This blog is brought to you by the letter "H", "P", "O", "A"...

Guess who is starting to recognize letters????

Did you guess Anna???

You are correct... we went out today and she saw a sign for a Hospital (the big blue signs with an H on it) and told us "I see H".. and she was so proud of herself... I was pretty proud too... earlier in the day she had grouped her alphabet letters on the fridge by color and was going through the vowels (they all are red). There was a little confusion on A versus U (which she named easily but I wanted her to find the A). She did find all 5 vowels that I asked her for. After nap we played some games on the sesamestreet.org site and she did really great at the keyboard games (she selected a letter or number and Elmo would show an object that starts with the letter or count to the number pressed). I found that she really likes the O key and the P key. Lily really liked playing these games also but wasn't getting as many chances at playing since at age 2 it's really hard to take turns doing anything. I need to remember to give her alone time for these games.. Anna has a tendency to take over.

Speaking of Lily, she's been totally surprising me lately. She has been wanting to sit on the potty with a naked bum. And this is on her own... not with me coaxing her to go and sit or try. Still no pee-pee in the potty but we're doing this on their terms for now. I do have a stash of M&Ms though if needed (then again it's a very delicious stash).. and plenty of stickers in the basement from my time as a teacher.

Lily can also somewhat dress herself. We are still allowed to put on her Pull Up and pants or shorts but when it comes to shoes and shirts Lily wants to do it herself. Not everything goes on correctly and we've had to help her fix it at times (shirts that are backwards are sometimes left if done at bedtime or if we are not going out somewhere). The funniest are the nightgowns that are backwards and inside out. I felt honored that she let me put her dress on today twice (we went swimming today) without telling me "I do it Mommy". I'm taking what I can get these days... then again Anna still lets me dress her completely though she has begun to fight me on getting dressed on the Changing Table. So far letting her stand up has been a good way to win that fight. The ramifications of that though is another post.. this one is getting long enough and Mommy is tired and needs to be up early tomorrow.

How to get to Sesame Street

Ok I admit that I LOVE Sesame Street and that I always have loved it since I was old enough to watch it way back before Elmo was the main star of the show. I love the songs, the Muppets, the people and heck my oldest brother does a great Cookie Monster impersonation. I also have 2 little girls that LOVE to watch Sesame Street quite a bit if only to catch a glimpse of their lovable and furry red friend ELMO (who Anna lately has been calling Elmo-head). Lily can sing parts of the theme song (the old school one).. and both Anna and Lily can identify Big Bird, Oscar, Cookie and Elmo with very little prompting.


So the other day the girls and I were watching a Sesame Street DVD and checking out the previews of some of the other DVDs that Sesame Street has... and I was looking up the various titles on our library's webpage to see if they have any of them on their shelves.. while doing this I found an interesting looking book and decided that I needed to read this book.. since it was all about the beginnings of Sesame Street and how it came to be and has evolved over the past 40 years. So I requested the book on a Friday (Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by Michael Davis) and picked it up the following Monday. I must admit that the book itself terrified me at first by the size of it. I was expecting something a bit fluffier but once I started to read the book and got into it I was hooked. It's been an amazing read so far... Lee has even picked it up and started reading it too as evidenced by the presence of 2 bookmarks in the book (3 if you count the one that I'm using in the Notes section).

I've learned quite a bit about Sesame Street and gained so much insight... I even started to watch some of the first episodes via youtube. Both Anna and Lily have been enjoying this also and we might be the proud owners of the Sesame Street Old School DVDs soon since the girls are totally into the old episodes too.

Maybe just maybe we can eventually make a trip to Sesame Place before the girls outgrow watching Sesame Street. Then again I never really have so there might be plenty of time for that trip.

Chugging along on Sock #2

Tonight at knitting group I turned the heel on Sock #2 and picked up stitches with the help of my friend Aaron who in my world is a knitting god... He totally knows what he is doing and if he doesn't...well he has this really awesome book by Cookie A (yes that is a real person) to help find the answers to my endless questions about sock knitting.

