Liliana's First Three Years

Happy Birthday LilyBean!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We Love You!

Memory Work

For our first effort at memorization we did Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". We only did 'circle time' 3 days last week and Noah had it down pat pretty quickly. Lily would repeat it after me every day but I didn't even bother seeing if she could do it on her own. Well, this morning she walks into the living room as I am sitting down with the Bible and starts talking and it's not 'til she gets to the 'heavens and the earth' part that I realized she had just quoted the whole verse for me. I was shocked and asked her to do it again and she did. She even said it again for Luke tonight along with our new memory work, which is a short prayer from a devotional, and she only needed a tiny bit of help from me. We only started working on that yesterday! Now, I know that most parents are biased towards their kids when it comes to cuteness and brilliance and what not...but come on...she is only 2 and a half...she is one smart cookie!

Look, Ma, No Diapers!

Could it be true?

Yesterday was potty training day here. Grampy came to pick Noah up in the morning and Lily and I spent the day in the kitchen with lots of juice and treats, a doll, and a potty seat. Two of my sisters used this method from Toilet Training in Less than a Day, and both had pretty good results. We had a rough start and I lamented to my sister-in-law after several major accidents that I thought there was something wrong with my children (neither one of them responds well to praise--Noah gets embarrassed and Lily just doesn't seem to care much). After that though something seemed to click with Lily and she was quite successful for the rest of the day. She has had some accidents today already but is able to catch herself and I think that I will be able to follow the book's instructions and not use diapers anymore. I will of course have to continue reminding her for a while yet and maybe even have to do more 'practice' trials but she's got the gist of it and I guess I would recommend the book to anyone else who might be in the market for a training technique.

Lily finds her voice

Many of you have probably already heard this story but I wanted to get it down for posterity's sake. Lily wasn't doing much talking before she was two and, while I wasn't worried, I was starting to wonder because I remembered Noah saying a lot more by the same age. Well, I took her to her 2 year check in April and they checked her ears. The PA said she couldn't even see her ear drums because there was so much wax in them. So, she cleaned them out and I was shocked to see what had been residing in her little ears. It would certainly explain Lily's silence to that point...Sure enough within the week more words were being spoken and every day since her vocabulary has been growing. She'll repeat anything she hears. Yesterday she came out with her first sentence. As Noah was getting up to turn the TV off she said, "No, Noah, don't turn it off yet." Very impressive!

I suppose it wasn't the first sentence. She says things like "I got it." or "I did it." or "Mommy, need help!" but this was much more complex. I am trying to overlook the fact that her first complex sentence was a command to her older brother and what that might indicate about how their relationship is going to evolve...It was at least much more pleasant than having to listen to her yell "NO!" over and over again.

Father's Day

Here are some pictures from Father's Day. I think Luke would agree that it was an enjoyable day...the kids helped me make a t-shirt for him by decorating it with their handprints and I made his favorite banana pancakes for breakfast and then we spent the rest of the day with his family at his sister's house. We had an excellent meal including Charlie's famous ribs and two kinds of dessert: strawberry shortcake and chocolate-frosted orange poke cake made by the resident cake artiste (Becky)...yum.

I couldn't help taking this picture--it was hysterical how much Lily really enjoyed her bread

Luke played 'baseball' with the kids (Alex at bat)

I know, I wasn't very diligent with the camera again...sorry.

Knitting Project

I've been making a poncho for Lily, which I just finished the other night. It's a little too warm for it now but we'll probably have some cool days or evenings that it will come in handy and it should fit her thru the fall and most of the winter. The pattern was pretty simple but it's the first project I've done that required piecing it together and increasing the number of stitches and whatnot. It was fun to do and I'm rather pleased with the finished product even with it's several 'mistakes' and fudges that I made.

front and back pieces

finsished off with a pocket and hood

and in use

Isn't she the sweetest little thing?!

A Basket of Lilies

Peek-A-Boo!

I just had to post this...