December 28, 2007
"Wii" had a lovely Christmas. "Wii" got some great presents and "Wii"'ve been having a lot of fun playing with those presents. Can you guess what our present this year was?

One thing I wanted to get written today: Natalie lost tooth number 5 this morning. She's looking pretty much toothless right now! Those grown up teeth better hurry up and get grown in so the poor kid can eat again!

I'll be back in a few days with a round-up of Christmas, but I just wanted to post a quick update. I thought I'd copy over a note I wrote over on Flickr about Christmas Eve night. It was particularly wordy for a Flickr comment, so I thought it would be more appropriate to add it here. Besides, there are still a few people who just read the journal and don't read my comments on my photos. (Mom!) 

The following was a comment attached to a photo of the kids sitting in front of the tree with all the presents waiting to be opened:

See these presents right there? They were all brought up the stairs at bedtime by yours truly. Our nightly routine is: Phil brings up Ella and puts her in bed once she's finally fallen asleep downstairs with us, then I follow up to put away any snacks/cups/etc. that were left out from our snacking session. Sometimes I stop by the laundry room to throw in a load. Usually I am following very closely behind Phil, though. On Christmas Eve night, Phil took Ella upstairs and then I proceeded to get out all the bags of presents and bring them up. I thought Phil would be joining me to help lug it all. After making my first trip up, I noticed that the fish tank light was off and Phil was in the bedroom already going through his bedtime routine. I turned the tank light back on so that I could see where I was going, and made the trips back up and down the stairs to bring up the presents and fill the stockings. Then I took my Santa bite out of the cookie, turned off the light, and started toward the bedroom. Phil then came out and said, "It's Christmas eve! We need to bring presents up!"

Um, yes.

I told him it was already all done, and asked, "What did you think was taking me so long down there? Did you think I was just hanging out downstairs for 15 minutes?"

After setting up and then playing our new Wii for an hour before bed, he'd forgotten what day it was. 

December 19, 2007
This will likely be a quick update. I feel like I don't have much to say, yet I feel the need to keep current nonetheless. Everyone is currently, surprisingly enough, quite healthy. It's very hard to pull that off when you have five people in the house and three of them are kids.

We're pretty much ready for Christmas. We have just a couple little things to get and some stocking stuff, but I've spent the last few evenings getting things wrapped. I try to only do a few packages at a time so that my back doesn't get sore. The decorations are up and the things to be mailed out have been mailed, so we're close. We did get a real tree this year, as usual, but it appears that my skin has developed allergies not just to makeup, but also to scotch pines. So we had to give away our tree and go out an buy a fake one this year, after an evening of putting up the tree yielded a mass of itchy red bumps all over my skin, in addition to the standard almost-argument and frustration of trying to get a tree to hold still and straight. Even when that tree looked perfectly straight before we bought it. Phil and I just decided that while we like having the smell and family outing fun of getting a real tree every year, the frustration almost wasn't worth it, and then my skin reaction just sealed the case. 

Ethan had a GREAT week of going potty, but then the next week (last week), it was about 80% back to going in his pull ups again. This week has been a little over half in his pull ups. The first week, he was such a champ at it that we thought he might even be in underwear by the end of the month, but it doesn't look likely now. It's just not consistent enough. 

Ella is walking more and more now. She's so cute. She's discovered that being up on two feet gives her the ability to dance a lot more (I'm trying to figure out how to upload a video clip of it - her little body dancing back and forth is SO cute) and she also has found it much easier to get into things. There is a whole strata of ornaments on our tree that is Ella-friendly. All the bells from friends'  weddings, for example. They have been great toys. 

Natalie got a bunk bed about a week ago. It's red, blue and yellow, and of course Natalie is sleeping on the top bunk. She LOVES it. We figure that we'll just move Ella right to the bottom bunk in a month or so, and just put the bed railing up on the bed. No sense in putting up the crib at this point, when she'd only likely use it for about 6 months! Natalie tells people (strangers - was this really the girl who used to be so shy?)  that she got a bunk bed and she got to be on the top bunk. She also tells everyone everywhere we go the following (and I'm quoting; it's always exactly the same words): "I'm five and a half. Pretty soon after Christmas I'll be six."  I think our math work has encouraged this, because we're doing plus-nines right now, and you regroup to ten, using the phrase: "when you have a plus nine, what does nine always want to be? Ten!" 

December 3, 2007
We've had a really big week. I mentioned last time that Ella has taken her first steps. I forgot another first for her -- last week she learned how to drink from a straw. I know this doesn't seem nearly as much as a big deal, but it is one of those accomplishments that makes our lives as parents much, much easier! Up until now, when we've been out to dinner, we've had to hold water in our straw and then drip it, dropper-like, into her mouth. And usually, once I made the mistake of offering her a drink, she wants me to continue. (That is, until I can redirect her attention to a morsel of food - which, in the case of sit-down restaurants, can mean if the food hasn't been served yet I either sit and drip drink into her mouth over and over again, or listen to the wrath of Ella come on.) Now I can just get her own water cup! Yay!

Saturday was a big night for Ethan, and subsequent days have shown that it wasn't a fluke.  Of course, I'm talking about Ethan finally using the potty!  On Friday we needed to get diapers for both younger, and we saw that Huggies had Pull-Ups with Cars on them. Pull-ups cost more than standard diapers, and there are fewer in the package, but we had to try something. So we told Ethan that he could have the Cars pull-ups IF he would try to go potty. We didn't expect results, but only that he tried. Well, Friday night when we told him it was time to try to go potty, he screamed and thrashed and did everything he could to avoid sitting. Finally we got him on and made him sit there for a couple minutes, just so he could see that he wasn't going to fall in and it wouldn't hurt. Then we got him off and put on a pull-up. The next day, in the evening after finishing dinner, we were getting ready for bath time and I reminded Ethan that he had to try to go potty again before he could get in the bath. At first he started to protest, but then I said, "Ethan, if you go pick out a book -any book- from your shelf, I'll read it while you sit on the potty." He said, very simply, "okay", then ran to get a book. He was so into that idea that I wish I would have thought of it earlier! So he brought me a Winnie the Pooh (heehee, appropriate?) story and I sat him down on the potty, then I sat on the edge of the tub and read the book to him. When I finished, he said, "Now let's check to see.." as he got off. Well, there in the potty was some poop, and we were ALL VERY excited! After getting him wiped up and hands washed, he proceeded to run bare-bottomed around the living room, singing and cheering, for the next few minutes until his bath was ready. Of course we had to call Grammy and let her know the exciting news as well.

You never know if that first potty experience is a fluke or not (Natalie's first poop in the potty was - she wasn't then ready to potty train for real for another six months) but since Saturday night, he's gone at least once per day. Today, so far he's gone pee twice. His pull-up has still had pee in it between potty visits, but so far things are looking good!

Natalie and Ethan had a dentist appointment this afternoon. This was Ethan's first cleaning, and he did great. Though he does have one small cavity, on the side of one of his front upper teeth. It's really small, but it just shows that we need to start flossing better. He'll be getting it filled in January. Natalie's teeth all looked good. Oh, something else I forgot to mention: she lost her fourth tooth last week also. (See, it WAS a big week!) She now has both lower front teeth growing in (they look SO big compared to the baby teeth around it!), a missing top right tooth, and a hole on the bottom to the right of her center teeth.