poor jack

He is such a good dog!!!

Avery putting dada night-night

This is what they do every night.  Av thinks it is so funny.  He has a pillow under his head that is under that pink blanket.  I guess that is how she thinks he sleeps.  

the girls with their grandmother

Camille in her new diapers

pictures

I know I have a lot of pics of Camille on here.  Av will rarely let me take pics of her and if she does Camille must be in them.  

how our girls got their names

Avery Louise
Avery was a name John and I both loved as soon as we heard it. Matt’s (John’s best friend) ex-girlfriend is named Avery. That is where we had both first heard it. We agreed on it right away. We didn’t know if Av was a boy or a girl until she was born and right up until the end we didn’t have a boy’s name. Even in the hospital when I was being induced at 41 weeks we still had nothing. I was panicking. We were just meant to have our little Avery. Both grandmothers have the middle name Louise. How lucky did we get on that????

Camille Anne
We took a family vacation in the middle of my pregnancy. We had a lot of names we liked but had not decided on anything. My sister and I were in this big huge bathroom of the house we rented getting ready. She said “what about Camille?” I loved it instantly. John not so much. He kept telling me no. Until one day I got a phone call from him saying he had changed his mind and he was ready to name our second little girl Camille. He happened to be in Europe when he made that call. He was staying at a house his company rented out for their employees when they were there. The owners of the house lived attached to it and had a little girl named Camille. He said she was so cute and she reminded him a lot of Avery. Until then he just didn’t think it fit for a little girl. Anne is my middle name. My mom’s name and her mom’s name both have Anne in it.

5 days and counting

Since I have nursed Camille in the middle of the night. She is doing great! I think John and I got really lucky though. We somehow timed it perfectly. Right when she started pulling up. I think she is just sleeping all night from being more tired because she has mastered a new skill and it takes a lot out of her. So being tired and sleeping all night is getting her out of the habit of waking up to eat. I hope. Every day she is sleeping later. She woke up at 5:30 am on Monday, 6:30 am yesterday and 7:00 am today. Can she do 8:00???

playmates

Camille and Avery are fast becoming playmates. It is so cute and I am so glad they have each other. They have already started fighting but that is part of childhood and I am glad they are getting to experience that as well. Camille will crawl right up to Av and take whatever she is playing with. It of course makes Av mad. Camille will have to learn she can’t just take things. Camille will also crawl up to Av and just kind of attack her. So far Av loves it. They just laugh and laugh together, it is the best sound in the world.

Avery can spell

Well not really but she is picking up some words. Last night I said to John “let me finish these dishes and then we can go on a w-a-l-k. Avery jumped up and said yay!!!! (Jack did too but he has known w-a-l-k for a while now) Guess we will start having to spell it backwards or something.

cloth diaper update

It is more work. I knew it would be and I am committed to doing it. I know it will get easier and easier the more I get used to it and the more I am able to get into a routine of it. The inserts are not totally absorbing it all like I had hoped they would. What the insert does not absorb the diaper is so that is good. She is not leaking and she is not wet but I will not be able to just change the pad without changing the underwear (glad John got such a kick out of that) like I had thought. That just means I need to pick out some more cute diapers for her. I will post some pictures of her sporting them. She looks cute in anything so it is no surprise she is cute in these.

cloth diapers

I am making the switch. I have fully committed and the new diapers will arrive at my house today. I am excited for it. I know it will be more work but I can handle it. After the last week dealing with all of Av’s poop I can deal with Camille’s. Cloth diapers have come a long long way. No more pins. They snap now and have elastic legs. They also are adjustable so they grow as the kid grows. So you only buy one set for the entire time the child is in diapers. The ones I bought are a diaper with an absorbent insert. You just change the insert if the diaper is not soiled. It is like putting a pad in your underwear. You don’t change your underwear every time you go to the bathroom you just change them if they are dirty. The diaper keeps the insert in place. I bought a diaper and a few inserts last week and used it and washed it a couple of times. It was a little more work to change the diaper but it will be worth it. I bought enough so I would only have to do laundry every 3 to 4 days, which I do anyhow. I really do think is it is going to be okay. Yes I may be crazy. I will let you know in a couple of weeks. I got them from www.greenerbaby.com if you are interested.

