Catching up...

It's been awhile since I posted much about what's been going on, so here goes...

In the last nine months or so, we:
- fenced our yard (back yard still a work in progress)
- found out we are having another baby girl
- connected to public water lines (we were on a well)
- had a sump pump installed in the basement to keep it dry
- went to Disney World in Orlando, FL
- demolished the old carport
- got layed off (just me)
- went to Paris (me, with my sisters)
- had our big redwood tree limbed up
- started building a new room to move the computers into
- had several bushes and small trees removed from our property
- built a small swingset and setup some outdoor toys
- had the entire roof replaced on our house
- potty-trained Ana during the day (still not ready overnights)
... and probably a few other things I'm not thinking of at the moment.

It's been a busy time!! We're now nearly finished with the new room and getting ready to bring home our new baby, Cassandra, who is due to arrive any day.

Bart is busy every day with finishing the new room, or at least whenever he's not working. I've been trying to clean the house and keep up on the housework - and just when I think I'm starting to get a schedule together, I'm suddenly feeling very pregnant and can't get off the couch to do anything. Hopefully I'll get my motivation back again soon.

I've also been trying to post pictures more often of everything going on, so you may have seen some of those. There will be more new ones posted tonight as well.

There's one set of pictures I'm strangely excited about - newspapers from 1953, found inside one of the walls of our house a couple days ago. They were apparently used as insulation when the kitchen was last remodeled. The papers were old and gross, but fascinating and I took pictures for as long as I could stand to keep the dirty pages in my hands (and kept a bottle of Purel handy!). While the last wall was being built tonight, I slipped in the free Columbian I get every week so the next person to tear into this place can find an old paper too - I'm curious when that will be, who it will be, and if they will be as interested in finding it as I was.

So anyway, if you're in the area and see our cars in the driveway, feel free to stop in and check out everything we've been doing or just say hello. Friends and family are always welcome to drop by, and soon we'll have a new baby to show off too!

Hope you are all having a good summer!!

~Jen~

Site Updates

I spent a little time today and updated Ana's part of the site. There's an updated list of her ASL signs (over 100 now!), some of the words/phrases she knows, and her stats from her latest Dr appt. She's growing up so fast!!

The Miracle Potty Training Tool

Last week Bart and I were discussing how to stay consistent with Ana's potty training, since our schedules are pretty hectic. We've heard from several "experts" (aka - other parents that have gotten past the potty training stage) that it's really US that need to be trained first, to take Ana to the bathroom once every hour. The problem with this is that we're busy, and we lose track of time easily (apparently, more easily than other parents). To help us, I decided to buy a simple kitchen timer to set whenever Ana uses the bathroom, to remind me to take her again before an accident happens.

I never imagined how powerful a $3 timer could be! By the fourth time it had gone off, and Ana had heard from me only three times "When the timer goes off, it's time to go potty," she perked up at the sound and said "Potty!" She was in her high chair at the time, so I got her out and she ran to the bathroom. That was Saturday morning (we started the timer Friday night) and by Sunday night she hadn't had any accidents - an entire weekend accident-free, with diapers only overnight and at naptime (which she woke up from dry both days), and no messy, wet clothing changes.

We're finally getting there... it's only a matter of time now before she's staying dry overnight too.

The end is in sight

The end of potty training, that is. Ana has been getting much better about using the toilet, and is having fewer accidents. Today, we made a trip out to Fargher Lake to a birthday party, spent a couple hours there, and made it all back home again without an accident. It was our first successful outing without changing diapers or clothes!!

It seems that she is starting to catch on, and with consistent support at home and daycare she should be out of diapers by the end of the year - hopefully much earlier though.

Our Little "Big Girl"

Ana had her 2 year check up today and weighs in at a whopping 26lbs! She's moved up to nearly the 50th percentile for her weight (she was closer to 25th I think) and just over the 50th for her height (was around 35th before). Apparently, she had a growth spurt over the summer!

Current stats:
26 lbs
34 inches tall

Most height predicters guesstimate that she will be approx 5'8" tall as an adult... I guess we'll have to wait and see on that one.

The Perfect Mommy-Daughter Date

Ana and I just had the most fun night together, and she was an absolute angel through the whole night! I've been feeling overwhelmed by her lately, with Bart at work so much, and tonight made it all so much better.

First, I picked her up from Mom's. She had a chance to ride Mom's horse while I was there, and then said goodbye, gave kisses, and we got in the car and left. The fastest and easiest pick-up in quite some time.

Then, we drove to Kid's Club in Salmon Creek. We played for over an hour, climbing through the jungle play yard and sliding down slides. We both had a blast. I was exhausted, and she was giggly and playful the whole time - even with the other kids. Once again she left without a fuss when I told her it was time to go.

