Potty trained!!

I hesitate to write this but I think it's true, Elliot is potty trained! (Finally!!) He has been doing so well. I hardly ever remind him and this week he's been going #2 on the potty all by himself. No accidents. He rarely even wants treats or prizes either. Sure there is still the occasional pee accident when he is very distracted playing outside but libby occasionally has that problem still and she s 2 yrs older. Hooray for only one in diapers!! 🎉

Cute Siblings

I can't believe I didn't post these pictures we had taken at JCPenny in March. They turned out so great. Eleanor hadn't had a nap, was teething and had an ear infection and Elliot had just had a huge tantrum because I wouldn't let him go up and down the escalators over and over. Just shows how awesomely adorable these kids are.

Ella baby

Sitting so cute and trying to crawl away

Cute girl

Loving her baby doll

I love her smile!

My girls!

My boy!

Cute close up

Look at those lashes!

Loves soccer

I love this girl so much! This picture captures her beauty and the joy she brings us

Posed

The serious picture

Her favorite activity: Coloring



Probably my favorite of them, just so funny.

Love them!

A lot of pics ended up like this. By the time Elliot and Eleanor were looking, Libby would get bored and look the other way. Elliot was giggling and kept putting his hand over his mouth.

Sunbeams

Elliot is in sunbeams...how did that happen? He is certainly not old enough for that! He happens to agree and would much rather be in nursery. It has not gone well. I have a feeling it will be a long time before I get to go to my own classes again :(  He basically throws a tantrum the entire singing time, yelling "I wanna go home!" and then class time does not have toys or snack so that doesn't go great either. His teachers are from Brazil and don't speak super great english either so that makes it hard. They have tried really hard to get him to be happy, even bribing him with chocolate. Unfortunately he just yells "no" at them or "don't talk to me." They watched a little video about the plan of salvation and the whole time Elliot kept loudly saying "NO! I wanna watch Cinderelly! CINDERELLY!" I tried to convince him we'd watch it at home and that it was jesus's turn, but he did not care. Luckily he does pretty well during the coloring portion of class, but if I even stand up he freaks out. Sundays are rough. Thankfully Eleanor continues to be awesome and went all of church without eating and fell asleep in my arms while I tried to convince Elliot to be reverent during primary. She didn't make a peep. I was so amazed.

I started the potty training too. Its pretty horrible as i expected, but someday he will go on his own. Actually I should go check on him.

It's a good thing he is so darn cute though. I sure love him, even when he's being a little turkey.

Life with 3 kids and 2 month old Eleanor

So I'm getting used to the whole 3 kids thing. We walk Liberty to and from school everyday and there is also ballet and play groups to go to so we are always on the go. Plus you know the regular errands like grocery shopping. Eleanor is so awesome and hardly makes a fuss... ever!

Eleanor was in the 97% for height at 24 inches and 78% for weight at 12 lbs 6 Oz. She is huge! Libby was pretty much that size at 4 months... not 2 months! Crazy! She has been sleeping through the night for several weeks now! I try to feed her before I go to bed and then she sleeps till 7 or 8! It's amazing! She also will go like 3-4 hours between feedings which is longer than the other 2 would go. It's so nice. I don't know how she has gained so much weight though. She is so happy! I love her smiles and coos. It's adorable. Hopefully you have been seeing all the pictures on Facebook and Instagram because she is so dang cute. Elliot and Liberty both love her too. A little too much on Liberty's part. She smothers her in kisses all day long! Drives me bonkers sometimes. 

Liberty is loving school and playing with her neighborhood friends. She is sort of a sassy pants lately and disobedient so we've started taking away "outside" time. She goes out and plays across the street with all the other kids in the neighborhood almost every day after school. There are some of the sweetest kids here. Even though some of them are way older than her they include her in their games. She knows how to play Red Rover now and enjoys looking for snails in all the window wells, climbin trees and making forts with the other kids. She has to stay where I can see her from the window and come in when we call her. If she doesn't follow those 2 rules she can't go out the next day. It seems to be helping. Tantrums are getting a little better. She calls me "stupid head" though when she gets really mad.

smiling as usual

Yeah, my kids still fall asleep in random places, he fell asleep at the worst time. Right when we needed to go pick up Libby from school. It was not a fun afternoon

kisses for Ella

miss sassy pants showing off her candy corn skirt which ahe's worn 3 times since she got it last week



bedtime

sister secrets

on a walk

Libby always tells me Eleanor loves her the most

adorable faces

Libby had a bunch of cavities filled and I swear she is the best 4 yr old patient ever.

