Christmas with 2 yr olds

Before I get to the Christmas update, I’m excited to share that Cooper has pooped and peed in the toilet!  I never thought I would get excited about this, but for not really trying to potty train, this is pretty big.  The poop was more about preventing having to disinfect the tub and toys again, but he did let me know he was getting ready to go and then pointed to the toilet.  The pee was the same thing, getting ready to pee in the tub and he let me know and pointed to the toilet.  He was very surprised to do both in the toilet and he thought the peeing was a little weird, especially because he wouldn’t keep it pointed down and I think he got more pee down his leg and on his hands than in the toilet.

Now that he understands pooping in the toilet anytime he hears Charlotte fart, he scowls at her and then starts whining/grunting and pointing at her butt.  Then he brings a diaper over and tries to put it on her.  We think it’s hysterical!  As for Charlotte, she hates being wet and dirty, and likes to sit on the toilet, but hasn’t made the connection of going in the toilet like Cooper has.

Okay, now for Christmas.  The kids woke up bright and early at 6 am.  I guess they really couldn’t wait to get started!  I got all the lights on and cameras ready (which I forgot to change all my settings back to normal, since I had been messing with them to learn the camera…not so great pictures, darn!) and then had them come downstairs.  Usually they race down on their bellies, but since they could see all the presents and doll bassinet and high chair, they didn’t know what to think.

Asking why his monkey/baby is in the bassinet 

Checking out the high chair and bassinet 

Cooper quickly understood unwrapping presents and got so excited about ripping all the paper off.  Charlotte wanted to play with one or two toys  while Cooper ripped all the paper off.

Running from one half opened gift to another

Charlotte having fun in her new jammies

Everyone checking out the new basketball hoop for the tub

Charlotte VERY excited about the balls and basketball hoop By far, her favorite toy

Cooper loved all the Little People toys, and especially liked this broom and little man.  I think he tried to sweep every part of the house with the miniature broom.  He pretends a lot now and it’s so fun to watch him!

Of course they wanted me to put every present together as they opened it.  When we went down to San Diego to visit Jason and Erin, we didn’t bring many toys with us.  Jason pulled out Connect Four and they LOVED it.  So I figured it could be a great game to grow with them, providing we don’t lose the pieces!

And for the big present, the kitchen!  We didn’t end up getting a wood one, because we found a nice plastic one on Craigslist for $100, and we got the baby bassinet and high chair for free with it!  Too good of deal to pass up.  They had a blast exploring it, and they still play with it a ton.  They pretend to cook, eat, drink, and do dishes.  Charlotte loves putting her milk in the microwave or the fridge, and Cooper loves pushing all the buttons and playing with the pots and pans.

Discovering it behind the curtains

Of course the microwave is the first thing to explore…he always plays with the real one.

Yes, Cooper, there’s even a phone!

They finally start opening everything up and exploring.

Cooper does the dishes

Charlotte eventually got bored and went back to her MagnaDoddle she opened on Christmas Eve.

The next day after picking up the missing package from our old apartment building, they opened their tools from family in NC.  We put everything in a bucket and they both jumped in.  Cooper loves putting the end of the real working drill bit in his mouth and spinning it around.  Charlotte was upset because Cooper got in after her.

Once she got out, Cooper got to work. 

Cooper and another very expressive look.  His feelings are always written all over his face (just like mommy!)

Chris and I had a very good Christmas as well.  I mentioned I got a Kindle and surprisingly LOVE it!  I never thought I would enjoy it so much, since I love reading real books so much.  It really is pretty cool, very simple, and convenient.  I got some super comfy PJ’s (thanks family in NC!) and a Snuggie!  Here is Chris modeling it for me while playing basketball with Charlotte.  He looks like some kind of religious man here, especially with the star above his head!

Chris got about 75% Tarheel related gifts.  Even Scout got a Tarheel  collar.  His favorite was apparently the Mr. Potato Head since he took a picture of it.

All in all, a great holiday!

