Lottie loves to eat!

Charlotte has mastered eating her rice cereal and is constantly going after everything else at the table so yesterday I finally made some baby food and we gave it a go.
For her first food Charlotte had pureed sweet potatoes and she LOVED them! She had another bowl this evening and easily would have eaten more if I had given it to her. Lily wanted to have a bowl with her dinner as well, not that she ate them, she just didn't want to be left out.
We will be trying butternut squash in a couple of days and then we'll move on to the green vegetables.

On the move...already?

All babies are different, I've always known this I guess but I'm not sure that it really sunk in until I had my second child. Charlotte and Lily have such different little personalities. Lily was a very calm baby who stayed in one place and examined her surroundings, Charlotte, however, is always on the move and exploring.

Lily didn't crawl until she was nearly 10 months old, but Charlotte will not stay in one place. She has learned to get up on all fours and is now launching herself around the room. She is not even 5 1/2 months old yet and my bet is that she will be crawling within a week. I'm not ready for this!

This video is 4 days old and even in the last 4 days she has mastered being up on all fours and scooting.

Learning her Letters

I'm not the type of mom to just randomly go buy my girls toys. However a few days ago I left the morning for a couple of hours to get some quiet time and I stumbled upon this foam mat on clearance for $7. Who could pass that up? Lily loves the alphabet and I thought that she would enjoy the mat.
When I got home I handed the container to her and she unzipped it pulled out the pieces. I put it together and she was so excited!
Charlotte loves it too, the colors and textures are interesting to her and she scoots all over it, because she does that these days. She can push herself up onto all fours and is going to be crawling in the next few weeks.
They played very nicely together!
This is what Lily does with her letters, I love how excited she is! I really don't know how she learned them, we read together and she has some ABC books, but we never really worked on learning them. I was very surprised a few weeks back to find out how many she knew.

....Five Months....

Today our Charlotte is 5 months old!

She is learning to do all kinds of new things everyday. She can now sit up on her own for a little while. Sometimes she props herself up with her hands, but she can sit unsupported and is getting better and better at it every day. Lottie has her first two teeth, they came in a few days after she turned four months old, and she loves to chew and bite. She laughs and smiles all the times and loves to "talk" to anyone that will look at her.

She is getting so much bigger too, we are phasing out her 3-6 month clothing and starting to pull out the 6-9 month wardrobe. The only problem is that all of our baby girl clothes that size are for Fall and Winter so we have to pick up a few new things to get us through August.

Here is our little Lottie in her 5 months onesie!

It is getting so hard to get pictures of her on her back because she would rather roll around or play with her toes.
And here is our Charlotte with her piggy. She is such a cutie!
Lily climbed up onto the chair to sit with her while we were taking her picture.
Lottie loves the Jumperoo and has mastered catching the parrot.
Also, a couple of days ago we started giving Charlotte cereal. She has been grabbing at everyone else's food when we sit down to eat and trying to get it into her mouth so we decided that it was time. She liked it, but did not eat much. We'll keep working with the cereal for the next few weeks and then we will start in on some veggies.
Could someone please tell father time to slow down a bit, my babies are growing up way too fast!

It's working, it's working, it's working!

Lily's therapy is really working! This afternoon for lunch I made chicken cream cheese rolls. I've made them before and last time Lily played with it a bit, eventually took a bite, but then stopped when she got to the filling. Today she played for a while, eventually took a bite, and then ate almost all of it! It was so exciting to me to watch her eat a new food item. She also ate half of a tortilla pizza a few nights ago and is playing with other food items more and more. I keep serving veggies, she only eats carrots (YAY!), but I'm not to stressed about them right now because I sneak enough veggies into her diet that she is getting the nutrients that she needs. But new protein and entrees are a big deal around here because they are the hardest to get her to eat.

Also, Lily's "Big Girl" sticker chart is working as well. Lily gets so excited to get to put a sticker on her chart when she accomplishes on her her tasks. This morning she accomplished a new on, she PEED IN THE POTTY! You know that your life is consumed by parenting when your toddler peeing in the potty is the highlight of your week. I don't mind, I'm very excited about it. We aren't hitting potty training hard this week because I'm going to be very busy, but next weekend we are diving in head first!

Why do they have to grow up so fast?

Someone needs to tell my girls that they need to slow down and take their time growing up, because they are getting way too big way too fast!

Charlotte thinks that she gets to sit up on her own now. I snapped this picture after she sat there for a couple of minutes this evening. It is just so naughty to be growing up so quickly!

We are back to trying to potty train Lily and I decided that she needs to have some more structure and a couple of little tasks that she needs to do every day. They are little tasks, like getting dressed, brushing her teeth, going potty, picking up her toys at the end of the day, things like that.
I wasn't sure how she would respond, because she has never seemed interested in things like stickers, mostly because I don't really keep them around, but when I put it up and showed it to her she was very excited. After we brushed her teeth this evening she ran to her chart and asked for the sticker. It is going to be a bit of a process getting her to understand it all, but so far so good.

We went swimming today with friends and Lily learned out to hold herself up in a tube.
Charlotte relaxed and even napped for a minute in her floating ring. I have a couple of water babies!

A Normal Week

With two little girls every day brings something new and this week we have had a lot of fun.

Lily has started playing dress-up. I'm not sure where she picked this up, she has never played dress-up anywhere, but she is loving it. Earlier this week I had her half dressed, clean shirt but she still wanted her pajama pants on, when she came to me wanting to wear her apron and matching kerchief. She was playing "mommy". This is not what mommy dresses like, I promise! I get dressed every morning, I only wear an apron occasionally, and very rarely do I wear a kerchief.

She played like this for a while.
The next day we had her appointment with her SLP and Lily insisted that with the rest of her outfit she needed this little skirt. It was actually kinda cute.

An update on our meetings with the SLP, things are going well. We have changed to going every other week because Lily is making some great advances. They seem small, but they are big steps. Lily has started to eat peanuts, almonds, and carrots. She is starting to put new foods in her mouth, she is even licking a lot of food, though not eating it yet. Her diet hasn't expanded much yet, but we are getting there. We just need to keep working on it.
Lily loves to color, she LOVES it, even at the park.
Lottie is also gaining new skills every day. Her new favorite thing is to stick her tongue out. She loves to razz and play with her tongue. She is also playing with her feet now.
Charlotte is getting more and more mobile and it is just naughty! I can lay her on the floor and she will be across the room in a minute. I snapped this picture and by the time that I stood up she was 3 feet away. She can also spin herself around and get toys that are out of reach.

I can't decide who Charlotte looks like. She isn't looking as much like Lily as she used to, she is growing into her own little person.
I LOVE watching my girls play together. Of course Charlotte doesn't play much at this point, but when she sees Lily she smiles big and watches her play. Lily loves to take care of her sister, she is always bringing her toys, blankets or anything else that she might like.

The other day I framed a little picture of the two of them and Lily carried it around with her all day. I laid Lottie on the floor to play and Lily brought the picture and put it in front of Charlotte and laid next to her.
She laid there for a while playing with her, then she would get up and do something else, and then come back to Charlotte. This was another sweet moment that I caught.
This afternoon while I was doing the dishes I turned on a movie for Lily and when I looked into the living room this is what I saw. Lily had her arm around her at first, but then switched to hold her hand.
I love how much they love each other. They are the sweetest little sisters and I hope that they grow up to be good friends. They've had a great start.