Happy Birthday Grammy

Mom celebrated her 60th birthday this week!  We  helped make her feel real loved by forcing her to wear the most appropriate outfit for a night out on the town.  She was a good sport and a good time was had by all! Happy Birthday mom, I am proud to call you my mom.

Honestly it was so nice to be home with the family to join in on the celebration.

Lily of course loved it because she got to have grampy feed her cake.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

So Lily has been working so hard singing. Just today Colin

said she has just been playing by herself and singing to herself.

It is one of the sweeter things. She has not quite mastered The

Itsy Bitsy Spider but she is working on it.

Little Miss Independent

Colin worked this weekend so Lily and I had a lot of time together. I planned a fun weekend, starting with going to the library Saturday morning to visit daddy, the fish, the toys at the library and of course to get more books. Lily LOVED it, spotting daddy when we got there and running over to him yelling "daddy!" We played, we read, we saw the fish, we even played on the computer. When it was time to go this little darling of mine threw the biggest temper tantrum I have seen. YELLING " NO" and throwing herself to the ground, kicking her boots off every time I put them on and slamming her head into the ground. All in the center of the library, right in front of all of Colin's employees. I knew that if I could get her outside she would be ok with my decision to leave so I grabbed her, the bag, the books, the boots, our hats, gloves, the jackets and my ever, loving, precious daughter- screaming, back arching and kicking. We went into the entry way where now everyone entering the library could view this little spectacle that I know is soon to become my future. So in the entry I try and reason with her, of course she is still screaming so I pack everything up while she continues her temper tantrum and now instead of banging her head on the floor of the library she is banging her head on the metal grates you walk across when entering. So now she is crying, not only because she does not want to leave but because her head hurts. So for the last time I place her boots on, she kicks them off (it is 0 degrees out otherwise I would not have cared about all of the extra paraphernalia). I finally get her coat on just as a nice bum walks through the door and sees my poor little girl screaming her brains out. He so generously offers to help me, talking about how pretty her pants are, how nice it is outside, there is no reason to be crying (yah thanks buddy, super helpful, now you are just talking loudly over my screaming daughter and the smell of alcohol pouring from your skin is not helping). So I manage to get her coat on and pick up all of the stuff and pick Lily up before she takes her coat off. We walk outside in the 0 degree weather, no hat, no gloves, no shoes and she stops crying. I then carry her 1/2 mile the entire time trying to tell her why we need to put her shoes, hats and gloves on and all she says is "dada ahk." So that was the start of our nice mother daughter weekend together.

The other rarely large temper tantrum we had was while I was trying to cook dinner. I put both of our aprons on to make dinner (thanks Marie and Poppie for the great apron for Lily, she was so excited to put one on after I put mine on.) She pulled her chair up to the counter to help me and I offered to get her a bigger chair. We were having a nice time chopping veggies until I turned for 1 second and she picked up the plate sitting next to her and threw it as hard as she could into the sink. The plate shattered everywhere, she knew she was in trouble and I immediately removed her from the chair and told her how we did not throw and she could not be on the chair if she was going to throw. She took it pretty well and then eventually asked to get back up on the chair, I like an idiot, first time mother said sure but no throwing (with much more of a firm mommy tone and a few more warnings.) So Lily gets on the chair picks up her silverware and throws it as hard as she can in the sink. So I guess the independence starts here.......

We did have a lot of very nice moments, like the one above where she decided to read to Chevy in the rocking chair for 20 minutes, seriously Chevy stayed there for most if it.

Well I loaded these pictures backwards but you get the idea. She has started to use all of her tools around her to get exactly what she wants....here she is dancing on the bed after discovering exactly how to get up there.

So proud!

"I just need to crawl across this space and I am home free."

As you can see, she first tried to use the tub of play dough toys to stand on, I seriously caught her on her tippy toes, with the play dough bin about to tumble. She then discovered her chair...this worked much better.

First real snow

We finally got a little snow here, it is not much but was enough to attempt a few winter sports Sunday afternoon. Lily has been feeling pretty yucky over the last 5 days so we only went out for a short hike with our new back pack and of course we had to try one small hill at the end of the hike. She was very unenthused by this.

There were turkey tracks everywhere and Lily kept pointing at the snow and saying "mom, ma Roxie, turkey tracks." Translation: Roxy was following the turkey tracks.

Kalie and Colin attempted to cross country ski but the path was really quite impassable in many areas so they resorted to carrying their skis.

Lily loves her new table she got for Christmas. She wants to eat every meal and even every snack here. She colors, plays with play dough, carries the chairs around the house...the table fun never ends. It has been nice because it gives Colin or I an extra second in the kitchen to either cook dinner or do dishes.

As a young girl I always played with my hair, did my babies' hair, did my friend's hair and dreamt of doing my daughter's hair when I grew up. Then I was lucky enough to have a daughter (first half of the obstacle met), now actually being able to "do" Lily's hair is another obstacle. She was given these adorable hair clips when she was 3 months old, I waited until her hair was long enough and attempted to sneak them in her hair, alas she would pull them out within seconds so I decided to let it rest. Well then this Christmas she was given a new set of beautiful hair clips so I thought I would give it a go again, well after numerous attempts the clips, hair ties, pig-tails have lasted no more than 1 minute as instantly she pulls them out and gives them to me to put in my hair- how nice. So this is the only picture I have been able to capture with her hair out of her face for more than 1 second.

She got the hand-made wooden animals and mitten for Christmas that she is playing with. The figurines go along with a story about animals who find a mitten in the woods and seek shelter. She brings me the book and figurines to play with and read multiple times a week! So much fun.

