Toilet Training Again

On Tuesday, the day after we got back home from Tasmania, I asked Eliza if she wanted to try wearing undies instead of nappies. She nodded her head and agreed to give it a go. In the 4 days that she has been toilet training it is a world of difference to when we were training Daniel. After having 1 accident in her undies where she started to wee before going to the toilet, she has had dry and clean undies since! She will take herself to the toilet. Around the 4th time she went to the toilet, I went with her and she said 'No Mummy. I don't want you here. I want to do it on my own.' Since then it hasn't changed. She has done poos in the toilet without a problem. She will stop playing or watching the garbage truck to run in and go to the toilet. She even goes to the toilet when she has a nappy on at naptime and bedtime. Such a surprise! Such a different experience. She has even woken a few times in the night, called out that she needs to do a wee and has gone to the toilet. 

It is wonderful to have a much easier experience of toilet training. I hope it continues and I hope that Alexander is paying attention to Eliza so he will be easy to train too. 

Catch up post

With us being away on holidays I have fallen behind on my posts so this will be a catch up one to bring it all up to speed before we went away.

Daniel and Eliza just love helping James mow the lawns. It's very cute watching them push their 'lawn mowers' around the grass, following Daddy.

Daniel and Eliza still enjoy helping to make pizzas. Alexander even wanted to get in on the action.

This photo makes me so happy. This is with Daniel's friend Lachlan from both Mothers' Group and preschool. These 2 boys are like peas in a pod. They get along so well together, have a great time together and a beautiful bond. This photo makes me happy because 
1. Daniel has been such a beautiful friend to Lachlan. They are best friends. Lachlan used to be sad to go to preschool and Daniel would run up to him, help Lachlan laugh and ask him to go and play with him. This has helped Lachlan be much happier and more comfortable at preschool.
2. At Mothers' Group, Lachlan would tend to just stay with his mum each week. He wouldn't really want to go and play away from her. This week at Mothers' Group when Lachlan arrived, Daniel asked him to go and play and they both went off and played happily with different toys. Then Lachlan's mum remembered that she had to go meet a friend. I offered for Lachlan to stay and keep playing and have lunch with us if they both felt comfortable. They both were absolutely fine with it. 
3. The boys played so beautifully together, having a blast. They shared toys, laughed lots, built, played on the trampoline, just had a great time. So much so that when his mum returned to pick him up, Lachlan started to cry because he didn't want to leave. Bless. It just shows how far he has come and how much he has grown.
4. This photo shows great friendship, security and trust. 

Love my 3 kiddies. They're so cute when they play together (the few times they are kind to each other or not in Alexander's face.

Eliza has continued to develop her drawing. After sitting next to Kay at preschool one morning while dropping off Daniel, she copied Kay in drawing people - adding legs and fingers and toes. So now her pictures have legs and at times fingers and toes.

 Alexander is enjoying being in the play kitchen. Most of the fruit and vegetables go into his mouth.

Like the other 2 kids, Alexander has music in his bones. He loves standing at the keyboard and playing it.

Shaking the shakers

The kids also decided to help Daddy practice for band one week. They became their own little band.

One week at Mother's Group Anne's kids wanted to come dressed up as superheros. Anne said they could if they took their other costumes to share with their friends. Daniel and Eliza jumped at the chance to dress up. They were so cute!

Alexander loves playing peek-a-boo in any way he can as well as exploring his movement - up and down.

 Alexander has started to sneeze on cue and it's just the cutest thing!

We love it when Grayma comes to visit for lunch!

Like with the other 2, Auntie Jenny keeps encouraging Alexander to stand/walk. Cheeky girl.

Eliza has decided that she wants to start to write her name. She likes us doing the dots of her name (like they are at preschool for the kids to sign in) and then she traces over it. 

One day at preschool drop off Eliza started creating something at the craft table. I convinced her to take it home and we could finish it there. She eventually agreed. She decided to create a little man. It was really cool to watch her create it, working out the different parts of the person and what could be used to make it.

Daniel did a painting at preschool based upon the book 'The Terrible Plop'. He painted the rabbit, the apple tree, the grass and the sky. I was so proud of this painting that he did! He did it on his own too, something that he is often hesitant to do without guidance. My clever kiddies.

I enjoy playing a game with Alexander after he's finished eating where I balance a bowl on his head and see how long he can keep it there. I love watching his face during it.