We’ve already taken down the tree, so now I need to change the blog to New Year’s!

Not really an update

After the kids were sick this past week the last few days have been very trying.  I can’t take anymore whining.  I’m frustrated that Charlotte doesn’t even attempt to communicate before she whines or throws a tantrum.  I’m frustrated  that she doesn’t try harder before melting down that she can’t do something.

I’m tired of Cooper teething his molars.  All he wants to do is nurse.  He’s also starting the ‘mine’ stage so sharing has been a no go, which makes Charlotte’s whining and tantrums even worse.  They both are so moody!  One moment smiling and giggling and the next in complete melt downs.  I’m over it and I have a feeling we have at least 2 more years of this.

Anyhow, I got the Kindle for Christmas so I am obsessed with reading right now.  That means I don’t have much time to blog since I’m still keeping up with P90X (even with my broken toe!).  The workouts are tough this month, but it’s easy to stick with it since it feels like part of my routine now.  I’m really starting to see definition in my arms, legs and back and I definitely feel stronger.  I think I’ll probably do this for another 90 days after I finish the first 90 days, and then try the couch to 5K and maybe even consider running a half marathon.  Just something to challenge myself…not sure though since I don’t really enjoy running.

Anyhow, I plan to eventually update on Christmas, but this isn’t really that update.  Sorry for the delay.

Holiday Card 2010

Here is the final holiday card.  I had to take the pictures over two different weekends and I probably took over 100 pictures to get about 10 good ones.  It’s near impossible to get two toddlers both in focus and looking at the camera!  (You should be able to click on this picture and see a bigger version.)

(We had a wonderful Christmas, but I’m tired after my workout so I’m going to bed now.  I’ll post about it hopefully tomorrow.)

Birthday Letter to Charlotte

Dear Charlotte,

You turned two a little over a week ago.  This past year has been full of firsts and lots of changes.  It really does seem like you’ve always been with us and we are so happy you officially became a Derichsweiler in May.  Your big brown eyes, beautiful smile, and silly laugh melt everyone’s heart, including your grandparents.  Our life is more full and more amazing because you’re our daughter.  We treasure every day and look forward to what the next year has in store for us!

Only a year go you turned one and shortly after you started walking.  We moved to a new house this year, and we all love the extra space, especially because now you are running and climbing!  You’ve asserted your place as big sister, although Cooper is starting to gain some ground.  Although sharing is tough, you still use your brains to outsmart his might.

You learned to eat with utensils this year and now you get upset when your hands get dirty with food.  You insist on having a napkin to wipe your hands and mouth when you eat.  You have a full mouth of teeth and handled getting both sets of molars and your I-teeth with very little fussiness. 

You are learning to communicate much better.  You can make so many new faces and can easily show us happy, sad, mad and surprised whenever we ask.  Our favorite is when you walk up to us and first make a mad face then immediately make a surprised face and we all burst into a fit of giggles.  You use signs regularly to show us what you need, although you have a unique ‘help’ and ‘please’ sign that you came up with on your own.  Speech therapy is going well and you are saying so many new words.  You know that cars go beep, beep, motorcycles go vroom, and dogs go woof, woof.  You can say car (caw), ball (baw), dog (daw), daddy (dahee), yeah, up (puh), help (peh), done (duh), and open (poh).  You can almost say more and mommy.  Our favorite is when you speak gibberish and end with a yeah, yeah, yeah.

You love cuddling and kisses with everyone including your brother Cooper and dog Scout.  You care very much if people get hurt or are sad, and you always try to comfort others.  You LOVE Handy Manny and dance and sing to all the songs.  You are also quickly falling in love with Blues Clues and can make all the signs at the right time during the opening song.  It truly amazes us!

You love any sport that includes a ball.  You cheer and clap during football games, especially when a player gets tackled.  When basketball is on you point to the ball and say over and over ‘baw, baw, baw’.    Your favorite songs are Hot N’ Cold by Katy Perry, Use Somebody and Sex is on Fire by Kings of Leon.  You stop whatever you are doing, get our attention and begin singing and dancing when these songs come on.  

