Our graceful baby...

Actually, she's not very graceful at all.

We live really close to our church and so, weather permitting, we walk there every Sunday. Two weeks ago we were leaving church and Sydney ran smack into a parked van. She fell to the ground pretty hard. She stood up and said, "I okay." and continued walking. She had a little bump and some bruising, but she was okay. I tried really hard not to laugh at her, but it was a really funny scene. Who runs into a parked car at full speed?

Then today, as we left church, Sydney fell face first to the ground. She scraped her knees pretty badly. She cried this time and Donnie held her, but then she wanted to walk again. She chose to walk in the grass the rest of the way home. I guess she figured it was safer than the sidewalk.

When ever Sydney gets hurt she asks me to kiss it better, but something about kissing a bloody knee kind of grossed me out. I could only kiss close to it. We came home and Donnie cleaned her up and put a bandaid on her knee. She seemed more upset by the bandaid than the actual injury.

We are going to spend the next few weeks teaching her how to walk - or either crafting a bubble wrap suit for her outside adventures.

Easter pics

About a month ago we took Sydney to have her picture taken for Easter. It was a complete disaster! We begged and pleaded with her for almost an hour to sit on the stand and smile. She wanted to sit on the floor and cry. We did everything we could think of to get a decent picture - we had given up hope for a good one since her eyes were all puffy and red.

Finally, we decided to reschedule and just go home. The next time we went to the portrait studio, we went earlier in the day, hoping she would be in better spirits. Well, she didn't cry, but she would only sit on the stand if she could have a bunch of random toys/props with her. We were so tired of trying to convince her that we gave in.

I don't know why she was so opposed to having her picture taken, after all, we take a million pictures a day of her!Plus, we take her to the same studio about every 3 - 6 months. We thought she would be comfortable with the whole thing, but now we are rethinking the whole studio experience. We might just wait until she starts school before we have any more "professional" photos taken :-).

A new bed...for baby brother

We have been trying to figure out what we wanted to do as far as bedding goes for baby brother. We will eventually put him in Sydney's crib, but since that is now in toddler bed form and currently being used, we have to have a back up.

We plan on buying Sydney a new bed once we get settled at our new school, but we will need something for a few months for baby brother. We have looked around, but nothing really jumped out at us. Plus, Donnie thought most of the ones I liked were way too expensive.

Last week all problems were solved when someone called and asked me if we could use a bassinet. They had a son in November, but are now preparing to move to Cambodia for a medical internship and no longer need the bed.

We gladly accepted the gift and now have one less thing to worry about. Although I am going to buy new sheets and bedding for it. White eyelet lace just doesn't seem "manly" enough.




Now that I am really into this whole nesting thing I convinced Donnie that we needed to buy the baby some clothes. We only bought a few things, but that helped me feel better. Since he is due in the summer and it will be extremely hot where we are going, we bought everything in short sleeves. Now he has a carseat, a bed and four outfits. I guess he can share his sister's pink blankets :-).

Sydney loves to sing. She also loves to turn in circles. Thus, she walks around our house all day spinning and singing. Today her favorite song is the theme song from "Elmo's World."

The words are:

La la la la
La la la la
Elmo's World
La la la la
La la la la
Elmo's World
I like my goldfish
My crayons too
That's Elmo's world!

It's easier to tell what she is saying when you know the words. It is really cute how she sings with such...passion. Donnie usually likes it too - except when it's midnight and she is jumping on our bed and serenading him :-0.

One step closer...

For Sydney's birthday we bought her a Winnie the Pooh potty. At first she would sit on it, but only if she were completely clothed. After a few weeks she would sit on it with just a diaper on. Then she thought it was a bowl for the next few weeks and wanted to eat out of it (we, of course, did not allow this because that is just disgusting).

Two weeks ago Sydney started taking off her clothes at will and sitting on the potty naked. She wouldn't use it, she would just sit there and then ask to take a bath. This led to many a night spent scrubbing pee out of our carpet as she would walk toward the bathroom and right before she would enter she would pee on the floor.

