Emalyn, Snow, and Potty Training

       Yes, I am finally posting about this sweet baby we have been blessed with. It has only taken me three weeks. :) I have thought everyday I would get a chance to update the blog, but life with these two little girls has kept me busy (and tired). You so quickly forget what it is like to be woken up every three hours in the night and how tired that leaves you the next day. Thank goodness for timers on coffee pots, so the coffee is brewed by the time I wake up in the morning (and thank goodness for Chris making mine for me every morning). We are doing well and are enjoying this sweet time with Emalyn. I definitely think the second time is easier. I feel more relaxed and think I may even be enjoying this baby stage more with Emalyn than with Maddie just because I feel like I know what I am doing a little more. It has been fun to see the differences in personalities between the two of them so far. Emalyn likes to be held ALL the time, she rarely gets upset (as long as she is being held that is), but when she gets mad, she get real mad. Within seconds her whole body turns bright red, and as quickly as she turns it on, she can turn it right back off and be totally content in your arms. We are just soaking up every minute of this time with her, because as we learned with Maddie it passes very quickly (although I wouldn't mind fast forwarding a little to when she is sleeping through the night). 

Here are a few pictures from the hospital. Maddie was shocked the first time Emalyn made a little noise.

Chris and I have had so much fun watching Maddie with Emalyn, and so far Emalyn seems to tolerate "loving" from her sister very well. And all Maddie wants to do is hold her and rock her, and she loves putting the pacifier in her mouth (usually gagging her in the process).  Maddie doesn't like to go anywhere without Emalyn. Her "new baby sister" is usually the first thing on her mind in the morning, and she asks almost every night before she gets in her bed if Emalyn can just stay "up-upstairs" with her while she sleeps.

Here are the links to the Snapfish Albums from the first two days, and I hope to get the other ones up soon.

http://www5.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3628432014/a=91347848_91347848/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

http://www5.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3676041014/a=91347848_91347848/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

So I'm not quite sure why in the craziness of a new baby and trying to love a two and a half year old who is learning what it is like not to be the center of attention all the time, why I thought it would be a good idea to start potty training. But none the less, I figured if we were going to be stuck at home, we may as well go ahead and tackle that too. It sounded like a good idea all week until it really did snow on Friday, which meant Chris was working from home. It is not unusual for him to work from home; however, now that Maddie's room is upstairs, he has to take conference calls from the dining room, which was asking for trouble. Trying to play with Maddie to keep her entertained and quiet,while holding Emalyn in the other arm with the buzzer going off every 30 minutes to remind us to check if Maddie was clean and dry and then try to sit on the potty was a little more than I could handle on less than 8 hours of sleep. I think we would have been fine if we could have gone for a walk or done something to get out of the house, but with the snow we were stuck inside, which meant by 4:00 when Chris finally got off his last phone call, I was done! Luckily potty training has been pretty easy. She has had two small accidents, both times while running to the potty. She will be in the middle of playing, and then all of a sudden will jump up and start running to the potty saying "hurry, hurry, hurry." Today, she startled Bentley when she jumped up yelling "hurry, hurry" and he started chasing her barking. Maddie is going through a stage where she is petrified when Bentley barks, and she stops what she is doing and curls up into a ball. So he started barking and she hit the floor and curled in a ball, and I just knew if she hadn't already had an accident, she would have for sure peed on herself after the barking. But amazingly she was still dry when I picked her up off the floor, and we made it to the potty. Here are a few pictures of Maddie...she much prefers to use the potty as a seat or as a stage to sing from.

So in true Maddie fashion,  she was less focused on playing in the snow and more focused on wiping the snow off of her toys outside. She definitely didn't get that from me. Nonetheless, here are a few more pictures of Maddie's adventures out in the snow with daddy:

 

Snow Day!

At one point this week, they were predicting 4-6 inches of snow here today. So of course, everyone freaked out and went to the grocery store. When I heard on the news Tuesday night that some of the grocery stores were out of bread and milk, I decided I should head to the store early Wednesday morning and try to beat the rush of people. But I knew I was in trouble when I had to head to the top of the parking garage at Kroger Wednesday morning to find a parking spot. And of course, it was a mad house; everyone else thought it would be a good idea to come early too. But we had groceries in case of snow, which was none existent this morning when we woke up. So we made plans to eat lunch with Lauren, Neel, and baby Carrie. Maddie was thrilled. Her next question was, "I get to go inside?" b/c since Neel had Carrie, I have run things over to her house but made Maddie sit in the car so we didn't expose Carrie to any germs. I looked up a few minutes later and Maddie had on her hat and rain boats, and she told me she was ready to go to baby Carrie's house, which of course only set us up for disaster when it started snowing 30 minutes later (lesson to myself don't tell her what we are doing until right before we walk out the door). And how do you explain to a two year old you cannot drive in the snow? She kept asking "but how mama?" which means but why? So I quickly went to plan B which was can you help me make Daddy's birthday cake? And she was so excited to help, which just means I need an extra dose of patience going into the whole experience. And even though it may take 2-3x as long, she is getting to the point now where she can actually help some. We put the cakes in the oven and headed out to play in the snow!

Thank you to Danette and Brooke for the snow suit!

