New Year's Eve

For New Year's Eve we attended a family party at our friends, the Ulven's. We celebrated the new year at 8:00pm. That's the way to do it! All of us were in bed long before midnight. Emily was more interested in stacking the party horns than blowing them. She also had to add her personal ice cream touch to the cake. :o)

20 Weeks Pregnant

Just in case you're curious and you haven't seen me in awhile, here's a picture of me at 20 weeks. I took a picture every 5 weeks starting at 20 with Emily, too, so it will be fun to compare! (Unfortunately, I don't have those saved in digital format.)

P-Day #3

Not a good day. Emily had 3 accidents and no successes. I gave up and put on a Pull-Up by late afternoon and used another one at night when we went out of the house. Tomorrow is another day.

26 months old

Emily is 26 months old now and everything you'd expect a 2-year-old to be. We're currently working on potty-training and temper tantrums. Fun times! One of Emily's developments this month has been reciting phrases and even long passages from her Curious George and Dr. Seuss books, among others. At times she can go for pages getting 60-70% of the words correct. You have to listen carefully and already know the story line, but it's there. It has become a bit of a game to try and guess which story she is recalling whenever she gets started. We have read these stories numerous times, and she also listens to some of them on a read-along CD, so it's all rote memorization, but fascinating all the same! (End of major bragging)

On the downside Emily has begun a bad new habit of ripping pages out of her books. I've performed 4 major surgeries in the last week. I have yet to actually catch her in the act. I either find the evidence or she comes and tells me and then says, "Mommy'll fix it."

She has also become fascinated with CD's, DVD's and cassette tapes. She hauls them around and takes them apart and comes close to breaking them all the time. After spending 20 min trying to match tapes, CD's, cases and folder covers back to each other this morning I had had enough. We don't have a good place/way to move them right now, so I did the next best thing. I got out the Saran Wrap and threatened Emily with a spanking if she touched it. She got one, but I don't think she has touched it since. I still may have to get out the leftover window winterizing plastic shrink wrap. We'll see.

The December video player is posted below and the Winkflash pictures are up.

P-Day #2

Emily's Pull-Up was soaked when she got up this morning, but that's probably because she decided to have a solo dance party from 4:00-5:30am. I laid in bed listening to her "read" books, jump on the bed and bang around with her tubs and pinwheel while giggling. I was too exhausted to get up and do anything about it. I figured it might do her good to feel wet for awhile. She went in her potty as soon as she got up, though. The tally for today was 3 successes and 2 accidents with a cheater Pull-Up at rest time b/c I knew she had to go #2 and I didn't feel like cleaning up another one. She ended up not napping and I was right, so that one was worth it. She wouldn't go before or after her bath, so we put on another Pull-Up for overnight. Let's hope we skip the party tonight. :o)

P-day #1

Today was the beginning of another hardcore run at potty-training Emily. We began after lunch since we ran errands in Waterloo in the morning. I announced that we were done with diapers and that Emily was going to wear "big-girl panties" now. It took awhile for Emily to decide to put on some panties (I told her she couldn't get up on any furniture without them), but she has been fine with it since then because she's worn them before. We had 2 successes and 2 accidents today. Not bad for the first afternoon/evening. We put her to bed with a Pull-Up on.

Post-Christmas

I have never before been so eager to start taking down Christmas decorations (even though they've only been up for 27 days). I started with the Jesse Tree and the big tree this afternoon. Emily broke 3 and lost 1 of the Jesse tree ornaments. The final tally on the glass bulb ornaments was 7 shattered and 3 MIA. The tinsel garland went straight into the trash. I left the winter/snowman decorations out because almost all of them are out of Emily's reach. I also left her Little People nativity set out because she has had a lot of fun playing with it the last couple days (although she's still calling the baby "Baby Moses" instead of "Baby Jesus").

Austin & I have really been enjoying some of our gifts. Austin's favorite so far is the under-cabinet radio/CD player for the kitchen, which has now reduced the "counter clutter" to a single Kleenex box. ;o) Emily has already shed some tears as we establish a firm "no-touching" rule.

