Spring has sprung

As we leave March behind us and move into April (I'm a little late with this), I realize that March was quite a month. At the beginning of the month, several of my family members came from New Jersey to visit. They were here for my sister's baby shower and Gwen's baptism, all in one weekend. Christina and Gwen had the best time with everyone. We are so lucky that so many of our family members were able to come.

The weather was pretty awful at the time, even though the week before was gorgeous. Since then it has been back and forth between turning the heat on in the house and putting the Air Conditioner on. The pollen comes and goes and all of the plants are blooming. We have lots of flowers and pretty trees on our property, thanks to the previous owners, and I added a bird feeder recently which has brought lots of little friends to visit throughout the day.

With the arrival of spring, comes growth and change and boy oh boy is it that time of year for the girls. Take a look at what we have been up to:

-I used the potty training in a day method with Christina a few weeks back (3/18) and other than the occasional accident she has at school, she is pretty much potty trained. Her treat of choice is skittles and it works wonders. On potty training day we said bye-bye to diapers. Now she wears big girl underwear all day and she only wears pull-ups when she is sleeping.

-Gwen got her first tooth on 3/14 although it still isn't all the way up yet. I'm surprised it is taking so long.

-Gwen started crawling forward on 3/24 (she has been going backwards for months now). She is so happy to be able to get around and she is already exploring everything.

-Gwen waved hello and goodbye for the first time on April 1st.

-Gwen has been saying "Mom", "Mama" and "Dada" occasionally although I still think it is just her experimenting with sounds. She has been doing a great job with that.

-Gwen is eating table and finger foods including pasta, chicken, cheerios, squash, apple crisps, and cheese although she still gets most of her nutrition from breastfeeding and from pureed foods. She also likes to use a sippy cup but more so to play with than to drink from.

-Gwen is doing great with Speech Therapy and I've been working with her daily at home.

-Gwen is just recently starting to pull up. She still needs some more practice though.

-Both girls have such great hand-eye coordination (unlike their Mommy) and Christina can really throw. It is amazing how well she throws actually. If you are playing catch with her, be prepared to be surprised. (Does that make sense?)

In addition to those achievements, the girls have continued to be as cute as ever.

-CC calls our house "Mommy's house" and also likes to ask "Where did Mommy's house go?" or "Where did Auntie Mindy's house go?"

-Christina doesn't call her sister "Ray Ray" anymore (she did for a few weeks only), but now can more clearly say "Gwendolyn". This morning she referred to Gwendolyn as "Sweet Gwendolyn sister". It was too cute.

-CC likes to vacuum and clean (she has since she was old enough to walk). Now that we have the Shark, she can actually vacuum all by herself. It is nice for me! She does a pretty good job with it too. Mommy's little helper.

-Sometimes Christina talks like her Uncle Alex did when he was little. It is funny because it isn't like she spends enough time with him for her to have gotten it from him. It must have something to do with Nik. It might be more so that she has a little Jersey accent sometimes. I've got to catch it on video one of these days. It is really cute and very cool to take us back to when Alex was her age.

-Nik likes to add fun little things to Christina's bed time routine. Right now we do high-fives and pinky swears. We use to blow kisses, but she gave that one up. She tried to add feet kissing, but we didn't participate in that one, lol. I think we should add a little fist pump, I'm sure Nik would like that.

-I know that "they" say babies put everything in their mouth, but seriously Gwen takes it to a new level. She especially loves paper and I can't seem to keep her from finding every piece of paper ever found anywhere and shoving it into her mouth. Christina was not like this. I don't get it. I understand wanting to explore by putting things in her mouth and I understand teething, but I wouldn't think that paper falls into either of these categories. I mean, taste one piece of paper and you've tasted them all right? Or does paper have different flavors? Maybe paper with blue ink tastes different from paper with black ink. Does cardboard taste better than printer paper? I don't know, but Gwen is definitely majoring in the art of paper tasting.

-For awhile now, Christina has been pronouncing "hungry" like "honkey". It is starting to get really funny when she tells us "I'm honkey". I feel like she is in the wild west or something.

-Christina has turned into such the little hypochondriac. Well I guess that is exaggerating a little, but she does always talk about having booboo's or saying that something hurts even when I don't think she has a booboo at all.

-We talk about potty training a lot since CC is still getting the hang of it. I tell her that Mommy doesn't like wet underwear. She responds with "Noooo, that's not good" and says it so freakin cute. Randomly she will say "poo poo in my underwear?" and I'll give her a look (like, you know the answer to that) and then without me saying anything, she'll say "Nooooo, that's not good."

-Sometimes when Gwen is sleeping in her bed she likes to sleep across the bed so that her face is pressed against my belly and her feet are pressed against Nik's belly. It is funny because Christina use to do the same thing at that age. Now, whenever Christina comes in bed with us, she tries to cuddle with Nik so much that she even puts her cheek against his cheek. It makes it very uncomfortable for him to sleep that way, but luckily she rarely sleeps in our bed. I have to say with a family of four, a king size bed really is appreciated. Before we moved we only had a queen and now that we have a king, I know I could never go back.

-Christina likes to trick me sometimes when I'm doing something else and I'm not totally paying attention to what she is saying. She'll say things like "Mommy goes to school" or "Gwen peepee's in the potty". She purposely says things that aren't true just to keep me paying attention. If I'm not paying attention and I say "yeah" to something that is not true, she will tell me "Nooooooo". Isn't that something that teenagers are suppose to do? Who knew that it would start so young.

-For one day only (so far), Christina was answering everything with "yeah-ya" like she is Little John or something. I couldn't help giggle each and every time she did it. I don't know where it came from, but all day long she had to add that extra oomph to her "yeah".

-Just like her dad, Christina takes huge bites whenever she is eating someone else's food. Like for example, if Nik is eating a cookie and she is jumping up and down with excitement. She will ask for a bite and then proceed to open her mouth bigger than thought humanly possible, and bite half of the cookie. She must have learned this from her Dad, because he does the exact same thing (the big bite thing, not the jumping up and down with excitement thing, lol).

-Christina does a lot of singing lately and it is too cute the way she sings the Itsy Bitsy spider - aka the "Ipsy Bitsy Spider".

I'll get some photos and videos up here asap. I have a whole months worth, so I thought I should split all of this up. Enjoy the nice weather if you are lucky enough to have it!