Miss Jessica is getting her whine on.  I HATE whining.  We tell her that she needs to TALK and she will do it so it isn't terrible, but still.  Whining is bad.  Very bad.  She also does this disgusting thing when she is upset where she will turn her lower lip down in a pout and just let her spit pool up and drool down onto everything.  The worst part is that she is 2 - she is too young to have things that she likes enough while getting the concept of not getting to have an effective behaivor modification tool on hand.  For Gavin, I can threaten going to bed early or losing the TV or something but Jessie not only wouldn't get the concept of losing something in the future, but she really wouldn't care.  She just doesn't watch TV much.  The FEW things she watches - Caillou and the Wiggles and a couple of shows from TLC like "Meteor and the Mighty Monster Trucks" and "Peep" - are really more of a take it or leave it thing for her.  And yes, she LIKES the monster trucks.

 

On the potty front, she's been fully trained for a long time now, but night times remain a bit of a struggle.  We've stopped putting her in diapers at night and I'd say that she has a 75-80% chance of being dry in the morning.  She has actually gotten up and gone to the bathroom once in the last week in the middle of the night.  The annoying thing is that before she actually falls asleep she makes a million trips into the bathroom and stays up for hours talking to herself and generally causing mischief and mayham.  Since Kris is gone doing army stuff now it is just me and I have to nurse Ash at night so she has the run of the house and I'm really stuck trying to figure out how to get her to BEHAIVE.  Normally she is good but her bedtime habits have GOT to change.  On the bright side, she really likes to sit and talk to me when I can sit in the room with her while she is going to the bathroom at night.  If I'm wearing a shirt with letters on it she'll get all excited and go over what the letters are and what each one stands for.  She'll have me list things that start with, say, 'T' over and over until I hit one that she likes.  Then she claps and says "That's my Favorite!"

Speaking of funny sayings - she can really crack me up sometimes.  We were driving to daycare the other day and she had a frozen waffle.  Yes, my kids love frozen waffles.  She said it was too cold so I suggested we bring it into daycare and Cindy could put it in the toaster and heat it up for her.  She said "Gross Mommy." then awhile later "Mommy, that was so yucky."  Now in the car she says "Remember when I said Gross Mommy?"  "That was so funny!"

 

4-3-07

Yikes, I didn't date that last one.  Oh well.  Jessie is so OLD for a 2 year old!  She went out to Best Buy with me the other day while I picked up some more ink for my printer and she was such a good girl!  She just followed along with me, offered to carry my stuff since I had Asher, and asked really nicely at the checkout counter for a treat.  I told her she could pick one and she had such a fun time picking out what she wanted.  She decided on a bag of Jolly Ranchers and she just stood holding the handles of the basket with all the stuff in it in the line with me and waited for our turn.  No running around, no playing with the line dividers, no running off or yelling or anything else in general that a certain brother would be known to do.  It is so amazing!  Oh, and it turns out she isn't such a huge Jolly Rancher fan.  I don't know what she was expecting, but in the car when I gave her one she declared that they weren't candy and gave them back to me.

She is getting better about staying dry overnight now too.  I'd say in a week she'll have about 3-4 dry nights and sometimes more.

She still LOVES to color/paint all the time. Now that it is getting nicer out she likes to color with chalk outside.  That and play in the sand.  I really want to dig out all the sand from our ancient sand box and put in a new liner and refill it with all new, clean, sand.  Mostly right now it is sandy dirt, which gets ground into everything they wear while playing out there.

OH, the other day she was running around this little sunken room at a relative's house saying she was swimming.  It was so funny!  She would pretend to put on her swimming suit and jump in.