You love playing with your Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Puppy and share your milk and snacks with him.  He is also your must have lovey for sleeping, along with your green blankie.  You can play with cars and trucks all day long, but you especially love books.  Dr. Seuss is your favorite author and daddy has memorized the Sneetches and the Lorax.

You are full of life and are very passionate.  You are also impatient and have a stubborn streak and hot temper.  At the same time you are oh so sweet and gentle.  We love you so, so much!  Happy Birthday, little Miss Charlotte!

(Enjoy the VERY long slideshow.)

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Party Faux Pas

We went to a holiday party on Sunday evening at a friend’s house.  We offered to stay home since we didn’t have a babysitter in case they didn’t want two toddlers crashing the party.  They were excited to have us all over, so we went.

We were the first to arrive, which was good because Charlotte and Cooper got the lay of the land before a lot of unfamiliar faces showed up.  Cooper explored every.inch.of.the.house.  Not kidding.  All of it.  Charlotte?  Well, she was content with her crackers, all 20 of them.  Let me explain.

The snack trays were low enough for both of them to reach.  So Charlotte took one cracker, then took 5 more.  Found a spot in a corner with a bench to make her pile.  Went back to the plate and took one more, then 5 more.  This continued all night.  You’d think we didn’t feed her.  She ate her crackers and drank her juice in the corner for the two hours we were there.

Cooper ran from room to room to room, wreaking havoc wherever he went.    He pulled the candles out of the fireplace.  Crawled under the Christmas tree to chase the cat.  He took crackers and the entire hunk of cheese off the snack tray.  He put a nut in his mouth and decided he didn’t like it and then put it back in the community bowl.  Six times.  He ate handful after handful of Chex mix and decided it tasted terrible and spit it out.  Three times.  On the couch, on the carpet, on the floor.

Ate BBQ chicken and then played on the computer and got sauce on the keyboard.  Put a half eaten celery stick in the curio cabinet and one in the old cubby where the iron was placed in the olden days (it is an old house).  Brushed his teeth with the hostess’ toothbrush.  He may or may not have dipped it in the toilet first.  Used the bathtub as a slide.  Went through the medicine cabinet, the make-up drawers, and the sock drawer.

And last but not least, he went through the hamper.  He came walking out of the bedroom with the hamper lid and everyone at the party started laughing.  The host said, no worries.  I’m glad Chris intercepted and he only brought out the hamper lid.

Why you ask?  Chris said he turned red when he saw what Cooper came out of the room with initially.  A pair of pink lacey panties.  Of COURSE they’re pink, it’s Cooper’s favorite color.  Chris managed to get Cooper to put the underwear back in the hamper and instead show everyone at the party the hamper lid.

Holiday parties are interesting and exhausting with two 2 year olds!

(To my friend:  Um surprise!  I purposely left your name out in case you don’t want all my friends and family knowing you wear pink lacey panties.  Really I would recommend buying a new toothbrush because I didn’t get there in time to know if he dunked it in the toilet first or not.  We had a great time and thank you so much for everything!

(Just so you know, it sounds like we don’t discipline our children with this post.  Obviously redirection is the big thing at this age and timeout we only use for more serious behavior like hitting.  They were very well behaved at the party and despite their curiosity and typical 2 year old behavior, we had a really great time.)

Using Photoshop

I’m still learning, but I would agree with Che, even with the LightScoop, my photos are underexposed (although I still prefer that to direct flash!).  So here’s my shot at using Photoshop to brighten up the photo (using Che’s tip in her comment from my previous post).  I also popped her eye a bit using this technique.  I’ve found that my monitors are a little blue and a little bright, so when I edit my photos still have a lot of red and yellow in them, and are still dark.  Let me know what you see.