pulling up

When I went in Saturday morning to get Camille she was standing in her crib. That was the first time. It was so cute. She is barely taller than her crib so just the top of her head peeped out. She was very proud of herself. Smiling and laughing when I clapped for her. Camille is going to give us a run for our money. She is way more into things than Av ever was. We have a lot of baby proofing to do. Camille is already getting into the glass front TV cabinet. She has pulled over a floor lamp and a mirror onto herself. She was chewing on the coffee table the other day and she is always getting stuck under the coffee table. These were all things Av never did. In the bath the other night she crawled over Avery to get from one end of the bath to the other multiple times. She was examining the faucet and handles, she knew that was were the water came from. You could just see her mind working trying to figure it out. She is still our little bull too. She runs her head into anyone. The other day a little boy came to play and he was barely walking. She ran him right over.

Camille’s sleep habits

We finally had Camille’s nine-month check up last week. She was sick so I had to cancel the first appointment. The checkup went well. She is 17 lbs 2 ounces and 27.5 inches long. She is getting big. The doctor and I talked a lot about her sleeping. She is still up twice a night a few nights a week to eat. Part of it is that I don’t totally mind. I feed her and put her back to bed. Total awake time is 10 minutes. Plus I like the time with her and I don’t want her to grow up so in a way it is keeping her a baby to me. The doctor told me though she is too old to be doing this and I was creating a monster. He also said it would be a lot harder to stop the longer I did it and that it was kind of cruel to her to continue and then just stop someday when I was over it. So I cut her off this weekend. The plan was for John to go in there and comfort her. We started Friday night when John didn’t have to get up for work the next day. She did wake up Friday night but never really cried hard. We heard her talking and complaining but she went back to sleep so he didn’t have to do anything. Sat night she slept all the way through without making a peep. 8 pm-7:30 am. It was great. John bragged that he was that good he got her to sleep all night. I say she realized she might as well sleep if she wasn’t getting Momma. Again she tricked us. She was just waiting for a workday to keep us up. She woke up about 5am this morning. John went in there and it just made her mad. Very mad. We even got desperate and tried a pacy but it was a joke. She didn’t know what to do with it. It kills me laying there listening to John and her struggle when I know I could go in there and solve the problem in seconds. Especially when John has to get up early and has so much pressure on him at work, I know he needs to be sleeping. After about an hour of John going in there she finally gave up and went back to sleep. When she woke for good at 7:15 she didn’t even want to eat right away. So I know she does not need to eat in the middle of the night. It has been 3 nights no turning back now.

family weekend

We had a great great great weekend. We really didn’t do much but spent a lot of family time together. It was really nice. Everyone was in a good mood and got along great. I love weekends like that. It is amazing how one little 3 year old can dictate the mood of the weekend. If she is being difficult it puts us on edge pretty fast. I know my good mood is still from Avery being potty trained. I just can’t tell you how proud I am of that little girl. She is amazing. It took us a long time to get there but once we did she never looked back. She was even pretty sick with a weeklong case of diarrhea. Poor thing. I felt so badly for her. Most of the week she had to go big potty 8 or 9 times a day. She did it though and for the most part did it in the potty. She has not had an accident in a few days and she can pretty much go all by herself. I don’t even have to remind her anymore. She will tell me/go no matter where we are. We have had to work on the hand washing part but that is the easy part. She knows the term “skid marks” hehehehehe it is very funny how she says it.

The below video clips of her jumping are pretty special too. For a kid with low muscle tone jumping is a huge milestone. She couldn’t jump until now. During the school year last year her class would have circle time and at the end they would sing a song that involved all the kids taking a turn jumping. Av would just sit there and not participate. She knew she couldn’t do it and so she would not try (she is so much like me, embarrassed to look silly in front of others so she does not try things she thinks she cannot do). Her wonderful teacher Miss Beth kept encouraging her and finally got her to go last (short attention span of kids meant they were not watching her) and try to jump holding onto her hands. She is now jumping and running and loves doing it. She tells you “watch me jump one more time.” Then she jumps and then tells you “watch me run.” She does this over and over. She is so proud of herself and it is cute.

