Children's Museum of Phoenix

A couple of weeks ago, we went to the Children's Museum of Phoenix for the first time. We had such a good time. Elise loved it, and we hope to bring her again sometime soon.

Our library offers passes to local attractions, mostly museums, called Culture Passes. You have to get to the library before it opens and wait in line to get the good ones, but you get two free admissions. That's what we did to get into this museum (or it would have been a little pricey).

When you walk in, there is an enormous structure for kids to climb on. It is made from and decorated with everyday objects. I think this may have been Elise's favorite part of the whole museum. She is such a climber. One employee even commented on how fearless she was on this thing. I couldn't get the entire structure in one picture, but it is really high! She enjoyed it so much.

You can put colored scarves in these air chutes and watch them travel through and fly out.

Notice the ping pong ball floating midair. You can reposition the pipes.

Matt really liked playing with this station.

trike "car wash"

sand on a lighted, colored table

lots of fun textures

scooping ice cream

There were tons of play areas for kids to pretend, including a full blown grocery store.

racing cars

Matt really liked this station too. He's a kid at heart.

riding a motorcycle

riding in a pickle car

playing a xylophone made from wrenches

I was surprised by how musical it sounded.

painting a stone slab with water

(which quickly turned into splashing in the water dish)

fun with dry legumes

This station was another favorite of Elise's. Just push the metal washers up, then watch them come down. Again, Matt loved this one too. Maybe she'll end up being physics-minded like her daddy.

Afterwards, we ate at Chick-fil-A and got ice cream.

Notice we've lost the bow by this point. I think the only reason it stayed on as long as it did was because Elise was so enthralled at the museum.

I'd say that's a Saturday well spent!

Duct Taped Diapers

It all started Easter weekend when we were staying the night at Holly's house. Elise was in Holly's playpen in the laundry room, which is where she sleeps when we stay there. We had brought her mattress topper to make her more comfortable, but she still wasn't sleeping great since she wasn't used to sleeping there anymore.

At about 4:30 in the morning, I woke up to use the bathroom. Elise must have already been awake in there and heard me because she started babbling. I got her up, changed her diaper, nursed her, and put her back to bed. Then I went back to sleep.

At 8:00 the next morning, I woke up and found that Matt was already up enjoying pancakes with everyone else. Elise was the only one still sleeping, even though it was noisy with all the kids, and she slept until 8:30. She must have been tired from playing all night. As I mentioned in this post, she woke up naked from the waist down and in a puddle of pee. So sometime between 4:30am and 8:30am, she had stripped off her pants and diaper and had peed on herself.

It was quite the mess. The sheet, mattress topper cover, mattress topper foam pads (which are amazingly absorbent, by the way), and the playpen bottom all had to get washed, along with Elise's pajamas, blanket, and baby doll.

This was not the end of Elise's nighttime charades. Once she peed so much that I had to scrub the carpet. Another time I found her, at about 6:30am, completely naked and asleep in a puddle of her own pee. That time I had to wake her up so I could give her a bath, and she was cranky all day. Once she got out zippered pajamas, another time out of snap-up ones. I tried putting her diaper on backwards, but she peed through it since it wasn't meant to be worn that way, and I ended up with a pee mess anyway. I was beginning to get really frustrated with the whole situation.

Then we finally started duct taping Elise's diaper on, and we haven't had any problems since. This morning I found Elise with her pants off and her onesie unsnapped, but her diaper was completely intact. I am so, so happy.

Let's just hope she doesn't figure out how to get the tape off. Hopefully it will at least deter her until she gets out of this phase. In the meantime, we have a nice big roll of duct tape to keep those diapers from coming off.

Baby #2's Gender

Today we found out that our baby is a girl! We're really excited.

With both Elise and this baby, I felt pretty sure they were girls from early on.

Matt didn't really have any guesses either way but was hoping for a boy both times (but he is crazy about Elise and very excited for another girl!). When I asked him after the doctor's appointment if he was excited, I guess he was still processing a little disappointment because he responded with, "Yes. We'll have a boy eventually, right?"

Here's a shot of the baby's face from the front (with a little bit of a skull-like look).

And here's proof that she's a girl. The picture is super fuzzy because the doctor was getting paged while he was performing the ultrasound. I guess someone else's labor was progressing much faster than they expected, so our ultrasound lasted about 2 minutes total before he had to go. Just enough time to tell us the gender and assure us that the baby is doing great. She is about 8 oz now, and I'm 17 weeks 4 days along.

Maybe now Matt will talk to me about names!

We love you already, baby, and we can't wait to meet you!

Crazy Old Elise

getting crowned with the Easter egg ring Daddy made her

Elise had her 18 month well check yesterday. She's actually 19 months now, and getting more grown up all the time. At 19 months, Elise is very vocal, very active, very curious, and not the least bit shy. She now has 13 teeth (her first canine broke through a week before Easter). She loves nursery at church; other kids, especially her cousins; and watching cats we encounter near our town home. Oh, and stripping naked is also a favorite pastime of hers lately.

Here are her stats: 35" tall (97th percentile), 18 1/4" for head circumference (45th %), and 27 lbs 2 oz (75th %).

We sure love this cute girl and her vibrant personality.

We like to call her crazy old Elise. :)

Friday the Thirteenth

Warning: This post is long, includes no pictures, is generally negative, somewhat gross, and probably really boring to read. Feel free to stop reading now. I'll never know.

I know it's still pretty early in the day, but it's already been a pretty awful one. I'm not really superstitious at all, but this has got to be the worst Friday the 13th I remember.