Once home and fed I started to work on the Gusset part of the sock... thankfully another knitting friend of mine (Susan) helped me with figuring out how to do that when I was working sock #1 (and she included illustrations - which is great for a visual learner like me) and I'm already two rounds into working on the Gusset already before Lee and I switched rooms so I could use the computer and watch TV. I am hopeful that I will be well on my way to getting this second sock done so that I can work on my next project or try to spend some time working on the two (2) blankets that I've been trying to work on lately... then again Aaron told me tonight that when I start my next pair of socks that he's going to teach me how to knit socks using the Magic Loop method.. sounds fun.

Sock #1

I finally was able to snap a couple pictures of my first sock...

This one is a little closer...

Meanwhile Sock #2 is ambling along... I am up to the Heel Flap.. I am determined to NOT break a needle while knitting this part (I broke 2 of my double pointed needles on sock #1 at this point). Maybe I'll be ready for turning the heel by Wednesday when I go to knitting group. I know that I'll need help with picking up the stitches that aren't currently live on my needles.

The Gods are Crazy

I swear these girls are giving me a run for my money lately.. but to their credit they are cute little buggers and that saves me from running far far away from them.

• Since we switched the beds at Grandma's house they have not taken a nap in them... I tried and failed on Saturday... I finally took them home after taking them for a walk around the block in Grandma's 'hood. They did eventually nap but it was late and we didn't let them sleep long..

• Sunday Anna did not nap at all.. instead she serenaded us (and eventually just Lee since I needed to get groceries) but went to sleep easily at bedtime.. Unfortunately tonight it took her 3 hrs to settle in to sleep. I had to remove quite a few things from her crib and change a poopy diaper before she gave in.

• Anna has attempted a break out here at home from the crib but we have been thwarting her everytime since we don't have Toddler beds here yet and probably won't for a bit longer..

• Both girls are totally digging watching Sesame Street's 35th Anniversary DVD (The Street We Live On) and can probably sing (recite) quite a few of the songs and words now. I think that it's adorable as anything and love to listen to Lily count to TEN.. (ok 'Ten' is not exactly in her vocab yet when she counts but she's getting really close).

• Lily has become a Barney convert... we have one (1) Barney book here and she has watched very little Barney on TV but she knows who he is and is enamored by him very much..

• Lily has also started finding little hiding holes for all sorts of objects.. If we are missing a cup, juice box or toy; we now know to look in her hiding places... on a small tangent she hid her Elmo doll today and actually was knocking on the door to get him back... I'm thinking that she thought that Elmo might actually open the door himself for her (like on the Elmo Potty DVD that she watches). I had to tell her that Elmo wanted her to open the door so he could see her.

End of an Era at Grandma's

Today's nap was the last nap that Anna and Lily would take at Grandma's house in a crib... from now on they will be napping in Toddler beds. We had been talking about it but hadn't done anything till today. Today Anna had a huge fit at nap time and decided to hook her leg up and then pulled the other leg up too and almost fell out.. I got her down and back in and closed the door.. then we decided to give them a fan since it was so warm in my old room.. Thank goodness that I went back in.. Anna was trying to escape again.. I put her back down and left the room and sat on the stairs waiting for a THUD or some other noise to tell me that she had fallen out or escaped.. Thankfully I heard nothing and went downstairs for a while. When I went to check on her a couple hours later she was still in the crib but awake.. so I took her downstairs with me while Lily slept a little longer.

Once Lily got up we got busy with taking the drop side of the crib off and converting the crib to a Toddler Bed... so glad that their Uncle left the conversion kit at Grandma's just in case. Since we were converting Anna's crib we figured that we might as well do Lily's also even though it doesn't convert at all. So we took the crib down (took a little bit to figure out) and I went to the basement to get S and D's old Toddler Bed. We gave it a quick cleaning with some antibacterial wipes and put the crib mattress on the frame.

Both Anna and Lily seem to be ok with the switch. They both had a ball playing on both beds...
The big test will be sometime next week when I bring the girls over and they take their nap. At the worst we can put the baby gate at the door so they can still open the door but not get out of the room. It's been done before with S and D and probably even with me when I was really little (though I doubt that one).

So it's the end of an era... no more cribs at Grandma's house... no more babies too cause we are BIG girls now.