Needless to say, we were not very happy about her "potty time" antics. Finally, on Monday, she took off her clothes, sat on the potty and actually peed in the potty! We were so excited! We might have been a little too excited, because she seemed a little startled by our reaction and she has not used the potty since then. At least she knows that it's not scary to do so, she we still have hope that before Baby Brother arrives she will be out of diapers.

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Sydney likes to talk to Baby Brother a lot. She pulls up my shirt and kisses my belly often. She even says, "I wuv you Baby Brother." It is really cute, but I think that she thinks Baby Brother is a name for a belly. She was playing in the bathtub yesterday and I heard her say, "Wake up Baby Brother. Ohhh Baby Brother so cute." And when I walked in, she was patting her belly. I guess she'll be in for a surprise in a few months.

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Sydney asks me everyday if we can go outside and "play with friends." Only the "friends" she wants to play with aren't the little kids at the playground, it's the little birds. Yesterday we spent an hour walking around following birds, looking in bushes for birds, and making bird noises. Our neighbors gave us a lot of strange looks, but Sydney had a good time.

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A few weeks ago we celebrated Donnie's birthday. Sydney helped me to bake a cake - and she ate quite a bit of frosting when she was "helping" frost the cake. When it was time to sing "Happy Birthday," I lit the candles, but as soon as we started to sing, she blew out the candles. Finnaly on our fourth attempt, Donnie picked her up and held her so we could make it through the song. She still beat him to the punch though!

Around the house...

It has been really cold here latley. I'm not even sure if Sydney remembers what grass really looks like since we haven't seen any in months. The ground is just completely covered in snow.

For weeks I have been trying to convince Sydney to put on her hat, scarf, coat, and gloves before we go outside because it is so cold, but she refuses to wear anything except her coat (and we have to wrestle that on to her).

Yesterday she was playing in her room and she came in the living room and proudly said, "Ohhh. Sydney so cute!"

When I looked up, this is what I saw:

Now if only she would wear them outside~

She really likes to wear "hats" around the house now. Anything that will fit on her head will do. On Valentine's Day we gave her a bucket with some candy in it. She promptly dumped out the candy and donned her new cap.

We have also been working on getting Sydney to eat fruits. She will eat any meat, bread, or vegetable we put in front of her, but she refuses every type of fruit we have tried.

After months of begging and pleading, she finally decided to give bananas a try. Thankfully, she really likes them! Now on to applesauce....

Where the fun never ends...

Sydney has recently decided that she no longer needs sleep to function. At night she lays by her bedroom door for a good hour or so screaming and banging on the door. She has even discovered that if she hits her childproof doorknob enough times and with enough force it will break open and she can emerge victoriously from the dungeon.

We have tried everything, but nothing seems to work. Even after she falls asleep to the sounds of her melodic demon-like screams, she only sleeps about seven or eight hours - a far cry from the 12-14 her doctor says she should get.

If she only slept eight hours at night, but was happy and playful the next day we wouldn't care, but that is not the case.


Then again, maybe she's just crying because I haven't vacuumed the floor in over a week.

It's A Boy!

We had our ultrasound appointment today and found out that Sydney will soon have a little brother to torment and terrorize.

During the ultrasound, he would turn and flash his boy parts at us quite a bit, prompting the technician to say, "He sure is proud to be a boy."

That's the same thing we were told about Sydney - well, that she was proud to be a girl. How lucky would we be if our little boy turned out like his beautiful sister? It would definitely make for an easy home life.

Also like Sydney, he is a mover. He could not/would not stay still. He likes to wiggle though, and Sydney was a kicker. I can feel him move more than she did though. During the ultrasound he kept moving his arm up by his head to his eyes. The pictures didn't turn out as clearly as Sydney's did, so they are hard to see. I will try to add them in later and explain what I can.

We are very excited for this little gift of hormone balancing in our house. I don't think Sydney quite understands what is going on, but when I sit on the couch she pulls up my shirt and kisses my belly and says, "Oh, baby so cute."

I know she will be a great big sister, I'm just worried about having to explain to her the whole "boys have different body parts" thing.