joshandpamelavv

Lately, I've been trying to figure out if my kids are at their most difficult age or if I just lost perspective due to a relatively easy phase. Haha. I guess it really doesn't matter. Both girls are doing beautifully and just simply growing up enough that they can do some serious damage in short order if I'm not paying attention. On the other hand, they're also old enough that I can take them outside to play and not worry about them eating absolutely everything in sight. I even took a spiral bound notebook out there yesterday to make menu plans while watching them! And I pinched peaches off the peach tree (though I didn't get very far) in hopes that we'll somehow reduce the nutrient burden on the tree (I'd love to have decent peaches this year). Of course, they both like to move towards things I don't want them to get into, but they love being outside...and they do play very well by themselves, compared to how they used to be. ;-) No more need to take blankets and toys outside to keep them occupied. LOL! Sticks, folks! Those are now toys. I am a paranoid mother, so I usually take the sticks away in short order...because of course my mind wanders ahead to possible reasons for emergency room visits. Haha. Poor, deprived babes. Someday soon I'll let them play with sticks a little more, maybe...



Food is an interesting issue now. Since Josh is at work most of the time (55-60 hours a week feels like it, anyway), the girls and I usually eat our meals when he isn't around. Up until recently, I had been fixing food only for myself, other than letting the girls snack whenever. It's highly unstructured, of course, and not very good, but for some reason I hadn't pulled it together to do otherwise. Felicity drinks a lot of milk (I weaned her a few months after she turned two, I think, and now she's almost three) and mostly likes to avoid meat, but she likes cheese, bread, carrots, berries, cantaloupe, lettuce, and chocolate. I'm sure she likes other stuff I'm forgetting, but her day tends to revolve around those items. Last night I was getting ready to cook myself some eggs and she saw me with an egg carton and the frying pan and wanted to know if I was making pancakes. :-P So instead of eggs I made pancakes, which both girls loved. And they both sat at the table to eat them. Mary also ate some frozen blueberries. Felicity wasn't interested. 



Mary still nurses a lot night and day. I night weaned Felicity a few months after Mary was born, so for that age Mary is still a few months away. She eats cheese, bread, fruit, veggies (a lot like Felicity, only she also really loves peas - frozen, cooked, or thawed), and pretty much anything else she can find. She's very good about letting me know when she's hungry, but I have realized recently that I really need to be feeding her more consistently, since I don't think nursing is quite cutting it anymore. She is absolutely adorable, but she's not a chubby little infant anymore. :-( She has kind of chubby cheeks, but she's not fat at all. She's very healthy and well-proportioned, though. 



Let's see...what else? Josh is working hard as ever at Pizza Hut. Every time I feel like we're getting into a routine as a family or he feels like things are finally evening out at Pizza Hut, something comes up...but so far it's nothing horrible, so that's good. Figuring out how to make life work thinking outside the box is awfully fun. When we needed to take the car in to get some work done recently, we walked from the car place over to Pizza Hut. It wasn't a super long walk, but it was very hilly and we stopped a couple times on the way and I think we must have taken a couple of hours, all told, to get two miles. :-P But it was a nice way to spend our day together and the girls enjoyed getting to go to the park on the way, with a castle and a fish pond. 





For the record, I did suggest that we could both drive to the car place and leave Josh's Jeep there and then he could drive the car back and bring the Jeep home. And then he could drive the Jeep to get the car and bring the car back to get us and then we could all go back to get the Jeep, but for some reason he found that unnecessarily convoluted. :-P We saw our old minivan for sale on the way home, but tempting as it is...I think I'd rather hang on to the money instead of buying a third vehicle just so we can have a backup option. I mean, I like backup vehicles and all, but money is a bit more versatile on the whole backup thing. A minivan would be nice to have again sometimes, but we only have two kids, so we don't really need a bigger vehicle. And the gas mileage of a smaller vehicle is obviously preferable. 