And afterwards, we made hot chocolate. Maddie's favorite part was the marshmallows. She kept saying just 1 more, and as you can see she filled her cup and her mouth! (And yes, we still have our pjs on under the snow suit!)

We are still just waiting for baby Emalyn to arrive. But after the craziness of the holiday season, I am enjoying this time with just Maddie.She is up in her new room and having a blast playing with all her new Christmas toys and toys that had been put up while we were redoing the rooms.

Getting ready for Christmas

We are not bringing out all of the decorations for Christmas this year a.) because I don't have the energy to get it all together and finish getting the two rooms ready and b.) Chris is concerned that he will be putting all the ornaments up by himself if I go into labor.:) But we at least have a tree up and stockings hung. Here is Miss Maddie in front of the tree with her "War Auburn" ornament, her new ornament this year. She was so proud that she helped decorate the tree (it was definitely a test of mommy's patience...she wants to be very independent these days and do everything herself, but we got all the ornaments up without any getting broken).

She had a half day at school on Monday and had a Christmas tea afterwards. I had told her Santa was coming to her school, but I don't think she was fully prepared. She just stared at him at first, but once she saw him picking up the other children, the tears started streaming. She did not want him coming anywhere near her.

Bebe came to the tea too, so she will know where Maddie's classroom is after baby Emalyn is born. As you can tell by the smile, she still isn't quite sure what she thinks about all of this.

Standing in line to see Santa, holding on as tight as she can to Bebe's finger. As soon as it was her turn, she walked up and got her candy cane and turn around to get out of there. We did manage to convince her to sit in Mrs. Martin's lap beside Santa (but she kept her eyes on Santa to make sure she knew what was going on).

And our day is never complete without a little bit of dress up!

Finally....

So much for blogging every week or even every month for that matter! Things have been crazy around here as usual. We have been getting the girls' rooms ready. Miss Maddie is moving upstairs or "up upstairs" as she calls it. And is very excited about having her big girl room (we'll see how she does the first night in it). But for now she loves going up there and looking at the progress and has asked Chris on several occasions if he is playing Bob the Builder. :) She "helped" us paint Emalyn's room, and it is almost done. All we have left to do is put up the wallpaper border and of course move Miss Maddie out, which hopefully will happen this weekend.

Since we will be spending a lot of time inside the house in January and February, I have been trying to plan little fun activities for Miss Maddie (which is probably one of the many reasons why I have been so tired the last few weeks).

Here Maddie playing ring around the rosie with our sweet friends Sophie and Aida. They are a little less than a month younger than Maddie. We see them at the library for story time every Tuesday morning, and then usually get together another day for a playdate. Maddie adores them, but is yet to figured out who is who, so she refers to both of them as SophieAida (no "and" just one word).

She took a little gymnastics class at the Y and loved it. She could not wait to go to "nastics" each week and never was ready to leave!



 








But we have had a few lazy days at home thrown in there. I heard her talking to Bentley and telling him she was coming up-up on the bed with him, little did I know she had gotten a coloring book and was on the bed coloring beside him. She adores that dog! Just last night, we said something about Bentley and the next words out of her mouth were "I love him so much!" I think she talks about loving the dog more than she ever mentions loving Chris or me either one!

And I think one of the biggest highlights of Maddie's fall was going to pick up Bailey from school and going to play at the McDonalds playground. Of course, Maddie did more watching Bailey than actual climbing, but she had a big time regardless. Everytime we pass Woodmont Christian now (which is often) she asks if we are going to pick Bailey up from school.

Here it goes...

Okay, so I thought I would be able to type something in the e-mail as we invited people to view, that just goes to show how little I know about how this whole blogging thing works. I didn't think I would ever start a blog, but as Chris and I sat reading our friends blog several weeks ago, we both commented how much we enjoyed reading and seeing what was going on with friends that we don't get to talk to on a regular basis (and we even learned a thing or two about the ones we do). So here goes my attempt. Hopefully I will be more successful at updating this than I have been in recent months about sending out pictures of Miss Maddie. I figure it will be a good way for me to keep track of all the funny things Maddie says that I mean to write down but still haven't bought a journal to keep track of them. And it will be a great way of updating everyone on baby Emalyn or "Emalym" as Maddie calls her when she arrives. Well, I have spent way too much time tonight trying to get the first post published, so I am now off to bed. I hope to get pictures up of pumpkin carving in the next day or two.

Trip to Gentry's

We took Miss Maddie out to Gentry's Farm a few Saturdays ago but stopped by Uncle Brian and Aunt Sara's house (or in Maddie's world May-May, Max, and John Miller's house) to see their new puppy. He is precious!

Maddie loved him, of course! She has not stop talking about how "itty bitty" he was, which compared to Bentley's 75 pounds, at 3 1/2 lb Perry is tiny.

Then we were off to Gentry's....

She loved seeing the animals, but the turkey's gobble was a little loud for her ears. 

I think by far the highlight for her was playing in the grain. I didn't think we would ever leave the grain troughs! 

After going through the hay maze, sliding down the yellow tunnel slide, and seeing how tall we were this year, we picked our pumpkin just in time before a meltdown. She was asleep before we pulled out of Gentry's. She had a blast! We are going to have to make this an annual tradition, but I definitely learned not to ever attempt this outing alone. We were all exhausted!