Before:

After:

Cool New Toy

For all you beginner photographers with DSLR’s, there is a cool new toy for your onboard pop up flash that attaches to your camera and will bounce the flash for a less harsh direct flash.  This is especially great for indoor pictures (as there is nothing to bounce light off outdoors) where you don’t have much natural light coming in, and for when you don’t have the money to purchase an external flash with a swivel head.  It’s called a LightScoop and you can buy at at Adorama for only $20.  I wouldn’t recommend getting the warm version one (I accidentally did and hated the yellow colors it gives).

Here are the results in an area of our house with very little natural light.

No flash

Direct Flash

LightScoop (bounced off a white door and white ceiling)

No flash

Direct Flash

LightScoop (bounced off a white door)

No flash

Direct Flash (Scout either gets weird glowing eyes or shuts her eyes against the harsh flash)

LightScoop (bounced off a taupe corner wall and white ceiling…less than ideal bouncing)

LightScoop with slightly better bouncing (off white door, but at an angle)

I think it’s absolutely critical to get a good surface to bounce light off, but for $20, I like the lighting it gives over a direct flash.  I hate the blown out look and terrible shadows a direct flash gives, so this is great for me!

A couple more things

I forgot a couple things…

Charlotte started feeling bad in the evening the day of her birthday (Monday) and had the worst meltdown at dinner time.  She’s been congested, coughing and sneezing and she ran a small fever on Tuesday.  Now Cooper is sick with the same stuff.  No fun.  This means we didn’t have speech therapy this week, so nothing to report.

Charlotte had her 2 yr well baby check up today.  She had a melt down and HATES the nurse who does all the shots.  We got some measurements, but I don’t know how accurate they are because she was flinging herself all over.  At 2 yrs old she weighs 26 lbs and is 34.5 inches tall, which means she’s really grown!!  Which I think is definitely the case since we basically had to replace her wardrobe recently since she grew out of all her 18 month size clothing.

We talked about how her speech therapy is going and her emotional behavior (short temper, impatience, struggle with transitions, needing things done a specific way or with specific item) and how we deal with the behavior.  We also finally got the referral for the hearing test, so we’ll have to take her for that.

When we discussed Charlotte’s motor skills, I mentioned again about the weakness and limpness in her extremities, particularly in her arms and hands.  When she first came home we noticed she never gripped on to us, but thought it might be because she was warming up to us and needed time to bond.  It has gotten a little better with her gripping with her legs, but she doesn’t hold on at all with her hands or arms.  She also doesn’t grasp or grip things strongly and rarely picks things up to carry them, but instead drags or pushes them around.  She doesn’t do much climbing and really only copies Cooper if he is doing it.

The doctor tested her grip and strength of pulling her arms away by holding on to both of her hands.  Charlotte started crying and throwing a fit, but barely made an effort to pull her hands away.  The doctor understood what we meant by weakness in her arms and hands as well.  She said the weakness isn’t necessarily the concern, but the modification of motor skills is more the issue.  It’s good that she’s problems solving and finding other ways to do things, but it also means she’s not doing the things she should be able to do.

The doctor recommended that we have Charlotte evaluated for physical ability (major and minor motor skills) through the Early Start program.  She said the gym we joined will probably help with building strength, but that an evaluation will give a better indication if she is really behind and needs more structured physical therapy.  Now it makes me wish we would have had her evaluated for everything to begin with!  I don’t know how we will fit in physical therapy if she needs that as well.  We’ll figure out a way, but gosh we have a lot going on right now!

Checking things off the list

I sent Christmas cards out today.  Although I think the idea was cute, I’m disappointed with the final product.  Simply put my printer sucks and by the time I realized it was ruining my great idea, I just ran out of time to get the photos printed elsewhere.  That and my monitor isn’t calibrated, so I’m not sure the color would have been right even if I would have taken them to be printed.  So sorry for the funky color and smudged looking photos.  Next year I will try to get it together sooner!

Now I need to finish Christmas shopping and make the calendars again.  First I need to edit some pictures and choose which ones will go in the calendar.  Those will likely go out late, so sorry!

