Eve is getting pretty good at baby signs
lately and yesterday even put together a phrase! We were
visiting with Jim & Julie and eating Kimball’s ice
cream (yummy!!). Eve, my little beggar, was standing next to
me, sharing my ice cream. She would point at the ice cream and
grunt, but when I said “do you want more?” she’d do the sign
for more. Then she started doing the sign without the grunting
:) Then she did the signs for “eat” and “more” then pointed at
the ice cream. I think that counts as a 3 “word” communication!
Good baby girl!

As an aside, I was a
very bad mommy. I was eating chocolate peanut butter ice cream
and we were talking about how Julie doesn’t eat chocolate now
because it make Molly fussy. We were laughing and eating and
after several minutes I realized that I was feeding Eve
chocolate PEANUT BUTTER ice cream! Bad mommy!!! Of course I
realized this just after she did her impressive 3-sign request
:/ I had to make her go beg daddy for ice cream. Luckily she
was really only licking my spoon, not getting much ice cream in
her, and either didn’t get any or at least not enough of the
peanut butter to cause a problem. It reconfirms my thoughts
that if she does have an allergy to peanuts it isn’t too severe
of one. I am still very eager to get the testing done so we
know for sure! And I’ll try hard to remember that peanut butter
is peanut butter, even if it’s in super delicious ice
cream!

Lex has suddenly become very good with
“thank you’s.” Almost every time you give him something or do
something or whatever, he says “thank you” in his sweet little
voice. He also says, “Oooh, I love milk! Thank you Mommy!” It’s
very cute. And polite!

A few days ago, as I was trying to get us all
out the door to go somewhere, Lex found some stickers in our
art drawer. I told him that I bought them awhile ago to
encourage him to use the potty, but they didn’t work (just
being honest with the kid). He thought for a moment then said
“I wanna pee on the potty now and get a sticker!” This wasn’t
terribly helpful to my get-out-the-door plans, but you can’t
really say no to a kid who wants to use the potty. So we did.
While he was sitting there I asked if he thought it would be a
good idea to have a sticker chart and when he gets five
stickers he can watch a show (I was making this all up on the
fly). He loved the idea, so I hurriedly made a chart and he put
his sticker on it. He was very excited! After he got the first
five stickers I asked him to get me a marker so I could write
five more numbers on the chart. While I was cleaning the potty,
he got a marker and wrote on the next five squares. He didn’t
exactly write numbers, but he marked the squares and was very
proud of himself, so now he’s pretty much managing the chart on
his own :) When I went to the pharmacy Sunday I bought a few
new sets of stickers for the effort and he loved the puffy Pooh
ones (puffy stickers don’t actually stick very well though!)
Now he’s asking to pee on the potty frequently. Still wants
diapers instead of underwear, but that’s ok. Baby steps for the
little guy :)

It’s official – Eve is weaned. And she
effectively did it herself. Tuesday night we got some books and
sat down to read and nurse, as is our normal routine. Eve was
very happy about her book and did not want to nurse. I asked if
she wanted to nurse and pulled at my shirt (the baby sign for
nursing), normally she nods and tugs at my shirt eagerly then
tries to get herself into the nursing position, but Tuesday
night she just ignored me and tried to get me to read her book
instead. So she went to bed with no nursing. On Wednesday and
Thursday I asked her if she wanted to nurse at all the regular
nursing times (morning, before pm nap, and night) but she
always crawled away or ignored me. Wednesday night she slept
through the night, however last night she was up at 2:00am
wailing. I tried to soothe her and give her the plug, but she’d
have none of it. I put Lex in my bed (he woke up saying “Eve is
angry”) then I sat on the floor with her and for the first time
in days she tried really hard to nurse. I thought long and hard
about it (parenting is full of tough decisions) but decided not
to. Instead I snuggled her and told her that she’s getting to
be a big girl and we are all done nursing and I love her and
will always cuddle and other sweet things. Oddly enough, she
settled right down. After a few minutes I put her pacifier in
her hand and she popped it right into her mouth (instead of
throwing it across the room like she’d been doing). We stayed
that way for awhile, sitting on the floor, rocking back and
forth, me whispering sweet nothings to her, and her falling
asleep on me. It was sweet and a little sad to say goodbye to
the nursing connection.

