Girly girl updates

The other day, auntie Lara put her necklace around Josie's neck, much to her delight. A while later, Josie asked, "Why did you lock the necklace on me?" Auntie brilliantly told her that it only can break when she is playing with it, so it's safe around her neck, but Josie wasn't buying it. She thought auntie had locked it on her forever.

Josie is full of "the sillys" all the time these days. She is constantly making up words or changing words she knows to be nonsense, ie. delmet for helmet (which kind of drives us nuts but also shows a lot of creativity). She gets so hyped up that bedtime is a disaster, usually taking a solid three hours before she'll fall asleep, regardless of what time she is put to bed, what the routine is, how she napped or didn't nap that day, etc. We're banking on it being a stage. She's gotten a lot better at playing independently, but with that comes getting into anything and everything. She can be so polite when talking with others. I often find myself reminding her to say thank you while she is saying thank you, so clearly I need to back off and let her have a chance to use her manners. 

The other day, I walked in to find Audrey laying on her changing table while Josie had a wipe and was wiping her leg. Jo had pulled her little wooden table up along side so that Audrey could climb up, and then she stood on it so she was at "mom height" to "change Audrey's diaper." After realizing that nobody was hurt or about to get hurt, I definitely laughed about it. They can be quite creative.

Audrey, these days, is winning everyone over with  her charm. The blue eyes, curly blonde hair, smiles, hugs, and constant hand holding is too much to resist. I'm not kidding, you guys. Everyone is sucked in by her charm. To top it off, she doesn't whine/cry nearly as much and she's talking up a storm, so she's just fun to be around all the time. She's just at a fun stage in life, and each stage is better than the last. She still speaks softly, so often times she relies on her facial expressions to get her point across. She has the best surprised or excited face. Huge eyes, open mouth, often times saying "'cited!" (excited). 

This mini update is leaving out a lot, but I don't want to forget these little things.

Matchy matchy

Sometimes I dress the girls up to match. It can't be too much matching, though, before it becomes over the top. So matching skirts, similar headbands, leggings, and smiles. We'll call that juuuuuuust perfect. (Headbands from this etsy shop.) We layer up around here to accommodate the 30+ degree temp changes each day. 

This weekend, Josie declared she was ready to go swimming. I'm right there with you, girly.

I'm still in the process of editing a few Easter pictures... weekend recap (a week late?) coming soon!

A little comparison

I came across this little picture of Josie on my sister's fb page. I then just had to go find a picture of Audrey I had taken recently to compare the two. It just so happens that Josie is the same age in this picture as Audrey is right now. Bahhh, they grow up so fast!

They are so different, yet so the same. I can't even imagine how different they'll look in another 16 months.

the Sisters

Where to begin? A relationship between sisters is complicated. With only 16 months between them, the gap of size and maturity is closing and with that comes more laughter but also more tears.

Most of their behavior is totally typical. Audrey wants to do whatever Josie is doing. It isn't undying admiration at this point, but she definitely "gets inspired" by what the big sis is doing. Josie hasn't learned yet that imitation is the highest form of flattery, so she gets rather worked up about it. Especially if it involves cheerios.

An example:
In the morning, I'll get Josie a bowl full of cheerios to keep her calm before I can get myself together enough to get her a real breakfast. If Audrey has been released from her cage let out of her crib, she beelines straight to Josie to eat her cheerios. If I get her a bowl just for her, she inhales it and then goes to Josie for the rest of hers. You haven't seen a real cat fight until you see this! Josie gets distraught and it takes half the morning for her to recover. Audrey smiles with a real "victory!" expression on her face. I'm ready to throw in the towel by the end of it all.

A story for you.

Every once in a while, Josie will be so very sweet to Audrey and will give her a toy without an ulterior motive or say something sweet about how much she loves her. I have to keep my eyes and ears open for it though, because at this point they are not too lovey dovey. Audrey in turn does occasionally offer kisses and hugs to her, but again, I have to be extra watchful if I want to catch those moments. 

