Feeling better

Well, somebody seems to be feeling better...

Finally after 6 days of running a fever, Charlotte is finally appearing to feel better.  Now begins the process of reminding her that unless we're sick, we really don't actually watch TV all day every day in this house.  But if its too bright, sunglasses are ok I guess.  haha!

We're still getting snow here.  Although, not as much as this past month, but still... we're ready for Spring!  We've been rearranging a lot of the rooms in the house and starting some Spring cleaning already.  Just so anxious to get out of the house and enjoy the outdoors.  Charlotte saw it snowing yesterday and said "Snowy gen, Mommy!"  Yes, my daughter, it is snowing AGAIN...  She wanted to share the moment with her Little People apparently too.  The pictures are a little dark, but I just had to share.  Here she is telling her Little People that its "snowy outside people." 

Still sick

Well, it seems that I was horribly mistaken that Charlotte's temperature last week was due to her tooth coming in.  We are now on day FIVE of her having a fever of at least 100*.  Not that anyone likes to be sick, but this is absolutely miserable for her (and us consequently.)  It's probably the worst head/sinus cold I've ever seen.  Mostly just a very runny nose, but I've never heard of a temperature for that many days.  She is screaming, usually "tissue!" about every 30 seconds, not eating or sleeping much at all, and very intolerant of any attention given to brother or anything other than her.  Let me say that again... DAY FIVE.  This is rough!  And to top it off, Beckett got the fever last night.  Here we go again!  At least he's a less dramatic sick child, just needs to be snuggled a lot, still not sleeping or eating well though.  Hopefully they will both be over this soon and Mommy & Daddy don't get it too.  Well, my "break" is over... need to get back to the sick kiddos who are now awake. 

Sitting up

Guess who's figured how to sit up by himself now?!

Sick day

Poor Charlotte woke up today with a temp of 100*.  She was also complaining that her "mouth hurt."  She has her last baby tooth coming in, so I'm guessing that's at least part of the problem.  She's not really eating much either and is pretty lethargic too, though, so it may be a little bug.  Regardless, we're having a lazy day around here til she feels better.  Nothing a little Tylenol, Orajel and cartoons can't fix.

Apparently, there's also nothing better than your "friends" to help you feel better when you're sick...

Beckett on the other hand, seems to be feeling great today... especially after his record-breaking 2 1/2 hour nap this morning!  When Charlotte was his age, hers were only about 45 minutes.  Two very different children for sure!

Daddy's little monkey

Charlotte is totally a Daddy's girl!  I don't think he minds at all.

Mealtime with Beckett

For how much this guy likes to eat, you think he'd make it easier on Mom to feed him...

"Once a time..."

Charlotte sat down with a blank notebook in her lap this morning.  And then she proceeded to read Mommy her story...

"Storytime Mommy."
"Once a time. Little girl. Name Charlotte." 
"Kids. Teddy. Blocks. Kids...."
"De in."

Could she be any cuter?!  Love my little storyteller!

Brother and sister playtime

The kids are so cute playing together now. It's such a fun age for them both!  Charlotte is always getting Beckett's toys for him... all of them usually. And Beckett is constantly trying to get toys from his sister. And they make each other laugh often! It makes a mama happy for sure!

Smart little girl

Charlotte is only 22 months old, but she is already showing signs of being a very smart and very organized little girl, just like her Mommy and Daddy.  Although... not sure we were quite like this at her age.  She is such a little sponge!  The lining up of her toys on the couches just started, partially I think as a way to keep brother from getting them, but it was still an odd sight to see.  And its not the only time she's done it. 

Yesterday, I caught her playing with her beaded necklaces.  She looked up at me and said "Twiangles Mommy!"  I was so proud and made such a big deal that she now does it again and again and yells "Did it!" and runs around the room when she does it.  :)

Between that and already singing her ABC's (just not liking to have it on video), what else will there be left for this little girl to learn when she actually gets to preschool age?!

A Day of Firsts

So yesterday was apparently a day of "firsts" at the Woods house. 

#1:  Charlotte had her first entire day of dry pants, including waking up in the morning with dry pants and staying dry after naptime.  Mommy was blown away to say the least and so unbelievably proud! 

#2:  Beckett made his first actual moves at crawling.  Of course, I couldn't catch it on camera though.  Until today he's been doing mostly an army crawl type thing - like this.








#3:  Beckett had his first attempts at eating toast and drinking out of a sippy cup.  The water in the cup seemed to be a disappointment once he figured it out, but he couldn't get enough of the toast, as seen by the mess on his face and the desire to eat two pieces.

#4:  No cute pictures, but it was also Kevin's first time seeing freezing fog.  If you've ever seen it before, you know it is a crazy sight, but absolutely beautiful!

#5:  It was also the first time Mommy and Charlotte "made" cookies together. Ok, so we cheated with the pop in the oven out of the package Valentine's cookies, but Charlotte sure felt like we made cookies together.  And let me tell you it was quite tragic for her actually having to put them in the oven and bake them.  She just wanted to eat the cookies, not have to "work" for them.  :)

Yep, they're really getting big!

Charlotte has had a rough week discipline-wise.  She's definitely about to hit that terrible two stage.  We realized just how much she had been getting in trouble when I overheard the following conversation between her and her Little People character toy a few days ago...

(As she was setting her Little People on her time out stool) "Time out. One minute."  "Say sorry Mommy."  "Ok." She then proceeded to pick up her Little People and give her a kiss. 

That was her mistake... she can't get away pretending like she doesn't understand how it works now.  haha!  Still, quite a funny thing to overhear.  She has so much personality and keeps us laughing often, more often than not simply at her response to getting in trouble.  So much drama!  And so grown up, of course, too!