Baby Signs are fantastic! Eve is on a bit
of a language burst and she’s been learning a lot of them
lately. She knows some animals (fish, dog, and bunny – thanks
to the Easter basket), but more importantly she knows nap,
plug, eat, more, and all done. This morning she was fussing and
I was about to put her in the high chair for breakfast (she’d
already nursed) but she started doing the nap sign over and
over. I got her a plug and put her to bed and she fell right
asleep! Had she not known signs we would have had a fussy
breakfast that she didn’t really want. The other day I was
going to take them both grocery shopping, but it was getting
late and into her nap time and she started doing the signs for
plug and nap over and over. Gotta love it!

Eve is sooo close to walking :) She’s been
cruising for awhile and now she takes a few steps between
things. I think as soon as she realizes she can walk she’ll be
on the go. At Dylan’s party yesterday I sat down about 3ft away
from her and called her. She had just cruised around the room
and reached the last piece of furniture and couldn’t go any
further. I called her name and she let go and took about 5
steps, controlled fall sort of steps, towards me. Any day now
she’ll realize that she’s actually walking :) Then she’ll never
look back!

On the recovering end of a cold Eve still
managed two big accomplishments today. 1) She cut a new tooth.
That makes two! And 2) she climbed up our step stool in the
bathroom this afternoon and then onto Lex’s toddler bed this
evening. She was really tired and basically waiting for me to
get done with Lex after the bath. She grabbed her doggie and
made an effort at getting into her crib (unsuccessful, of
course) so she went over to his bed and climbed in :) She’s so
adorable!!

Alan is reading them stories
now and Lex and Eve are so adorable. They’re both holding their
doggies and Lex is very silly tonight. For several minutes he
was trying to pull the words off the pages of the books. Eve is
reading her own little book and patiently waiting her turn.
They’re so sweet!!

Can you believe we’re coming up on a year
already!! She’s getting so big and so very happy. Last night
she was reading John Grisham, how’s that for advanced! :) She
didn’t seem to care for it much though, probably a little too
gritty for her taste. We’re celebrating the day by doing not
much of anything. We’ll end it with dinner with some friends,
so maybe she’ll enjoy that. Probably not since it will be past
her bedtime and no where near her bed. Oh well.

She’s so mobile these days, walking everywhere
with just the smallest bit of support. She also talks up a
storm and I think she’s started singing recently. She knows
several baby signs (daddy, more, all done, bye (kind of), and
down). She also has some phrases that aren’t clear, but
definitely sound like phrases, her favorite being “there she
is!” (have I posted about this before, it sounds familiar as I
type) She has also started climbing on things, such as the high
chair, hearth, and stools. She has definitely reached that age
where you have to watch them closely because baby goes up,
anything she can reach comes down, and anything that will fit
goes in the mouth. All together makes for a interesting age :)
And she is an amazing baby!

Lex is totally reading these days. It
amazes me. He likes to read the paper with me in the morning
and he sees words, sounds them out, and gets so excited :) He
read “Food Store” yesterday and then asked for help with
“Specials.” We read the comics together and he read “My dad got
a” in Baby Blues, but gave up on “speeding” and asked for help.
The longer words are tougher (obviously) because he can sound
them out, but forgets the beginning by the time he gets to the
end :) Alan says he has that problem too! It’s just amazing to
watch him go. He points out signs to me and even asks questions
about them (“no what?” he says, pointing to a No Parking sign).
My sister bought a bunch of Sunday papers while she was here
and Lex spent Monday with the papers spread all over the living
room floor. He walked around looking at them and pointing out
words. He’s also starting pointing out the page numbers. The
other day he said, “An that’s B5, yeah!” (still very self
congratulatory). I had to ask, “B5? What is B5?” and he pointed
right to the page number. I know I’ve said it before, but it’s
just so cool to watch little brains learn and grow.