Cutie Pie Pictures

I did a photo shoot with Mira yesterday.  Considering it was raining and I had very little natural light, and I don't think she was feeling very good, I think we got some cute shots.  Click on the link below to go to see them.

http://www.sabrinawattsphotography.com/2011_05_17/

We did Mira's baby blessing on Sunday, the 14th.  Here are some pictures of her after church in the blessing dress.  This is the dress that me, Megs, and Alison wore for our baptisms and that Emi, Ariana, and Cari have worn for their blessings.  The last one is my attempt to capture her smiling.  She has been doing a lot of that lately. :)

I've been waiting to post these next ones until I had a chance to look for Emilia's pictures.  Unfortunately, besides the ones that I posted to this blog and the ones I printed in the book I made for Emilia's first year, we lost all the pictures we had of her when Steve's hard drive crashed.  Sad, huh?

I did make a birth announcement with the very first pictures I took of Emi, though, and we have that. I put Mira in the same outfit. Do you think they look alike?

Emilia (you may have to click on the picture to see the bigger version) :

Mira:

While I was looking for Emilia's pictures, I did find this one and decided to include it just for fun. I don't remember her being SO bald!

Chocolate face

I was working in my room while Emilia was watching a movie in the living room this morning.  All of a sudden I look up to see this face:

I say, "Emilia, what happened?"  And she responds, "I was eating chocolate milk.  With my fingers."

Meaning she was dipping her fingers in the Nesquick tub and then licking it off.  I had to laugh.

Funny stories

A couple of incidents worth recording for embarrassment or amusement sometime in the future:

   The whole family was at Megan's house a little over a week ago. Emilia wanted something from upstairs, but I was nursing Mira and Steve was in the middle of a game of Super Smash Brothers, so Ben was a nice uncle and said he would go up with her to get it. Ten or fifteen minutes later, we realized that neither Ben nor Emi had come back downstairs and I wondered whether we should see if Ben needed to be relieved, so when Steve was done with his game, I made him go up and check.  Ben came down a minute later, walked into the room where I had been chatting with my mom and says, "So...I wiped my first bum today."
   "Your daughter's, you mean?" I asked.
   "No.  Yours."
   "What happened?"
   "Well, we were playing, and she said she needed to go potty.  I would have come and gotten you, but it seemed kind of urgent, so I took her in the bathroom. She just kind of stood there, so I asked her if she needed help." 
   Then Ben strikes a know-it-all-girl pose and in a know-it-all voice (being Emilia), says, "Yes. Pull down my panties."  (She was wearing a dress, so no pants to deal with anyway.)
   Ben continues in a rather sheepish tone, "So, I pulled down her panties."
   As know-it-all Emilia, "Now put me on the potty."
   "There wasn't a seat, so I put her on and she told me I had to hold her there, so she didn't fall in.  When she was done, I took her off and she does this."At which point Ben sticks his bum out.  "Do I need to wipe your bum?"
   "Yes!"
   "So I wiped her bum."
   When I was done laughing, I thanked him for helping her and apologized.  I'm sure it was way funnier to see Ben telling it, but I just had to record it. :)

