For the past 2 weeks Ella has been waking up dry. She has been wearing normal diapers to sleep since when she would have an accident she would pee right out the front of the diaper and soak her bed. I guess she was holding it till the early morning and then it would just rip. She also sleeps on her belly so it made it all worse. Anyway she has been dry so upgraded to a pull-up. If she continues we will move to undies next week. Very excited. Was not sure how long this last part of the process would take. She turned 3 1/2 in June.

Last week the girls attended a week long Musical Theater Camp. They worked on pieces from Shrek The Musical. They really enjoyed themselves. They are always singing and doing shows at home and have so much fun together. Claire's voice has grown so much in the last year. She sings so beautifully and she usually makes me cry. She has developed a nice vibrato and it is pretty impressive fro 5 1/2. Ella also has a very cute voice and sing full songs with correct notes and words.

So in the show Ella was in the opening number. She played Shrek's mom and a little boy played the dad. In the song they were singing to little 7 year old Shrek about leaving home. About it is time for him to go. Lyrics like "It's a Big Bright Beautiful World. With possibilities everywhere. It's peaches and cream and every dream come true........But not for you. Very funny. Anyway Ella did a great job. She really surprised us with her performance. She sang almost all the words and did all her blocking.

The second and closing number Claire and and Ella were apart of an ensemble piece. Claire played one of the little pigs and Ella the ugly duckling. very cute.

Then Claire sang her solo. She played little Fiona. She is stuck in a castle and it is day 23 and she she dreams of the day a prince will come save her. After Claire another girls plays teenage Fiona and comes out a girl playing Adult Fiona. At this point it is has been 4523 days locked in the castle. At the end of number all three girls sing together. Claire did so well. She sang great and seemed very comfortable on stage. She was expressive and believable. We are soooooooooo proud of her. This is what she wants to do and I will do everything I can to support her. In 2 weeks she starts a musical theater class. We both will be trying out for Annie in Sept and I hope this is something we can do together.

Today we had a "goodbye pull-up party" for Ella. She has been in undies for a week now with only 2 accidents at the beginning. Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The party consisted of pull-up hats, cupcakes and ice-cream. Then we had the ceremonial throw the pull-up in the garbage and say good-riddens ceremony. This is a good day :) Attendees were Ella, Claire, Chloe (neighbor friend) and me. We sang to the tune of "Happy Birthday" "Good-bye Pull-ups to you......" followed by "Hello undies to you....."

Ella she is 3 1/2 this month. It was time. I am very happy and I think she is too.

Today Claire had a dentist appointment. He informed that Claire's 2 lower middle teeth are loose. AHHHHH - Where has the time gone? Did not expect this so soon. She is growing up too fast.

Not sure why but for the past weeek Claire has been saying "Don't get mad at Daddy. I love my daddy and you can't get mad at him".. Now she likes to say it often and has a smile on her face. Well just now at dinner Claire said it again and then Ella says "Yeah mom don't get mad at daddy - don't get mad at him....don't step on him and hurt him.....because if you do you will have to sit in the chair (black chair I put her in when she does something really bad). Then she says we don't hit, we don't hit anyone, we don't hit Claire, we don't hit Ella, we don't hit anyone." Very funny.

This morning Ella was woken up by me in order to get Claire to pre-school. She was very tired and her eyes were too. I put her on the changing table and she says "My eyes are not working mom - they are broken!". I told her that happens sometimes when you first wake up. I said give it some time and you will be able to see. About 30 seconds later she screams "I CAN SEEE NOW!!!! I CAN SEE THEY ARE WORKING NOW!!". Oh that was sooooo funny. Nice start to the day.

Today we converted Ella's crib into a toddler bed. I would have held off longer (since I like to sleep in the morning) but at the end of May we are taking a 2 week trip and she will be sleeping in a bed not a crib. We wanted to give her the 2 months to get used to it so that we don't have to worry about her falling out when we are in hotels or on a boat.

We took the crib apart and both Grandma and Grammie watched over the web cam. The girls were so excited. They were jumping in the bed and singing and giggling. They were jumping off bed onto floor - mattress real close to floor. Well this was the first night sleeping in her big girl bed. We will see how she does. I put pillows on the floor just in case she falls out. I also put a gate at her door and locked the bathroom door to Claire's room. The hope is that she will wake up and just play in her room until we get there. Hoping she will not open door and cry because gate is there. We will see.

