Elliot

holding on with one hand

how cute would elliot be if he wore glasses?!

I love this one

Elliot is getting so close to standing alone. He wants to so bad! The last couple days when I lay on the floor he crawls over and pulls himself to standing, lets go and stands for 2-3 seconds and then sits down, claps for himself and does it again. It's pretty adorable. He probably did it 20 times in a row. i love that he claps for himself. It's really cute. He also dances on command which is my favorite thing. It's such a goofy dance, I can't help but laugh and ask him do do it over and over again. I sure love that kid. Can't believe his birthday is in 1 1/2 weeks!

will teething ever end? Libby got her teeth in pairs, Elliot is getting them one at a time which means endless teething. This time around he is being super picky and spits out everything I give him. All he wants is the bottle or yogurt melts. So frustrating some times. This is random, but Elliot makes the funniest faces while he eats. He HATES cold things. He won't even let us give him ice cream, even though I'm sure he'd love it. He cringes when he tastes something cold even if he likes it. Any food that is a weird texture too he makes a funny face and then opens his mouth for more. Silly kid.

Parent Fail

Libby went to the dentist for the first time last week. She did great! They had a slide/playground thing in the waiting room a t.v. on the ceiling with Cinderella playing while they cleaned her teeth. (Pretty awesome dentist office) She was so good and opened when they asked her too. I am very proud of her. But, as I expected she had a cavity. The only people who can be blamed for this cavity are me and Richard for letting our children eat way more sugar than they probably should and being terrible about brushing their teeth every single day. Parent Fail :( Well, we are doing much better at that now. Yesterday was the big day for Libby to get that darn cavity filled. She once again amazed us with her braveness and did great. They didn't even need to give her laughing gas, that's how awesome she was. This time she got to watch her favorite movie Toy Story 2 and Daddy was there with her favorite blanket and her Jessie toy to comfort her. Richard said she looked like she was going to fall asleep for part of the time.

Elliot loves getting his teeth brushed, so hopefully we will be better about his keeping his teeth clean and not have to deal with cavities for him so early.

Richard update

This post is just about me (richard) so if your looking for cute pictures of the kids, sorry you have to wait until next month after Elliot's b-day. For the past month I have been working on starting a business/website with a few other guys from school. It has been time consuming, but I think it will be a really good resume builder. Our group presented our business plan at a CEO crowd pitch event. By audience vote we won overwhelmingly. There were about 10 presentations and we got 45% of the votes. Also this week I had an interview with the church IT dept for an internship with their software development team, I think it went really well.

Best buds

duck duck goose at the park for a birthday party

Libby with her friends from sewing group (+one we just met)

Of coarse there's Zach!

We miss Orson so much! Libby asks about him all the time, but he moved in July :(

Libby was so lucky to have such great friends in our ward. I forgot we had a few pictures from earlier this summer.

Pictures and stories

I can't believe it's already September. School is starting back up, Elliot is 10 months old and Libby is 2 1/2! Where did the time go? We had a great trip to Washington last month, but unfortunately I didn't really take many pictures and I forgot to steal some from my mom's camera.

School started up today for Richard. His schedule seems pretty nice. He should have lots of time for homework between classes and work, which will be nice. Maybe he won't be at the school till 8 pm every night this semester...One can hope. So thankful that Richard is going to school and working so I can stay home with these crazy kids.

Doing "science". Baking soda in a pan with colored vinegar to drop in and make cool little explosions and pretty colors. Loved it!

making some sort of fort on her chairs

pretending to sleep

Craft time!

Liberty is hilarious and crazy as usual. A few days ago she gave us quite the scare. Richard was at work and we were home hanging out with Julie and little Zach in the living room. Libby went into my room and was playing on the bed. She slipped off and hit her mouth on the dresser drawer. She was screaming and bleeding everywhere. Her teeth looked a bit like Halloween teeth: bloody, puffy gums, and a tooth that looked slightly out of place, yuck. Her lip was all cut up from her teeth and got super puffy. Julie called Richard who rushed home on his bike. Of course this happened at 5 pm when our Dr office and most dentists close. We don't even have a dentist so we made a few calls and tried to go to Urgent Care who referred us to an on call dentist. The dentist basically said "this happens all the time and she'll be fine." It was so sad to see her in so much pain. She fell asleep for a few minutes between screams in Richard's arms. (No naps + screaming = very tired girl). Anyways, her lip is still a bit puffy, but the teeth/gums look normal now. Thank goodness.
Libby is really into pretending. She is always "making cakes" at the playground with woodchips/rocks and then uses a stick for a candle and wants us to blow it out. She is always talking about Jessie (from toy story 2)who is her imaginary friend. They do all kinds of crazy things together. Richard has started telling her "Princess Liberty" stories each night before bed and she LOVES them. I am no longer allowed to put her to bed and if I have to, she won't let me tell the stories because I tell them wrong. Her favorite princess besides princess Liberty is Cinderella. She sometimes pretends she is Cinderella. We are so lucky to have such awesome, talented grandmas; Grandma Olive made her a Cinderella dress and accessories that we should be getting this week! We are very excited. Definitely put pictures up.
Libby and I have sort of started doing "mommy school". Still getting into the swing of things, but she loves it. I've been wanting to do this for awhile, but it seemed overwhelming and then I found a great idea on pinterest. We have a binder with clear page protectors. I found lots of good preschool workbooks at the dollar store and we have a letter of the week, number, animal, shapes, color, weather. Each thing has a little activity (matching or coloring, etc) to go with it and we use dry erase markers or crayons on the page and erase when we are done. We are mostly practicing on writing (tracing) and recognizing numbers and lower case letters, she's known the rest for a long time.