Story 2:
  Today I decided to brave Walmart with both the girls.  I guess I was feeling brave because it had been a good morning.  I knew I was going to have the girls all by myself until bedtime because Steve had stuff going on tonight, so I really wanted to get out of the house anyway.
   We get to Walmart and I get most of the stuff I need while Mira is sleeping in her carseat.  She wakes up while I have just a few more things to get and after a few minutes, I hear her poop.
   I think, "Good! She needed to poop," because she's only pooped once since the suppository incident.  That last one was a fairly normal bowel movement, and I had read online that breastfed babies can go a long time between bowl movements because they can use most of the nutrients from the breastmilk.  She hadn't been uncomfortable like she was before the suppository incident either, so I didn't think much of hearing her poop, except what I already said.
   Well, I'm getting the last two items on my list and Mira is starting to really cry now and doesn't want her binky.  So I think, "I'll take her into the bathroom and change her diaper, and then hopefully she'll take her binky at least until we get out to the car so I don't have to try to breastfeed somewhere in Walmart."
   I grab the car seat with Mira in it, Emilia with her fairy Barbie, the diaper bag, and my purse, out of the cart and haul everything into the bathroom where I pull out the changing station. I move the blanket that was covering Mira and I see a big sploch of poop on it.  "Great! She blew out.  I hope it's not bad," I think.
  But it was bad. Really bad.
   I set a changing pad on the changing station and get Mira unbuckled.  As I pull her out, my hand gets covered in poo.  She has it all the way up the front of her onesie to her armpits and halfway up the back of her onsie, too.  It's also leaking through her pants down her pants-legs. All I can think is "Oh, gross! Oh, gross! Eww, ew, eww!"
   By the time I actually get all of her clothes and her diaper off, Mira has poop down both her arms, both her legs, covering her belly, her back, and her bum.  It's even pooling in her belly button.  My hands are full of it, the changing pad is smeared, and I can't leave her lying there to wash my hands or get a plastic bag to put her soiled clothes in. So I grab the wet wipes and start wiping her down, which of course makes her scream like a banshee.  I swear I had to use like 15 wipes just to get her looking like she didn't have yellow skin!
   This whole time, Emilia, in typical Emilia fashion is accosting every woman that comes into the restroom by blurting out, "My sister is poopy! Her name is MEER-ah.  She is yucky because she's poopy." Or she shoves her Barbie in their face and says, "This is my fairy Barbie; her name is Elina.  My sister is POOPY." I have to try to get her to stay by me because she tries to follow them into the stalls and keep talking.
   I finally get Mira cleaned enough to put a diaper and clothes back on her when I realize that there is no change of clothes in the diaper bag.  I had to use it a couple days ago and forgot to replace it! So I have a baby who is wearing nothing but a diaper and (thank goodness she didn't get them, too) her socks and only the blanket I had thrown over her carseat to wrap her in.  It's 39 degrees outside and WINDY!
  I decide that I'm going to have to buy something to put her in--thank goodness it's Walmart and it only cost me $3--so I wrap her up in my remaining blanket and go to put her in the carseat to wheel us back to the baby department when I realize that her carseat is covered in poop, too!
  Out come the baby wipes again (because, of course, the paper towel dispensers are completely out of paper towels).  I scrub down the straps and the bottom of the carrier as best I can and set my sweet, smelly baby in it.
   We get back to the cart and I go to set down the carseat on the front of it when I realize there is something yellow and runny that has pooled on the plastic seat that you put down when you want your kid's legs to go in the holes.  Yes, that's right, the poop leaked out of the carseat and dripped down onto the cart! More wipes go to baby-wipe heaven, and we're finally on our way to the baby section. 
   I pick something out, put it on her right there in the baby section and head for the checkout counter.
   Thankfully, Mira takes her binky and I don't have to try to breastfeed her, too.  By this point, though, Emilia is tired and hungry and on the verge of a breakdown.  But we make it out to the car, I throw everything in, buckle the girls and we head for home.  Mira falls asleep, and I hear Emilia say from the back seat, "I smiled at her, Momma."  "Oh, good," I tell her and I swear, within two minutes, I hear snoring.  Looking back, Emilia is out cold in her carseat!  She falls asleep in the car maybe once every couple months.  She had to be exhausted!
   Now both girls are bathed and in bed, and I'm ready to hit the hay, too.  Goodness.  What a day!

New title, new pictures

Well, it has come to my attention that the title of this blog is no longer incredibly appropriate. But, I don't want to get a new blog and then have to re-invite everyone and generally mess with the workflow already in place. So I'm going to re-title the blog, even though the address will be the same. I hope you can all be lenient on my laziness. :) I might have to try on a few titles before I get it right, but for now (I'm reading Jane Eyre, whose writing gave me the idea), I'm going to call it The Misses Watts. Mostly because we have Miss Emi and Miss Mira, which I call them 90% of the time.  If anyone has suggestions for a better title, I would love to hear them!

Below are photos of the two Misses Watts. The ones of Mira were mostly taken within the first week. Since then, I've been pretty consumed with trying to figure out her diet via my food intake and/or formula. It seems that she has an intolerance to milk and soy and that wheat and eggs irritate what I think is acid reflux. We finally got in to see the doctor today and she gave us some medication for the acid reflux, so hopefully we'll see some improvement in the near future. If I can just add wheat back into my diet I will be happy. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to give up milk and soy for the entire time I breastfeed, though. The milk that she got through formula gave her a rash on her face and the soy formula made her vomit up everything she ate and gave her such bad constipation we had to give her a suppository to help her get it out. It's been quite the adventure!

Emilia seems to be liking her sister well enough. She is acting up by being rebellious, but she doesn't seem to resent her sister at all, so that's nice. Other than that, things are going pretty normally. Still lacking sleep, but you kind of have to expect that for the first few months.

Thanks everyone for thinking of us! It's been nice to hear from so many of you. All of the gifts have been appreciated and you will be getting Thank You notes soon, I promise. :)

Now for the pictures I promised.

Emilia loves to put things out and arrange them.  This was a princess tea party according to her. :)

She looked so cute that day, I just had to take a picture.  This was how she looked yelling at me to not take a picture of her. haha :)

 

Emilia in her Easter dress from Grandma Watts. She loves her polka-dotted princess dress.  She wore it every Sunday in April. 

