picky eaters!

ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!! e+c are getting so opinionated about what they want to eat. they won’t eat any purees anymore (this has been for about a month now) – EXCEPT – if they are the really expensive pouches that they can sip on. see below. I have surrendered and decided it makes my life WAY easier if I just use the pouches so I am going to go with it.

they also want me to change it up. I can’t repeat meal options more than every couple days or they turn their noses up at it. they don’t like bananas – too mushy. they prefer fresh food – any leftovers are rubbish. basically I feel like I am feeding them a carb and a cheese for every meal with a pouch mixed in for some nutrition. sometimes they want a fork, sometimes they don’t.  here are some of the looks they give me.

ellie being a goofer.

claire assessing the food on the fork.

apparently she didn’t like it.

claire has been squishing up her nose frequently at things.

ellie loves to slant and squint her eyes like this.

love those choppers!

in sweet news, I have been making lots of homemade bread because the kids are cranking through it. charlie, especially, loves my bread and will always ask for his pb&j on “homemade bread”. it totally makes the extra effort worth it.

eleanore’s first word(s)?!?!?

look at that precious little girl!!

if you had asked me two days ago if ellie (or claire) was close to saying any words I would have said no way. ellie babbles and squeals a ton, but nothing except “dada” really sounds like much. they say “mammmmm” only when they are really mad and crying in their cribs. yesterday ellie and I were look at this word book and I pointed at the dog picture and told her what it was and said “ellie, can you say dog?”. then she repeated “dooh” really softly and quietly and I thought for sure I was losing my mind. so I asked her again and waited a bit and sure enough a sound like dog (more like “dooh”) came out again. it was different than any of her babbling so I was sure she was trying to say something. I did get a little recording of it so I could show bill that night, but with charlie’s background noise and claire babbling and whining in the background he thought I might have been going a bit nuts. so with laura here today I thought I would see what she thought and ellie did it again! she said “dooh” multiple times when pointing at the dog picture. then we decided to test our luck – there is another picture with an apple and I asked ellie if she could say apple. laura and I will both swear we heard her say “a.pa”. I literally fell over laughing and looked at laura  to confirm I wasn’t losing it. she thought it sounded just like apple too (I mean as close as she would be able to say it at this age).  who knows if these were just her starting to say words or just flukes, but it is really fun to think about starting to communicate more with her and I love hearing her soft voice.

another little fun fact about ellie is that she will often grab unto claire’s clothes and walk behind claire when she crawls. it is hysterical. claire just keeps moving forward as if she doesn’t have her sister attached to her.

this is how she grabs on.

terrain park

charlie, bill and I got to get out skiing last week while bill’s consultant was out of town. he took a half day off and since laura was here we were able to both get out skiing with charlie. it was such fun and we had a beautiful day. charlie has gotten out to ski quite a few times this year. I think while he was skiing with pappy or g pops they took him off some jumps in the terrain park. so he kept asking to do that. I was less than thrilled because I know what the years ahead will bring if he takes to going off jumps. it makes me nervous already.

in the lodge before getting out on the slopes.

going up the lift. these two love their time together on the hill.

this was monumental. charlie now gets to get pulled when getting to different places on the hill versus bill having to push or carry him. bill’s legs are happy.

welch has a couple of quad lifts, but the terrain park is only by a double so I would ride behind charlie and bill. c’s legs are too short for them to hang over the lift so bill sits him on the lift with his legs off to the side.

going off one jump.

almost going to get some air.

as I am writing this, charlie and bill just arrived home from a night of skiing (10 pm now). charlie always comes back from skiing just beaming with pride and chatting about tons of stuff. he actually walked in declaring that he had an idea… “he wanted an iphone for his birthday!”. I don’t have the heart to tell him he won’t get an iphone for years bucko.

see what I mean!

this is claire every time charlie is trying to eat.

she climbs up his chair to get close and try to grab his sippy cup.

if ellie hadn’t still been in her highchair she would have been on the other side.

these two girls love, love, LOVE their big brother!

and this is what it is like when she falls. she acts like its no big deal and just crawls out and starts over.

ugh!

parenting is hard. really hard sometimes. I think it goes up and down. and charlie and I are in a deep deep valley right now. that kid is as strong-willed as me. the hardest part is that when it is just charlie and me (or bill or any other adult) he is fantastic. super fun to be with, obedient, respectful, etc – just a delight to be around. but when he is home with his two very busy, very interested sisters he transforms from a little boy you can talk through challenges with to a little boy who reacts quickly and is often mean. now i know it is hard to have two little rug rats always wanting to be right at your side and playing with your stuff, but even if they are playing with something totally different he will run over and want to take it and play with it (even something really babyish). he has 5-8 minute glimpses of perfection – where he is the sweetest, most kind big brother. he will play hide and seek with them, get them toys, point out pictures in a book, but it is as if he can only handle so much and then he gets jealous and doesn’t know how to handle himself. we have talked through all these feelings and I just purchased a feelings book that we have been reading, but it is challenging to have the time to really talk through every correction when I have 2 other little, pretty demanding, people to manage (right now – “manage” means saving them from every high place they climb up to). I try not to bark at him about everything, but sometimes I feel like every other minute I am correcting, asking, reminding him about something. I can’t let him push his sisters over when they try to get to his cars. I can’t let him take something directly from them. overall I just feel defeated. mostly because he is getting more disrespectful with me by the day. out of any behavior I cannot handle being talked sassy to, but I find I am hearing it more and more and my response is getting more and more snappy because I am about to snap. obviously something is not working and I am hoping having bill home this weekend will help get us back on track. he needs to have someone else correct him in a different way and bill is so good and managing his emotions and words. it will be good for me and for charlie.