Today, I'm trying to decide what kinds of desserts I want to make for tomorrow. One I already have planned and the ingredients are all ready to assemble tomorrow morning so they'll have time to chill in the fridge before Easter dinner at my grandparents' house. But I want to make some other stuff and time is kind of running out, so I need to settle on exactly what I want to do, especially if it's something that requires a trip to the grocery store. :-P As always, I have a huge pile of laundry to wash and some bathrooms that could use cleaning. Our guest room is still a disaster, but attending to that usually involves two children coming and spreading the disaster even further, so I've been procrastinating. Sometime, though, I really do need to get the clothes sorted out and the other junk put away so we can get the new bed set up and actually make a presentable guest room. And then maybe someday someone will come and visit us...or maybe not. I don't know. Oh, yeah, I also need to clean up the play room. Sometime it's going to turn into a little girls' bedroom, though I'm not sure how soon that will be. Josh and I discussed buying a second toddler bed, but I think Felicity has about outgrown hers, so I think we're going to look at getting a twin bed or something - not sure. I think we have far too many beds and types of beds for the number of people in this house, so I don't know why we would buy a bed just yet, but we need to figure out something...sometime. :-P Or Mary can just keep sleeping in our bed, Felicity in her bed...and then we'll figure something else out later. Haha. :sigh: 

Sorry this is incoherent. I'm kind of tired at the moment...

Not super precise, but...

Felicity is close to 35 pounds and 37.5 inches.

Mary is around 23-24 pounds and 30.25 inches.

'Tis crazy. Felicity is two and a half now. She says lots and lots of things. And the world of pretend has suddenly opened up to her. She likes making and throwing snowballs at us and, thankfully, they don't hurt...since they're pretend. :-P She is also obsessed enough with the concept of monsters that I'm pretty sure the kids at church have to be annoyed by now. She'll find anyone (pretty much six and under) and chase them all around the church, roaring at them. "Rawr, rawr." :shaking head: I don't have any idea...

She also points to the window and back door and tells us there's a monster out there. Josh was actually worried she might have some basis for this, but I promise that she really never even sees out there and she also comes up with other imaginary things and points just to get us to look at empty space. She has been doing a lot of other obvious pretend stuff lately, too. Yesterday she was playing with a "pretend" baby and even sticking a pacifier (not imaginary) into it's (imaginary) mouth. So yeah...lots and lots of pretend.

And, also, every time I put on a skirt or a dress or she's wearing one, it's "You a princess!" or "I a princess!" Not sure where she got that, either...haha.

She has a slight tendency to be a bit dramatic and occasionally throws fits when she doesn't get her way. I welcome her to continue her pointless endeavors, usually, if I can't reasonably accommodate her (after instructing her on how to go about communicating properly, of course). Amazingly, this seems to have the opposite effect. ;-) Fits aren't much fun to throw without an audience or effect, I guess.

Let's see...still no potty training progress. I'm not wanting to push it till she's closer to three, but then we'll be getting a little more hardcore, I imagine. At this point, I'm not seeing adequate signs of readiness to feel like pushing it would be productive. But if I don't see her moving in that direction in the next few months, I do have a plan for encouraging it without turning it into a big issue yet. I'm planning to just go ahead and put her on the toilet regularly throughout the day...but I'm not really ready to do that yet. :-P And it's almost as much about my readiness as hers. ;-)

Otherwise, she's starting to learn the concept of counting and saying letter sounds, but she doesn't recognize specific letters or numbers. She is learning shapes and colors. She asks us a lot about the names of specific objects. She also likes to learn new concept-naming words, which makes me laugh. She seems to understand them surprisingly well. Being rich = having a lot of money...which she apparently thinks is a good thing.

