Happy Girl

Alexis is such a happy girl.  And about 99.9% of the time, she wakes up happy.  She went through a phase where she was regularly waking up between 4:30-5:00am, so I bought a music play-station that I could hook onto her crib in an attempt to help her amuse herself at that early hour (and let us get a little more sleep).  She loves it so much that even now that she sleeps in a little better, when we go to get her up she often starts crying when we try to take her out of her crib because she wants to stay in it and play the music.  I took this video of her dancing to the music with one of her babies.

22:2011

More pig-tails:

Smile!

Alexis is in the stage where she makes funny faces when I ask her to "smile" for pictures.

Modeling her new pj's and slippers:

Wearing pig-tails in her hair for the first time:

P.S. Today, Alexis is 19 months old!

21:2011

This is what John and Alexis do most days while I'm cooking dinner:

Alligator Creek

This morning we went to Alligator Creek to spend time as a family and get out of the house. We didn't stay for too long, but Alexis had fun going on a little nature walk, playing in the creek and looking at all of the animals (mostly the bush turkeys and a kookaburra we found in a tree).  John and I both love to see how excited Alexis gets about everything she sees.  When we were walking to the creek, she would stop about every two steps and point at something and say "ooohhh" (in her singsong inflection).

Bigger and Better

As Alexis continues to get bigger and bigger, our laundry room sink seems to get smaller and smaller. We've been using the laundry sink for her baths ever since she was born, but it has just been getting too impractical. I came across this ingenious collapsible tub by accident while I was browsing the aisles at Toys R' Us. This is what it looks like collapsed:

And here is Alexis enjoying a big tub that's just her size!

20:2011

Alexis was being her normal, goofy self this morning while I was trying to take pictures of her in her church dress. This is one of the silly faces she was making:

And this is the face that Alexis made when I asked her to smile:

In good news . . . Alexis stayed in nursery all by herself for the whole third hour of church today! I took her in at the beginning of the second hour and she was very clingy. I stayed with her for all of Sunday School, but then I left to go to Relief Society. She was already crying before I left the room, but they were able to calm her down eventually. When John went to pick her up at the end of church, she was happily playing.  We are very proud of her.  Hopefully in a few weeks time we'll be able to just drop her off and she'll feel comfortable being in nursery for the whole two hours.

A Love Affair

Alexis absolutely loves The Wiggles.  We have a few of their DVDs and they are lifesavers when I really need to get something done and I need Alexis to be temporarily distracted (like today when I was trying to get dinner ready for the missionaries).  This is a video of Alexis dancing along to her favourite song "Rock-A-Bye Your Bear."

19:2011

Happy Mother's Day!

I for one, was very spoiled this Mother's Day.

I got these beautiful flowers:

And John made this yummy dinner:

(Barramundi Burger, homemade Sweet Potato Fries, BBQ Prawns,
and Threadfin Ceviche)

I also got a very nice card with some coupons inside for things like an extra-long sleep-in, an ankle rub, and a whole day off (!).  And I got to take an extra-long nap after church. 

The only negative was that I didn't get any pictures with Alexis.  We tried to take some before church, but she would have none of it.  Below is the best picture we could get of just her; the pictures with me were disasters.

Zombie Alexis ready for church:

Funny Girl

Alexis is a funny girl. Within 15 minutes of waking up this morning, she had her shoes on and her jewels (while still in her pj's of course).

Thanks Nana for the new jewels!

First Go

Today, Alexis and I had a first go at toilet training.  It was . . . interesting.   During the two hours that she was in panties, she went pee five times and four of those times was in her panties/on the carpet.  However, the one time that she did go on the toilet was the first time that she had ever done that, so we definitely celebrated.  Alexis passed the "readiness test" in the toilet training book that I have, but as soon as we started, it became apparent that she's not really ready.  She is very interested in the toilet and she loves to read all of her books about other "big girls" that use the potty, but I think it would be better to wait a month or two for her verbal skills to increase even more.  And we need to focus more on helping her understand when she goes pee.  She always tells me when she goes poop, but never pee.  We're also going to help her understand the difference between wet and dry.

I'm glad that I gave it a go.  It will definitely help me to know what to do better next time around.  But it was exhausting and stressful!  Alexis was only in panties for two hours and both of us were wiped out by the end.  I was planning on trying longer, but after two hours, Alexis was a basket-case and I ended up putting her down for an early nap.

Here is a picture of Alexis in her training panties:

(That pose is all Alexis! I did not prompt her to do that.)
(I love that her left thigh still has a roll of baby fat!)

(And she's wearing John's watch - one of her favourite accessories.)