Avery jumping

Camille pushing up

veggies from our garden

Bull or Bulldozer

Some new things Camille has started to do:

• She is totally impossible to dress. Sometimes I put her on the floor and throw a leg over her chest to keep her from twisting over while I change her diaper. The second you put her on her back she rolls herself over and is either sitting up or off crawling away. It can be very very frustrating.
• When she is crawling around on the floor and decides she wants to be picked up she runs her head into your leg. She is like a bull.
• Or a bulldozer. She crawls over anything in her way including her sister.
• If she sees something she wants she just crawls over and takes it. Including pacys her friends have in their mouths. Her day care teacher told me the other day she kept doing it over and over again.
• She is relentless. We were outside the other night and she kept crawling over to the play area and grabbing a handful of rocks to shove in her mouth. I kept taking her back to her blanket and toys over and over again and again she would be right back at the rocks. It didn’t faze her or frustrate her in the least that I kept moving her from the rocks. It sure did frustrate me though.
• Baby yoga. Downward doggie is her favorite. She does it all the time. Not sure where she got it from. Pushing up, she will crawl over to a step or something low to the floor and push her legs out straight so she is bent over whatever she is trying to stand at. She does not know where to go from this position but I am sure it will not be long before she figures it out.

John

“Hi John” “John” “where are you John” were all statements made by Av this weekend. She has taken to calling him John. He will come back with “who am I?” and she will laugh and say “daddy.” The phases kids go through are pretty funny. Her friend Caroline has been calling her daddy by his first name too. I don’t think Av picked this up though, I think it is something that kids just naturally start doing as they learn their parents are not just daddy and mommy. I wonder when “I want a nack (snack) Melissa” will come out of her mouth?

No accidents

The weekend I have been dreaming of for months and months happened this weekend. She didn’t have a single accident!!!!! It was great. We did not stay home either. While out shopping for new pants for daddy at the mall she told me she had to go potty. We headed downstairs, she was able to hold it and go once we got to the bathroom. We don’t really even have to remind her anymore. She just runs and goes on her own. She even has had a little stomach bug and has had to go poop way more then usual and still no accidents! Kids are so funny they have no inhabitations. While on a walk yesterday she told me she had to go potty. I have read about that and knew it was okay in the world of parenting to let her go potty behind a tree. We headed to a little park on our street. No one else was around. She squatted right down and pooped like it was no big deal. She had not warned me that she had to poop. It took everything in me not to die laughing but I held it in and acted like it was no big deal and told her what a good job she had done. I didn't know what to wip her with so we settled for a leaf . Hehhehehehe I will remember to keep TP with me from now on.

Fun Weekend

We had a nice weekend. It was full of great friends and good times. Friday we had dinner with the Wootons and the Masons. We try to have dinner once a month together and rotate houses. This month it was at the Wooton’s house. The food and company were superb. While there Av decided to go poop on the potty for the first time. We were so happy but it was kind of weird talking and congratulating her about pooping at someone else’s home. She was so proud of herself and continued to bring it up throughout the night. It is the type of dinner conversation only parents of young kids would understand. We didn’t get the girls to bed until around 9 pm and to our great surprise they both slept until 9 am Saturday morning. Saturday afternoon we had a 1st b-day party for John’s cousin’s twins. We don’t get to see that side of the family enough so it was nice to be there and share their special day with them. When we first walked in the door Av was hiding behind my arm but by the time we left she was off playing in a room with adults and kids without John or I even being around. Saturday night we had a baby shower but it was not your typical baby shower. It was for a friend that John works with. They had a keg and a full open bar. It ended up being a nice night out for John and I. Sunday was a pool day. Camille is really a fish like her big sis Av.

finally getting better

So over a week later Camille is finally getting better.  She had a fever until this weekend.  Sunday and Monday she was still puny.   By Tuesday her right eye was almost swollen shut and she was bleeding from her nose.  I took her straight to the doctor.  He was kind of perplexed.  Between the eye drops and the meds he gave her she should not have still been that sick.  He decided to up the dose of the eye drops and to give her a stronger antibiotic.   He thought her sinuses were infected and that was why they were bleeding.   I was told that if her fever came back or if she got worse she would need an IV antibiotic.  Thankfully she is getting better and is more back to herself.  John was out of town for the last couple of days and the minute she saw him she was miss happy girl again.  She is in love, totally and completely.   She missed a week of camp.  While we were there picking Av up we ran into Camille's teacher.  She said the entire class had pink eye and they only had one kid there on Monday.   It's great she is already following the crowd and joining in on the fun.  