Poo poo ahhk

About 3 months ago Lily started adding ahhk to the end of her words......it started with mama ahhk, then spread to wawa ahhk and now finally poo poo ahhk. You are all probably asking the same questions we are asking..... what does ahhk mean? And quite frankly I have no idea, we thought she was saying work initially but now that ahhk has spread to many other nouns.

Many of you know we have been working on going to the bathroom on the potty for a while now. We have gone through quite a few transitions. Initially she would only poop on the potty, then she started peeing on the potty. We got to a point in this whole road to potty trained that she was actually pooping and peeing on the potty on good days 2-3 times/day (when I was home). Typically we would ask her if she has to go poo poo on the potty and she would say "yes" or " "NOOO." Then we went through the typical withdrawal, she stopped using the potty all together, we let it happen, reluctantly, and now we have returned to potty training. Now when she has to use the potty she says "poo poo ahhk" regardless of whether or not she has to poop or pee. We quickly RUN to the potty and push whomever is on the potty off as quickly as possible (this happens quite often as we only have 1 potty and some of us just like to hang out on the potty) and we sit on the potty. Now it use to be that immediately Lily would ask for a "booook, booook" and we would sit for sometimes 15 minutes and read books on the potty and sometimes she would go and sometimes she wouldn't. It started happening frequently enough that I honestly thought she was doing it just to get our one-on-one attention. However now she is very emphatically saying "poo poo ahhhk" and then we RUN to the potty, take all of the clothes off because she doesn't like to have anything on and now instead of "booook, booook" she says "wiiiipe, wiiiipe." Because she wants to take the toilet paper and wipe herself, cute - yes initially until now. Now she has only peed on the potty once in the last week but she has asked to go 5-8 times, each time immediately asking/yelling for the wipe and she will tell you over and over that she is not done yet and she will continue to ask for more wipes. Now all of you potty training experts out there, I ask you.....where are we at in this potty training road to success. Please tell me we are close?

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season filled with family, friends, laughter and love. My apologies for such a long period of time since the last post. December was filled with a lot of fun and in between all of that I found myself sick with a cold, a different virus, strep and then finally because I didn't listen to my body the first three times the terrible flu; all of which rendered me out of commission from all of our usuals. We are slowly trying to get back on track and I am making my way through all of the things that were supposed to happen over the last few weeks. I know many of our west coast friends have called and written and I am sorry I have not returned the calls but please know you were all in our thoughts and prayers this season. We felt so blessed to be close to our family but we missed you all out there.

Lily scored big this year from Santa with her first kitchen (complete with a stove, fridge, oven, microwave and sink). It was so great to watch her slowly notice it Christmas morning, pointing at it, looking at us, pointing again and then finally not walking away from it for the rest of the morning. She didn't even open all of her presents she was so content just to play with it. So officially we now have two kitchens in this house, both missing a dishwasher. (Thanks Marmie and Poppie for the great Christmas morning pi's!)

We spent Christmas afternoon with my family. It was a nice and relaxing day and even better only having to travel 20 minutes versus 2 plane rides and 2 car rides.

Lily is just starting to show interest in dolls and she spent 10s of minutes covering her new baby doll, holding her, and hugging her all Christmas Day. Thanks Aunt Megan!

By mid-day Lily had the hang of this whole "unwrapping the present" thing. She would quickly unwrap and say "oh wow a......" She was just as excited about the boxes as she was the toys (she had no idea the boxes contained toys). We would say Lily do you know what it is and she would say, "yes a box." So sweet!

Look at that adorable new outfit, thanks Katie, Geoff and Harper it was a big hit!

We got a backpack for hiking, which we are so excited about! Colin tried putting Lily in it and walking around the house with her and she wanted to get right out. Then my mom put the babies in the carrier and walked around the house, Lily wanted to get in immediately, so of course a picture op was had.

We have had very little snow and for that matter cold days (until this week) but that didn't stop Lily from wanting to wear her snow pants and hat to daycare- yes she put the hat on herself.

For New Years (and a late Christmas celebration and a party to show Dave and Carrie off to their wedding in style) we went to Gaylord. Unfortunately I don't have many pictures because I was not feeling well but I did capture Lily in her new purple leather ankle boots from Aunt Carrie and Uncle Dave- they matched perfectly with Aunt Bri's and Uncle Dermot's jean leggings; thank you all for keeping our daughter up with the stylish times. I assure you she is the best dressed 20 month old in Michigan.

The last two days in Gaylord it snowed and Colin and Poppie were able to take Lily on her first sled ride. She seemed to like it but I think she liked jumping into the snow drifts a little more.

Christmas Cookies

As many of you know Adrienne and I have made Christmas cookies together for years so I needed to carry on the tradition here in Michigan with my sisters. Typically with Adrienne we each made 3-5 different types of cookies, we start early in the day and end late! So for a month now I have been preparing my sisters for this, "do you know what you are going to make?" "do you have your supplies?" "you have to stay hydrated." "make sure you wear good shoes so you can stand all day." It is a big deal and by the end of the day you are beat. We decided to make cookies at Megan's because she had a big enough kitchen and a dishwasher- that is the key. Above is the car load of supplies I took to Megan's. There were many funny stories from the day that I will spare you from but lets just say there was lots of laughter but Adrienne and her cooking skills, cookie baking endurance and fudge was sorely missed.

Apron and Christmas spirit in place!

It was a little more challenging with a little one running around and wanting nothing at all to do with helping.

The end result.

Lily did manage to sneak in 3 chocolate chips, she had them all over her hand and face.

Finally the cookies were done and the little one was passed out.