Lillian is 4!!

I can't believe Lillian is 4 already! She is getting to be such a big girl. It seems like not that long ago she was still my "baby doll." Now, if I try calling her my baby, I get told that she is NOT a baby!! Oh well!!
Lillian has grown so much over the last year. She knows her ABC's and can count up to 10 without help, usually. She is a good helper around the house, (most of the time) and she adores her brother. I love to see them laughing, and playing together.  Her birthday was on a Thursday and I decided to make her favorite, macaroni and cheese. Afterwards, it was time for presents of course. I snapped a couple of pictures of her but the rest is on a video. We also got Preston a couple of presents since we knew he wouldn't understand why Lillian was getting new toys and he wasn't.
Lillian was so excited the whole day for her birthday, and hated having to wait all day for it. I think in the end it was worth the wait. She loved dinner, of course, and had so much fun opening and playing with her birthday gifts.
Lillian loves books and always wants us to read to her. Some books she has heard so much that she will often sit down and "read" it to herself or Preston. It is so cute. She also likes Barbie dolls, all the princesses, all the Tinker Bell fairies and Strawberry Shortcake. With a little help from my mom, I was able to bring home my old Barbie dolls and house, a kitchen stove with lots of dishes and my Strawberry Shortcake dolls and gazebo. She LOVED them!! To her they are brand new, and aren't 20+ years old!! Thank goodness they made toys better then!! LOL Since she has her own room now, she is really loving having all these new toys and the space to play with them.
Lillian continues to be a finicky eater. But we have been able to get her to try a few new things with some a little bribery. I can only hope that as she gets older she will get better about trying new things and the finickiness will go away.
My little girl brings such joy and laughter to our family and we are so blessed to have her. She has her own little personality which continues to develop. However, she takes after her mommy in so many things, I can only imagine what she will be like as a teenager. I think I will be getting a dose of my own medicine. LOL!! Anyway, we all had a wonderful time celebrating her birthday and look forward to many more.

 Preston with his new Dr. Seuss book. He loves books his size.

 opening his "gift"

 Getting more excited about his new toy.

 Oooo...animals!!!

 "Daddy hurry up an open it!!!"

 He loves his Noah's Ark toy. He and Lillian both loved playing with it that day.

 He really enjoys playing with the Fisher Price little people and animals.

My silly little girl!!

The other day Lillian comes into the living room of my parents with one of the kitties beds. She then proceeds to lay in it and cover herself with his blankets. My mom and I thought it was so funny!! I just had to take a picture. Kids can find the best entertainment in the simplest of toys.  I love it, why do I even bother buying toys!! LOL I love you Lillian!! (October 27, 2009)

First real haircut...well sorta!

I finally broke down and had my friend give Lillian her first real haircut. Up until now I have been just trimming her bangs when they got too long. But the last time I did this Preston was a brand new baby and I thought that I was "fine" trimming her bangs. Well....I learned my lesson. To be quite honest it wasn't that bad and most people wouldn't have even noticed, but I did and that is all the matters. Hahahaha!! Anyway from there I decided to let her bangs grow out. I would do her hair most mornings in cute little updo's to keep her bangs out of her eyes. Now they are long enough, she just tucks them behind her ears. Anyway, the rest of her hair was getting pretty uneven and she was complaining every time I brushed her hair, and that's with me putting lots of conditioner in her hair. I decided that what she really needed was a haircut, and mom needed one too. ;) So off to Cyndi's to get our hair's cut. Lillian did really good sitting still while Cyndi cut her hair, but trying to get her to smile was impossible. The looks she was giving me you would have thought I was torturing her or something. No matter what I did, she would not smile. As soon as Cyndi was done, she was all smiles. What the heck??? Oh well. Her hair is sooooo much nicer to comb now. :) (October 19, 2009)

Potty Training and Singing

I decided that Lillian was getting ready to potty train, plus I am so over the 2 kids in diapers. I have actually been dreading this for sometime. We had tried back before Preston was born, but she just wasn't ready so we stopped. Now that she will be 3 in a couple of months I think she is ready, sort of. Last Monday I went and got a potty for my parent's place, so she could help her while I was at work for a few hours. I got her the same exact one, so as not to create any favorites and subsequent problems. I also had to invest in some pull-ups, and yes I know what you are thinking, they are just diapers. But when your parents house is all carpet except for the kitchen and bathrooms, you really don't want to be spending all day cleaning the carpets and leaving clean spots everywhere. We do however have real girl underwear, for her when she has gotten a little better at recognizing when she has to go.
Anyway, moving on with the whole potty training experience. I was hoping for the best, but no such luck. After giving her what we thought was the appropriate length of time after drinking something, we would take her back and have her sit on her potty. While she was sitting there, we would read a couple stories trying to get her to relax. After 15 minutes or so of no success she would grow tired and want to get up. We would think that we had already missed it and she had already gone in her pull-ups, (they usually already had pee pee in them from us missing a previous opportunity). So we would put a new pull-up on, and then wait a few more minutes to try it again and of course miss it again by five to ten minutes. This went on the whole week, which was very frustrating to us. Finally Friday came and I was really at my whits end. I then proceeded to spend around 30 or more minutes in the bathroom before she finally went. YEAH!! After that we had 3 more times over the weekend which we were successful. Today we have gotten her to do it twice, which is very encouraging. We still have lots of misses but at least I feel we are moving in the right direction. The funny thing about this whole experience is that I seem to have more success when I sing to her. Don't ask me why, I guess it is just relaxing to her. She likes Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I am a Child of God, and The Wheels on the Bus. Most of these songs come from nursery, so here's three cheers to the primary music leader. Now if I can just figure out what the turtle and frog songs are that Lillian keeps asking for and we would be all set. Although I am getting a little tired of the same 3 songs. Anyway, I am amazed that this is working, but everytime we go into the bathroom to go potty she will actually ask me to sing a song. I actually think this is so stinking cute!! But it works!! Within minutes of me starting to sing she announces to me very proudly that she is going pee pee!!! So I am hoping sometime soon, I will have a potty trained little girl. Wish me luck. If you have any tips or secrets feel free to let me know. I will take all the help I can get.

