December 2004
Holy Cow! It's the end of the year already. I should have worked on this last night, but I was just too darn tired. Of course, we're tired today too, but I have to get it done now since it is 2005. On to the goodies.
Phoebe continues to shock and amaze us. On 12/18/04, Phoebe peed in the potty for the first time. Before baths we've been sitting her on the potty because she wants to try. When she sits there she really pushes, and she peed this time. She didn't do it the next time, but the following weekend she did it again! She hasn't been able to get anything else out since, but we'll keep giving it a shot. Words are pouring out of her mouth now, and she understands the meanings of many more. She enjoys just "talking" where she puts together words and syllables and just keeps going...we are not able to keep up. And she can finally say Ellen. Well, Ellie...Ok, it sounds more like Lelwy, but it's close. Some of the other things happening with her are her love of shoes, she runs like the wind, she has real grumpy looks, and she's hitting her terrible two's before Ellen is completely out of hers. (That's so unfair) She really enjoys playing pretend with her sister. Especially the new presents that she got from Santa this year (more on that later). She now really sits and listens to stories, though she still insists on looking at books upside down sometimes. She's also quite the dancer. It's the funniest thing to watch her just start spinning around for apparently no reason. But she has a reason. She'll also just fling her arms back behind her and start running making the wooshing sound of flying. I guess we'll have to start calling her Tomcat.
Ellen has continued to improve in her name writing skills. She can spell words on her own like zoo, Phoebe, Mom, and Dad. (that's right, she can spell Phoebe. She's also working on her sight words (cow, moo, cat, dog, no, Target). She's quite good at sounding out the words that she can't spell. She seems to really enjoy it. She always points out "No" when she sees it in other words. She got Boggle Jr. for Christmas so she's learning how to spell some 3 and 4 letter words. Ellen is also quite the dancer. We're hoping to get her enrolled in dance class this winter at the park district. It's hard to come up with good things to talk about with Ellen because she's not making the leaps that Phoebe is making. Ellen's development is more subtle. She still enjoys putting puzzles together, and she just got a couple new puzzles from Grandma. We put one together already. After Phoebe goes down for her nap, we keep Ellen up for a little bit to read or play games. We were able to read her The Best Christmas Pageant Ever over the weekend. We thought she wasn't paying much attention at one point, but near the end, when they mention Mrs. Armstrong, Ellen asked if her leg was better. (for those of you who don't recall the story, Mrs. Armstrong was the original pageant director who broke her leg which is why the story teller's mom took over)
Wow, what a busy month this has been. I think we'll need the new year to recover. We kicked off this month's festivities with a house warming hosted by Ellen's Godparents. It was nice to see everyone that we've not seen for months with all of our busy schedules. Then it was out to get our tree from our neighborhood tree farm. We picked out two that were right next to each other: one for us and one for Grandma. We delivered Grandma's and took ours home. After the kids went to bed, I went back over to Gram's house to put her tree up in it's stand. The next morning, we put ours up and the girls helped decorate it (so that means lots of ornaments towards the bottom of the tree). We also put the gifts that we had received already underneath. The funny thing was that the girls didn't seem to care about the presents at all. They were more interested in touching the ornaments. I don't think they touched them once...until the day, of course.
Of course, with the holidays also comes the traditional cookie parade at our house. We prepared our usual 5 types of cookies, and Ellen continued her training in the ways of her cookie baking by taking part in the sugar cookies. This year, in addition to mixing the dough, she also got to cut out her own cookies and frosted them herself.
Next up was our ornament party. After a year off, we revamped our annual ornament party to be more child appropriate. We had a great turnout this year with 10 kids between 1 and 6 years old (and their parents, grandparents, and aunts in some cases). Jada pulled out her supplies with 3 different types of crafts to create with (candy cane reindeers, clothespins, wood and cardboard decorations for coloring) to keep the options within the attention span of the kiddos. We left the knives, wire cutters, aluminum wire, etc packed away...maybe when the kids get older we can pull that stuff out again.
