Makenna's Teeth

Makenna is losing teeth at a fast and furious rate. She lost another bottom tooth last Thursday and the top two front teeth are hanging on by a thread!! She is so excited! I had to take a few last pictures of my baby with her top two teeth still in place! Who knows when she'll come home from school without them (tear tear). Oh they grow up much too fast.

On a side note, the silly tooth fairy somehow forgot our house last week when Makenna lost her tooth. Talk about panic. It was April Fool's day so we decided this was her joke on us... and sure enough she came the next night and made up for it! Whew!

Potty Training Update

I believe when I last posted, Maya had been potty trained for 2 weeks and was still consistently having one accident per day. Shortly after that, she stopped having accidents altogether and has since not had an awake accident in over 2 weeks!!!! She is even waking up most mornings dry!! I'm not sure when to go to underwear overnight (the other two girls insisted on it early on), but I'll just follow her lead. Most nights she's fine with wearing a diaper but still wants to put her underwear on top of her diaper :) She has had 1 or 2 accidents during her nap time, but has caught herself and woken up. She has even gotten up in the middle of the night to use the potty!

She's very particular about the bathroom and is partial to using mommy and daddy's potty. She asks for privacy a lot, but I've become a little leery of that after she got adventurous and fell off the potty a few times :( I think my favorite aspect of all of this is that one of her new favorite sayings is "I proud of you Mommy!" since she hears me say it to her all the time. It's even better when she says it to me right after she sees me go to the bathroom :) Gotta love kids!

Everyone is just amazed by her and can't believe how well she is doing at such a young age. Josh and I are amazed as well, but in all honesty it doesn't surprise us. You have to know her little personality to realize this is just the way she would do it. Maya - Mommy and Daddy thank you for making this so easy on us. :)

Bedhead Baby

As I've mentioned numerous times on this blog, Miss Maya can't seem to grow much hair. Well imagine my shock one day when I went to get her up from her nap to find that she actually had bedhead!!! She has enough hair now to have bedhead! This mom couldn't be happier :) And yes she is almost always this smiley after her naps (when she actually takes them and that's not all that often anymore).

My Favorite View

Have you ever heard that country song "My Front Porch Looking In"? When I took these pictures I was thinking of the lyrics to this song, only mine was "Back Door Looking Out" :) I was standing in my kitchen cleaning up after dinner one night and looked out the door to this beautiful view. I couldn't have asked for a better view. It was one of those moments when I just stand there in awe of all God has given to me. I am so blessed and forever grateful!

Family Fun Day

The girls enjoyed Spring Break this past week. We wanted to do something a little extra special, out of the ordinary with the girls, so Josh took Friday off and we headed down to Coralville. We spent a good chunk of the day at the Iowa Children's Museum, ate lunch, went on the carousel at Coralridge mall and then enjoyed their playland for awhile. And of course we couldn't end the day without a treat from Whitey's! The girls had so much fun and were good for the most part (Maya got a little tired at the end and Maryn had to act out at least once ;). There is no better way to spend the day than to watch our girls having fun and enjoying themselves.

The girls' hot air balloon "ride"!


Everyone had to have a turn trying to fly the plane simulator


Maryn's turn


Makenna's turn


My three little marsupials in the "Down Under" exhibit


So Cute! Maya smiling at us from the window in the barn!


Maya's favorite - the slide! I'm pretty sure she went down this particular slide at least a dozen times!


Maya laughing up in the barn!


Just too precious not to include


Makenna trying out the slide!


While we were in "Imaginacres", Maryn was determined to clean up the area! She was hard at work cleaning the little house and was frustrated that all the little kids wouldn't clean up the vegetables out in the garden area!


Maya on the carousel


Maryn on the carousel


Makenna on the carousel


Maya chilling with her sippy in her stroller. She was quite the trooper and kept up with the big girls almost the entire day. Every once in awhile she would ask to be put back in her stroller just so she could veg for a minute :)


My little pizza chefs!!




Makenna the Banker


Maryn the Banker


Maryn checking out the display all about air


Maryn flying rockets. She had to jump on the platform to make them fly. She was a pro after a few tries.