the other other thing I have to mention in this rant is that when you take an almost 3 year old little boy and put an iphone near him he becomes an animal. a crazy, obsessed, out of control animal. we don’t let charlie play with our iphones – occasionally he can watch a “mater” you tube clip on it, but that is usually a reward (which he has been not been getting a lot lately). our friends, aunts/uncles, grandparents, etc do let him play on theirs and the kid can navigate that thing better than most adults. he literally loses his marbles when it is time to be done unless prior to giving him the iphone you set up an expectation. with charlie you have to present the situation and talk him through what is going to happen when he is done with the phone/dvd/tv/etc before you give it to him to ensure that the ending is smooth (ie: charlie you are going to be watching numbers land soon – when you are done what are you going to say? “thank you mom”). if you do that he is usually pretty good. when bill and I were talking about what we should do with his iphone/ipad obsession I almost wanted to cut it out completely, but bill had a good point that technology will be a part of his life forever. at some point he will have to start learning how to manage technology. however, we have joked that if we wanted to stop parenting now we could just purchase him an ipad and we would be good to go for about 3 years.

thankfully I read a blog post the other day that talked about how as moms we really want our kids to be obedient, well-behaved, etc so that we look good. but in life our goals should not be to raise perfect kids, but instead raise a God loving, responsible adult. it was a great thing for me to read at the time because I need to remember what my ultimate goal is. charlie is definitely pushing me to pray harder and to lean on God for his wisdom and knowledge during these challenging times. I don’t even want to think about when he is in his teens. hopefully by teaching him that his decisions can have consequences we will be preparing him for the years ahead. prayers for patience and wisdom would be wonderful!

charlie I do love you more than you can imagine. I love spending time with you and you are a sweet, caring, goofy little dude. I can’t wait until we are out of this rut!

steps

both eleanore and claire can take 3-4 steps independently. they will usually only do this if they are holding some object in their hands and when they are going between 2 things (couch, bench, etc) or to me or someone else. they don’t fall forward like charlie did – instead they are so well balanced they just slowly squat down if they are getting nervous. I am hopeful that when they do eventually walk they will be well balanced, safe walkers.

toofers, giggles and more

claire has all of her top toofers through. ellie’s has 2 poking through, but not as much showing as claire.

charlie and ellie were giggling like crazy together.

I love when charlie is sweet and loving with eleanore and claire.

the girls fighting for a prime piece of a real estate on charlie’s car bench. he spends most of his day playing on this bench when we are home and the girls try with all their might to play next to him. I spend most of my day trying to keep him from asking for my help with the girls when they are trying to attack his stuff versus just pushing them when they get in the way. he really tries, but sometimes he just acts like a 2 (almost 3) year old.

my mom came to help for the weekend because bill had to go to vegas for a conference. when she arrived we snapped some pictures of nana with the girls.

nana & claire.

eleanore showing off her clapping.

this is blurry, but shows claire being pumped up.

and another crazy face from claire.

the kids loved playing cars with nana like this. she is so good at encouraging playing together.

continuing with claire’s goofing theme. my mom and I found her standing in her car seat while it was rocking trying to chew on the handle. ellie was actually standing next to her before I took this picture (I imagine saying “be careful claire…”). claire was so proud of herself.

claire with a block in her mouth. I love this picture. she can be such a ham!

you could say she is into putting things into her mouth.

on saturday, my mom and I took the crew to the pool. I had a friend who was out of the pool snap this picture with my phone.

what a fun weekend we had mom! thanks for coming to help!

in other news, eleanore has also picked up the climbing habit and is standing up and down without assistance. I love watching her conquer new skills. she is so proud.

february??

the weather was unbelievable the past couple of days. we have barely had any snow this winter and most of what we had has melted. every morning when I pull up charlie’s shade he says “oh no mom! the snow is melting!”. then the other day out of nowhere he said “don’t worry mom, maybe we can get new snow!”. little does he know I would be ok without anymore snow this year. anyway - my mom is here so we had the kiddos outside. it was hot in the sun! the temp was somewhere in the 40’s.

ellie was loving it!

ellie was delighted when she got a hold of lily’s ball. and she instantly tried to eat it! yuck!

claire was also pumped to be out in the sunshine.

claire assessing where she should take off too.

this is the closest I could come to getting a picture of the girls together.

otherwise the other pictures turned out like this.

ellie is just precious.

thanks to my mom for helping me wrangle the girls to keep them safe on the deck. it is going to get interesting this summer.

where was charlie this whole time? just playing in the wet, muddy yard. he loves to take rocks from our landscaping and put them through the gutter. it is going to be dangerous cutting the grass this summer. check out his plummer crack.

new shoes

girls always love a new pair of shoes and e & c are no different. they were thrilled when I found these beauties.

how cute are these???

enjoying their tea party with their new shoes on.

ellie laughing.