She likes to paint and draw and color. She and Mary get along fairly well, I guess. I'm not really sure how that is supposed to work, actually. I encourage her to let me deal with it when Mary is breaking rules (such as climbing where it is dangerous to climb), so she is getting better about letting me know, "Mommy, get the Mary down." ;-) And then I do. And then it's, "Good job, Mommy. Good job!" LOL! Is it really patronizing when your two year old treats you like you treat her? ;-)

Mary is thirteen months old now. I just realized that when Felicity was this age I was already halfway through my second pregnancy. :-P [BTW, I'm so glad not to be pregnant now. I have energy and strength and no weird food cravings or aversions and on and on...] Anyway, she is a little mischief maker. All those non-childproof cabinets that we survived with Felicity are definitely a problem with Mary. So we very quickly got them all locked up. Every single time one of us leaves the main food cabinet unlocked, it seems like Mary gets there instantly and starts pulling stuff out. And books come off shelves, stuff comes out of drawers...

She's not really quite a little tornado. But she is an extremely tactile person. She almost always has something in each hand, which is hilarious. And she has favorite forbidden items to pursue every chance she gets. LOL! Keeping up with her is definitely quite the task. But, on the bright side, she is exceptionally good at entertaining herself. She's so good, in fact, that I think she's even teaching Felicity how to do so, and that of course is very helpful.

Mary also thoroughly enjoys TV shows (and always has). Current favorites include Care Bears, Shaun the Sheep, Leap Frog, and other similar shows. She still loves Curious George, too. Also, she has started saying words...mostly difficult to understand, but in some contexts I pick them out more readily, so that's fun to watch.

She has been walking for quite a while now and likes to run, too. She still falls down a good bit, but she's quite steady on her feet when she pays attention and isn't going too fast. She also likes walking backwards for some strange reason, especially when I'm offering her food and she wants to get a closer look at it before deciding whether to eat it. ;-) Speaking of food, I think she loves bananas the most. She also likes apples (particularly whole and particularly to chew up and spit out :-P), shredded cheese, and, sometimes, cheerios and crackers. But she still mostly prefers to nurse. Sometimes I wonder how that could possibly be adequately nourishing...and then I realize that might very possibly be why I get so weak and hungry these days. :-P Ha. Being a cow is so fun. ;-)

Let's see...Josh seems to be doing quite well at Pizza Hut. He's still developing his management style and it seems to be working really well. I'm actually quite impressed with how he applies those skills both at work and at home. He approaches things from the perspective of being empowering instead of condemning and it's just really very...nice. I've seen criticism before, but never really understood how it could be constructive. I like how he basically focuses on how it can be better in the future. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it's just feels different...like he's helping everyone be as successful as they can be instead of making them feel like something is defective about them.

So yeah...other than that, we're having fun cooking lots of good food at home. We got a frying basket this last week. That night, we made crab rangoons. Then yesterday we made hush puppies, French fries, French fried onions, and fried chicken with tempura. 'Twas so good! I have to say, being married to someone who is an awesome cook makes me feel like I hit the jackpot. LOL! It's pretty nice being in the kitchen and just both doing our stuff and making awesome food. He gets more of the science and is really good at blending tastes. I'm good at chopping stuff? ;-) No, I have fairly decent cooking skills and like to cook well. And we work well together. It's super fun. And if anyone wants to come and enjoy some of the fruits of our labors, we've decided to start hosting an opportunity just about every Thursday night at our house. Let us know if you'd like to join us sometime! :-)

Apple pie and cherry pie are cooling on the counter in the kitchen. Everything else is in the refrigerator ready for me to add the finishing touches tomorrow before we go to my aunt's house to celebrate Thanksgiving with my parents, most of my siblings, my grandparents, my aunt, and my cousin.

Updates...

Mary is walking more and more all the time. She started taking steps earlier than Felicity did, but she still does a lot of crawling. She's going to turn one soon! She is very fun and playful and also into just about everything. All those babyproofing things we didn't need to do with Felicity are turning into a necessity now. ;-)

Felicity is gradually becoming more verbal, which is quite convenient for communicating. She also enjoys having books read to her more now.

Josh is still doing quite well at Pizza Hut. I appreciate his hard work to support us!

