April 2004

Another month has come and gone.  Time is just flying by.  We've had an unseasonably warm and dry spring so far with several days over 70, and a few in the 80's.  The girls continue to grow at an alarming rate.  This month we'll start with Phoebe new since she has hit the bigger milestone.

Before we get to that though, the girls have both been relatively healthy with not much more than allergies.  Phoebe had an allergic reaction rash that had us worried.  I'm not sure that we ever determined what it was from, but it went away so that's good.  It hasn't come back yet.  The doctor said they had been seeing lots of allergies in the form of rashes at that time possibly due to the early warm, dry spells, and the spores in the air.  Other than that, she is still exploring everything.  I don't remember if we mentioned the water, but she is drinking water from a sippy cup, but will still only take warmed milk from the bottle.  She is a little bit picky with the eating, but mostly with respect to whether she feels she should be feeding herself or having one of us feed her.  One night, while Jada was feeding her applesauce, Phoebe grabbed the spoon and wouldn't give it back.  So Jada grabbed a new spoon and Phoebe took that one too.  Jada then took back one of the spoons to get more applesauce which Phoebe grabbed again.  Jada grabbed the other spoon, and fed Phoebe more applesauce.  they kept exchanging spoons until the applesauce was gone.  It was a nice little juggling act.  In addition to the manual dexterity, she's also working on her talking.  She likes to immitate sounds that she hears...this isn't all that fun when she and Ellen get into a yelling game, but at least it shows she's working on it.  Phoebe's trying really hard to do the things that we do.  She blew her first kiss the last week of April.  She was using her finger to do it, but you could tell what she was trying to do.  Another cute thing that she does is lay on pillows.  It doesn't sound cute when I type it like that, but she will pull a pillow down from the couch or Ellen's bed and lay on it for a minute.  Then get up, change positions, and lay on it again.  In Ellen's room, we still have the boppy set against the walll for us to lean up with another larger pillow during story time.  She will knock these flat and crawl in between them testing out different softnesses and textures.  Adorable.  Finally, the big milestone is the walking.  On Easter day, Phoebe took 14 steps while we were over at the Casey's for dinner.  She never hit that many again until April 22 when she just started walking...and walking...and walking.  Now she walks more than she crawls.  It's still the occasional drunken sailor stagger, but it's cute nonetheless.

Ellen doesn't seem to be slowing down any either.  The tantrums are still pretty frequent, and she's very stubborn.  She has the same philosophy on getting dressed that  I do: "these 2 don't match anything else, so I'll just wear them together".  (she said that all on her own.  I didn't say that to her).  Her language skills seem high to us, but we're just parents, so that's how it should be.  She can already count to 50 on her own, though she doesn't recognize the numbers by sight past 10 yet.  She is starting to be able to recognize some common words now like "the", "end" and "rain" (she's an Oregonian.  What'd you expect?)  She's still very interested in books, even when they don't have a lot of pictures.  She will sit still to listen to a classic book of fairy tales that Jada has.  Jada also read Charlotte's Web to her this month.  She seemed to enjoy it.  Potty training has gone very well this month as well.  No accidents to report other than the ones that we contributed to...which you'll read about in just a minute.  Otherwise, she asks for M&M's less and less after pooping in the potty.  We still aren't sure how to get her to a pull-up free existence with naps and night time, but we'll get it figured out eventually.

On April Fool's Day, Jada and the girls joined a colleague from teaching childbirth classes, Liesl, and her daughter Claire at the Children's Museum.  All the kids enjoyed the grocery and restaurant area-Phoebe was able to push a cart around.  Then we were off to the dentist/doctor's office, Phoebe played receptionist, while Ellen and Claire checked out the baby dolls' health.  Eventually, we worked our way to the instrument section and then the older girls applied face painting.  Luckily, the water works area washed off much of the paint.  Following a quick snack time, all the girls wandered through Mr. Rodger's Neighborhood.  It was a fun exhibit!

One of Phoebe's friends, and a daughter of one of Jada's kindergarten buddies, Keilani turned one in April.  Ellen hung out with Dave, while Jada and Phoebe attended the birthday party.  There were mostly babies between 6 months and just over a year.  Phoebe enjoyed playing with new toys, spent some time chasing the family dog, and tried to help Keilani's mom, Laurie, see the next stage of childproofing needed in her home.  When it was time to leave, Jada found a police officer readying himself to write a ticket for her parking job-apparently there used to be a sign posted that said no parking.  Luckily, Jada knew the police officer from her college days-with the Oregon Police Academy on campus, Western Oregon State College boasted the highest number of future cops.  Needless to say, no parking ticket was written.

Jada had another Oregon Education Association weekend in Portland this month which left daddy in charge of the kids for 3 days.  He did ok.  The girls miss mommy, but they're pretty good at adapting to 1 parent.  Though it's definitely more difficult to keep them both occupied especially with Phoebe climbing everything in sight.  I also had one day where I had asked her to put her pull-up on for nap time.  Then she forgot to do it, and I forgot to check, so she peed in her bed.  I couldn't be too upset about that.  It was nice when Jada came back home on Sunday night, and she just made it before bed time so the girls got to see her.

Our second annual Easter egg hunt was at the Casey's again this year.  It was lots of fun.  They "hid" the eggs out on the front lawn, and the weather was perfect that day for March.  Unseasonable warm and sunny.  Afterwards, we let Ellen eat some of her candy, and she was absolutely shaking after a couple eggs of jelly beans and chocolate eggs.  Then we've been letting her have some after dinner when she eats everything she's supposed to.  I think she's only got a few jelly-beans left.

That's it.  As always, sorry this is so late.

Journal Entry: May 9, 2004