The Girls

It is so hard to write down every month new things the girls are doing to keep record so I thought I would make a little post about some things that are new just to have for memories.

Let's start with Emme. She has just exploded with language in the past six months. It's amazing to me how she is such a little girl and not a toddler anymore. She has such a great vocabulary and comes up with the funniest things sometimes. I'm amazed how she knows things that I didn't recall discussing with her or things that we have talked about months prior and it's on her mind like we just talked about it. She is now fully potty trained except at night we have a few accidents but I feel that is doing very well for her age. I really wanted to get her potty trained well before August since that is when she starts preschool and she has been fully day trained for about 4 or 5 months now without any accidents. I decided about a month or two back to just cut out the pull ups at night because since she was day trained, I figured we should work on the night time stuff. To my amazement, the first night she didn't have an accident at all. Since they, she has had accidents but she has gone about 5 nights without having any which I consider to be very good for her age since it's not really a conscious thing, it's more to do with their body maturing enough to hold it. She also can hold it all nap time and she has one had one incident with that ever. We have also got rid of the Binkie as we call it, or Pacifier. She was only allowed to have it at nap or bed time but my goal originally was to have it gone by 18 months and that went out the door a long time ago. It was just more of a comfort thing to her and I just decided one day to take them all away and when it came to nap and bed time to just endure the withdrawl from it. It went way better than I expected it to. The first day she cried for about 10 minutes at nap and bedtime and by the third day, she was saying she is a big girl and doesn't need it anymore. I'm so relieved it wasn't a huge battle because she really loved that thing so much. I never thought I would have my 2 1/2 yr old still having a binkie so I'm happy to see it go.

Emme starts preschool in August and I'm so hoping she will have an easy adjustment to it. She only will go 2 days a week for half days but it seems like so long to me since she is with me all the time. I really think she will thrive because she loves being around other kids and she is so ready to learn and have that social experience. I think it will be very good for her. Whenever she sees a school bus, she says "Look Mommy, school bus, Emme is going to make new friends!" So I have been preparing her for school and saying she will meet new friends and she has to go by herself, Mommy and Daddy can't go to school with her. I find when I explain things to her ahead of time, it makes things so much easier and she doesn't get upset or as upset anyways when it's just sprung on her.

She can count to 10, sometimes skipping a few numbers and also say most of the alphabet which I'm happy about since she will be in school soon. She is really good with her sister and loves to include her in everything, sometimes she pushes her around and doesn't like to share but she never does that with other kids so I think it's just a sister rivalry thing. She has been telling us lately that Stella is her best friend which just totally melts my heart. I'm really glad they are so close together now that they are older because they have such a good time playing together. One of their favorite things to do is go in Emme's room and read books together and also play in their "fort" which is either her walk in closet or her bathroom in the tub :) She is such a bright little girl and listens for the most part, especially in public which I feel very lucky for. She always wants to help me in the kitchen make dinner or bake and is always willing to get things for Stella when she is asked. She just gets funnier and funnier as her vocabulary grows.

On to Stella...Stella is such a happy little toddler, I couldn't ask for a happier child. I feel so lucky to have her personality because as much as I love Emme, she is alot more high maintence. They have always been so opposite in personalities and Stella has been so easy going since she was born. That has definitely carried through to now because I really don't know of a happier little girl. She walks around with a permanent smile on her face and she is always laughing. It's so funny to finally see her walking and running around. She didn't officially start walking until almost 14 months, she was so laid back it really didn't interest her that, she was content with crawling around. She is so different in body build than Emme too, she weighs about 26 lbs and Emme is 27 lbs! She has really thinned out alot I have noticed however since she was little, I think the walking around has helped that. She is so smart in knowing what's going on even if she can't talk like Emme. She will pretty much do anything you ask her to and if you say to her to go put something away somewhere, she knows exactly where you mean. She also has been telling us when she goes poo at times so I think she will be pretty good at potty training too, I hope anyways!

Some of the words she is really good at saying are: sit, drink, more, Mar (for Marley), doll, baby, B for Binkie, Mama and Dada of course, and she tries to say Thank You and shoes, etc. but she's still working on those :) She is very good at communicating what she wants even if she doesn't know the word yet. She's a very good sharer with Emme and any other kid and she just loves people. She always shakes her head yes or no for things and is really good at giving hugs and kisses to people when asked. I'm always grateful for her little sunshine personality in our lives :) We are very lucky to have two wonderful girls.