A post about Elizabeth

It wouldn't be fair if I didn't do the same kind of post for Elizabeth. So here goes. Elizabeth has embraced her second year of life and all that comes with it. She understands the idea of "the terrible twos" and doesn't let us forget it.

She is very stubborn and when she wants something you might as well go along with her, or else you are in trouble. She is getting much better at school- she had a slight hitting problem associated with the always wanting things her way- and she seems to be retaining some alphabet knowledge. She points to letters and calls them 'A', so something must have stuck!

She is learning the letters and numbers and does plenty of crafts at school. She is learning to use the potty and she is pretty excited about her successes when she has them.She loves reading books and we read one every night before bed. Most of the time it is the same book, but every once in awhile I can sneak in something different.

Elizabeth also loves her sister. She always wants to do whatever Morgan is doing- without fail! If Morgan is done with dinner, then Elizabeth is done. If Morgan wants a snack, Elizabeth wants a snack. If Morgan has to go potty, then Elizabeth has to go potty....you see where I am going with this. It is pretty cute, but I don't think Morgan understands that Elizabeth really wants to be her friend. Nor does she understand that she is teaching her sister plenty of bad habits.

It's getting late and those are all the updates I can think of. I'm sure I will think of more and I will be sure to post about them. But I thought I would end the post by saying that all the pictures in this post were taken by our good friend Kate. Kate went to high school with Greg and she recently started her own photography business and this is the second year we have used her to photograph the girls. We even snuck in some family pictures. I thought I would share a few more of my favorites.

A post about Morgan

It has been awhile since I updated everyone on the girls themselves and since I have great new pictures to share I figured I would kill two birds with one stone.

Miss Morgan recently moved to a new class at pre-school. She is now in the Junior Kindergarten II room. It is essentially the same level she was in before, but now she is in the older class. So instead of being with three and four year olds she is with all four year olds. She thinks it's the grown up class if that tells you anything.

Her class is going back through the alphabet and they spend two weeks on a letter. So far they are up to 'O'. She can easily write her name and spell it for you, and it working on writing small words. She can use scissors, paint, markers, crayons etc. and seems to be having a blast at school. We recently signed her up for a dance class. The teacher comes to the school and teaches several classes throughout the week for all the different age groups. Morgan was very excited because all her friends take dance too. Hopefully soon I can sneak up there and watch a class!

She is becoming much more independent and likes to play by herself. We have fully entered the doll phase of life. Morgan loves playing with dolls (Barbies, My Little Ponies etc.) The other night I watched her play by herself and have conversations with the dolls for over 30 minutes! She does like to play with her sister from time to time, as long as Elizabeth does what she is told. Sometimes Elizabeth doesn't like that though. She also loves playing board games. So far she is a pro at Memory. I admit that the first couple of times I let her win, but now she beats me fair and square.

At the moment those are the only big updates I can think of on the Morgan front. But I thought I would end the post by saying that all the pictures in this post were taken by our good friend Kate. Kate went to high school with Greg and she recently started her own photography business and this is the second year we have used her to photograph the girls. We even snuck in some family pictures. I thought I would share a few more of my favorites.

Thanks again Kate! www.kshdesignsonline.com

Morgan's First Party

One day when Morgan came home from school I realized that she had mail in her pile of papers. It was her first birthday party invitation! In her classroom there are maybe 8-10 girls, and one of them, Abigail was turning 4. So her brave parents invited all the girls to Abigail's birthday party. Morgan was pretty excited.

The party was being held at Bounce U and Elizabeth, Greg and I were allowed to come too. Morgan waited patiently for the day to arrive and when it finally did Greg was at Ball State's homecoming that day so I braved the trip with both girls! We made it to Bounce U and headed into the place and from the moment we walked in Morgan was in her element. She had all her little friends and they were all full of four year old enthusiasm. The party started by getting all the girls together so they could watch the safety video.

They all sat very still and watched the video. You would have thought it as a major motion picture!

Finally it was time to bounce. The great thing about a party at Bounce U is that you get the entire bouncing room to your self. So there were about 10 kids and their parents in a room with several bouncing toys. So there was no waiting or bumping into each other. It was pretty fun. And they even let the parents play!

This is Morgan and Elizabeth in the boxers ring. They had giant boxing gloves that you could put on and box. The only problem- the boxing gloves were about the same size as Morgan so I don't think she could have put them on even if she wanted to!

Elizabeth didn't seem to mind the fact that she was crashing the party. She was the youngest kid there by far. But she had her own fun.

At one point I finally found Morgan in the boxing room. She was having so much fun with her friends!

Before the party moved to the lunch room (which then opened the room for another party to start bouncing) all the girls got together for a picture. The girl to the right of Morgan in the picture is Abigail.

After bouncing the kids were pretty hungry and by this time it was noon. So we headed into the party room to enjoy pizza and juice packs.

And of course there was cake!

All in all Morgan had a great time at her very first birthday party. And then two weeks later we went to her second birthday party for our neighbor's daughter. It appears that my daughter is quite the socialite! I guess I better start keeping a list of attendees for her birthday party next summer.

It's Potty Time!

Over the last couple of months Elizabeth has shown more and more interest in going potty! Which is great news. I decided not to push the issue and if she is into it then great- otherwise I will wait. Well she sees her big sister go potty and thinks it's a great idea.

Every night we have to read "A Potty For Me". I've read this book so many times that I can recite the thing by heart. For the first few weeks Elizabeth just seemed interested in sitting on the potty. She knew exactly what to do and would get the toilet paper when she was ready to be done and then we flushed the toilet and washed our hands. So one night when she said "I wanna potty." I figured we were just in for another trip of sitting on the potty but she surprised me! All the sudden I heard a tinkle and I looked at her and she must have realized how excited I was because she smiled so big!

It caused an immediate party of clapping, cheering and candy eating. Elizabeth was pretty proud of herself. Later that night she asked to go potty again and actually went! Since then we have been having sporadic success. Most of her issue now is timing. She will tell you she wants to go potty- which actually means she just went in her diaper.

For now we are going to keep working on it and I will need to stock up on M &M's which are her favorite reward!