No More Milk - for me!

I took Nathan to the dr yesterday due to his continuing tummy issues. The dr wants me to try eliminating dairy from my diet, as she suspects he is sensitive to milk proteins. I tried this when he was about 6-8 weeks for a few weeks and he seemed to get better, and I slowly started enjoying diary again. But now he is having obvious stomach pains all day and night so we are trying again. Since I get about half of my daily calories from diary, I am hoping this will help me lose the rest of my baby weight.

He weighed in 16 pounds, 10 ounces! I knew he was getting big, I almost can't carry him in the car seat carrier anymore.

I can't leave out the latest on Emma. On Dec. 31st, I started putting her in panties during the day. The first 2 days we had a couple of accidents each day, but since then she is using the potty all day, at home, school, and when we are out! It's so nice to have her out of diapers, the washing machine was running all day and night with two kids in cloth diapers! She is still wearing one at night but I am not rushing that change. One of the ways I know she stays hydrated is to let her drink lots of water before bed, so I think it will be a while before we change that.

Emma is 3 years old!

Today Emma is 3 years old! We can hardly believe our little baby girl is 3, but she is! She has had a wonderful birthday this year. We did a little Toy Story party on Dec. 18 with some of her friends and she really enjoyed it. Today we are at Grandpa and Grandma Smith's house and they had a little party for her with cake and ice cream.

She is a very funny girl, she loves to make silly faces and tell silly jokes. I love to watch her play and listen to her talk to her toys. She is so sweet and loving but also very smart.

She absolutely loves her baby brother and asks me every day if he is big enough to play with her. She is so affectionate, she loves to hold him and kiss him. When Nathan is on the floor she will lay down with him and talk to him.

When we return from our Christmas trip I am going to stop using diapers on Emma. She is ready to use the potty, she can and has worn panties all day and not had any accidents, but she still continues to choose diapers. So when we get back home, I'm putting up the diapers (except for night time) and we'll see how fast we can get her completely potty trained.

Emma still pronounces a few words incorrectly. She says "gurl" for "girl" and "hurs" for "horse". It's very cute and I know soon enough she'll drop all of these cute little inaccurate pronouncements.

Potty Time and Even More Words

Emma has started to use her little potty. She first went pee pee on Nov. 10th. Daddy was present, but Mommy had given up and left the bathroom. Emma was very proud of her success. She's gone a few more times, and now Mommy has decided it's time to get a seat reducer and an extra potty.

The new words and phrases continue to come daily. Here are few: stuck, broke, empty, belt, help, ant, mouse, more (sounds like ma,) pretty, milk, hair, no way, heart, pie and coke. She knows exact what coke is and will demand a drink if she sees anyone drinking it. She also picked up "shoot", from Mommy. Mommy is working on changing that to oops or oh no. It's especially embarrassing when we are around others and Emma will say "shoooooot", drawing out the word. She has also started to say cat, puppy and cow, instead of "mow", "ruff-ruff" and "moo". I am a little sad that she's saying the real animal names, it is so cute to hear her say the animal sounds.

Emma can identity these shapes: heart, circle, triangle, square, and star. She can say heart but she knows the other shapes too. When we are playing outside, I draw the shapes and then ask Emma to run to the star, or the circle, etc, and she always goes to the correct shape.

One of our neighbors a few houses down has some little scarecrow men staked out in her yard. They are about Emma's height, and she is very interested in them. Every time we play outside, Emma has to go over and hug and kiss all three scarecrow men. It's very cute!

All fall we have been showing Emma how to make the Hook 'Em sign with her hands. She knows the Longhorn symbol and will point it out on our T-shirts. Then she grabs her hand and says "help hand", asking for us to help her make the hand sign. She can't hold her fingers in the sign by herself, but she tries! She also knows the sign for mouse and frog. She doesn't use her signs very much anymore, but sometimes she still does.

I know tomorrow she'll say more words and I'll think of others that I forgot to write down. She is really learning so much everyday!

-Ronda