Elliot

haircut!

date night!

brought the bouncer outside

Elliot is obsessed with this train book from the library and here is reading it to Eleanor. He seriously brings it everywhere

playing in the fountains



captain hook!

me and my boy

I dunno, but he certainly thought it was funn

little fish

Today after church the kids were eating otter pops and Richard and I were hanging in the living room (which leads to the backyard). The door was open so the kids could eat outside. After Elliot was done I asked Richard if Elliot had gone outside and to see what he was doing. We have a little kiddie pool that still had a couple inches of water from yesterday and Richard looked out and said "yep, Elliot went outside. He is getting naked by the pool." He was down to a diaper and working on the last sock. It was pretty funny. Richard made him put swim shorts on which are somehow too big around (12-18mon size). They lasted about 5 minutes before falling completely off and Elliot continued to play in the nude. It was funny. He loves water so much! He kept laying down in the water and pretending to swim and then he'd switch to his back. He doesn't care if his face gets wet at all, which is awesome but also scary. He doesn't seem to have much fear which makes me glad we don't have a real pool. 

Talent show and film festival videos

our little Liberty was so brave and sang in the ward talent show! When daddy said he was doing it, she wanted to too, we didn't think she'd go through with it though. We both thought she'd chicken out when she got up there but she proved us wrong.




For the Bell Family reunion we had a little film festival, all the videos were awesome, hopefully the other videos are posted. Here is our submission featuring Libby and Elliot. I took some random footage of the kids and Penny and Richard did an amazing job of editing it all together. I was surprised at how they put it together so well.

Random kid post I never finished...

Elliot has been holding out on us I think. Today Libby got hurt and after she was all better, Elliot wanders over to me and says "Libby got hurt. Libby got owie". Pretty good sentences considering I've only heard him say most of those words a couple times and never together. Little stinker. He is really in to hugging these days which is so stinking adorable. He'll walk up to one of us with his arms wide open and say "hug" and then "aww" while he's hugging you. I love it when he hugs Libby. They've gotten to be pretty good friends lately and play really well together (most of the time).

Libby has reached one of the girl stages I really was dreading. The "I'm not gonna be your friend if you...." stage. I hate it so much. I knew she'd pick it up sooner or later b/c I've been around enough kids to hear it and she's told me a few times girls at preschool said they didn't want to be her friend for the silliest most trivial things. She told me if I peeked at her picture than she wouldn't let me have it and would give it to daddy. I've heard her say it once or twice to one of her friends and I'm hoping we are going to stop it before it gets worse. She can also be one of the sweetest girls and often tells me that I am the best mommy in the world and that she loves me, which is nice to hear and makes me feel good. I was proud of her today, I let one of her friends come over to play and Libby let her wear the fancy Cinderella dress from Grandma Olive and volunteered to be the prince. She is older than most of her friends and always gets to be the queen or princess, so it was kind of a big deal that she was being so considerate. She danced with Cinderella too which was kind of amusing for me!

{Started this before we moved... can't remember what else I was going to write about. Kids are doing great with the move. Libby of course has already made friends at church/neighborhood and Elliot is doing fine in nursery. Elliot is continuing to talk better and better. I wish he was eating better. He basically lives off apples, granola bars, animal crackers and dry cereal (and milk and apple juice too). He'll occasionally eat what I make (mac n cheese, ramen, rice & beans, and pancakes). He won't even eat any desserts--even m&ms. He is crazy. }

Almost 2

I can't believe it's almost been 2 years since this cutie surprised us! He is such a joy.

He might not talk a ton, but I think he is pretty smart. I've been babysitting a lot and I've come to be very grateful for my children's great attention spans. Elliot has been able to sit through a movie for a really long time, I thought all kids this young could, but apparently not. If I get out blocks or cars for him he sits and plays for a long time too. Some days it drives me crazy when I have to babysit and the kids just don't play longer than 2 minutes with something and get into everything. I'm very blessed with such awesome kids :) 

 I love watching Elliot play with cars, it's so cute. HE makes these funny growl/vroom car noises as he drives across the room and then lines them all up like they are stuck in traffic.

 He also can make decent towers. I think the record is 7 blocks without it falling. (I think mine is 10 stacked 1 by 1 like that, so 7 is pretty good)

See that ball...it's about to come in to use

and no more tower! Elliot loves to attack his towers or lines of cars with balls using great sound effects.