On the way home, we stopped at Fred Meyer for a little shopping. We wandered around a lot of the store, but she didn't fuss about being in the cart the whole time. An off-duty employee noticed us by the bakery and brought her a cookie, and she didn't get shy like she normally does. She was talkative and friendly with the cashier too, and on the way out, showed off her ASL skills to another customer. I'm not trying to encourage her to talk to strangers, but it's nice when she doesn't start screaming the moment somebody looks at her.

At home, she played quietly when I was on the phone and then got ready for bed when I asked. She got on the toilet and went potty, then got her jammies on and climbed right into bed. I tucked her in and she gave me three sweet kisses - one on the lips, then one on each cheeck - a nightly ritual she started on her own a few weeks ago.

My little angel is growing up so fast...

Ana's Birthday Party

Pictures (and maybe video) will be posted soon - hopefully by the end of the week.

In case you're wondering, the day was okay ... not as good as I had hoped, but overall I guess I can't really complain - Ana seemed to enjoy it, and that's what really matters. Here's how everything went... (It was a long day)

Since the park picnic shelters are reserved on a first-come, first-serve basis, I tried to get there around noon to reserve a shelter. Failing this, a good friend of ours got there around 12:30 to hold the shelter until I could make it (Thanks again Don!!). After picking up the cake, ice cream, and nearly a dozen balloons, I got to the park at 1. WalMart's company picnic ended up being at the shelter by the playground, so we got the big shelter by the parking lot.

Don and I sat around chatting and doing a little bit of setup at the shelter until a family with a few dogs arrived around 2:30. They took a seat at one of the picnic tables in the back of the shelter, and Don and I decided they were probably just taking a break in the shade and would leave before the guests arrived. We were wrong... they were soon joined by several other families, and within a matter of minutes had taken over the entire back half of the shelter. Errrrggghhhh. They weren't exactly rude to us, but certainly not friendly either, and NOT keeping track of the kids at their party, who kept coming over to our party. At one point, I had to ask one of their guests to stop smoking inside the shelter because the smoke was bothering our guests, and later, they stripped down a young boy in the sink (which happened to be in the front part of the shelter with our guests) completely nude to wash him off, and LEFT HIS DIAPER IN THE SINK!!! Yuck!!

Anyway... I had decided this year to invite some guests at 3pm and others at 4pm, since it seemed that there were people uncomfortable last year when everybody was there together. The idea was to have a chance to party with the 3pm guests, then anybody uncomfortable in the crowd could leave and anybody that wanted to could stay and party with the 4pm guests. For me, it was like planning a really long party... but it was really two parties back-to-back. We had two pinatas and two cakes, and plenty of snacks and drinks.

Bart arrived with Ana at 2:50, fresh from a nap and ready to play. None of the 3pm guests arrived, but Don was still there, with his two sweet girls going back and forth between the shelter and the playground, and his wife Erin stopped by for a little while as well. A few of the 4pm guests showed up early, and we got the party going around 3:30. We broke open one pinata when the first group of kids got restless, then had cake and melted ice cream (note to self: ice cream does NOT stay frozen in a cooler full of ice in 80 degree weather for 3 hrs). Ana opened her presents with a little help from some of the younger guests, who were bored with her "open a toy and play with it for 5 minutes" approach and finally, we broke open the second pinata.

Thank you to everybody that made it to the party, and many, many thanks to the guests that lingered until the end to help clean up as well. I appreciate you all very much.

A big-girl bedroom for our Big Girl

Ana's crib has been converted to a toddler bed, so she can now get in and out on her own. We also rearranged and reorganized her bedroom to make it a fun place for her to play with her toys. She picked out a new Tinkerbell sheet set that matches her purple walls, and we added a Tink growth chart to see how big she is getting.

Saturday morning she woke up and opened her bedroom door on her own to join us in the living room. She was wearing her pajamas with the onesie unsnapped and hanging out on the outside of her pants. Closer inspection showed that she had already removed her pants, unsnapped the onesie, removed her diaper, and then pulled her pants back on. She proudly showed us her dirty diaper in the pail in her room too. She's practically changing herself these days!!

Potty Training Update

Ana has been letting us know more regularly when she needs to use the toilet, but for the most part only for us at home. She has shown that she doesn't like being in a wet diaper though, which is a really big step.

She has made a habit of removing her diaper - and any clothes in the way - each morning when she wakes up. To prevent this, we have had to use a diaper pin to keep her onesie on (she can undo the snaps). Even so, she has occasionally managed to undo the tape on one side of the diaper and move the diaper enough to cause a small mess.