Mira Sofia Watts

Mira Sofia Watts joined us at 5:50pm on March 28th (although she didn't get her name until last night). :) She was 7 lbs 4 oz and 19 inches long. She is a beautiful healthy little girl with tons more hair than Emilia had--and it's dark! I think she's going to have brown eyes, too. They seem more brown than Emilia's were at birth. She's been a good girl so far. :) We came home last night and had a pretty good night. She doesn't like to be woken up to eat, although that will probably change in a few days. My mom took Emilia last night, so we only had to worry about one little girl. I'm excited to see her again tonight though! Am I up for the challenge of taking care of two little beauties? We'll see, I guess. :)

In a small miracle, Ben and Haylee also had their daughter, Dylan Avery, at 5:05pm, same day, same hospital. They were five rooms away! There are a couple pictures of both girls below. Hopefully they will be good friends!

Happenings

I've finally got things back in order after we switched bedrooms last Monday.  I was starting to get a little worried that I would go into labor and our rooms would still be disaster areas.  But, as usual, I worried for no reason.  I've got Emilia's and the new little one's princess room all decorated and organized except for some things I want to hang on the wall and have to wait for Steve to have an evening free to help.  My bedroom is also clutter-free, albeit devoid of all decoration.  I figure no one's going to really notice for a while, so I'm not too worried about that part.

One of the reasons I was worrying about going into labor before I was done organizing (can you say "nesting-to-the-point-of-ridiculousness"?) is because I feel like my body is getting geared up for it (even though my official due date is 3 weeks from today). My ligaments are definitely loose.  I waddle like a penguin wherever I go. :) And at my doctor's appointment this morning, I was dialated to 2 centimeters and 75% effaced.  Besides, I have always believed I would go closer to my original due date, which was March 28th (if you recall, the changed it to April 7th because of the ultrasound).  I could be totally wrong and I could go for another three weeks, but I was right with Emilia, so I'm stickin' with my guns until I'm proven wrong. :)

Here is the latest precociousness from Emilia (and yes, she is quite obsessed with princesses lately):

We were playing with her prince and princess figurines the other day and Emilia had her fairy figurine dancing with Prince Charming.  At one point in the dance, Emilia let go of them, expecting them to stand.  Prince Charming did because he has a base, but her fairy, who she calls Elina, does not, so she fell over.  Emilia immediately informed the prince, "Prince Charming, Elina just fell in love with you."

This morning Emilia was singing "Little Bunny Foo Foo." She had spent most of the weekend with Nana Frohlich, so I asked if Nana had been singing that for her. She responds, "No, Nana's husband named Grandpa was."

The other day Emilia pointed out a Prince Charming figurine we have and told me that he was Cinderella's prince. I asked who Sleeping Beauty's prince was and she correctly responded, "Prince Philip!" Then in her cute matter-of-fact way, she adds, "And my prince...is Daddy!"

As a mother who thinks Hollywood and the book industry are conspiring against the happiness of all young women by selling them a pack of lies about what love actually is, I am slacking in my duties to safeguard my child from it all. Emilia told me very matter-of-factly recently that if she dances gracefully, all her dreams will come true, and that if you dance with a prince, he falls in love with you.


Emilia is in the habit of making up verbs. Her most recent one: Royaling. She is currently wearing her royaling dress waiting for her royaling carriage so she can become a princess.

Emilia is such a sensitive little soul. I decided to sing something new at bedtime tonight, so I picked one of the more upbeat ballads that I memorized as a teenager--Little Bitty Tear. You can hear it at the link (I think). As I sang the last line, she told me to stop, and I realized she was crying! She had to wipe away the tears with her blankie. "I don't like that song, Momma." I felt so bad!

We always tell Emilia she has a cute little bum. Her today: "I have a cute little bum. When I get big, I'm going to have a big bum like yours, Mom."

Also today (while eating dinner at the in-laws): "Mom, Grandpa likes to eat." She didn't mention anyone else. Just Grandpa.

Recently, if I ask Emilia if she dreamed about anything (after she wakes up in the morning), her response is, "Yeah, I dreamed about dancing cupcakes." Sometimes she adds, "You can have a purple one, and I have a pink one, and daddy gets a blue one."

Steve's been writing his thesis for a while now and when he's working on it, I have to tell Emilia not to bug him. Today when we went to the library, she ran over to the kids' computers and told me she needed to work on her thesis. She faithfully pushed buttons on the keyboard for at least 10 minutes. :)

videos

Those of you who get this through email won't be able to see the videos unless you go to my blog.
This one is of her singing the Itsy Bitsy Spider.  Mostly just for the cuteness factor of her voice. :)

I've been trying to get a video of her talking with her New Jersey accent, but she isn't cooperating.  It's the "a"s in words like CAR, STAR, SPARKLE and such where it comes out the most, but I can't get her to say them on cue, and if I say them first, she doesn't have as much of an accent when she says them.  I'll update the post if I can get a good video of it.