Big sister time

It’s been 3 weeks since little Miles came into our family and Lily has taken to him so well! She is like a little mom and has mostly been very helpful. She loves to help me change Miles diaper and likes to tell me everything she thinks he needs. Every time he cries, Lily will make sure I know and tells me to go pick him up, even if he is right in front of me and even if it means putting her down to do so. She wants to talk to him all the time and she’ll say “Hi Miles. How’s it going? You doin’ good?” I just love watching her interact with him. Her latest thing is grabbing his arm and making him “wave” to us, She thinks it is so funny! I just have to make sure she doesn’t tug on him too hard sometimes. She really loves being a big sister and I am so happy she doesn’t seem to be jealous or hurt that we need to give Miles so much attention.

One thing she loves is trying out all of her old baby stuff, like Miles baby chair…

And while I was looking through the baby clothes she found her first Halloween costume…

 

We’ve had a lot of fun lately getting ready for Christmas. Enjoying the festivities downtown and decorating the Christmas tree. Lily has taken the opportunity every day to rearrange the ornaments to make the tree “just right”

 

 

 

We went to our ward Christmas party and Lily insisted she bring her pumpkin to get candy, just like she did at the last church party we went to. Who was I to stop her? She wasn’t thrilled, however, with having to sit on Santa’s lap…

 

I just love the little person that Lily is becoming. She definitely has her moments, but I am so happy she is in our family and that I get the opportunity to help raise her.

No longer the only child

I have to start off by saying that just by typing the title of this post I have to hold back a few tears. For 2 and 3/4 years Lily has been my world and has been the focus of most of my attention. I am so excited to have another child and I know Lily is as well, but I can’t help feeling a little sad at the change in the family dynamics. So far Lily doesn’t seem jealous or sad about the new baby but I just hope that she still knows how much we love her. I hope she doesn’t feel left out in any way or sad at the change in our attention. We love her so dearly and hope that we can continue to give her the attention she needs and make her feel just as special as she always has.

This past week we welcomed little brother Miles Jamison into the family. It was a wonderful experience and one that was  highly anticipated by Lily. Over the past 3 months Lily has had 3 friends get their own “new babies” and she has been waiting and waiting for her own. I am grateful that she was able to watch her friends and get some kind of idea of what was coming. I feel she was definitely prepared and excited. She would come in to my room in the mornings and talk to the baby. Closer to the due date she would say “Baby, come out!” to my stomach. So when the baby finally came it was such an easy transition for her. One thing that threw her for a loop, however was the gender. We did not find out the sex of the baby before hand and the entire time Lily kept saying she wanted to have a sister. I don’t really know if she knew the difference between the two, but a sister is what she wanted. She is very much in love with her little brother but it took her a few days to start referring to him as “him” or her brother instead of saying “she” or sister. At the hospital she took to her little brother, Miles, right away. She wanted to  hold him for short periods of time and was tickled pink every time he would yawn or make a noise. She has been the biggest help now that we are at home. She loves to pay attention to her little brother and let us know if he is moving or fussing at all. It just melts my heart when Miles will be crying and she’ll tell him “It’s ok, buddy. I’m here. Stay calm.” She wants to hold him all the time and likes to help get things for him, as well as watch him get his diaper changed. She doesn’t seem to be jealous of him yet and we have been trying to give her as much attention as possible and let her sit with us whenever she can. I give her lots of hugs and have her near by as much as possible so she knows I want to give her affection too. The only thing she has been a little competitive about is the baby furniture. She is always trying to get into the bassinet or sitting in the baby rocking chair. She’ll remind me that they are for baby Lily and I have to coax her out so I can put the baby in them. Hopefully that will be the bulk of the jealousy issue, but we’ll just have to see how that goes.

Lily definitely has her opinion about things and knows exactly everything about the baby! Clark wants to call him MJ and tells Lil that, but Lil says “He’s not MJ, he’s Miles!” I called Miles Buddy Boy the other day and she told me “Not buddy boy, just buddy!” I love that she seems nice and protective of him. Today in church I let someone else hold Miles during choir practice so I could hold my binder. When Lily noticed she came over and grabbed my binder off my lap and closed it. She then told the lady holding Miles “That’s mommy’s baby!” and wouldn’t stop until she gave him back to me :). She wanted to make sure that no one else took him and that he stayed with mommy! I can’t wait to see how she grows from having a little sibling and how her love for him expands. I am grateful for the opportunity to care for my babies and experience the greatest love of all through them. They are both so precious to us!