 

 

Oh where to start...  Well, how about this... Kris went out to Target awhile back and he picked up this little dance leotard for Jessie.  She LOVES it.  She insisted on wearing it to dance class that week but she is still not quite willing to actually participate in the class.  It is really too bad because just by sitting in the chairs watching the other kids dance she had already picked up the correct feet possitions and some of the stomping dance moves.  She is just too adorable jumping around doing her imitation to the dancing.  Unfortunately, the missed swim lessons have lowered her willingness to put her head underwater.  Kris finally got the family membership to lifetime so we can all go swimming now and she was just a little too timid in that pool.  She didn't want to jump off the edge into our arms and the "zooms" with her head under the water didn't cause mass hysteria, but they weren't well recieved either.  She is blowing bubbles in the water really well and making the monkey cheeks which she never really got when she was younger.  Last weekend we all went bowling (Gavin got to pick something fun from his great conferences as noted on his page) and Jessie took over my bowling spot.  (OK, I was sucking so badly that to save face I 'let' her have my bowling spot and told them to turn the bumpers on.)  She was so fun to watch as she went up and pushed the ball down the lane and got squeeled with excitement that her ball would hit pins.  She was quite dissapointed that she didn't get to put on the bowling shoes (you know her and shoes...) but she got over that.  She was wearing her pink shoes from aunt Sara.  Yes, pink.  Did you want to know what she says her favorite color is?  I'm betting you could guess.  Yes, pink.  I want the PINK socks Mommy.  I want the PINK shirt Mommy.  I want the PINK cup Mommy.  I think I'm going to start calling it "light red" just so I don't barf all over her "light red" hair clip collection.  Hmm, snow!  Snow isn't pink, we can talk about that.  Jessie has this habit of not saying her 's' sounds.  It is "no pants" and "no suit" etc.  It is just so cute to hear her talk about all this 'no' stuff!  She is still wearing her jacket from last year, which is like, 6-9 month sized or something ridiculus like that because it still fits her.  It is just crazy.  It is white and blue and she has these red mittens and this red hat and I just can't hardly stand how cute she is in the whole thing.  She's cute anyway, even when she's doing things I'd prefer she not.  Like tonight, after putting her to bed, I put Ash to bed.  I'm nursing him and I hear this little knocking on the door and the tiny little "Mommy, you in there?"  She knows she isn't supposed to knock on or make noise at that door.  She did stop and she didn't open the door which I'm very glad of - and that little voice was really pretty cute even though she was supposed to be in bed.  Aww, I wish I could keep her from growing up.  I'd take all the "light red" in the world to keep her 2 years old forever.

 

1-31-07

 

It's been awhile... Sorry about that.  I have been keeping up better on the scrapbook stuff though so when in doubt, check out that link because it's probably been updated.  Jessie has been singing along with songs a lot lately.  Not just songs she knows the words to either.  If there is a song playing, she'll work her way through singing along.  She usually gets a good approximation of the words anyway.  You should hear her sing "We will we will rock you!"  Hehe!  She actually has a good sense of tune most of the time too.  Her other thing lately is to tell me she's too little to walk.  She alternates between a big girl and a little girl a lot these days and she loves to be on my lap and cuddled and carried.  I try, but it is just not easy with Asher all the time.  I try to keep in mind that she just needs a little extra love sometimes, but it is hard to keep from thinking that she is annoying me and needs to act her age.  On the plus side, it is never really a cause for an all out tantrum or anything.  She can usually take me saying "no".

 

1-9-07

 

Organic high fructose corn syrup... does anyone else see the problem here?  I was reading the ingredients in this organic fruit preserve thing I was putting on some toast for Jessie and ran across that little bit.  Now, the whole reason I buy organic is NOT because I care about the stuff being grown without pesticides.  I mean, OK, I care a little, but mostly it is because I want to support smaller family run local farms and more ethical treatment of the land and animals.  Also because I want to buy and serve foods with as little processing and "natural and artificial flavours" as possible.  If someone is going to make organic high fructose corn syrup what is the point???  I mean, talk about the sky turning purple.  That is so weird.