Finally, the reason for the season was upon us. We had Phoebe's Godparents, Papa, and Grandma for some Honeybaked Ham and some early present opening to try to offset some of the excitement from the next day. After our guests left, we had story time as normal with the girls, so this time, we read the Polar Express (yes, we actually took the time to read it instead of going to see the virtual Tom Hanks fest) to the girls and gave them their bells from Santa. The next morning was, of course, Christmas. The girls were, how can we say, excited. But they showed amazing restraint in getting through breakfast before going in for presents. Once we got the camera setup, we let them come in. They headed straight for the pots and pans set that Santa brought them. They got to playing with that while Jada went on her scavenger hunt from her stocking. The girls were still playing with their pots and pans when Jada got back. Then we got to it. Phoebe is really good at unwrapping her presents now. We just kept them in presents and tried to keep them by who sent them so that it would be easier to keep track. They got lots of great gifts that will keep them entertained for quite some time. (A big thanks to all for the thoughtful gifts) They did just fine until they ran out of gifts, and Jada and I were unwrapping ours. Ellen had a bit of a melt-down, but she got it back under control. We had hoped to make it to Mass at a church that some friends of ours go to, but the unwrapping took a little longer than we though. However, it all worked out since the kids needed some time to wind down. After nap time, we headed off to our friend's, Mike and Carrie's, house for Christmas dinner. They were very kind to get the girls gifts, but after Phoebe unwrapped hers, she kept going unwrapping one for someone else who was there. Carrie was kind enough to put on Charlie Brown's Christmas movie for Ellen to watch. We tried to help Ellen hear the movie a little bit better by explaining where to sit, but she ended up sitting and facing the speaker next to her because she just didn't understand. It was really funny. Unfortunately, the holiday season had started to wear on her, and she started to run around and dance uncontrollably. (it sounds strange, but that's the best way I can think of to describe it) It was all just too much. We got her calmed down though, and she did a good job leaving. We actually got them to bed a pretty decent time that night.
We had a final day of excitement with Ellen and Phoebe's cousins coming over in the morning. Ellen was very excited again to have everyone over. I only remember 1 meltdown when Phoebe was playing with something that Ellen didn't want moved. Phoebe was just excited that Papa was there again. After they all left, we managed to get the girls down to nap. After nap, we had our last visitors of the year with 2 girls that are roughly the same ages as Ellen and Phoebe. Ellen was very out of control to start with but managed to calm down after dinner a little bit.
During the break, I took a day off from work. Originally, it was going to be a ski day for Jada and I, but since the snow just isn't flying in the Cascades yet this year, we ended up using one of the girl's gifts from Ellen's Godparents to visit the Children's Museum. It had been about a year since we'd been there, but they both had a really good time. They actually played some really nice music on the Xylophone (X is always for xylophone) together. Then during the afternoon, we redeemed our gift from Grandma for some baby sitting to go out on a date. We took in a matinee of the Aviator followed by dinner at Hall Street Grill. (Not to get off on a tangent here, but here's something bizarre. They had a sign on at the front counter of the theater for "bargain" price and another for "twilight" price. The odd thing was that the twilight price was less than the bargain. How does that work?)
As an anecdote, during one of the afternoons I came home a little early, and I got to play with the girls. They were fighting over something...again. Then they started wrestling. Phoebe held her own pretty well. If I were judging the match, Phoebe would have won on points after a stunning reversal followed by a take down. She's quite wily. On the other hand, Ellen knew how to use her size to take advantage. So finally, after they were on the ground again, I broke them up like a hockey (if there were such a thing) referee.
Finally, New Years Eve. It was pretty anticlimactic here at the Pearson stead. We made sure all the laundry was done, and the girls were bathed. We had them in bed before 7pm PST, and Jada and I actually got to bed late. We stayed up until almost 10:30pm.
Hey, it's after midnight in Illinois
Journal Entry: January 1, 2005