Ramblings of a 2 1/2 year old

So Lily is so funny to listen to these days. She is so full of imagination and between her imitations of us and making up her own worlds we are always amused. She has tons of fun making up words and changing the words to songs or things that we normally say. For example there is a song she sings at story time at the library to get the kids to sit down on the floor before they begin  but at home she changes the word “floor” to “duck”.  So she’ll say “Everybody come and have a seat on the duck” and she’ll watch to see our reaction and just laugh and laugh. Other times, when we’re watching football, we’ll tell her to say “Go baby!” and she’ll say “No. Go davey!”. She gets such a kick out of being silly with her words and usually we do too.

She has picked up a quote from the movie Monsters Inc. that she uses ALL the time! At least once a day she’ll tell me, Clark, or whoever comes over to “Get it together, man!”. It never fails to make me laugh and I am amazed that it usually fits the situation. She is such a little smarty.

She recently discovered my garlic press and has decided that it is a phone. She’ll flip it open and talk on it like a phone and say things like “Hi. how are you.”, “That sounds like fun!”, “Oh really”, “Um, ok, lets do that”, or other things like that. When we ask who she’s talking to she’ll casually say she’s talking to the bunnies. Whoever they are :). I love watching her little face while she is on her “phone”.

 

 

She has also discovered that our colander makes an excellent hat!

 

One of my favorite Lily quotes recently happened early in the morning while she was saying her usual “good morning” to the baby in mommy’s tummy. She had her head on my stomach and she heard my stomach growl. She turned to me and said “Mommy- the baby’s tooting!!” I just about died with laughter but didn’t even bother with trying to explain what was really going on. Lily has now had 3 friends within the last 2 months get new babies in their families and I think she is very aware of what is going to happen next month. She is so in love with these other little babies and seems very excited to get “her own” very soon. I have been so lucky as to not be very big during this pregnancy and I didn’t even really show much until my third trimester, but with 1 month to go Lily can finally see my large stomach and imagine a baby in there. Lil hasn’t been patient enough to actually feel the baby move but I’ll fake it for her and she’ll get so excited to feel my stomach move. I know she’ll be a great big sister and just fall in love with our new little one, whether it is a brother or a sister.

I have been struggling with slight feelings of guilt at the thought of taking away Lily’s “only child” status. I don’t want her to be an only child nor do I think it’s wrong for us to have more children, but I get sad at the thought that it might make her sad for a little bit. She currently has all of our attention and I don’t want her to feel inferior in any way to the new baby. I know she’ll be so excited she probably won’t even notice, but I still worry. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. I love my little angel and hope she knows that!

Oh how we love to twirl

I can’t believe that we’ve already made it to dance class! This past week Lily had her first “Tiny Tots” ballet class and absolutely loved it. Since it is for 2 and 3 year olds, not much was actually accomplished but the experience of being in a new class in her little leotard and tutu was apparently thrilling to her. And I guess 30 minutes was way too short because Lily was crying and crying when I told her we had to go home. She kept trying to get back into the room with the older girls so we went to a room down the hall and I let her twirl around for about 10 minutes and that seemed to satisfy her. She has talked about dance class every day since and I am looking forward to seeing what being in a class does for Lily.