Someday I'll update more thoroughly, but I'm tired now. :-P

Where to start...

I did post about a month ago and so I guess the girls are a month older. LOL! Major milestones...

Mary is standing on her own for brief periods.

Felicity is actually speaking intelligibly and in fairly complex sentences at times. Sometimes it's simpler but still funny, like at the grocery store when we toss something she likes into the cart. "Thank you...very much!" (with added emphasis at the end of course). :-P

Mary just went through a rather intense clingy period. It seemed like forever, but now that she's actually taking naps without me holding her again (as of yesterday and today), I'm thinking maybe it was really only a couple weeks. That's long enough for dishes, laundry, and cleaning tasks to pile up. I read somewhere that it's good for kids this age to be clingy since they're also developing the mobility to get into mischief. Felicity never thought to get into cabinets at this age! I don't think she even knew how. We didn't install the child safety stuff on some cabinets (with cleaning supplies, for instance) till close to Mary's birth, I think. :-P

Felicity is just now figuring out that she can open the refrigerator herself. Maybe it's time to reorganize and stick approved snacks where she will be able to grab them most easily without disturbing anything else.

Josh got promoted to restaurant general manager at the Pizza Hut where he works. That was a couple weeks ago. I'm glad he takes his job so very seriously, though I do rather miss him. And I think he misses sleeping and eating. :-P But hopefully soon we'll get a good routine worked out. They were able to hire an additional shift leader recently and the first week with him went so well that I was shocked as Josh arrived home earlier than ever before at the end of his closing shifts. Of course, that was partly because they were working the same shift. :-P But maybe the overall effect will be similar. I can hope, right?

Our water heater broke recently. We knew when we bought our house that we'd be replacing appliances in a few years and here we are. ;-) I guess only wishful thinking would ever inspire us to hope things like appliances and car parts will last forever. Haha. What is it with things wearing out? My family very kindly came over and helped me get everything cleaned up, including vacuuming up a good bit of water that seeped in under the carpet, but I think we got to it quickly enough because I haven't seen any damage so far. This was a week ago. Josh got a 24 hour plumbing service to come and replace the water heater, so we never even had to take cold showers.

I think we might be spoiled. :-P And that's about all for now...I'm loving this cool weather. Fall is the best time of year!

 Mary is eight months now (as of 8.13). I don't know how tall she is, but she's 22 pounds. Measuring her is pretty much impossible since she won't stay still. :-P She seems reasonably tall, though. Felicity was around 34.5 inches last I checked (around her second birthday) and she's about 31 pounds now. Both girls seem quite healthy. :-D

In teething news, I don't know why I always forget that teething can make children fussy. It's kind of like forgetting that being anemic can cause fatigue, I guess. Mary's version of teething is so much milder than Felicity's (which really wasn't all that bad) that I just look at her funny when she's fussing. It dawned on me in the last day or two that she might be cutting more teeth and, sure enough, she now has eight little teeth poking through her gums. She got three on the bottom, two on the top, then one more on the bottom, and then two more on the top. I'm pretty sure that's not the standard order, but the Internet says it's okay. ;-) Felicity is still growing in her last four baby teeth; the bottom ones are more grown in than the top ones. I'd tell you where I am in the process of getting my wisdom teeth, but this has been over a decade in progress and...yeah. Let's just say I've had plenty of moments where I could definitely sympathize with my teething children.

Let's see...developmentally, I've lost track of where my kids are compared to where they were. ;-) Felicity can finally jump now and she even gets the concept of hopping! She likes singing along to songs; I don't think she's quite tone deaf, but she's definitely not quite to the point of matching pitches. And her enunciation leaves something to be desired. But at least now she can let me know in words some of things she wants: popcorn, rolls (tootsie rolls, that is), choc-ate mi'k, apple, staw-bees, and dee-doos (her name for pickled okra; we haven't figured that one out). She still isn't very consistent in her eating habits, but she's nearly always in the mood for whatever Josh is eating. And I'm starting to see a pretty strong correlation between Daddy time and eating and sleeping well. She's definitely a daddy's girl! 