Beckett, on the other hand, is growing up in another way.  He had his 6 month check up at the doctor today and they confirmed what we already knew.  He is a big boy!  He's 19lbs 9oz and 27 1/2 inches.  On the charts, that's in the 75-90% for both.  I guess that explains why he's already wearing 12 month clothes while he's only 6 months old.  This is such a strange thing for us, especially considering that Charlotte was only 19lb15oz at her one year check up!  Once again, growing up way too fast!

The kids are really growing up fast

I'm sure that every parent out there feels like their kids grow up way too fast, and we are definitely not the exception.  Especially this week. 

Here are some highlights from the past few days...

Charlotte started to play dress up.

Beckett scooted all the way through this tunnel by himself with sister's puzzle piece in sight.

Charlotte is such a big girl now trying to read by herself.  She absolutely loves books!

Beckett seems to have found his first girlfriend.

Charlotte was Daddy's big helper with the dishes yesterday and continued to talk about it all day today.  She loves helping Mommy and Daddy with anything we'll allow her to.

We really do try to cherish every moment that we can with the kids, but still, it all seems to go by so fast.  Charlotte and Beckett both bring so much joy to our lives, as crazy as some days may get.  This is such a fun season in life for us all!

Happy baby

Our little guy is 6 months old today.  It has gone by so fast!  He is such a happy little guy and we are so blessed to have him.  Hope he can add a smile to your day like he does ours so often...

It snowed!

Yes, it snowed!  And that is an understatement for sure.  Although I'm not sure of the exact total in our area, everywhere around us received somewhere between 7 and 9 inches of snow, so I'm sure ours is close to that.  In addition to that much snow, the night after it snowed, there were wind gusts over 35 miles per hour, which caused some major drifting.  And as beautiful as all of this is,

Kevin was scheduled to work at 4am the morning after all of this.  Here is his attempt at getting out to work.... 

It was so dark that early in the morning, he couldn't tell how bad it had drifted.  Needless to say, he didn't make it in that morning.  And it took quite a lot of digging and help from a neighbor to actually get unstuck at all.  Ah, the joys of living in the Midwest!

Hopefully, we'll have a chance this weekend to actually get out and play in it at least!  Maybe during halftime of the Superbowl today?!  Go Colts!

The new diapers

After an entire day of the washing machine running the dozen or so pre-washes required with the arrival of our new cloth diapers, they are finally clean and dry.  At least temporarily.  Only had to change a few wet ones so far, but they seem to agree well with the little guy for now.  Here's a couple "modeling" pics...

Potty Training & Cloth Diapers?

I am in amazement right now as I'm writing this.  I honestly never thought this day would come -for more than one reason. 

To those of you who have potty trained a little one before, you may think this isn't a big deal.  But to us, it really is.  Ever since Charlotte was born, she has hated having a wet diaper and hated being changed.  So we decided at some point that we were going to attempt "early" potty training, at least in terms of when most people potty train these days.  We bought her a potty seat for her first birthday, then proceeded to do all the books, videos, rewards, etc... to get her to use it.  She actually did very well starting off in our opinion.  Took right to it, with the occasional meltdown of course, but that's nothing abnormal for Charlotte regarding anything.  Then I came into the third trimester of my pregnancy with Beckett.  Yeah, to say I was huge is an understatement and getting her up and down off her potty seat plus bending over to help her with her pants was just not happening.  We still did the Pullups, but just didn't "force" the issue with her.  Then the baby came and we tried to reinforce pottytime again with her, but with a newborn it was again quite the task for both her and us.  She did use the potty more often than not over the past year and at the risk of providing tmi... she's pooped in the potty almost exclusively since she was just over a year old.  Even that was worth this long attempt for us!  But now, as I'm crossing my fingers, it appears that she's got it.  A couple weeks ago, we figured we'd make the big push again and put her only in panties (as we've done a few times before) other than for naps and bedtime.  I also decided to switch over from telling her "It's pottytime!" and taking her there to letting her tell me.  She is a very independent strong-willed child, so this seemed to be a way to let her have "control" over the situation.  We had a couple very minor accidents, but we are now in day two of no accidents and her telling me every time she needs to go and holding it until she gets on the potty... including a trip in the car yesterday where almost five minutes from home she told us it was pottytime and we assumed she had already wet herself.  I am a proud mama for sure!  I'm sure there will be accidents along the way, but I am so proud of my "big girl" for learning this.  The beginning of many more independent steps for this 22 month old!

And then there's my little man Beckett... I can't get as excited about this.  Poor little guy doesn't even know what's coming, but on its way from the UPS man as I'm writing is a box full of cloth diapers and supplies.  And no, I'm not one of "those people."  Please, if you are a hardcore cloth diaperer, don't take offense to that.  But if you know me, or how high maintenance my children are, you would know that cloth diapering has seemed like an insurmountable task and waste of my precious time and sanity.  Until now.  I've mulled over this idea for quite a while now.  And a recent conversation with a friend (Thanks Melissa!) has encouraged me to see that it's definitely doable.  And what a cost saver!  In less than two months, I will have more than paid for the large stash of diapers and accessories by not using disposables, and with the ability to resell at a later date too.  So, I'm taking the plunge, with the convenient new Flip System version of cloth diapers (by the makers of BumGenius) and incredible power toilet sprayer invention.  Here goes nothing... 

Once again, never thought I'd see the day that this all would happen!

Starting a family site

So this has been a thought of mine for a while and definitely a long time coming, but I've decided to start a family blog.  I feel like I've been adding pictures and stories to different websites all over the internet, and this is actually a place I can have it all together.  Just a way for all of our long-distance friends and family to stay up on what's going on with the Woods family.  Thanks for stopping by!