Lily is also just growing up so fast! She is learning and exploring and I just love watching this process. She is thinking more and I love listening to what she has to say. The other day I was complimenting her on making baskets in her basketball hoop out back and she would say “Thank you Trish!” and I couldn’t help but laugh. Last week I told her to “Hold your horses” (not even thinking that she wouldn’t have a clue what I was talking about) and she looked at me like I was being so silly and said “No, I’m not getting any horses.” While watching something on T.V. she saw someone freaking out and she said "Get it together, man!" (quoting a line from one of her favorite movies, Monsters, Inc.).
We spend lots of time reading books these days. Lily is always begging me to read her a book and I try my hardest to read whenever I can. Her favorite books are "Guess How Much I Love You", "You Are Special" by Max Lucado, "Oh The Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss, and the "Tangled" book. I am amazed that her attention span has expanded so much that she can spend 5+ minutes paying attention to a book and I am also surprised that we have yet to have a page casualty. She is so gentle with her books and is very good at turning the pages for me. I am trying to teach her the concept of "the last time" but she really has no clue what I'm talking about. We'll read the books and she'll want me to read them over and over and I'll tell her that it's the last time I'm going to read it. I'll then finish the story and she'll ask to read it again and she'll tell me "Last time, ok?", well, pretty much any time I tell her I can't read right now she'll tell me that. I'm happy with her fascination with books and I hope that she gains a great love of books as she gets older. I have always loved to get lost in a good book and it would make me very happy if she does too!
She is very excited about the thought of having a baby brother or sister. Two of her little friends have little sisters now and she is finally understanding what is going to happen in our family in a few months. She talks to the baby every morning and finally likes to feel the baby move. She’ll lift up my shirt and tell me how much she wants to see the baby. She is so sweet with her new little friends and is always talking about the babies is such a sweet little tone I just can’t stand it! She scrunches up her face and almost looks like she’s going to cry when she says things like “Baby Urban is so cute” and “I love baby Urban so much. She needs a blanket!” She is very gentle and cautious with the little ones and I know that she will be such a good big sister. I can’t wait to see her with a sibling and see her joy with her own new baby (as she calls it).

2 and 1/2

This summer has been so much fun with Lily! She is such a vibrant little girl who loves life and loves to have fun. She is always exploring and finding ways to get into things. She is trying to imitate us more and more is all kinds of ways. Not only what we say but how we do things as well as what we do. For example she’ll throw a bag over her shoulder, get her little stroller and tell me she’s going “bye bye”, then she’ll drive around for a while and “park” her stroller and tell me “I’m coming home now!” She is all about testing boundaries but has been responding very well to consistency and clear rules. For example, she was having trouble staying in her big kid bed at night but when we stopped letting her in our bed and we ( I ) put her back in her own bed every time she finally got the idea.

Lily is amazing me with her love of singing. She picks up new songs and tunes incredibly quick and will be singing them around the house all day long. We were at Target the other day and she spent the whole time at the cashier singing the Olympics theme song at the top of her lungs and making everyone in line laugh. We also started learning Christmas music for ward choir last week and she was singing along with us. The great part about that is that the song we were learning says “Gloria, Gloria” in the chorus and Lil (due to her Tarzan obsession) kept saying “Gorilla, Gorilla” instead. I love this little girl!! :) We definitely spend a good portion of the day with Disney songs on the Pandora station and she sings her little heart out. I would much rather prefer that to songs she would pick up (or already has) off the radio or having the TV on.

We have spent lots of time at the pool this summer and Lil is a little fish. She LOVES the water. She loves jumping in and luckily doesn’t get freaked out when she goes under the water. She does seem to have a problem, however, with splash parks. She will not go near the squirts of water for some reason.

We’ve been having fun around the house trying to find new ways to entertain her. I love that she has a much longer attention span and can focus on an activity for more than 30 seconds these days. She is so fun to watch when she is filled with wonder and amazed by new things, or even just when I can see her thinking and trying to figure things out on her own.  She has been having fun with chalk lately and has filled our patio with scribbles.  This is the best alternative I can give her for coloring on the walls inside… I also made her some bath paints and let her loose in the tub, which was a big hit! Kind of a waste of body wash, but… anything that lights up that little face of hers! She has also spent more time helping me cook and bake and she loves it. She has figured out how to move around chairs or her little princess potty to use as step stools and loves being able to get into everything. She also now knows how yummy cookie dough is and will stand there with her mouth open saying “Ahhh” until there is no more dough left.

 

I recently got Lil a set of rain boots and an umbrella and she could not be more in love! We took a little trip to the park for a photo shoot and got some great little shots. I love my beautiful sweet little girl!