And, just so you can appreciate Josh almost as much as we do, getting that Daddy time in looked like this yesterday:

Josh hasn't had a real day off in over a week and a half, maybe longer; I don't remember. Yesterday, after barely getting enough sleep to call it a night, he was out the door in time to interview people at 9AM. Turned out the 9AM had to move to 12PM, but anyway...Josh started his shift at Pizza Hut shortly thereafter and got home right around 2:30AM. I've had very little success trying to figure out a consistent schedule for the girls to sleep, so even if I get them to sleep shortly before Josh gets home, they wake up like they've just had a nice, late evening nap. :-P So I just gave up for yesterday and let them take long afternoon naps. And so it was that they were both wide awake after two hours of trying to get them to sleep. So after a super long day and hardly any sleep lately, Josh took care of both girls while I fixed him some snacks, and he and Felicity plopped down on the couch and ate food. Never seen a happier little girl...

And this is our family time lately. :-P Felicity is definitely much happier when she has spent time with Josh, so hopefully we can figure out some other method of making that happen, because there's just no way staying up into the wee hours of the morning can be the ideal for a toddler. On the other hand, getting her to bed super early would mean her possibly getting up and staying up in the wee hours of the morning, which means little to no sleep for me. And a slightly earlier bedtime means her getting up just a few hours after I go to bed. I am not really worried about when I get to sleep, but I do like to be well-rested in general, since it's a lot easier not to be grouchy that way. ;-) So I do prioritize getting enough sleep. If it doesn't work out one way, I'll nap during the day and I'm always super grateful I don't have to go to work. But I'd love to try to get as much of my rest during a normal sleeping period as possible.

Oh, yeah, about Josh...things seem to be going pretty well at Pizza Hut. I definitely think he has found his niche in managing people. He cracks me up with all his creative (and apparently quite effective) ideas and his use of gadgets (fish scales, a laser thermometer, etc.) I'm not like him at all, so innovating and buying things to make life easier and measurements more precise would never occur to me, but there he is figuring out all sorts of ways to improve everything. That, also, is his strength - taking an already-existing system and improving on it, fine-tuning. Whether he'll stay in the food industry long-term is questionable (long-term being the rest of his life; hopefully he stays with Pizza Hut for several years), but management so far seems to suit him well. I can definitely see that many things have challenged him in a way he never experienced before, but he has embraced the challenges beautifully and I'm excited to see him continue to succeed.

Meanwhile, it is a bit lonely here at home. I very much love the two people who are my constant companions, but their conversational skills are rather insufficient for carrying on any sort of intellectual dialogue. I am an introvert, but I do like interacting with people and I kind of miss it. Hopefully I'll be able to remedy that somehow eventually. For now, I'm doing what I've always done in the lonelier times in my life and spending a lot of time on introspection and seeking God. My major focus in the present is on parenting. I want to know what kind of relationship is "healthy" to have with my kids, for the present and the future. I want to know what methods of training them are most Biblical and constructive. And I want to learn how to teach them coping skills that will help them deal with all that life throws their way, good and bad. And I want to know how to share the Gospel with them in a non-manipulative way so that, should they embrace it, it will be sincere and real. And of course I want to find out what things in myself must be pruned and what things must be healed because I don't want any of it to get in the way more than...I dunno...it must? 

I'm not perfect. I know that. I know that ultimately my kids will have to accept that about me and move forward with their lives in any case. But my desire to learn and grow is greater in knowing how much it impacts my interaction and relationships with them. I'm glad my parents have set an example for me in this in being teachable and humble and loving unconditionally. I'm afraid it'll take a while for me to get there and, as is the nature of parenting, I probably won't have it all figured out till it's too late to be useful in my own parenting. But I guess that's the beauty of being able to ask God for wisdom - He gives it even when I don't have all the life experience and the cool thing about it is I can't take any credit for it, either. ;-)

 She crawls! Well, mostly. She still drops down on her stomach occasionally for no apparent reason (she doesn't scoot much; she just crawls a bit and then drops down and then gets up and crawls more). Mary is six and a half months now, a full month ahead of Felicity on the crawling thing. She can get into a sitting position and into a crawling position on her own and she has started pulling herself up on things, but not quite to a standing position yet.