I am almost 6 hours into "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy, which I uploaded to my new MP3 player using a free library service. Only 27 more hours to go! :o) I can't seem to find (i.e. make) the time/energy to sit down and read a lot of books lately, so now maybe I can enjoy some while doing other things--like taking down Christmas decorations. It might even inspire me to walk/exercise more once the weather gets nicer and the streets are clear.

We are also ecstatic to have a working vacuum cleaner once again and to have the dog hair back under control. It's not exactly the most romantic thing to spend gift money on, but it was desperately needed!

Emily has had lots fun playing with her new toys and reading her new books. The last picture of the slide show was of the new storage bin shelf we got for her room. Apparently, Emily thinks that was a toy, too. Every time we've put her to bed we can hear clunking and clanging, and when we go into her room the bins are all off the shelves and stacked inside one another. I can't decide if actually filling the bins with things would discourage her from removing them all or would just create a colossal mess as she dumped everything in a pile. I'm thinking the latter is the more probable outcome, so except for a few books (which usually end up in bed with her anyway) the bins remain empty for now.

Now that the holidays and travels are finished, we're going to be buckling down in the potty-training department. Tomorrow (Monday) is "P-Day" so Emily & I could both use a little prayer. ;o)

Christmas Whirlwind

We are now in the recovery stage of our second round of Christmas travels. We drove to LeMars & Hull in snow/blowing snow on Wednesday and home in dense fog on Friday. We visited all of Austin's grandparents in LeMars and then had three consecutive family parties on Megan's side. It was a great time visiting with family and eating more (yummy!) food than anyone should be allowed to consume in a month. But now it's good to be back home again. Below is a highlight slide show and there are lots of videos in the December player.

Lorenzen Christmas

We spent the (cold!) weekend in Des Moines and celebrated Christmas with Austin's family. It was a hairy trip getting down there Saturday morning with nasty road conditions and a lot of accidents--especially on I35 around Ames--but we made it! We ate lots of good food and Emily enjoyed opening all her presents (and wanted to open everyone else's, too). Her favorite presents so far have been her sewing cards and new Curious George books (go figure!). Unfortunately, she came down with a yucky head cold before we left and wasn't always in the best of moods. But we still had fun visiting family! There are some new videos in the player and below are a few pictures...

We actually got a decent family picture (do I really look that pregnant?!?),

but the "grandkids" picture didn't go so well... :o)

Emily had fun coloring with Grandma Lorenzen and both she

and cousin Asher "helped" Grandma play/sing some Christmas carols.

Emily's first friend birthday party

Emily was invited to and attended her first friend birthday today. Wendell Hunt turns 2 this weekend and his brave mom decided to host a party that included Wendell and four other 2-year-old girls plus moms (none of the boys could come). It was a fun time with simple activities, good food and no gifts. :o) Emily's favorite part was definitely the purple helium balloon she got to take home. She didn't let go of it for most of the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, Emily displayed some of her worst behavior in a long time. I should have had a clue when she threw a 15 min. tantrum before we even left regarding the snowman and her entire bedtime entourage riding along in the van (see previous post). I would have stayed home as punishment, but she wouldn't have known what she was missing, so the only punishment would have been for me because I had been looking forward to this outing. She threw at least 5 more tantrums throughout the morning--including one in which she plopped down in the middle of a fluffy snowbank with tennis shoes, jeans and no mittens. I seriously laughed at that one. She also managed to knock over their Christmas tree. Although her behavior was exasperating, I did not lose my cool. I think (and hope!) I at least made the other moms feel better about their kid not being the only one who ever acts like that sometimes. Next time there will be tougher consequences. :o)

Five cute kids

Coloring party hats, but more interested in the cracker tray.



Playing with homemade play dough...Emily didn't like wearing her hat and ended up ripping it apart.

Caterpillar cupcakes and balloons to take home

Note: Three of the other moms blog, so I'll add links to their posts when they are up. :o)

Heather's Henhouse

Craft Tales