       

Miss Independent…

So I think we’ve finally hit the “twos”. I was away for 10 days for Carlos’s wedding and I left behind a sweet little girl. When I got back I was welcomed home by a sweet little girl who was now demanding things and screeching at me pretty much every time I tried to help her do ANYTHING. First of all, I never want to be away from her or any future children for that long of a time if I have any choice in the matter. It was very hard for me and I missed Lily and Clark more than anything. Thank goodness for video chatting online or I wouldn’t have been able to make it through. That being said, I was amazed at the difference in Lil when I returned. She is still generally happy and pleasant and a small reminder usually turns her frown into a smile, she just MUST do everything herself! I discovered that if I let her put her own clothes on or have more opportunities to feed herself she is so much happier. I must say I am a little proud that she is wanting to be so independent.
She has even started going to the bathroom all by herself, which is exciting and scary at the same time. I Like that she doesn’t need me for everything, but I worry that she’ll try to empty her princess potty by herself and I will have a nice puddle to clean up in the bathroom. The best part about this is that she can’t say “ I peed all by myself” so it sounds like she says “ I peed on myself.” I love that little kid! The only time the independence tries my patience is when there is a time crunch or when she is having trouble but still won’t let me help. And I don’t mean I can’t help if her shirt is on backwards, it’s when she’s taking 10 minutes to button her pants and is crying because she can’t do it but still won’t let me intervene. There is also the demanding aspect. I think the phrase we hear most is “give me dat!” with a tiny scowl on her face. Luckily as soon as we say she needs to talk nice she’ll light up with a smile and say “please”. I guess the best thing we can do is be good examples of how she should act/talk and continue to remind her that we won’t tolerate that behavior nor will we fulfill her request until she asks politely.
Anyway… now to the fun stuff! I just love how her sentences are coming along. She says the funniest stuff and makes us laugh all the time.  I wish I could remember everything she says but I’d pretty much have to follow her around with a tape recorder to do that (yes, yes, I know we don’t use tapes anymore…). The other day we were at a friend house and every time Lily fell down she would get up and say “ I am OK.” I forget if I posted about this earlier, but she misplaces the word “little” all the time. She’ll ask for a “piece of little chicken” or a “sip of little water”, but that’s probably in response to me asking if she wants “a little” anything. She loves to climb, jump, and hop all over the place. She is always jumping on her bed, off the couch, off the kitchen chairs, anything she can climb onto. I am just praying that she waits a while before breaking any bones…
Lillian has started talking to EVERYONE she sees. We were walking to the park the other day and she told the few people we passed that we were going to the park. At the store she talks to all kinds of people and tells them things like “ I’m going to the store with mommy” or “I gonna get some goldfish.” I felt so bad the other day. I was showing an apartment to this guy and I go around the corner and Lil has her pants down and is trying to get on the toilet by herself. I tried to get her to hold it but that wouldn’t work. The guy didn’t seem to mind, luckily. He came back later that night to drop off his application for the apartment and as he’s leaving Lily makes sure to tell him “I tooting!” with a big smile on her face. I wanted to laugh and bury my head in the sand at the same time :).
Lil also loves to exercise with me. She loves to try to imitate me and she is so sweet as to try to wipe sweat off of my while saying “you so sweaty, mommy”. She gets sad when we stop and I’m hoping that’s a good thing. I don’t want her feeling that self worth hinges on working out or anything, but maybe that it will make her strong and be able to do all she wants to. I make sure to not talk negatively about myself in front of her and hope that she will have good body image for as long as possible. Fingers crossed…
I love that little girl!


 

Sweet Little Girl

We have been having so much fun with our little Lillian. She is such a joy to have around and I love the little person she is becoming. Her sense of humor is developing brilliantly and she loves to make us smile. She is very smart and loves to be independent. She is quick to get hot under the collar but very quick to calm back down. I am learning how best to help her understand her feelings and express them in a more positive way than whining or flailing her limbs and crying. Every day she is becoming harder and harder to distract and she is remembering things long after I have hidden them.

