March 2011

March was a fun month! We celebrated Lydia's first birthday and enjoyed a quick visit from my parents! We also spent a weekend at the Wilderness Resort in Wisconsin Dells with the Evers Family! Other than 1 crazy snow-storm in mid-March, we're starting to see some grass and we're getting some warmer days!

I've gotten out a few times for walks with the girls! Yesterday Lydia thought it was hilarious to kick her boots off her feet as I was pushing her in the stroller! She just laughed and laughed every time I had to stop and pick up her boot and put it back on her foot! Today she thought it was hilarious to pull off her mittens and throw them outside of the wagon! Again, she just laughed and laughed every time I turned around and saw her throwing the mitten overboard!

Chad has had his eye on a newer boat and luckily, he just sold our boat today! So over the next month, he'll be busy checking out the new boat and hopefully, purchasing it! Makayla has been excited to go boating. One day she told Chad, "I'm all done with the snow, let's get out the boat!" She's also been admiring the new boat on-line with Chad. One day I was talking to her about our red boat and she said to me in a very know-it-all voice, "No, Dad is going to buy a blue boat!" She was very excited when Chad brought the red boat home from the storage shed earlier this week. She came inside and told me that we needed to build a bigger garage because both the boat and Dad's truck did not fit into the garage together!

Lydia has really started enjoying dolls this month! She likes to feed her doll a bottle or spoon feed the doll some pretend food! She also likes to take the doll in and out of the toy stroller and she tries to push the doll around!Makayla likes to put diapers on about 6 of her dolls and stuffed animals and then she'll go through and change the "poopy diapers" on each one of the toys! She has a toy garbage can which she fills with all the "poopy" diapers! She wraps them all up, just like I do when I change a diaper. Then she gives me the bucket of poopy diapers and I have to open them all back up for her so that she can use them again!

Lydia and Makayla are getting old enough to periodically play nicely together! However, most of the time they just taunt each other! Lydia will grab something that she knows Makayla is playing with and she just laugh and run away as fast as she can with it! Makayla will grab things away from Lydia and push or hit Lydia. Lydia is learning to push back and sometimes she pulls Makayla's hair. Sometimes, when Makayla grabs something from Lydia, Lydia will just look at me and put on a good crying show, hoping to get her toy back!

Here's a photo of me and the girls chillin' before bed one night! We weaned Lydia of her bottle this month since she seemed to be getting up a lot in the middle of the night wanting a bottle. She might have slept better a few nights, but she's full force into teething right now, so she hasn't been the greatest sleeper! I felt both of her top 1-year molars coming through in the past 2 weeks...hopefully the bottom ones cut through soon so she can sleep a little better!

Makayla has been pretty hit or miss with her potty training up until the last week of March. Actually, she gets the potty training concept, it's just a matter of her deciding she is ready! All of the sudden, she wanted to wear underwear all the time, day and night! She stayed dry all week at school, but had a few evening accidents at home. Last night was night 3 of wearing underwear to bed and she stayed dry all night! The first 2 nights she woke up wet in the middle of the night and we had to change sheets and clean her up! She must have remembered last night because she made it to the potty in the morning! In the past, she's gotten up to go potty in the middle of the night...so again it's just a matter of her deciding she's ready! Sometimes, I will remind her she's wearing underwear and I'll ask her if she has to go potty. She'll just say, "I'm fine Mom!" in an annoyed voice! Unfortunately, she's not always fine and she'll have an accident shortly after my questioning

Lydia LOVES Cheetos! She always wants more than 1 on her tray. Here, I gave her 4 at once and of course, she had to hold all 4 at once and try to eat all 4 at once!Lydia also doesn't like things cut up into pieces. She was using her front teeth to gnaw up a grape today...so I cut a few in half and gave them to her. She just took the cut ones, looked at them, threw them on the floor, and then pointed back to the bowl of whole grapes. I think she thinks they look like balls, which are one of her favorite things right now! She has a few favorite balls that she carries around the house. And she wants anything that looks like a ball...including apples and tomatoes that are sitting on the counter!

Here's a picture of Lydia and Grandma Sandoval! Lydia's 1st birthday was on March 4! We celebrated the following Friday with family and friends! Here's a picture of her cake: (which I would love to take credit for, but unfortunately, I did not make it...in case you are wondering...)Lydia wasn't too sure about us singing to her and it took her a few minutes to figure out her cake, but once she dug in, she loved it! Lydia had lots of help opening her gifts, which was fine with her! She was more interested in this big box that one of her gifts was wrapped in!We had a fun play date with my friend Louise and her two children, Ella and Jayden! It was quite amusing trying to get all the kids to sit still for a photo!Some of Makayla's new phrases are "taada" and "look everyone!" She'll say "look everyone" as she holds something up and slowly turns around to show it to everyone in the room! She also is very observant of when Chad, me, Lydia, and her are all in the same room. She will say, "we're all in here!" I took Makayla outside after our crazy 12+ inches of snow and we had fun trying to walk in the snow and then falling over in the snow and making snow angels! It was one of the first times I actually got outside with her...typically Chad takes her outside and I stay inside with Lydia!

Lydia is starting to be more verbal too. She can pretty clearly say: Mama, Dada, hi, and ball. There are a lot of things that I think she is trying to say, but that aren't too clear! For example, she will also say "tickle,tickle" as she wiggles her fingers by my neck! She also says "whoa" when she falls down! She loves to chatter and one of her favorite babbles is "doobaa" which she says about 5 or 6 times all strung together. She will say that and then I will say it to her and she will say it back to me! She uses sign language to say "more" and "all done". She can wave hello and bye. She will shrug her shoulders and hold her hands up when she is looking for something. She can also nod her head yes and shake her head no! She loves to hear us say "no" and then she'll just laugh at us! She likes knocking over a tower of blocks and she absolutely loves playing downstairs or taking a bath! If she hears either of those words (downstairs or bath) she drops everything and goes running to either the steps or the bathroom!

After daylight savings weekend, the girls got into weird sleeping patterns! Lydia was going to bed around 7:00pm and getting up at 5am! Makayla was not falling asleep until 10 or 10:30pm and we were dragging her out of bed after 7am!! Chad and I were getting tired of burning the candle at both ends! We've finally got them back to both getting up around 6 or 6:30, which is a decent time! And when we are lucky, they are both asleep before 9pm! Sometimes I think Lydia sleeps less than Makayla does...especially with her recent transition to only wanting to take 1 nap a day! Sometimes all she takes is one 90 minute nap! Makayla would sleep over 2 hours if we would let her! We started limiting her to 90 minutes so that she wouldn't be up so late at night!

Well, the girls continue to keep us going non-stop! Check us out again next month! :)