Charlotte’s birthday party was absolutely wonderful.  She LOVED all the Handy Manny stuff and it was great to have room to have so many people over.  We got to catch up with friends and even hold a couple little babies since our friend Michele had twins (boy/girl) a couple months ago.  I was surprised because all I felt was relief that my children weren’t that age anymore.  I guess that means I’m not ready for more right now!

We decorated everything in Handy Manny and put up caution tape instead of streamers.  We had a local bakery put a Handy Manny picture on her cake and I made cookies from Mrs. Portillo and candy from Mr. Lopart for favors.  Chris and I made a ‘Put the tools in the toolbox game’ (in lieu of Pin the tail on the donkey game). 

We gave Charlotte a basketball hoop and a play house for her birthday, both of which she LOVED (and so did Cooper)!  We had to put both of them inside the house because it’s been raining and was all wet outside, but we wanted her to be able to play with it.  The garage has too many things they can get hurt with, so for now our house is taken over with kid stuff.  We also bought her some little people stuff and puzzles to help her learn animal sounds.  She got lots of kitchen related items which is great since they’re getting a play kitchen for Christmas.

I’ve uploaded her birthday pictures to her Shutterfly site.  I am so thankful to Caren who took AMAZING photos of the party and Charlotte.  Tomorrow I will try to post Charlotte’s birthday letter and photo collage of her last year of life.  This one is my favorite:

I know I am way behind on uploading pictures to their Shutterfly sites.  I hate doing it because it’s so time consuming so I just keep putting it off.  I think starting in January I’m going to revamp the Shutterfly sites to make it simple and quick to upload pictures.  I’m probably going to move everything to one site so that I don’t have to do multiple uploads.  I also plan to delete multiple and blurred pictures to help me save space on my hard drive.

Falling behind

I have way too many things going on.  And to make sure it’s more difficult to do everything I broke my toe.  I was taking pictures of the kids for the Christmas card and I accidentally kicked the fireplace hearth.  This really throws a wrench in the whole P90X workout!  I was able to complete the workout tonight with only a few modifications.  I’m most concerned about keeping up with the cardio part of the workout, so we’ll see if/how I can modify that.  Grrr…

I finished designing the Christmas cards, which actually turned out pretty cute.  Now I need to print them, then assemble, then address and send out!  I still need to finish Christmas shopping as well.  Honestly could I be doing anything more??

I need to do a post for Charlotte’s birthday, but it’s late and I need to go to bed, so it will have to wait, because I want to do it right instead of rushed.  Maybe tomorrow?

Cookie Decorating

Charlotte had her last week of speech therapy at home this week.  Next week she starts at the center for both days.  To be honest I think it’s probably also more convenient for the therapists to have her in center, rather than come to the house.  It’s fine though since I think she make faster progress in center and it also gives Chris some freedom and bonding time with Cooper.

The last few days Charlotte has been touching her chin every time I ask her to make a sound to ask for something.  I asked Chris want sign she was making and he laughed and said he forgot to tell me.  During therapy, they sort of touch her chin and cheeks to get her to form her mouth in the proper position to make a particular sound.  She has picked that up…she looks like she is rubbing an imaginary beard.  I think it does help remind her how to form her mouth because initially if she’s trying to say ‘open’, she’ll say ‘mmm, mmm’, but when she touches her chin she’ll change it to an ‘ohh, ohh’.

We had a busy day today.  Charlotte’s party is tomorrow, so we are busy trying to get everything for the party, plus prepare for Christmas.  I am behind on Christmas shopping and I still haven’t gotten a good photo of the kids for the Christmas card.  I hope I have some luck tomorrow morning before the party.

This morning we went to My Gym for class (we joined since Charlotte’s therapy has switched days and gives us the opportunity to take advantage of the play time and the class).  During nap time, Chris ran errands for the party and I prepared the goodie bags and favors.  After nap, the kids helped me decorate cookies.  Well more like helped eat them, but we had fun.

   

Cooper’s masterpiece

And Charlotte’s

Too much cute to contain