Anyway, Jessie didn't seem to care.  Thankfully she, like my other kids, seems to be growing fit and healthy even with our occasional trips to the evil fast food places and my inclusion of organic high fructose corn syrup in her diet.

Last weekend we went on a very spontaneous family trip.  We went out to Trollhaugen to go tubing (in the artificially made snow since it doesn't get cold enough to snow in MN anymore apparently) and we decided to get a hotel room there instead of driving home right away so we got to go swimming and sleep at the hotel too.  It was a LOT of fun and even though the pool was very cold and Jessie was shivering and not really into getting her head underwater, they enjoyed the time.  Jessie even went down the big huge hills in her own tube!  It was so funny to see her in her little ladybug coat with the fuzzy poms on her head going down.  After that we headed to the hotel to unpack and walk over to Embers for dinner.  (Pretty sure that was not organic.)  Jessie ate Kris's salad and kinda picked at her eggs.  We also got some hard ice cream at the restaurant to bring back to the room and share.  Back at the hotel room we played some games and then suited up for the pool.  Jessie was so excited until she felt the cold water.  We let the kids sit at the spa pool and kick their feet in the hot water but we didn't want them in it since that's not good for kids.  Back in the room we tried to get the kids settled so they could sleep on the fold out couch bed but it was not easy to convince Jessie to stop talking long enough to fall asleep.  I really hope she grows out of that.  Eventually she was asleep though and she did sleep through the night even with Ash waking up a few times and Daddy snoring like a train.  We were a little nervous about the whole trip with her in undies but she did great!  Of course, once we got home later that evening she had 3 accidents in a row.  Sometimes I wonder if she just forgets or something. 

 

1-1-07

 

Happy New Year!  Good grief I feel old.  I was going over how many years ago this and that happened with me... TEN years ago DH and I went out to the awesome party at the International Market Square... TEN years.  Yuck.  It seems like just yesterday and that totally scares me.  Then again, just yesterday I was pregnant with Jessica and now all of the sudden she is two going on three. 

Speaking of growing up, Jessie is getting better at using the bathroom without any prompting.  She's been basically potty trained for awhile now but we are working on her being more independent because she really doesn't want to leave what she is doing to use the bathroom.  Also, she needs to be totally independent before we attempt nighttime undies.  That said, we had a horrible night last night with accidents.  We were over at Farma's house for the new year and all the kids stayed up until after midnight (seriously, they didn't even look a littl tired at all!) and that night it was accident after accident.  Everyone was saying that she was just trying to get a chance to wear the awesome new summer clothes she just got from Aunt Sara but I'm thinking maybe she really was more tired then she looked.  The kids did get some more gifts to open from uncle Nick and Aunt Sara and their cousins, so that was fun.  Jessie (and Asher) loved the little brats doll!  She was pretty in love with her new clothes too because, you know, Mom doesn't buy pink. :)  She says pink is her favorite color, have I mentioned that? 

Remember a long time ago (yesterday) when Jessie had climbed out of her crib and we needed to transition her to a bed pretty early?  Ya, well, she can now climb up to the top bunk without the ladder.  We found her up there jumping on the bed.  It isn't even like she is a big monkey or anything, she doesn't really climb on stuff that much.  Now I have to decide if it will just be safer to put the ladder back so she can at least use that instead of not using it - or if I should continue to tell her that climbing up there is off limits.  At the moment, I went the "off limits" route and it seems to be working. Hmm, well, she also pushed the kitchen chairs over to the counters to climb up there and pick out her own plates or cups or whatever.  I discovered that one day when she said she wanted juice and I said I'd be right there to get it for her and she ran off and came back with a cup to put it in... "Where'd you get that hun?" "The cupboard."  

One last thing - the other day she was coloring something over at a relative's house and I was trying to get her to show off her Irish Dancing to the people there.  I kept saying "Come on Jessie, show us your dancing."  Finally she turned around and looked at me and said "I can't right now Mommy, I'm just BUSY." and turned back to her coloring.  See, she was busy.