Ella just ran into the kitchen saying "Mommy I got poopie on my finger!!" And she did. Yuck. She is on antibiotics since her nose has been running with green snot for 6 months. You know what happens - pretty messy diapers and this one was green. I ran her to the bathroom to wash her hands hoping she would not touch her self or me :)

Yesterday Ella did her first poopy on the toilet. She was happy when she flushed since the poopy was saying weeeeeee and going to play with his friends in poopyland.

Ella had her 2 year checkup yesterday and she is doing great. She weighed in at 23pounds 14 ounce (10-25 percentile) and 33 3/4 inches tall (50 percentile). If you compare her to Claire at the same age she is 1 pound heavier and 1 inch taller. Kind of interesting. So she will be a slightly bigger kid :) I laugh since they are both tiny ones.

Ella continues to amaze us with her speech. The sentence structures she is using now is more a 2 1/2 - 3 year old. We have to remind ourselves she is only just 2.

She is so full of life and active in everything she does. She usually always happy - except when she is tired.

She continues to do pee pee on the toilet here and there throughout the day. We had a better routine before the family came for the holidays. Trying to get back to that now.

She had seemed to be dropping her nap for about 2 months here. Just before xmas she went 7 days without a nap and seemed OK. Just after that she has been taking naps everyday and sleeping a lot. Not sure what happened. I was kind of looking forward to the no nap thing so that I was free to be out with the girls for the day. Oh well. We will see what happens.

Ella has been doing very well with using the potty. She goes anywhere from 2-5 a day. She loves to sit and hear her pee tinkle in the water. Best of all she loves to flush. She says "I have to go the bathroom". I say OK. She then proceeds to run as fast as she can (panting like a dog)to the toilet. She opens the door, runs in, lifts the seat, puts on her potty seat, drags the stool and is on the potty. She pee's with a big smile on her face. I wipe her. She gets off toilet and flushes with a huge giggle and then runs to the sink to wash her hands. Not sure if this is a just a phase but it is pretty cool that she is starting so early.

A few weeks ago we took out the floor potty for Ella since she was asking to go potty. She would ask to go and we would put her on. She would sit for a total of maybe 5-6 second and then get off. So that is that. Yesterday at like 1:30PM after only have one diaper change in the AM she had a dry diaper. I was like that is odd since she drank a lot in that time frame. She says mom I want to go to the bathroom. I said OK. I put her on the potty. I made sure she stayed on the toilet and held onto the handles and then she went. She did her first pee pee on the toilet. She was so excited. She was gigging through the whole thing. We will see where this goes. Claire started this at the same time and was in undies till age 3.

We just returned from Ella's 19 (supposed to be 18mth) month checkup. She is doing well. Her weight is 22-8 pounds and her height is 32 inches and head 18 1/2. For weight she is in the 25% and her height in the 50%. She is a little bigger then Claire was at this age but not by much.

I feel like such a slacker since I have not posted much about Ella. They say that happens with the second one but I don't feel great about it. So I finally have stopped to do it now.

Ella is a awesome. OK done. See you later. Kidding :)

Ella has grown up so fast. It feels like yesterday when I was on bedrest and she was kicking around in my belly. She just turned 19 mths yesterday. She is such a funny girl. Always laughing and talking. Oh does she talk so much. At about 16-16.5 mths she was using over 50 words. At this point I have stopped counting. She is now speaking in 3-4 word sentences and can say words with 3 syllables. She has also worked out how to properly add "ing" to the endings on words. At the airport a few weeks ago she says "Mommy airplane is flying". Or she might say I want to "run" and then say "Claire is running". Very excited to have a second child who can communicate so well. I never expected that after Claire. I guess she has Claire to teach her. She repeats everything.

She also loves to sing. I am amazed at how much she picks up. She sings Twinkle Twinkle, Ba Ba Black Sheep, Tender Shepard (from Peter Pan), Happy Birthday, Rain Rain go away and Rock-a-bye Baby. She sings almost the entire song.

She is also very active. She likes to climb, walk down the steps (holding on of course). Starting to do some good jumping. Actually getting both feet off ground.

She also loves to read. That is pretty much the only time you can get her to sit still and focus. We have a bunch a books near her crib that she can reach. When she wakes up from a nap or in the morning the first thing she does is grab a book and start reading.

That is it for now. Have her 19th mth (late for 18th) next week so we will see how much she ways. I know she is tiny for her age.

I was driving yesterday and came to a quick stop at a light. I then hear from Claire "Woh that was close - GIRL!!" Pretty funny. Not sure where the GIRL part came from :)