Life

I am so behind on blogging, it’s not even funny.  I have a lot to update everyone on, but I haven’t made time to do it.

Here’s a quick run down:

Cooper did help feed the dog.  But he also likes to put the food in the water.  (Ignore the messy tray, that’s what I was cleaning that day.)

Playing tag at the park

Charlotte’s new method of saying hi.  She sort of bounces it up and down in front of her.

Charlotte’s hand clapping that she learned from My Gym (Welcome Song)

I loved how her skirt got flipped up here.  We have slowly started leaving the bungee cords off the table.  So far they just move the chairs to the bar, but they don’t climb on the counter.  We will be getting a new kitchen table soon, so we won’t be using the bungee cords anymore.

Potty training is still fairly slow.  We aren’t really putting any effort into it.  Charlotte shows no interest at all.  She doesn’t seem to be phased by sitting in a wet or dirty diaper for long periods of time.  Cooper on the other hand announces to us when he is peeing and grabs himself then says ‘pod’ and demands we take him to the bathroom.  We always do and just let him sit on the toilet even though he has already peed his diaper.  Every once in awhile we catch him before he pees.

He also hates pooping in his diaper and prefers to go on the floor or in the toilet.  He lets us know immediately if he has a dirty diaper or just takes his dirty diaper off and brings it to us.  Let me tell you how not fun it is when he does that.  Here are the kids wearing underwear over their diapers.  It seems to be the only way they’ll wear underwear. 

They are loving hats again and picked one out at the store.

Love the expressions Cooper makes!          

Cooper is quite the communicator.  Through his facial expressions and body language we are able to understand a lot of what he is saying.  The best part is that he has over 30 words now, many of which are very clear.  He seems to learn a new word every day and really tries to make new sounds.  It’s completely fascinating to me this whole process of learning language.

Charlotte is also really starting to talk.  She says 20-25 words, but not all of them are clear.  She is getting better at mimicking sounds when asked and we’ve noticed her sitting and practicing talking.  Her therapy has done so much!!

Charlotte is still very stubborn and opinionated.  However we have changed our discipline style with her and we are seeing HUGE improvements in her behavior.  We have stopped timeout altogether (which I was not okay with at first) and instead have gone completely to gentle discipline with tons of positive reinforcement and choices. 

When she gets upset, we offer hugs and cuddles and then redirect.  We also ask her to explain what is wrong (even if we can’t understand her) and then give her choices so she has control.  What I thought she needed was more boundaries with rules and timeouts/consequences for her actions.  What she needed was to be made to feel safe when her emotions were too big for her.  The cuddles help and then giving her control with choices also makes her world feel more predictable.   Bottom line, we have much, much less of this:

She has turned into this fun loving, funny, confident little girl.  She still has some difficult moments or days, but I’m enjoying being her mommy again.

She makes this motion a lot…getting the hair out of her face.

Charlotte and Cooper both LOVE this book.  I have to admit that I like it too.  The story is great for handling adoption, the illustrations are beautiful, and it rhymes.

Here she is in Cooper’s crib doing her pretend sleeping again.  It’s so darn cute.

Check out Charlotte coloring.  This is a new favorite thing to do in our house hold.  Cooper usually just peels the crayons or eats them, but Charlotte genuinely enjoys drawing and coloring.  Notice how well she holds the crayon!

I still need to upload February’s pictures to Shutterfly, but that will be for another night.  Hope everyone is enjoying the photo blog!