One of the sweetest things she is doing right now is asking if things are ok. Whenever she drops anything, a book, a spoon, a purse, she’ll ask “are you ok???” and will continue to do so until she picks it up and will ask every time it happens. I just love seeing her concern over things because it shows her compassionate side. She is always very perceptive of our feelings and will ask why we are sad or if we are ok as well. She is also very concerned with where we are. If she is alone for too long she’ll come running through the apartment saying “what you doing, mommy?” or “where you going, mommy?”. As soon as we are located she’ll go back to whatever she was doing or sweetly come invade my personal space and climb right into my lap to be a part of whatever I am doing.  She likes to tickle us and tries to surprise us by saying “boo”. She still hasn’t figured out though that she has to sneak up on us first in order to actually startle us ;). She is still doing great with her potty training and has been consistently telling me she has to go to the bathroom  while we are out shopping or at the park. I couldn’t be more proud of my little girl.

Lil is so great with her bedtime routine. She has started to go to bed earlier will tell us when she is tired and that she’s ready for songs and prayers. She has even started saying prayers which is the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard. Randomly I’ll hear her say “thank you for this day, thank you for the food, etc…” and it makes me very happy. After we pray she’ll run to her bed and try to climb in and we’ll tuck her in and she’s good to go. We don’t have to stay in the room or do anything special. I can’t believe how she is growing up.

The morning is a whole other story. Lillian will one day hate me for writing this down but I can’t resist :). She’ll greet me with a hearty “Hi Mommy!” when I walk in the door and she’ll immediately say “I pooped!”, “I peed”, “That stinks!” or something else to tell me her diaper is full (which is mimicking  what we usually say to her when we get near enough to smell her diaper). I’ll reach down to turn off her fan and she’ll say “Lily turn off the fan” and then she’ll turn it off, but she’ll never turn it off before we get there. Then I’ll get a big hug and we’ll get rid of her pull up and she’ll again say “That stinks” or “that’s a big one!”. I made the mistake of once having her smell a particularly nasty diaper and now she asks to smell them almost every time and then she’ll laugh with me. This process is repeated almost every morning :).

Last night we went to a choir concert for some of the girls we work with at church and Lil had a blast. She loved listening to the music and seeing the kids perform. As any 2 year old would, she started getting a little antsy and we let her roam around in between us for a bit. Her favorite group was the singing and dancing one right before intermission. She started off by following along with their arm movements and lifting her arms high into the air while on daddy’s lap. I could see her little hips shaking but when they started singing “School’s Out For Summer” by Alice Cooper and was begging to stand on the chair in between us and dance. We gave in and it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. She was doing her little version of head banging and was waving her arms in the air and shaking her hips. We had to work hard to contain our laughter and I was slightly concerned about her blocking the people behind us. Luckily we were in the last row before a big aisle so she wasn’t directly in front of anyone. Right when intermission started, some friends of ours who happened to be behind us came up and said Lily’s dancing was the best number of the evening and that she entertained the whole back left section of the audience. I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so much or had as much joy as I do from this little girl. Especially at this age some of the things she says or does are so funny and she makes me so happy.

    

                                                        

26 Months

So Lily has definitely hit her 2’s. Almost everything she comes in contact with is claimed by a loud “MINE!”. We were sitting in church today and there was a little boy sitting behind us. Every time he would look at her she would remind everyone that whatever she was holding was hers and would start scowling at him. She even reached over the back of our bench, grabbed the hymn book from the bench behind us and proclaimed that the book was hers. When we are at home she likes to claim things as well. Whenever we get up from a seat she’ll go to it and say it’s “Lily’s chair.” Some days when I dress her she’ll cry that it’s “Lily’s shirt” and I have to remind her that I’m just helping her put it on. I can’t really get upset with her because I know it’s completely normal. I try over and over to remind her that certain things belong to all of us or that we can share, but I know it mostly falls on deaf ears. Lily also likes to throw tiny tantrums when she doesn’t get her way. Luckily a big hug and some loving words usually calm her down. I also have a surefire defense for the tantrums if a hug doesn’t work. Once Lily stops truly freaking out I tell her that I don’t want her to smile- that whatever she does she can’t smile- and I go back and forth between scowling and smiling at her and soon enough she is giggling along with me. I know that whining and crying are almost all toddlers know about communicating their displeasure so I am trying my best to help her learn how to communicate more effectively as she grows older. I know that she’ll get it someday and I just need to be patient and loving. She is so sweet and I can see a little angel smiling back at me when I look at her.
She is such a little songbird! She is always singing her ABC’s and many other songs. We love to sing together and have little dance parties. Lily is very interested in copying me in all that I do. She wants to put on makeup and nail polish like me. She wants to help me sweep the floors and do laundry. Sometimes it’s more detrimental than helpful but I love that she has the interest. I want to encourage her to do all that she can and explore her abilities. I think we tend to underestimate what little ones can do but I try to let her try new things. I love to see her joy in her little accomplishments.
Lily is definitely expanding her memory every day. She found a santa hat and calls it “Christmas,” 4 months after the holiday. She talks about many different family members and things she’s done with them. She’s always talking about her grandparents and her experiences with them, like her trip to see her grandpa and grandma Aragon and their cat. The use of Skype with our families has been a big help. She loves talking to relatives and being on camera. I am so grateful for video chats because of the familiarity with family members  we visit infrequently. It is just amazing to see how she learns and how she is growing every day. I see her little mind expanding and I just love it! I can’t see where her future takes us.
 