Mommy, Mommy!

Last night I was playing a game on the computer and talking to my mom for a few minutes. Lillian was playing, when all of a sudden I heard her fall into this box on the other side of the couch (her potty came in it). She then starts whimpering and calling my name over and over in a desperate plea for help. I am thinking she her feet are stuck, no big deal, right. I couldn't have been more wrong, I quickly paused the game, told my mom to hang on and went over to see what the problem was. Here is what I found,
She always seems to get herself into predicaments that require a little help. Anyway I had to grab the camera and take a couple of pictures. How often can you say your 2 year old fits in a potty box. Besides, boxes are lots of fun. They are more fun than the toys that came in them, right? She also just loved having to stay in there for another minute longer while mommy took pictures. But hey, I have to have something to impress (I mean embarrass) all those boys with, right?

My Sleeping Beauties, Well at least one of them...

(...Just kidding honey:)

I came home from work Tuesday morning, expecting my family to be up, fed and ready for a shower but instead found this. I couldn't resist taking a couple pictures. Lillian had crawled out of her bed, just as I was getting up to go to work early that morning, and into our bed. She cuddled up to Daddy and went right back to sleep. Ahh how cute they look together. She's got Daddy wrapped around her little finger already. How precious is my little monkey!

One of Lillian's Favorite Places

I finally got around to using these free passes that I had for the Santa Ana Zoo. My mom and I took Lillian there on Saturday. She loves animals and always has so much fun at the zoo. One of the animals that she likes is the Llama's. In the picture below she is actually pointing and saying "Llama". We actually had to go back and see them after we had been through most of the zoo. She couldn't seem to get enough of them. (Good Grief!)
Here we are looking at a mommy monkey and her baby that is hanging onto her back. I thought it was pretty cool, especially since I have never seen that before. Lillian, of course is always interested in "babies" and found them very interesting.

My mom got Lillian and I a ticket to ride on the elephant. Man that was an experience. I have never been on one before. With every step my body would get swayed back and forth. Thankfully it was a short ride. We both enjoyed it, and Lillian wanted to go back on it again. She loved watching the elephant and the ride was just the cherry on top.


We went over to the farm area and Lillian loved looking at these very friendly geese. She wanted to pet them, but we told her no because they might bite her. Then she was afraid to get to close to them. I kept trying to get her to stand next to them in front of the fence and she would stay there for just a moment and then turn around to make sure the goose wasn't going to bite her. So I had to settle for her standing and staring and talking to it. Oh well, it was better than nothing.

Here she is with the big pigs. She was talking to them and trying to get their attention but they were too interested in their food. Go figure!
Waiting for the train to start. She could hardly wait to go on the train. She was so excited when she discovered it and kept bugging us to take her for a ride.
Lillian had to sit on Grandma's lap because she wouldn't sit down while we were waiting for the train to leave. (One of the many reason's why we call her "Monkey")
And were off. She had a great time riding on the train, except when we were going through the tunnel and the conductor told everyone to make some noise. Brilliant idea, dude! (NOT) Hence the picture below where she is huddle up to Grandma. I think it scared her just a little. But once we were through she was fine. Thankfully it was a short tunnel. Anyway, we had a great time and I couldn't believe that she walk around the whole time. We were there for 2 hours and she never complained once or wanted to be held. What a big girl she is!

I'm Sleeping, Mommy!

The other day I managed to sneak upstairs to brush my teeth, and go to the bathroom in peace. When I came back down the stairs I discovered that Lillian had climbed into her old car seat with her baby doll and was pretending to "sleep." I thought it was so funny and I quickly grabbed the camera. Lillian, upon seeing me said, "I'm sleeping, Mommy with my baby." She even went as far as to grab the sun shade and pull it over her and the baby. We had a really fun time trying to get her out and into her own bed.
And yes, we finally went and got the old mattress and box springs from my parents and set it up at the base of our bed. So now Lillian sleeps in her own bed. (I think Daddy is a little more excited about it than I was.) I suddenly realized where Lillian gets her sleeping style from, that night as I tried to turn my prego self over and discovered Brandon right next to me with his arm in my face. Yeah, guess who got a nice little shove onto his own side. I had completely forgotten how much of a bed hog he is and how nice it was to have Lillian keeping him on his side. Of course he doesn't think it was nice because he didn't get a good nights sleep, but I sure did. :) Anyway, Lillian loves sleeping in her own bed and has actually slept the entire night in her own bed every night since we brought it home Friday.
Moving on, I hope you find these photo's as funny as I did, (Katie, I hope this was a good distraction for you. I have got a few more photo's I need to blog and will try to do it tonight! :)

Lillian and Chalk

I had to share these pictures of Lillian. She loves playing with chalk. She was outside in the garage the other day and Grandpa got out the chalk for her. Well she had a blast, as you can see. She was covered in chalk. Even her face had chalk all over it because she kept smelling the chalk. I thought she looked so funny. Of course as soon as she came inside, I took everything off including the socks and shoes so she didn't get chalk everywhere. Sometimes I just can't believe how dirty she manages to get. But hey that is part of being a kid, right!