Amazing Avery

Avery is still doing so great with her potty training.  We have barely had any accidents and even at camp today she only had one.  I worried so long and hard about this instead of just trusting in her.  Again she proved to me what an amazing little girl she is.  I am so lucky to be her mom.  

Big 9-month girl!

Camille is now 9 months. She is getting so big. She is crawling. Has been for a few weeks now. She goes from room to room as she pleases and is very proud of herself. As soon as she is able to break free from the adult attending to her she busts a move for either the pile of shoes sitting by the back door or Jack’s water bowl. Her two favorite play toys. She can kneel now too. She crawls to something and kneels at it to play. It will not belong before it is a standing kneel and then she is pulling up. She jabbers and squeals all day long and will imitate some sounds. She drinks from a sippy and eats with her pincher grasp. Everything gets banged together and she is starting the fun “dropping” game. She is the most excited when her dad walks into the room. She still does that weird air sucking in thing to laugh. She shakes her head no appropriately. She has 4 teeth. Her hair is finally growing. She is still only 16lbs but is getting chunkier by the day. We have her in a big girl car seat still facing backwards. She does not seem to like it any better than she did the infant seat. She is pretty much eating anything and everything but some unusual things she does not like are cheese, bread and cheerios. I am still nursing her and that is going well. I love it. This last week she has been sick again. Boy when she gets sick she is sick. She had a fever that lasted 4 days. Now it is just a bad cold but she is still pretty miserable. I hope these weeklong illnesses are a thing of the past soon.

BIG, BIG, BIG news!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The potty bag is EMPTY. The bag I have had since Easter just waiting to reward Av when she goes to the bathroom on the potty! It had about 8 cheap little dollar bin toys in there for her and she is now the proud owner of all of them. I can’t tell you how happy and proud of her we are. It made my weekend. So it all started last week. I got fed up and went to the library and checked out every potty training book they had. I only got through one of them but the main theme of it was at her age cut out the diapers “cold turkey.” She had Friday off from school so I knew the 3-day weekend would be a great time to do it. So Friday AM we got up and “threw” her diapers away. We had many, many accidents on Friday but we kept going. Finally that night after Grandma and Pap-Pap arrived she ran into the bathroom by herself and a few minutes later we heard “I pee-peed on the potty all by myself!” She was so happy and proud. She must have repeated that sentence a thousand times that night. She did her happy dance as did John and I and G&PP. It was a big celebration. She had started to go pee in her underwear, realized what she was doing, and ran and finished on the toilet. On Saturday again we had multiple accidents all day long. It was starting to look grim again. John and I had a wedding to go to so we left. A few hours in we got a phone call. Av had sat down on the potty and peed! This time she had figured out how to make it happen when she wanted to and it surprised the heck out of her. Since then for the most part she has been able to do it. No poop on the potty yet. Yesterday her and Grandma went out for a while. They were standing in line paying for something and Av told Grandma she had to go poopie. There was not a bathroom where they were so by the time they got to one it was too late. Other than that she has gone in the potty. Last night in the process of reading one book she want pee 3 times in the potty. She likes her new skill! I am sure we still have accidents in our future but no matter what we are not going back to diapers so I feel I can proudly say that Av is potty trained!!!!! We kind of forced her into it but it worked and I am glad we did. At her age she realized she should be going in the potty but she didn’t know how and liked the conveniences of her diaper. Maybe we should have done it six months ago, but maybe she was not ready then. Who knows, all I know is that it worked and I am proud of her.

sick update

Well she has pink eye and an ear infection.  Ugh.   She weights 16.4 lbs.

Why is Camille sick again?????????

Teeth?  Not sure but I am really over it.  Poor little thing.  She is  so sad and pathetic unless she has meds in her.  This is day 3.  Heading to the doctor.  We are supposed to have her 9 month well checkup tomorrow.  Guess that is not happening.