Her sense of adventure is climbing up on a six inch tall box. :-P LOL! And then she cries because she doesn't know how to get down. Don't worry. I'm trying to teach her how to get off the couch and stuff properly, but so far she hasn't seemed to make the connection. Hopefully soon...meanwhile, I try to make sure she sleeps in between us at night so I don't have to worry about her falling off the bed. And she sometimes takes a few of her daytime naps in the playpen, though lately she's been a little fussier. Maybe we can blame it on the third tooth growing in? It's a third bottom tooth and I can't figure out if she's getting teeth out of order or if she has an extra one like I did. :-P I guess only time will tell.

Felicity is going to turn two on Thursday and she has finally figured out the concept of matching. We haven't quite gotten to the point of her understanding turns and the whole memory game, but at least we're getting there. She did remember where stuff was when I tried playing it with her once. She watches kid shows a good bit, including Leap Frog, so she has started saying names of letters and numbers, but I don't think she's made the association just yet. 

And nothing pressing for me to do, so now for the updates I've been wanting to write down for a couple months now. :-P :sigh: I don't think Mary's developments are going to be nearly as well-documented as Felicity's, but I guess that's the fate of a second child. Though, for the record, a lot of the reason I don't post updates on her as often is because she's much more cooperative about letting me get other things done. So with Felicity I had a lot of computer time because she would nap in my lap (and generally only in my lap), but Mary will very happily sleep in bed, in the stroller, in the swing, wherever it is she happens to be when she's tired. So this translates into me getting dishes and laundry done more consistently and also me spending a lot less time online, at least when I could actually be typing. I'm able to browse with her in my lap, turned so that her grabbing won't hurt anything.  But that makes typing impossible since one-handed is just too time consuming!

Anyway, updates...

I used to want a ton of kids, but now I'm wondering how in the world I'd be able to cuddle them and spend tons of time with them since it's already a challenge with two. I feel quite mean for nursing Mary when Felicity wants to be rocked and cuddled, but sometimes taking care of them one at a time is just more efficient. And of course I still want to spend plenty of time with Josh. :-D Prioritizing essentially means figuring out how to make all the peripherals happen without really focusing too much on them. Mostly I've just learned how to do household tasks in much shorter time increments.

The good thing is that Felicity, who is going to be two at the end of this month, is starting to become a tiny bit helpful with some things. She can pick up trash and put it in the trash can. I've been working on having her do this particularly when she makes a mess (like candy wrappers from candy she has just eaten) and so of course she is also cleaning up after me. :-P Not too long ago, I gave her a cleaning rag and showed her some dirty spots on the floor; before long, she was finding and cleaning up dirty spots on her own. And she's even starting to become somewhat helpful with Mary, entertaining her and trying to quiet her when she's fussy. Or, if I'm sitting with Mary and need a spit up rag, I can usually ask Felicity to get one if there is one handy (Felicity is pretty OCD about cleaning up spit up anyway, so half the time she'll bring a rag when I haven't even noticed yet that I need one).

Two things that I've been wanting to work on with Felicity are weaning and toilet training, so I keep testing the waters with both, trying to see if she's ready. Communication is a big challenge for us right now. She talks a lot, but most of her enunciation is terrible, so we have difficulty understanding her. She's also not super big on talking on command, so there's never a guarantee she'll give us even a yes or no. At this point, I honestly can't tell whether she's just being difficult or if she just gets frustrated and stops trying as a way to cope. If we get her weaned and toilet trained within the next year, I think we'll still be well within a fairly normal time frame, so I'm not too worried.