Most of the time, they get along great. They tend to coexist without tears about 90% of the time. The older Audrey gets, the more they play closer and closer together. Josie is happy to role play (and of course assign roles to Audrey) all day long and Audrey plays along for a while before moving on to another game or activity.

There isn't a whole lot of jealousy yet. Most of the time, if one kid wants to he held, the other is content to stand close by or play on her own. I can only recall less than a handful of times that Josie asked me to put Audrey down so she could sit with me (and read a story of course). Most of the time, Audrey is happy to get down because she's done with whatever we are doing anyways. Overall, this doesn't create problems, which I'm so thankful for.

They are almost the same clothing size! For a while, Josie was in 2T and Audrey was in 18 months. I foresee many arguments about clothing since they will more than likely be in similar sizes their whole lives. Lord, help us all.

They interact the most at mealtimes. Right now, they sit next to each other with the lfb sitting across from them. Josie is all about messing around at dinner time and Audrey is happy to oblige if she can once she's eaten enough to avoid starvation. Many a meal I am guilty of dragging Audrey's high chair away from the table to try to keep them under some kind of control. Many a meal, I fail. It is entertaining, though, so there's that.



I still think that they look like sisters, but the similarities are not that obvious to me. Hair is different, eyes are different, noses are different. With totally different personalities, they just seem so different.

One of their obvious differences (to hubby and me) is how different their approaches are to new things. Josie will dive in head first with excitement, not thinking through what could happen or if she is even capable of it. Usually, she ends up stumbling or initially failing, causing immediate frustration. We do a lot of coaching around about continuing on even though "it's so hard, mommy!"

Audrey will take her time, watch everyone else, figure out exactly what she should do, and then do it almost perfectly. She takes longer because she does this, but in the end she comes out ahead. She didn't have to fail and then figure it out. She just does it right the first time. This can be dangerous, though, because if we aren't careful she could get the attitude that if she can't do it perfectly the first time, it isn't worth doing. No bueno.

It's so fun to watch how different they are. They are both smart. They are both loving. They are both sweet and compassionate to others. They are both dramatic. They are both hilarious. Yet they go about all of these character traits differently. Always keeping us on our toes, these two!

I pray that they can be best friends. I pray that even though it's inevitable that there will be arguing, that they will learn to put each other ahead of friends that will come and go. I pray that they can be sisters in Christ as well as sisters in our little family.

Aren't these little princesses sweet?

And occasionally, they match. Not too often, because come on. But occasionally, it's sweet.

A little happy with your sad (A memory)

It's no secret among my family that awkward laughter can almost always be heard through the tears. Sometimes it is just easier to laugh than it is to cry, even though it doesn't make sense on the surface or look just right.

Four years ago, my uncle got stomach cancer and fought for his life. He didn't win that fight, and in April, we headed to the cities to attend his funeral and be as supportive as we could for his family. It was such a hard trip. There's nothing fun about seeing family suffer, mourning someone that you loved, wondering how or where to go from here. 

Amid all of the sadness was one little ray of happiness. It was my sister's birthday. Not just any birthday, though. It was her eighteenth birthday. She was so aware of everything that day, that it wasn't really appropriate to be parading her excitement around, that people couldn't be expected to remember or give her more than a quick "Happy birthday." It was hard on her, and I could tell. She's the kind of girl that loves to celebrate, not just her birthdays, but everyone's. She loves to make others feel extra important and flat out loved. It truly seemed unfair that her big milestone birthday was not to be celebrated.

I grabbed my cousin, the one that my sister adored the most and that loved her back like her very own sister. I told her what was happening and we agreed that we needed to secretly do something fantastic for her. We snuck away to a local Dairy Queen and found the best cake we could. We even had them write on it with icing. This is no small thing, since her name is LARA, frequently confused for LAURA. They even got that right! It was definitely as perfect as we could have hoped for.

