visitors

last week, my friend katie drove her twin girls – eva & elise – down from woodbury for a play date. it was great to catch up and see our girls (and charlie) play. eva & elise are 20 months old so just a bit older than ellie and claire.  we had a great day and went to the park and played on the deck. eleanore and claire are definitely more aggressive than eva and elise, which I am sure had a bit to do with the fact that we were at our house. however, my girls do need to be watched when playing because they can be pretty pushy. thankfully, eva and elise handled the chaos well.

on the deck having fun. ellie. charlie. elise.

eva. claire.

claire getting out of the pink car in a weird way. she never wants to use the door in the normal fashion. I think she was climbing over the door when it started opening and then she was stuck.

we attempted to take a picture with the kids before katie left. ellie would not sit still and poor elise was tired and sad because charlie and claire had been in her face too much. this is probably the best one.

claire-charlie-ellie-eva-elise

classic.

of course when we are done eleanore wants to start modeling.

what a fun day! it is incredible to see these girls play together!

time outs, broccoli and more

eleanore and claire have officially entered “time out stage” at the schmitt house. they get put in timeout  for blatant disobedience (once they are warned once). since they have seen charlie model many, many time outs they definitely know what they had to do. the first time I put ellie into time out it was pretty effective. she was crying and just put her little hands on the wall and stood there. I couldn’t believe it. nothing like teaching charlie to put in timeout. I am still not sure if they actually think it is a punishment. sometimes they are sad, sometimes they cry, sometimes they just stand there. who knows if this will be the ticket, but as of right now this is my discipline strategy.

here is claire. I thought I had a couple pictures of ellie in time out, but I can’t locate them.

what is this for again?

for being picky eaters as babies, ellie and claire are really into eating a variety of vegetables. I have no idea when the switch happened, but I am going to enjoy it while it is here. I am sure the switch will flip soon and we’ll be back to eating bread and cheese for all 3 meals.

ellie is obsessed with corn on the cob (must be eaten on the cob) and broccoli. she will see them and instantly start saying “meme meme meme” and pointing.

ellie cleans the cob perfectly. charlie does an ok job.

ellie’s full mouth.

claire has finally joined in and starting eating the broccoli too.

claire’s full mouth.

the lighting on this picture is messed up because it was so bright outside this morning, but I wanted to include it. it shows how much claire (and ellie – but almost always claire) wants to do exactly what charlie is doing. charlie was standing against the window warming up this morning and when I looked over there was claire copying him. so sweet. by the time I grabbed my camera ellie was involved and then the whole party broke up. still a sweet moment though.

my 3 precious kids. always looking a bit hill billy. love them so much - hill billy and all.

for the record

a couple things happened today that I wanted to record. they are all very different, but still worth mentioning.

I had taken the kids to a park to meet up with friends after nap time and charlie had done a great job sharing. when we were getting in the car to go I asked charlie to look me in the eyes so I could tell him that I was proud of him for sharing his cars. after praising him he says to me “what’s that?” and pointed at my face. I asked him if I had dirt on my face or a zit (sometimes he is nice enough to point those out for me). he said no. then said “those green balls?”. it was like he was noticing my green eyes for the first time in his life! seriously?  I told him that they were my eyes and that I have green eyes and he has brown eyes. I thought it was both sweet and crazy that that is when he decided to take notice of them.

 

bill is working a lot. A. LOT. by the end of this week he will have worked for 26 days straight with only 1 day off during that time (last sunday – aug 12th). the last full weekend we had off as a family was july 28th & 29th. this should be illegal. actually, it probably is according to some resident governing board – not that it makes a difference. can you tell I am ready to be done with this year? the kids are too. they saw bill for a bit before heading off to church this am (he was leaving to go round, etc) and the entire way to church the girls were babbling back and forth “dada. daddy. dad. daddy. da dou.” they love him and miss him.

 