My two little pilots!

Makenna's 1st Grade Music Program

Makenna had her 1st grade music program at the end of February. She looks forward to her music program all year long! Music class is one of her favorite classes and she LOVES putting on plays or shows of any kind. The kids had to try-out if they wanted a speaking part. Makenna was fortunate to get a role (Student #1) but she was disappointed it wasn't a bigger role. We told her that it was only fair to share with the other kids who didn't get the chance to have any lines last year. She was a good sport about it, but still disappointed. The program was adorable as I expected. Echo Hill's music teacher is phenomenal! The amount of time and energy she puts into these productions (and there is one for each grade) just blows my mind! And it's incredible what she can get a bunch of 1st graders to do! "Blast Off!" was another fun music experience for Makenna.


Makenna all dressed up before her program!




She found me in the crowd! I even got a smile! At least she's not embarrassed by me and my camera yet!


Maya enjoyed the entire show sitting very comfortably in Poppy's lap. I don't think she moved from this position the entire time :) Maryn on the other hand stood up and tried to sing and dance and follow along with all the actions going on onstage!


Makenna saying her lines at the microphone




Makenna and her good friend Kaitlyn after the program. Aren't they adorable?!

Potty Training Maya

Let me just start this post by saying I was not ready to potty train my barely two year old at ALL! As a matter of fact, it hadn't really entered my realm of thinking. I figured I'd think about it in the summer and had just pushed it out of my head for the time being. As is usually the case, my daughter had a different idea :)

I don't necessarily think there are any huge secrets to getting a kid potty trained, but the one thing I have learned from my previous experiences is that you have to do it when they are ready. Not when the parent is ready, when the kid is ready. If you bypass the opportunity when they are ready, you will be hitting yourself later when they are resistant to the training. If you push the training on them too soon, you will just cause yourself more headache and work than anyone really wants to deal with. Not to mention a child who's probably overly frustrated at trying to do something they're not ready for. That's my soapbox :) With that said, Maya decided she was ready to train too early in my book, but I went with it because I knew it was my window of opportunity.

For a short period of time, Maya was flexing her independence by constantly taking off her pants and diaper. And by constantly I'm talking at least a dozen times a day. I'm not kidding. The second she would be out of my sight she would go in a corner and strip. Didn't matter whether the diaper was dry or wet, she wanted it off. I was finding rogue diapers all over my house. She took it to the next level and for a few mornings I found her standing in her crib with her pajamas in one hand and her diaper in the other. The child despised diapers.

So on March 2nd, I took the hint. If she wanted to run around my house naked, so help me she was going to be potty trained! As I did with the other girls, I jumped right into underwear. You have a few more accidents up front, but they seem to get the message a little faster that way when they get all wet. She had a few accidents the first day or two, but by day three she was down to one accident a day (none of these accidents were ever number two). It has now been a little over two weeks and she is consistent with the one accident a day. She has had days with no accidents, but somehow she will manage to always sneak in one accident (even if it means peeing on the bathroom floor right before we are about to put her in the bath at night!). To top it all off, she naps in underwear and has stayed dry when she sleeps. She is even waking up with a dry diaper in the morning!

Of course she picked the most inopportune time to do this... Makenna and Maryn both had swimming lessons every day and we had a lot of other activities on our schedule as well. She was coming everywhere with me and it was quite terrifying to think that she was doing it in underwear. I'm probably jinxing myself, but she is yet to have an accident in public! I used to be anti-pull-ups, and still am to some extent, but Maya is so strong-willed in her decision to do this that I have used a pull-up on her when I've left her in the nursery at church or the daycare at the gym. But of course she will only wear the pull-up over her underwear... she insists that she has to keep her Dora's on!

Maryn - 4 1/2 Years Old

All about Maryn at 4 1/2 years old!!!