This morning however, she managed to pull the onesie down from her shoulders and all the way off, and then removed the diaper. After putting her on the toilet, I made the call to her daycare and asked if she could wear panties today, and they agreed that it's time for her to move her up to "big girl" status. So, for the first time ever, she wore panties in the car and at daycare!

First Trip To The ZOO!!!

We took Ana to the zoo for the first time today and had a blast! Her latest favorite movie is "Happy Feet" and she says/signs "Penguin" all day long, so we took her to see the real penguins right away. She went wild watching them; she was really excited.

We also saw fish, elephants, zebras, a giraffe, baby goats, turtles, monkeys, bats, bears, and a whole lot more. On our way out, we stopped at the gift shop and bought a toy penguin to take home.

Potty Training Update

Ana has started taking her pants and diaper off during naps and bedtime now for over a week. It's been frustrating to get her to keep her clothes on to avoid an accident in her crib, but we've managed pretty well with some strategically placed diaper pins and we've only had to change the sheets once in the middle of the night.

Today, we put her in real panties and explained that she would need to use the toilet because she wasn't wearing diapers. She was fine this morning, then got a diaper for naptime (took it off once before her nap and then again afterwards, but luckily no problems) and then was back in panties for the afternoon. She used the toilet all day, until a small accident at 6pm while we were reading a story.

We're on our way to having a toilet trained toddler!! Hopefully she'll be done with diapers before her birthday in Sept.

Just Catching Up...

It seems like I've let this blog go for awhile, so I figure I'll give a few quick updates.

- I got my glasses, they are very stylish ;)
- Ana knows approx 100 ASL signs now; it's hard to keep track of them all!
- We're going to be removing at least two trees from our property soon, to open up the property for building a garage.

Important dates to remember:
- Aug 2, our 5th wedding anniversary (BBQ? Party??)
- Aug 23, Saddle Up Car Show
- Sept 6 or 7, Ana's birthday party
- Sept 8, Ana's 2nd birthday

Have a fun summer!!

~Jen~

What do babies dream of?
When I went to wake up my little girl this morning - who was conveniently sleeping in on the day I needed her to be awake, after a week of getting up early when we would have liked her to sleep in - she looked so peaceful, dreaming. She was sleeping on her tummy, and as she woke up she seemed startled by something. She moved up onto her hands, and then sat up quickly, her eyes wide open as she exclaimed a quiet "uh-oh!!". I asked what was wrong, since she seemed okay, and she looked around in wonder saying "Kaa-Kerrrr" and knocking her right fist on the back of her left wrist - her sign for crackers. She patted the sheets and bedding around her, seemingly frantic, then signed cracker again, looking up at me for an answer. I told her she didn't have any crackers in her crib, and she threw her arms out and shrugged her shoulders in a big "I don't know where they went" gesture, looking very confused.
I don't know about all babies, but apparently mine is dreaming of crackers!

Big enough for braids!!

I braided Ana's hair for the first time tonight. It's just the same small amount of hair usually pulled up in a ponytail on top of her head, but it looks so grown-up looking. I realized that braiding somebody else's hair is a lot harder than doing my own, especially when that somebody is a squirming toddler.

Success!! Persistence pays off!

Ana has been sitting on her potty chair every night, and tonight we had a breakthrough. After her obligitory 20 seconds, she got up and down several times and then stopped to play, pants down, in the bathroom. In less than a minute she got a surprised look on her face, turned around and put herself on the potty chair to go - and went!!

Ana baby, we are SO proud of you!

Ana and I will be participating in the March for Babies (formerly March of Dimes) this year on April 26. Please consider sponsoring one or both of us so we can reach our goals. If you're in the area (or plan to be that weekend) you can sign up to walk with us as well.

You can find more information about this event or make a donation to support the March for Babies at the links below.

Sponsor me - http://www.marchforbabies.org/jenglessing
Sponsor Ana - http://www.marchforbabies.org/PrincessAna
Sign up to walk with our team - http://www.marchforbabies.org/499897

Thank you for your support!

It's definitely potty-training time! Ana is taking her pants and diaper off by herself now several times each day, which is leading to some creative clothing choices to help prevent her from having an accident. Of course, the options that prevent her from undressing herself also lead to taking longer for us to undress her when "it's time", so it's becoming a challenge.

Ana is getting potty trained! She went potty in her potty chair for the first time on Saturday night. If all goes well, she'll be out of diapers before her birthday in September.

Yeah!!

Hey there! Welcome to Jibber Jabberz... the newest piece of the Jabberz site.

~Jen~