It all started about the time I went to bed last night around midnight, so when the day officially began, I guess. Elise hadn't been sleeping well, and she woke up just before I headed to bed. I took care of her, put her back to sleep, and tried to go to bed myself. I woke up at least once an hour, sometimes more often, for the entire night because we all have colds and I couldn't breathe through my nose at all. I kept getting unbearably thirsty from breathing through my mouth. So I had a terrible night's sleep.

Then Elise woke up again at 5ish this morning, and I tried to put her back to sleep. Matt's alarm was going to go off at 5:30am, so I convinced him to get out of bed a few minutes early so the sound wouldn't bother Elise as she tried to go back to sleep. I shouldn't have bothered. Not only did she not go back to sleep, but she took off her pajamas, her onesie (which I thought she couldn't get off herself), and her diaper, and she peed everywhere. She sat in the corner when she peed, so it got all over the carpet too. Awesome.

I made Matt late leaving for work because I needed him to watch Elise in the bathtub while I cleaned up the mess. He finally left, I bathed Elise, and we went down to have some breakfast. Elise has been having trouble with constipation lately, and I took her to the doctor earlier this week for it. This morning she was scheduled for her 18-month well check (even though she's 19 months now). She was fine on Monday evening when I brought her in, but since then, like I said we all got bad colds. More on that later. So we were having breakfast, but first I wanted to make sure Elise drank her apple juice with stool softener in it.

Right in the middle of that, though, I started to feel like I was going to puke. I know I'm pregnant, but I don't vomit often. Between this pregnancy and the my pregnancy with Elise, I have thrown up a total of once, which was when I was brushing my tongue one morning while I was pregnant with Elise. I had some nausea for a while with this baby, but that stopped almost completely several weeks back. So I felt like I was going to throw up, and then I felt like I was going to black out. Thankfully, I didn't black out, and I hadn't eaten anything yet so I didn't exactly throw up either. After some dry heaving, I pulled myself together, helped Elise finish her apple juice, and then we had breakfast.

I thought we were early getting ready to go to Elise's well check, but we somehow ended up leaving late. Then I ended up getting lost because I went too far and passed the turn. I called Matt to help me figure out where I was, but he has lost his voice almost completely so the call was really frustrating. I could hardly hear him, but he managed to get me back on track. We made it to the doctor's office 15 minutes late.

Then I realized I forgot Elise's shot record. Then Elise peed on the table in the 3 seconds the nurse had me take her diaper off to weigh her. If you're counting, that's the second pee mess this morning. Then Elise had ear infections in both ears. She cried a lot during the doctor's visit, poor thing, which she usually doesn't do at all. She didn't cry at all when she got a shot, though; she was so brave. But on the way home, she blew her nose in her sock. Then she cried a lot while I tried to get her to eat something before I put her down for a nap.

Elise feels miserable. And I feel miserable. And Matt feels miserable, has lost his voice, and has to work a ton of hours today. I hope he comes home early, though, and I told him that. Does that make me an unsupportive wife? Probably.

So that's the end of my pity party. I thought maybe writing this all down would make me feel a little better about it, and I think it has somewhat. No pictures in this post; I don't really want to remember this day that way. Hopefully the second half of this day will be an improvement on the first. I think I might go take a nap now.

Easter Weekend

We had a terrific Easter weekend. We went to my sister Holly's house on Friday night and spent the night. Elise loves her cousins, and it was really good for us to get to visit with everyone.

For some reason, I think this is the only picture I got on Friday.

Holly's kids have also been watching The Sound of Music lately, and they put on a puppet show for us.

Here's the original in case you don't know what I'm talking about.

And here is their version.

The puppets are made from Trio blocks (Leighton's smart idea).

That night Holly and Jonathan went out for a date night after they put their kids to bed. They even took the baby with them, and the kids were no trouble at all.

Elise slept in her old room, the laundry room, and all was going well. I woke up with her at 4:30am, changed her diaper, and put her back to bed. She slept in till 8:30am, despite the noise of 4 other kids and 4 adults in the house. When she finally did wake up, she was wearing only a shirt. No diaper. There was a big wet spot where she had been sleeping, and her shirt was wet with pee. I guess she didn't go right back to sleep like I did after we got up together at 4:30. She had never gotten her diaper off before. Not a fun mess in a play pen, let me tell you.

We all had bunny-shaped pancakes for breakfast, including Elise after her bath. Holly made gluten-free pancakes for the two of us.

Then Matt and I headed out for our date to see The Hunger Games movie. We are reading the books together, and it was a lot of fun to see the movie. It has been a while since we got to go to a movie together.

Elise went with Holly, Jonathan, and the kids to a neighborhood Easter celebration. Apparently, Elise was very into the blue snow cone she got. She had a lot of fun.

When we got back from the movie, we all made and enjoyed an Easter meal together: ham, sweet potato casserole, broccoli casserole, yellow squash, carrots, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, rolls, pineapple and, for dessert, chocolate cheesecake. Holly and Jonathan are great cooks.

On Easter Sunday, Elise got to wear the new dress she got from Grandpa and Grandma, complete with matching homemade accessories made by Grandma. She loved her Easter basket.

Matt did a great job playing the organ in church on Sunday. We came home and had leftovers from Saturday's meal, which Holly and Jonathan were generous enough to send home with us. We had such a fun Easter weekend!

We're so grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ and for His Atonement and Resurrection!

Counting

Elise can count to about eleven now, except she misses seven every time. She's getting so big!