Oscar is so cute with Alexander. One week he just started playing peek-a-boo with him. So precious watching Alexander's face light up.

I love watching Alexander's face. His eyebrows are just so expressive. He is such a cutie.

One of my favourite things to hear is my kids giggling. Especially that belly laughter that they get. The giggles are contagious. 

After Mainly Music Eliza, Alexander and I often head to the shops to get a couple of things that we need. Eliza loves helping me. She enjoys carrying a basket, putting in the groceries, and helping scan them at the end. Cutie.

It is fun being crazy with my monkeys. Love them!

Just Crusin'

The week before we headed to Tasmania (so mid March) Alexander changed from just pulling up on the coffee table to put one foot in front of the other and start cruising. He's getting pretty confident and speedy with it too. Very clever little guy.

He has also started to try letting go for a few seconds. The first time he did it was at mum and dad's place with Jenny watching too. He wasn't very focused on holding on and wanted to swap hands so let go of both for a second, balanced and then held onto my legs again. 

At home he was 'helping' me hang out the washing by pulling off the pegs that I had put on. Cheeky boy. He again lifted his hand off for a second then went to hold on again. The poor little guy unfortunately missed the clothes horse and fell flat on his face. He was ok after a cuddle. 

He has also started to show signs that he will be a climber. Twice he has tried to climb at the book shelves, standing on a toy car, and toy garbage bin. 

 

He was then in the play kitchen, standing at the sink. His feet were perfectly balancing on the sides of the wooden crate so he could be that little bit higher to reach everything. Oh dear! I've never had a climber before. I hope he doesn't become too adventurous!

 

He has also started to crawl properly, on hands and knees. He doesn't do much commando crawling anymore. I'm a bit sad about this because he doesn't do his side lying pose much anymore either.

Eliza's Wiggles 3rd Birthday

My beautiful girl is now 3 years old. Where has this time gone? She is so full of personality, so cheeky, so funny, so determined, so stubborn, so caring, so cuddly, so Eliza. She is unique and we wouldn't have her any other way. For the week before her birthday she kept asking if it was her birthday. We had to keep reminding her that her party was going to be on Saturday and her birthday was Sunday. Fortunately she seemed ok with that.

The Friday before her birthday we headed to the Wiggles concert at Hornsby RSL. Eliza loves the Wiggles and especially loves Emma, often calling herself Emma and demanding that we call her that too. So we felt it was fitting for her to go to a concert before her birthday. At the last concert the Wiggles walked through the crowd collecting bows for Emma, bones for Waggs the Dog, roses for Dorothy and pictures fro the Wiggles. The kids were keen to head there 2 hours before it started so I suggested that they make a picture to give to the Wiggles. They were keen to which was great. Their pictures were really cute!

We headed to the concert, pictures in hand and joined the line to enter. We met up with some other mother's group friends in there and they were excited! The wiggles started with singing some of their songs. Daniel was right into it from the start. Eliza slowly warmed up to it, silently watching but after a few songs she was up and dancing too. Even Alexander got into a couple of the songs towards the end of the concert. I enjoyed this concert more than the last one. They played all their own instruments and had so much energy.

When it came to the Wiggles walking around to collect the gifts and pictures we had Simon walk into our section. Both Daniel and Eliza held their pictures up high for him to see.

Simon was lovely. He spoke to the kids, thanked them for their presents and gave them high fives. So cool!

Daniel's favourite song was '5 cheeky monkeys', espeically when they sang about 1 cheeky doctor jumping on the bed. He couldn't help but laugh.

Eliza liked Emma focussed songs and enjoyed making Emma's bow when Emma sang about it.

Alexander warmed up during 'Point your fingers and do the twist'. He loved bouncing to the songs without me helping him.

All 3 kids liked joining in with 'Move your arms like Henry'.

The concert was lots of fun and my little Wiggles loving girl really enjoyed herself.





On Saturday night I started to make her cake. I decided that I would be adventurous and make a cake of Emma Wiggle for my Wiggle loving girl who likes to pretend she's Emma. I had made a dolly varden cake but realised that it would only go up to Barbie's knee so made 2 more ring cakes to add to the bottom. I cut the rings to be the right size and then iced them together. The icing was black so I did a trial with the colour as I joined the cakes together. It turned out to be grey colour so I decided that with the skirt I would add lots of black.