Nicknames: MarBear, Mar and every once in awhile mommy sneaks in a Leigh Lou :)
Weight & Height: 37 lbs and I had originally reported that she hadn't grown much since her 4th birthday... I was wrong. I recently measured her and she's grown almost 2 1/2 inches in 6 months bringing her up to 43 inches! She is typically my slowest grower of the bunch but still measures in the middle percentiles.
Hair: We've continued to keep her hair shorter. It's a darling style for her and fits her personality to a tee! It also doesn't hurt that she doesn't like her hair being fussed with and won't keep her hair pulled back for anything.
Favorite foods: She is actually a very good eater. The few things I can think of that she doesn't like - black or kidney beans, rice,and pickles. She will eat nearly everything else you put in front of her (some days it may require a little prompting but she usually discovers she likes it as soon as she takes a bite). She would tell you that her all time favorite food is hamburger pizza.
Favorite Drink: Probably watered down apple juice
Favorite toys: anything she's playing with Makenna. They have excellent imaginations and are making up a new game everyday. This child would love to sit in front of the TV or computer all day, much to my absolute horror. We have to watch her carefully and limit her time so she doesn't.
Favorite stuffed animal: Puppy. Her latest concern is that puppy can't come to heaven with her. That's how much she LOVES this stuffed animal.



Favorite Books: She is very into all of the "Dick and Jane" books right now since she is new reader. She can very proudly read any one of those books from start to finish (we're talking over 30 pages!!!). She also loves all of the "Llama Llama" books and has taken a strong liking to having me read chapter books to her. Her favorite series right now is "The Rainbow Fairies"
Bedtime: We try to have her in bed by 8:00.
Wake-up time: Maryn is NOT a morning person. She got that from both her mommy and her daddy :) Genetics were working against her on that one! She has a wide range of wake up times, but she would be most content waking up at 8:30ish every morning. Unfortunately most days of the week I need her up around 7:45-8:00.
Latest Accomplishment: Reading, without a doubt! She is so proud of herself! And probably counting to 100!
Likes: playing with Makenna, preschool, gymnastics, helping mommy bake, Daddy dates, special stay up late nights, playing Blokus and Trouble with the family, swimming lessons
Dislikes: cleaning up (she always finds a way to get out of it), being woken up, being hot and sweaty, socks, playing outside (we're not sure where this came from but she much prefers to be inside), loud noises (I think her ears are still sensitive since her tubes are still in place).
Fears: Maryn is hung up on the idea of being left home alone and she doesn't like it. If I ever mention going somewhere, she will immediately start to worry about who will take care of her and her sisters. I always reassure her that mommy would never leave her home alone without a trusting adult.
Favorite shows: She's really into any kind of Barbie movie right now.

Ah, yes. This is the Maryn we all know and LOVE! Totally posing!


Activities: She just finished up swimming lessons and did wonderful! She has been taking gymnastics all through the school year and loves that as well. She will join an AYSO soccer team for the spring season. She is so excited to play on the same fields as Makenna. Mommy and Daddy realized we were wasting our money on the rec soccer programs and decided to do club soccer with both of the girls.
Best Friends: Odelia, Abby, Micah, Rilynn
Health: KNOCK ON WOOD!!! She has been extremely healthy this winter. I don't think she even caught the cold we all got earlier in the season. The one thing that is interesting is that her ear tubes are still in place and the 3 year limit is coming up in April. If they have not fallen out by her appointment at the beginning of May (which I'm sure they won't since they hadn't even budged at her last appointment) then she will have to have them surgically removed :(
What She Wants To Be When She Grows Up: A chef and baker. She reminds me nearly every day :)
Interesting Tidbit: Just after her 4th birthday we switched Maryn to an anti-hormone/organic diet. She was having some minor sweat gland issues that the doctor told me not to worry about. After doing my own research online, I found time after time other parents swearing that a hormone-free diet would solve the issue. Sure enough it has! And as an interesting by-product of her new diet, it has also improved her behavior. If there is a day when she eats a substantial amount of non-organic dairy, egg or meat products (those are the only products I truly worry about since they have hormones if not organic) we will notice a short period of meltdowns and inability to cope following shortly afterwards. Not to mention the fact that her sweat gland issue will return when she eats anything non-organic in a substantial quantity. It's amazing how much the food you put in affects you! We're just glad that's easily controlled by something as simple as diet.