put curlers in Libby's hair, this is the result!

Can't get over this cuteness!

kisses!

One day Libby thought it would be funny to climb into the excersaucer with Elliot...With two sets of legs in there, it was a tight squeeze and took like 10 minutes to get them out, by then they were both screaming. I don't think she will be doing that again.

Elliot is obsessed with baths. If we leave the bathroom door open, he is in there banging on the tub, trying to climb in. We started actually doing a bedtime routine with him where we give him a bath by himself after Libby is in bed. It was so exciting for him to get the bath all to himself (instead of sharing with Libby, who lays down and hogs most of the bath). It's hilarious to see him crawling around and splashing. He also loves the piano. I've been scooting the high chair to the piano so he can play. I think he will be our musical child. He enjoys watching Richard play guitar too. It seems like Libby got bored of piano and guitar a lot faster than he does. He also has a love for Taylor Swift. If he won't calm down to go to sleep, we just turn that on and he usually goes to sleep pretty quickly. It doesn't work with other music as well. Elliot has 4 teeth now! Which he was not happy about getting. He is also crawling everywhere and getting rather fast.



So handsome in his church clothes

Giving us a little concert

Sleeping with his bum in the air. Too cute.



You can see Elliot's new top teeth in this picture

potty training success

Libby is totally potty trained! Day and NIGHT! Well, at least I think so on night. Richard decided we could just leave her in her underwear at bedtime and see what happened. I made him promise to clean up the pee because I didn't think she was ready. Boy was I surprised when she crawled in bed with me in the morning with dry underwear on. Today was day 2 of staying dry all night. I'm very excited. Libby also finally figured out doing #2 on the potty is good. I told her she didn't have to take a nap if she pooped on the potty and ever since then she's been doing it. (some days I regret that promise because no nap means no mommy time and a very crazy toddler, but we seem to be adjusting and really I'd rather her be potty trained than get 2 hrs of quiet....i think) We may have also promised her ice cream cone if she does poopoo. She has to wait till richard gets home from work to get her cone (if we don't make her wait, she'll do a tiny bit and beg for a cone) Making her wait all day seems to work, but first thing she says when dad walks in the house is "Daddy I need an ice cream cone! I go poopoo in the potty". Funny girl. She's pretty proud of herself. She keeps telling me "mommy, I'm bigger now". So glad to only have 1 kid in diapers now. We've also had very few accidents this week, which is quite nice.

9 months and crawling

Elliot is crawling! Finally! I have mixed feelings about this milestone. It's only been a couple days and he's still really slow, but he has managed to get many things I didn't want him too. He may have eaten a scrap of bright blue paper today while I was helping Libby. I think I got most of it out, but it was pretty chewed up, so who knows...oops, guess it could've been something worse. I do love that he has hit a new milestone though and it's fun to see how excited he gets when he can crawl over and get something he wants. He is still super happy most of the time (except, heaven forbid, I walk out of the room. Going through some separation anxiety right now, I hope it's a short stage cuz it's nearly impossible to get things done)

Here are his stats and percentiles. (i'll put adjusted age stats in ( ))

Height: 28in 32% (70%)
Weight: 18lbs 9% (29%)
Head: 17. 8 41% (63%)

It's so weird to think that he started out so small. He seems huge now. I even had a couple people tell me he was kind of chubby when we were in WA. (they must have compared him to Liberty, cuz he isn't chubby, but next to her yes). He also outweighs what Libby weighed at 1 year! She was only 15# 12 oz at 9 months and 17#5oz at 1 year! Libby insists on "having a turn" when Elliot goes to the dr, so I was happy to learn she gained a pound since her last visit which was probably 2 months ago-- up to 25lbs now!

Sorry, no pics today. Camera hasn't been unpacked from our wa trip--post about that later I guess.