Then came the time of putting Emma into the cake. I used one of my old Barbie dolls for Emma (thanks Mum for keeping them!), she found a yellow top from our old Barbie dolls too which worked perfectly. I used one of Eliza's yellow bows and added a black bow to it and then put her hair in piggytails. I was pretty pleased with how she looked. I also wrapped some black felt around her legs for the top of her skirt and then put glad wrap around her legs and skirt so she would stay clean when pulled out of the cake and so Eliza could play with her. As I started to push Emma into the cake, disaster started to happen. The cake started to split! I freaked out and had a cry but needed to keep pushing her down. It split more as I pushed. Once her legs were down in it and the cake went up to her waist I had a bigger cry because of the split in the cake. Once I calmed down I started to patch up the gaps with off cuts from the cake and more icing. This seemed to work.

Next up was time to ice her skirt. I made the black icing, basically using all the black colouring so there was no space for errors. Fortunately icing covers all the mistakes underneath and you couldn't tell that the cake had split. There was a lot of icing though! Once her skirt was complete, I used a yellow drawing pen to do the lines on Emma's skirt and it was done. I was pretty happy with the finished product.

The next stress was how to protect it over night as it was too tall for any of our cake tins. After a lot of time and ideas James and I came up with using ring tins with skewers and bluetac between the layers and then a cake lid ontop then covered in glad wrap. What an effort! But it worked!

Saturday morning brought a lot of rain so while James headed to get Tim with the kids I set the house up ready for her party with family

When Eliza got home she came over and saw her cake. Fortunately she recognised that the cake was Emma. Phew! And she was very happy with it. Makes all the stress worthwhile. 

Yummy!

The funny thing was the most of the people coming had no clue who Emma was. Grandma arrived and looked at the cake and said 'What is that?'. Aunty Megan arrived and wondered why a doll was sitting in a pudding, and then realised that it must have been something for the cake. Dear.

Eliza was quite overwhelmed by the amount of people here so started by just sitting and reading with Grayma.

She then enjoyed some of the food with Auntie Jenny.

After a little bit of time and play with Oscar, Eliza came up to me and said 'Mummy, I want to go to my party now.' Hmmmm... I told her that this was her party but she kept insisting that she wanted to go to it. I told her that because of the rain we couldn't go to the park so the park was at our place. She kinda accepted it then. Funny.
She then enjoyed reading again with Aunty Megan.

Mark was the baby whisperer. Alexander was quite overwhelmed by everyone being here and only really wanted Mummy, Daddy or Nana. But he seemed to settle and be happy while being help by Mark which was lovely. He then liked playing with Auntie Jenny on the floor.

James made some birthday babychinos for the kids after he had finished making coffees for the adults. They really enjoyed them!

Uncle Howie trying coke with a spoon as Daniel uses a spoon with his babychino

The food was a hit and most of it was eaten. Even Alexander wanted to try some but it was helpfully moved out of his little arms reach and he was given coasters to play with instead.

Then it was cake time. We sang Happy Birthday to Eliza and then she blew out the candles.

Then it was time to eat. Black icing really is messy!

Eliza was very happy to have her Emma doll, which made it worth the stress of keeping it the right size and the cake splitting.

Then it was present time. Oscar and Daniel helped give her the presents and open some of them. She was very spoilt by her lovely family!

And the enjoyed playing with them. The first present she openned was from the Howies and she just wanted to keep playing with the cookie letters that they gave her. Funny girl.

Daniel also enjoyed playing with the presents too.

Mel, Ben, Tristan and Kaysey came after the party too and the kids liked hanging out together. Lots of fun was had, tasty food eaten for lunch.

Then they watched some Play School together as tiredness set in.

It was a lovely birthday party for a much loved girl!

Last photo as a 2 year old

Sunday was Eliza's actual 3rd birthday. 

After she woke we did present time. She loved openning her presents, especially her new hair salon.

Doing Daniel's hair

Doing her own hair

Doing Daddy's hair

Wait... what hair?

Doing Mummy's hair

Cutting Mummy's hair

The day was quite busy with me meeting some friends for brunch then James on band in the afternoon/night and church at night. But we did get Sushi for lunch at Eliza's request and had a nice time together for lunch time. What a big birthday weekend!