Of course...why didn't I think of that?!

For the past couple of weeks I could not figure out how Ellee was getting to the top shelf of her bookshelf. I of course removed the bottom shelf so she couldn't stand on it to get some leverage up but still its baffled me. I moved a chair and several other things sure everything was out of reach. Yesterday I found her in her bed with a million head bands and barrettes along with, oh I don't know, say 1 KAZILLION TINY HAIR ELASTICS SCATTERED ALL OVER THE PLACE! gah! If you have little girls, you know what i ma talking about. The little elastics come in packages of like 500, and for some reason Ellee has always found joy in tossing them everywhere. But how did she get them was my question?! 

Today I figured it out. I heard some bumps and thumps coming from Ellee's room and I new she was not in bed for nap. I went up stairs to find her covered in strawberry lip gloss along with the rug, chair and bed spread. Seriously child?! The lip gloss was a present for her from Christmas and given her craziness I never gave it to her. Well she found it on the top shelf. How did she get it, I found out. She uses her garbage! Yea, crazy. She empties out its contents then flips it over and use it as a stool. Doh! Of course...why didn't I think of that?! Probably because my brain is on overdrive lately.

We spent the weekend at the farm in Wisconsin. I was able to enjoy some time out with my sisters, but by the time I got back I could tell the poor hubs was ready for a break. :) I empathize. 

Ellee spent most of the weekend taking advantage of the unguarded home (no gates here so I knew she would be taking advantage) and getting into everything she possibly could have. There was an incident with honey, and incident with toilet paper, and incident with makeup as well as a Vick's/lotion incident. The weekend was full of cleaning up, and shouting 'Where's Ellee?' followed by the scattering of adults to find the escape artist. The weekend was full of clean ups, scolding, shouting baths, and oh yea, some puking. She ended up throwing up at 5 am on Sunday morning. She was fine by 9 am though, and I think it was something she probably got into..who knows.  

 

Peyton was her usual happy go lucky self on the weekend. Content to play with toys open and close cupboard doors and bang lovingly at the kitties on the porch. She still seems to be more shy and wanting to be close to her mama nad papa so it was a great weekend for her to get used to some "new" people. 

We're all happy to be home, but that means I need to get back on track with my school work and continue the season long process of Spring cleaning. With 2 little ones running around its hard to keep on track so I figure if I go bit by bit I'll be done by summer :) 

Here is sweet little P enjoying some melon and sharing with Mama. 

 

Trees and things

With Ellee with so much energy I thought I'd put her to work. We started my garden flowers and herbs in doors and she LOvED IT!

I let her scoop dirt and push the seeds in. She couldn't stop exclaiming she had made 'trees'!!!

How cute is she. She even grabbed my face and smushed it against hers :)

Tonight when I put her in bed I thought I'd cuddle for a little bit. She rolled over and says 

'I wuv wu mamma'

I said pardon just to see, and she said I wuv wu once more. She's so sweet. But then 

she can be so sassy! Such a little sour patch kid. 

Peyton has been working through some teeth but she's been picking words up and been doing a great job with her sign language. 

Here is Ellee doing her new favorite thing. Cracking eggs. She asks for eggs every minute of the day just because she wants to crack some. And sometimes she doesn't even ask. She'll just show up in the middle of the room with the carton. 

Ellee Scarlett, 2 years and still surprising me

Ellee was a high maintenance baby and she's a high matenance toddler. Not high maintenance like the adult with low self esteem, I'm pretty sure she is going to be an extremely confident young woman, high maintenance in the fact that we have to work hard to maintain her. 

Sunday after church, the bread and wine sit in the middle of the circle. Ellee has frequently asked when its passed her if she could have some bread. I've always told her 'No its for the big people'. On this Sunday my parents were visiting and she was sitting with them. After meeting we were standing in the foyer and Ellee with bear in tow, runs up to me opens her mouth wider then Jaws and says, 'I got bread!' Meeting has been over for a little while so I realized she'd run p to the table and taken her share like everyone else had. I explained that wasn't okay and she was not to touch the bread or table. 2 minutes later I hear look at Ellee. I look up to see her in the middle of the auditorium, her bear in the middle of the table between the wine glasses, and her on her tippy toes grabbing handfuls of bread and shoving them ravenously into her mouth. Oh ellee Scarlett. Of courses, there was a lot of chuckling. I was extremely thankful it was after the worship meeting and not during. We've had several times when she's bolted from us and made her way up an aisle or somewhere else. 

Lately she's also found it enjoyable to yell at the top of her lungs when she's being removed from meeting to be disciplined. 'Stop it mommy! Stop it!' And 'No thank you mommy!' Are her favorites. 

Another crazy month

It's been such a crazy month. I think I said that about last month or January. But either way this one may have topped the last. We've had some weird and crazy things happening this month. Some personal stuff and some family stuff. But we are well and healthy. :)

Ellee is in usual form. Lately she's been pulling full clear sentences out. Yesterday Matt was playing with her and clearly and articulately she said "one more time!". And shes basically potty trained minus the busy days and lazy days, for example on this particular day i heard from the loft, 'holy cow! i'm pooping!!' She struggles with the 'st' and 'sp' sound which ends up coming out as 'f', like frawberry, She has always been an advanced speaker. But being our first child we really didn't realize this till we had our second. Ellee at 12 months could clearly say her name and about 10 other words. Peyton says about 5 words but probably is saying others we just don't understand them. She understands 90% of what were telling her though. Eat, she runs to the fridge. No, she smiles mischievously and reaches again for the soot in the fireplace or blu ray player. Come, she smiles and bolts in the opposite direction with her head slightly downward in a bull like run forward.  She's a stinker, definitely one to watch for.
Ellee has maintained her extreme high energy. I've had people tell me it's exhausting looking at her, let me tell you! But she's 2, time will tell if she's been blessed with more energy than the average 2 year old. She'll be 3 in the summer and I am looking forward to signing her up for an activity. Gymnastics or tumbling is what I am leaning towards, I've also thought about dance. I have a feeling dance won't be fast paced enough for her. But it will probably be more disciplined which is definitely good for her. We will see.