After we got this cake, we realized that we had no good way of getting her to see it without awkwardly parading in front of our family after the funeral. We put on our thinking caps and decided that she needed to come to us. As we parked around the block, by the little park just down the street, I got out my phone and gave her a call, "Lara, come down the street to the park. No, just do it. Hurry up! Just do it. Seriously. Just do it." She was hesitant and confused, and I'll never forget the look on her face when she saw us standing there with a big pretty cake just for her birthday. We laughed so hard that we almost cried (typical, no?) and snuck back into the house to enjoy a piece before it all melted.

The cake ended up abandoned in the freezer of my aunt's house and I'm sure she wondered where in the world it came from, but the memory of this was worth all of the trouble. 

Just this past weekend, my mom and I were walking past this same park and I knew I needed to write this little story down so I'd never forget it. Because, you see, my sister is great at birthdays. And she deserves to have great birthdays. It's a happy story, even with all of the sad.



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Impromptu photo shoot

 I often take AJ's monthly photos while Josie's napping since she tends to be a bit of a camera hog. I was braver than usual this month, and the results were pretty funny. Josie was not impressed when I wouldn't let her be in the picture, but the minute I said "ok, your turn!" she was happy to lay down "like a baby" and get her picture taken. It was so fun to get them in pictures together!

Sure, I got some good shots, but here's the reality. Josie doesn't want to smile and stay put while I figure out the settings on my camera or wait for the flash, her swinging arms land on Audrey's head at least once causing her to cry, the flash finally goes off while I'm moving to console the baby, and the wristlet for the camera photo bombs the picture.

Win.

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Sisters

I had low expectations for Josie meeting Audrey. She's only (almost) 17 months old. Come on, how much can she really understand? We'd been prepping her as much as we could, talking about the "baby", pointing to my belly, practicing saying her name, but generally she seemed to ignore us as much as possible and showed very little signs that she understood. Sure, she liked patting my belly and other babies, but none of that really meant she understood.

She'd been staying with her grandma and grandpa while we were at the hospital, so they worked hard on getting her to say "Audrey". Also, her grandpa's tradition is to buy a small stuffed animal horse and bring it with to the hospital when he meets the baby. Of course, the horse had been within Jo's view at their house, so they'd been working on explaining how that horse was for her sister, Audrey. 

It turned out that Grandma and Josie were the first people to arrive to the hospital, so Jo ended up being the first one besides hubby and I to see her. How cool is that? She came running into the room saying "Baby? Baby! Baby? Baby." She said it with a question-like tone, excitement, a factual tone, and repeat over and over. Hubby picked her up and she looked really close for maybe two minutes before moving on. I couldn't have asked for more. 

Once Grandpa caught up and came in the room, the next big focus for Josie was getting that horse she'd been wanting to hold for so long. Grandpa gave it to her and told her to bring it to the baby. She listened and "shared" it with her, but mostly she was just so excited to hold it. She spent most of the rest of her time there sharing it with everyone and passing it around. It was pretty sweet. She still calls the horse "Audrey horse". I don't know if she understands that Audrey's name is just Audrey and not "Audrey horse".

She was pretty happy to have a little one-on-one with us too. Glad she missed us a little bit at least!

All of her life, Josie has been the main event with everyone around. Being the first grand kid on both sides, she knows how to get laughs and generally gets a ridiculous amount of attention. With the addition of her cousin four months ago, she's learned to share it and how to interact with a baby, so we were blessed to have that part learned. She didn't seem jealous at all and was happy to clown around with those interested around her. Generally, after that initial interest, she was not interested in anything Audrey related. I'd take that over jealousy any day.



There was one point in the day that she wanted to hold the baby. We got pictures and I'm so glad we did, because it was priceless. She was all about it, got a good look, and was done. She even pushed her away like "Okay, let's play with the next toy!" Too funny.

Initial thought  - "Yeah, holding this baby is the most fun!"

And we're done. 

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