Felicity still loves music and went crazy over the music at a restaurant we went to with her Uncle Eric and Aunt Noelle (in Texas) this past week. She heard the music and just started dancing in her high chair, smiling, just thoroughly enjoying the atmosphere. Felicity also likes electronics. When the X-Box has issues and needs to be turned off, all we have to do is ask. She already knows intuitively to hold the power button down if it doesn't turn off immediately. And her ability to figure out how to mess up cell phones is, well, maybe not that amazing but still a little frightening. She loves watching shows on NetFlix but is very selective about which ones she prefers and I haven't quite been able to pinpoint her taste. I keep thinking if she likes one show, she'll like another similar show, but it's not that simple.

As far as food, this is kind of a battle area as well. I've started to find that if I limit nursing and offer her a variety of healthy foods, she eats pretty well most of the time, but she still has days where all she wants is junk. She does like fruits and veggies, though, as well as cheese. So I try not to run out of those. She also loves chocolate, but that has been true her entire life, I think (Mary also loves chocolate). Josh and I like chocolate, too, so this is understandable. I wouldn't say we're addicted because I don't get headaches or have any other withdrawal symptoms when I don't have it, but I do really enjoy it. :-)

I'm trying to think if there's anything else noteworthy about Felicity and I just can't really come up with much. The first year is huge with developing motor skills like scooting, crawling, walking, but that's all long past. Felicity is still pretty clumsy, but she can walk and run just fine. I'd say her motor skill development is about as decent as mine. And I am terrible. ;-) Oh well. She looks like me. I guess she can be like me in other ways, too.

Now Mary is an interesting child. After having Felicity be so high maintenance, I've been surprised with how easy Mary is in general. I'm seeing why someone could say that the cry it out approach works. Mary doesn't usually last super long unless she genuinely needs to eat. Felicity would scream bloody murder forever like we were completely abandoning her, whenever we put her down. Mary actually enjoys playing on the floor or in a playpen. Mary is even pretty willing to get passed around to strangers (unless she's tired or hungry). She's extremely friendly in general, always trying to get our attention or even trying to make eye contact with strangers. Once eye contact is established with whoever it is, she flashes her really big smile and makes them smile in return, which makes her happy.

She's not big on music, but she definitely enjoys some TV shows, especially Curious George. I've gotten pictures of her sitting happily on the living room floor watching. For some reason, I never knew that babies could have the kind of attention span she does. If she gets bored, she looks around for something to play with/chew on. And she moves...she sits on her own pretty well. She still scares me a bit because she'll stop holding herself up all of a sudden and fall back or sometimes do controlled falls to the side so she can move around on her stomach. But she's certainly capable of sitting. She pivots on her tummy really well and has also recently started scooting, just forward so far that I've noticed. She reaches out as far as she can with her hands to try to grab stuff and keeps her hands there while she pushes her knees up (chest on the ground) and then pushes with her feet to move forward. It's a weird kind of scooting since she doesn't really use her hands to pull herself forward, but I guess it works for now.

She's almost six months old now and, while I think I see a couple of bottom teeth getting ready to come through, she's still toothless. She is very interested in food, particularly when we're eating ice cream or chocolate. She liked some cantaloupe I gave her the other day. But overall she isn't really that big on food. She acts like she is, especially if she's hungry, but just a few tiny bites usually satisfy her, so I'm guessing she's just wanting to explore. She seems quite well nourished, so I'm not as eager for her to eat food as I was with Felicity. I haven't weighed Mary since she was about five months old, but she was nineteen pounds at the time, so I'm guessing she has to be at least twenty by now. I'll weigh her again in about a week, when she's six months old. Dressing her is interesting. She's busting out of clothes that Felicity was able to wear a lot longer. By the time I get laundry done, it's usually time to retire the clothes because they're too small. I'm not sure whether that says more about my procrastination or her growth. I figured that since she and Felicity were born opposite seasons, whatever Felicity didn't wear would work for Mary, but it turns out that Mary is wearing all the clothes that Felicity was wearing a year ago. :-P