this last one takes the cake. prepare yourself for some unwanted information about ellie. I mentioned in a prior post that the girls are really into the potty. when I was cleaning up dinner tonight ellie came over to me and pointed at her diaper and said “da” (a pretty common sound around here). I said good job ellie for telling me you are going to the bathroom. I will change you before bath. then she ran away so I thought all was good. I finished cleaning up and started baths and called the girls in. I thought I would have to deal with a #2 from ellie so I had some wipes ready. but as soon as we got into the bathroom ellie ran to the little potty and sat on it and said “da” over and over. so I asked her if she wanted to go and took her diaper off. she instantly started working things up. she would push and then stand up and check the toilet to see if she had produced anything. she did this for a bit and I continued to just ask her to sit back down. by this point claire was in the tub and getting cleaned up. ellie continued to try to work on something and was moving around a bit. once I saw she was serious I kept her seated on the toilet. and all of a sudden she produced a seriously large poop! I was so proud of her. the bummer was she got pretty sad when she realized that I wasn’t going to let her touch it. so maybe she won’t repeat this great act for awhile, but either way I was impressed that she even knew what she was supposed to do on a toilet. I took a picture of the whole thing, but cropped it for the blog. I know – gross. but I had to show bill. good job ellie! I am so proud of you! now if we can just work on some more words (I must say eleanore is the more vocal one. she will repeat things and has a small number of words. claire prefers to use da dou with a few others. she just can’t help it).

are they ready??

so the girls have been VERY interested in their bodily functions for awhile now. I think it really started in july when we were in hudson a lot and the girls were in their swim suits (without diapers on because we were at the river) almost all day. they figured out when they should go to the bathroom (they would go up on the sand and go tinkle – it was hysterical).  they also love to get into the tub, stand up and tinkle. then they clap for themselves and each other. I will admit that I full embrace and encourage this. the faster they learn what it feels like to go to the bathroom and how to control it the easier they will be to train. claire will come up to me and tap her diaper and say “da” a lot to let me know she is going to be going to the bathroom. it would be helpful if she had some real words. 

so with their newfound excitement over going to the bathroom, I busted out the little potty chair to see if they wanted to sit on it before bath time. well – they were initially obsessed with it. they tinkled on it a few times, but mostly they just wanted to sit on it.

the other day, claire kept pointing at her diaper and walking over to the bathroom and so I finally just brought out the potty chair and let them walk around toto nanuck (totally naked). they had a blast taking turns on it. no one had any success, but that doesn’t matter. I really don’t expect them to potty train until around 2.5 yrs old. however, I have no problem talking about going to the bathroom on the toilet, letting them try, having accidents, whatever.

ellie on the toilet. claire giving pointers.

claire – cruising around sans diaper.

ellie – checking out the toilet to see if she had any progress.

crazy kids

the girls were playing like this the other day and I thought it was so sweet. it gave me hope that this will be a common scene in future years. they only lasted like this for 2 minutes before they quickly lost interest.

charlie built this tall tower on top of one of his cars.

crazy claire and eleanore. we have this splash table on the deck and instead of splashing around the table like most kids do they climb in and out of it and play in it while standing! I have given up trying to make them stay out of it because it is all they want to do.

claire is saying “da dou!” her favorite word. now if only I knew what it meant.

getting in and out over and over. she literally practices to master it.

claire was loving dunking her face in the water and blowing air and water through her lips.

ellie wanted in on the fun. I had to take these pictures standing up so I could react to catch someone if they started falling or slipped. they do a lot of crazy things in the splash table but I can’t usually capture them because I am making sure no one gets a concussion.

both going down to blow bubbles.

ellie changing levels.

ellie.

guess who is wearing pig tails?? claire!

I love the messy back.

ellie wasn’t so sure about hers.

auntie dotes came to visit and read “I love my mommy because” 100 times.

ellie showed off her “cute” smile. when you ask ellie to smile “cute” she gives you this. we laugh sooo hard!

she loves how funny it is!

I will end with ellie hiding in the closet after bath reading goodnight moon.

first pair of heels

eleanore and claire are loving trying shoes on. I found these cheap plastic heels for them to wear around and they are loving them. I will also add that I am loving how entertaining they are to watch in them.

here is claire wearing a pair and trying to hand me another shoe to put it on.

when you walk in plastic heels on the wood floor...

you take a few falls.

apparently for claire – just walking in the heels isn’t enough. she must climb with them too.

claire prancing around in my tank and heels. they are constantly moving so pictures are difficult to capture.

here is claire in action:

ellie working on getting a pair on.

ellie modeling one of my workout shirts.

ellie in action:

these two girls are so sweet. they are interacting and chatting more and more every day. here they were in their highchairs leaning in to touch heads over and over and giggling. what a gift it is to watch them.

their teeny pony tails from behind.

sweet eleanore. are you tired? don’t worry – my kids have never fallen asleep while eating. they are too honey badger for that.

claire giving charlie a kiss since he was feeling out of the loop with the girls playing.

ellie’s goofing smile.

claire’s goofing smile.

I was trying to get them to stay a bit longer in their highchairs so I let them draw with pens (they eat crayons).

ellie.

claire takes her coloring very seriously.