours. His appointment isn't until the end of the month, so I don't have any measurements. But the other day, we held him up to another baby that is 1 month older & Davis was a head taller than him. I was totally surprised. People say he's a big baby, but he seems so normal to me. I guess he's a little taller than average. I think I've been holding him a little too much lately because he has started to cry every time I set him down. Not a good sign. Good thing he's still young & I can turn it around.

Mr. Giggles

You Make Me Smile

This picture puts a smile on my face. She finally put on the dress up clothes she got for Christmas. Instead of the tiara that came with it, she opted for dad's hat. Very typical of her. She always has a hat on. And I love that she kept her jammies on underneath.

 And how can this little guy not make you smile? I realize these pictures probably all look the same to you, but I couldn't decide which one I liked best. He is definitely a mama's boy already!

FW Stock Show

We went to the Stock Show this past Wednesday to check things out. I have not been to the Fort Worth one since I was little. I have to say I was a little disappointed. I'm comparing it to the Houston Rodeo and there really is no comparison. Oh well, Elliot still enjoyed it. I only got 2 pictures and both are not very good.

Nothing New

We have been doing a lot of this lately...

 Not much has been going on and I'm ok with that. It's been kind of nice just hanging around the house in our pj's. But things should start to pick up this week. We have a play date planned for the next 2 days.

Elliot has been really great with playing on her own lately. I walked back to her room to find this. She had put all of her stuffed animals down for naps and her as well. Of course she's not really asleep:)

Stars Game

My sister got extra tickets to a Stars game and invited the whole family. I have only been to 1 hockey game in my life. I have to say I can get into any sport if I'm there in person. And I will say hockey is more exciting when they have fights. There was only 1 this game.

 Papi, Elliot & her BFF Eleanor

She passed out for about 5 minutes. It was a 2 'o clock game and she usually naps at 1. So when 3 'o clock rolled around she couldn't fight it anymore. Shortly after, they scored a goal & everyone cheered waking her up. Then she had her 2nd wind.

 After the game we went to this burger place called Grease Monkey. It was in downtown Arlington. I hadn't been there since they started to revive the area & I have to say it's really cute. I loved the atmosphere of this place.

 

Davis is 3 Months

3 months is the age where things start to get fun (at least to me anyway). Babies are easier to handle at this point because they've filled out some and aren't so fragile. And they've started to respond to parents' crazy antics by smiling and laughing. Such is the case for my sweet little guy. He is such a good baby. He's already sleeping through the night and we didn't even have to make him cry it out. He just started doing it a week or 2 after he turned 2 months. That has helped mommy in the sanity department. He eats every 3 hours and is awake for about 1.5-2 hours before taking a nap. I love going to get him out of his crib. We use one of those swaddle blankets and as soon as I undo it, his little arms fling into the air for a big stretch. So cute! He's getting better at tummy time. I have to admit that I am totally slacking in the mom department on this one. I was a nazi with Elliot, but now that there's 2 of them, I'm constantly being pulled in 2 different directions, so the tummy time hasn't been my top priority. That is until this past week. I'm making up for lost time. I looked back at E at 3 months and she was a champ at lifting her head up really high. So now I'm trying to catch Davis up. I've also been sticking him in the Bumpo as well and he does great at that. With Davis I never signed up for the weekly emails you get about what your baby should be doing. I still get the ones for Elliot, so I forget what should be happening.

1st Date of the Year

Since one of our New Year's resolutions is to go on a monthly date and Lane's schedule is crazy, we have to plan them out in advance. So once I had all of his shifts written on the calendar, we really only had a couple of free dates available in January and they are at the beginning of the month. Not to mention on random days. It kind of feels weird going on a date on a Tuesday night, but it all worked out. For Christmas I gave Lane a homemade gift "12 Daytz of Christmas" that I found on some blog. For each month they tell you what to do which kind of makes it nice that we don't even have to think about it. January was pretty simple: go to dinner and a movie. We had planned to go to Fuzzy's Tacos (LOVE them!), but when we dropped the kids off at my parent's house, my mom was making dinner and it smelled really good. So we ate dinner with them LOL! We decided we would go out for dessert instead. We headed to Cheddar's and while we were waiting to be seated, we decided we would also get an appetizer because it smelled so good in there. Yes, sadly we had just eaten a full meal, but still thought we needed an appetizer in addition to dessert. Um, can you tell that dieting was NOT one of my resolutions? Good thing. Anyway, we ordered the cheese fries and they were so good. Then we got the fudge cake sundae. OH. MY. GOSH! That cake was HUGE and oh so delicious. We both felt sick from eating so much when we left. Off to the movie we went. Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol was Lane's pick. It was action packed and pretty good. Well besides that fact that it was totally unbelievable.  In pretty much every scene Tom Cruise should have been knocked unconscience if not dead. For some reason that really bothered me. Guess that's why they call it Mission Impossible. Anyway, we so enjoyed our little date and look for to many more!

Not Ready

I have been planning on potty training Elliot at the first of the year. She's just shy of 2 1/2 years old and I have felt that she's ready, seeing as she tells me she needs to go potty when she needs a new diaper. Of course she's already gone in the diaper at that point. But I figured with a little "training" she'd pick right up on it. The other day she said she had to go potty, so I took her in there and set her on the pot. She told me to close the door, so I did. Then I hear her say, "I'm finished." Not expecting anything I go in there and take a look and sure enough she went #2. What a surprise. That incident confirmed my feeling that she was so ready.

Well we didn't make it past day 1. I quickly realized that she's NOT ready. She only had 1 successful potty visit and that was right after her bath at night. I even set a timer to take her into the bathroom every 10 minutes, but she never had to go when the timer went off. Now I'm not writing her off so quickly because she had accidents all day long. That part doesn't bother me. For me the indicator that she wasn't ready was when she would be sitting in her chair and pee and not even flinch. Even after she had finished. She'd just sit there and continue watching tv like nothing ever happened. So she's not recognizing the feeling that she has to go, or that she's gone for that matter. I guess I will just wait a bit longer until that clicks for her. Sigh.

New Year's Resolutions

Last year, I didn't make any resolutions. None came to mind, so I skipped it altogether. I break them anyway...and usually within the first month. But this year, I'm excited to set some goals for myself to work towards. And with any luck, I will finish the year as a better person. Most of these are of a spiritual nature. I was actually kind of surprised by that, but apparently it's what I need. So here we go...
-Have a more positive attitude
-Monthly dates with Lane
-Monthly temple visits
-Daily personal  prayer on my knees (the knees is the hard part for me)
-Daily family prayer
-Daily personal scripture study
-Daily family scripture study
-Weekly family home evening
-Read the R.S. weekly lesson
-Read the Ensign every month (we keep this in the car, so I read while Lane drives)
-Read a conference talk once a month with Lane & discuss
-Fast once a month
-Pay fast offerings once a month