Sickness and February

We spent quite a bit of the latter part of February sick. There was only one incident of puke, praise the Lord,  but quite a bit of snot and boogers.
The puke incident was less then a good scenario. It happened with matt when we took ellee out with him to Walmart and she ended up puking all over the floor in Walmart. Thank you to whomever cleaned up the mess. I'm sure you dislike your job now...more than you may have before. Sorry!
Peyton was the first to come down with the bug. It happened on valentine's weekend with a rash all over her cheeks and trunk. From there it was a chest cold and she looked so miserable.  We ended up in the ER with her on the Monday to rule out pneumonia, they said she had RSV. The experience as a whole reminded me of the vast difference between the girls. Ellee has always been relatively friendly and sociable with strangers, even letting some hold her walk with her not particularly caring it wasn't us. Peyton is shy and cautious. She prefers no one to touch her if they're not us and won't throw free smiles out to random strangers. So getting Peyton to cooperate for a chest cray was extremely traumatizing. She was so upset about it all especially with other people holding her down. She survived tho and she's better now.
Later that week I took both kids to the doctor, they both had ear infections and needed to be on antibiotics.  They also were having trouble keeping air in their lungs and they needed to be on inhalers. It was a $$ month of sickness!!
Matt and I managed to slip out with just some throat tingles and coughs.
Hopefully March has less bacteria and more fun. Oh and maybe some warmer weather. We're really looking forward to a summer filled with biking, roller blading, parks and bubbles :)

Note to mommy

Note to self: Try and do hair every day, it will make you feel good about yourself. 

When Ellee was born, I struggled the first couple months with all the new things, but then I fell into an easy pattern and I did well. I had time to get ready most days, and put on a real pair of pants, shirt or shorts. But when Peyton was born, it was winter so there wasn't much going out anyways, and there were two of them so it was difficult to find time to do anything but the 2 minutes of teeth brushing. Now with them being so active and it being winter again, let me be honest,I sleep in the yoga pants from the day before and rarely get out of them until afternoon nap the next day. 

It makes me recognize moms in the grocery stores with their kids. It's easy to tell the moms apart. 

A first time mom is a mom that I think any mom of more than one could recognize at the grocery store. She has a shopping cart cover with a child sitting happily in a perfectly cute outfit, maybe a bib on to stop any mild drools or spits. She has her hair and make up done and is dressed in a fitting outfit. She has a massive diaper bag filled with absolutely everything needed to tackle an apocalypse with a baby. She is smiling and enjoying her time waltzing around the store with toys to keep the sweet baby entertained. People notice her and the child and many will ask about the baby and she'll happy tell the age of baby and make him smile or coo for the interested party. 

The mom of more then 1 has a kid plopped in the cart and one in the seat. The kids are in comfy clothes, sweat pants and regular tees. If the younger spits the shirt she is wearing will suffice as a bib. She has a purse with a bag of Cheerios , one diaper for each kid and a small pack of wipes. She has comfy pants and slip on shoes or boots on and hair up out of the way. Maybe even glasses on still. She is too busy focussing on her list and getting in and out of the store in the quickest amount of time without any meltdowns, she doesn't recognize people taking interest in her children. 

Does anyone agree? Well if not i can say this is me.

 This is the difference in my Walmart shopping trips from a year and a half ago to today.

Maybe it will change over the next year and half, but for now, I just need to try and do my hair everyday. It really does make me feel motivated for the rest of my day! 

Snowboards and snowmobiles and lots of smiles

This past weekend matt and I headed to Madison to visit family and really just get some us time. Our awesome family said they'd watch the girls while we took time to enjoy our favorite sport season. We went snowmobiling through Madison area. It was a lot of fun!
I never grew up with snowmobiling but matt is very used to them. I am do hesitant about them. We went snowmobiling in new Hampshire 2 years ago and I actually lost control after being cut off by someone on the trail.  It was one a curve and he was hugging to far to my right resulting in me over turning and then going major left into the ditch. I bailed, yes jumped off, which turned out perfect because the snowmobile shutoff and ended up sticking straight up in the ditch.  Matt came around the corner to see just the snowmobile. He was a little panicked and helped pull me out of the 5 feet of snow after her found me unharmed. Fast forward to this weekend I just started out going really slow. Matt called it grandma speed. Then things got better and we had a lot of fun. It was fairly straight trails and there wasn't many people on them. :)
We also went to cascade mountain north of Madison and did some snowboarding. I love snowboarding.  I hate riding chairlifts though. Ugh. Snowboarding down the hill you don't notice any cold. But the chairlifts are like throwing yourself in a freezer and you just sit there and endure. By the time I get off my face feels frostbite. All in all a great snowboarding trip. Except I majorly wiped out getting off the lift and ended up on top of some dudes skies. Opps. I apologized from in between his skies...embarrassing!  Matt stood off in the distance not claiming to know me. Thank goodness for goggles, helmets and masks!
Peyton and Ellee quite enjoyed their time playing with cousins but as usually it's always nice to get home.
Ellee has been quite enjoying the box house I made her. It's so cute she takes her leap pad in there and plays some games and of course mr.bear joins her in there as well!