25 months

Lily is so cute these days! though I guess that’s been the story all along. Her language skills continue to develop and improve. We are hearing more and more sentences and they are actually understandable :). We are still working on getting her to say the correct terms but at least we understand her. For example, when she tells me she’s hungry she’ll say “What you like?” or “You want some?” instead of saying she’s hungry. She is usually such a little angel and isn’t very whiny, which I am very grateful for. We are definitely at a point where I am happy with how much I’ve paid attention to how we talk to her since she is repeating more and more. And not repeating what we just said, but repeating phrases in reaction to different situations. She’ll randomly say “ I love you so much”, or when I go to the bathroom she’ll say “yay mommy. I‘m so proud of you!”. When she climbs on things she’ll say “don’t fall off” or “Get down please”. When she has an accident in her undies she’ll say “Yilly- you need to go potty in da toilet, not da undies!”, which cracks me up and helps me relax about the clean up. She is such a precious little girl. I' am so happy to have her in my family. She also LOVES nursery! She looks forward to it all week and gets very excited Sunday mornings. After every prayer in sacrament meeting she says “Amen. Nursery time???” and after church she has started to stay in there and keep singing even after she sees me at the door. I am happy that she is so social and is confident enough on her own.  I just love her to bits and can’t wait to see what she does next!

2 Years Old

As I look at my little sweetheart I cannot believe we’re already at 2 years old. I remember those first few months with her wondering how we were going to make it through the sleepless nights and crying spells. Somehow we made it through and before we knew it we have a little person who is beyond cute and is such a joy to have around.

It is amazing how much and how fast she changes. Her vocabulary and sentence forming skills have been exploding this past month. She is constantly talking – usually saying “Look at that, mommy!” She is so curious and eager to learn. She loves to explore and be free and play.

She is such a funny little girl. During choir practice or during the songs in church she'll wave her arm back and forth and try to conduct the music- quite a sight indeed! She loves when we play Mario bros because she wants to dance to the music and asks us to play almost every day.

Lately she is becoming more opinionated and sometimes defiant, as any 2 year old does. She’ll say “I said NO!” or give us a (very cute) little scowl, but a little time out or tickle attack can usually clear that up. Or we’ll just ignore her when she falls to the ground in frustration and she’ll come back around when she realizes that won’t work. It’s just your typical toddler stuff, but I appreciate that she turns it around when we tell her to. Overall she is such a happy little girl. I just spent 2+ hours in the hair salon and she was so quiet and calm (while playing with my phone) that a few of my former coworkers said they’d want a child that was as well mannered and nice as Lily.

We had a little birthday party with some of her favorite friends and it was a blast. Bubbles, balloons, and jumping on the bed provided all of the entertainment they could ever want. I know she felt so special and that made me so happy! She is now going around singing happy birthday to anything she sees. Yesterday she sang Happy Birthday Cream of Wheat :). For her birthday she got a bunch of “Tangled” merchandise
and she’ll sing songs from the movie while playing with her Rapunzel doll. 

I love this little girl so much and I’m so grateful she is in our care.

Sorry…Here comes a lot of pictures :)

Birthday party fun

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