And diapers? Well, they're wearing the same size. And the diapers don't look small on Felicity or large on Mary. And Felicity isn't an especially tiny girl, either. Mary isn't really terribly obese, so I guess we can blame it on her build? ;-) I wasn't exactly hoping to have them in the same size, since smaller diapers are less expensive, but I can certainly appreciate the convenience aspect. But seriously...size 5 diapers at 5 months? It just wasn't what I expected. Mary has always had issues with diapers, though, in the sense that I've always had to make sure we have a blanket or something to catch overflow, no matter the size of the diaper or the brand. While she hasn't completely outgrown that, things have improved somewhat to the point that I no longer have to change her clothes at every diaper change (and the dirty diapers are finally fewer).

As far as sleep, like I said above, Mary will sleep wherever. She doesn't usually go to sleep on her own, but this is more because I'm not quite to a point where I feel ready to predict when she's ready to sleep with enough accuracy to force the issue. Since she's easy enough to nurse to sleep or get to sleep by walking around with her briefly (or even putting her in a stroller or swing), I guess I just don't feel like it's that important. She still sleeps with me at night, which I really enjoy as this gives me several extra hours to spend holding her without feeling obligated to do anything else (except when Felicity wakes up :-P). Getting her settled for the night sometimes takes a good while, but lately she has been tired enough just to drop off and be asleep. She nurses some during the night without waking up, which means my sleep is barely interrupted at all (at least by her). I want to say she sleeps an average of about eleven hours at night. During the day, I'm guessing that (on a day where she sleeps enough) she sleeps another three or four hours, spread out over three or four naps.

I guess that's about all for now.....

Josh is still enjoying learning all the finer aspects of managing a schedule and employees in his assistant manager job at Pizza Hut. He's also still working on getting the last few frustrating details of his Jeep figured out before he can use it regularly. I wish I could help him, but alas...I can barely drive (and I can't drive his Jeep at all). I don't know how cars work and don't seem to have much of an aptitude for figuring it out, despite Josh's explanations and even his carefully drawn illustrations. Between his job, the Jeep, helping me with the girls and grocery shopping, and trying to relax occasionally, he's definitely the busiest he has been in our married life and I think it agrees with him, because he seems pretty happy. I think it's less because he's busy and more because he's doing stuff he wants to do, but still...he's energetic, happy, and motivated.

As for me, at times I am quite bored, not so much for lack of things to do as because the more interesting things I'd like to do are harder for me to do while having to maintain constant availability for two rather needy individuals. Like I said, I'm learning to do housework in shorter increments of time, and that in itself has been a challenge for me, as I don't like being interrupted when I'm working on something, so my tendency is to avoid doing anything that might be interrupted unless there's no specific endpoint for it. Like, I'd spend all my time watching shows or surfing the 'net, because interrupting that doesn't make me feel like I started a task and never completed it. But obviously if I wait till there won't be interruptions, nothing will get done. But I still haven't figured out how to break through that impediment when it comes to more intellectual pursuits. Maybe soon.

"Recent" meaning the last couple months or so, I guess...

From 2011-02-28

From 2011-03-11

Ready to go grocery shopping, dressed in pink to avoid the usual questions about whether they're girls or boys. :-P

From 2011-03-13

We're giving up on the garden this year, but Felicity gets out there at every opportunity.

From 2011-03-15

Helping Daddy put together shelves in the garage

From 2011-03-16

I guess it was naptime and I wasn't keeping up.

From 2011-03-17

This is more like what naptime should look like, right? ;-) These days, I'm encouraging Mary to sleep in our bed, but as soon as she becomes more mobile, I'll have to do something more like the above, I imagine.

From 2011-03-18

Happy girls

From 2011-03-20

From 2011-03-20

Mary is generally so happy she's about to explode from sheer joy...and usually shrieks as a result (something Felicity has decided to mimic)

From 2011-03-23

From 2011-04-02