Girls just want to have fun!

I have tried to get her to wear this purse before and she had no interest in it whatsoever.  Today she came out of her room with her beads on and not one but two purses on!  It's funny, she holds her arm up in the air to keep it on her shoulder.  She is more of a tom boy, likes to get dirty and is fearless.... the other day she carried home a pet rock about 4 blocks from a little hike with daddy.  So the occasional moments she is a girly girl is fun.

Dinner time

Lillian has mastered the fork now.  She can use a spoon pretty well as long as it is in a container that has high enough sides, I often put her fruit cups in a larger drinking cup so she has a better chance of getting it on the spoon. 

The Park

We can go down the slide like a big girl now! 

Rose Garden

Lillian took time to stop and smell the flowers at the rose garden in Balboa Park :)

May

So much has changed recently in many areas of our lives.  We visited Greg for a week, went back to Maryland for a week to finish arranging everything for the move, then off to my parents for a week since we couldn't move into our new place yet and a hotel was just too expensive, and we are now all in San Diego.  Here is a stream of photos from my visit with my parents and Lillian is saying the things she knows/recognizes :) 

We even got to feed a giraffe at the zoo!  The pic is in the slideshow but here it is again:

Since we've gotten to San Diego Lillian's sleep habits have been HORRIBLE! She is much much more aware of her surroundings and we've had to make some adjustments to her bedtime/nap time routines.  She now screams when the door is closed yet makes it a game when it's opened just a crack.  We think she feels like we are leaving, she definitely asks where each of us are when we are away.   But we are getting better at it, for a while I was having to sit in her room until she fell asleep.  I have found her laying on top of me in the middle of the night though, sometimes more than once a night.  We think it may be that she was away from Greg for six weeks and now needs a bit more security.

She has been talking so much more too.  Now it usually only takes us saying a word once before she attempts it.  Today she even said 2 word sentences by herself, with no prompting!  She knows so many words I don't even think I can recall all of them.

Another big milestone is we are full on potty training now!  We were doing it in Maryland and she could tell me if she had to poop but we were never very consistent going pee on the potty.  Now we go every 15 min.  She has a few accidents still, usually if I don't take her right when the timer goes off or if we are out and about and she didn't actually go before we left (although we do always try).  We have the chair potty in the truck for emergencies.  She has been pretty successful with it for the most part.  Once we have less accidents I'll extend the time out further and further.  I've had to use the cloth diapers as underwear without a pad since even the smallest underwear they make is still huge on her.  Maybe in a month or so she will be completely potty trained although the cloth diapers don't really cause her pants to get wet if she does have an accident.

Easter Basket from Mema and Papa

Egg Hunt

I had a rental car for a week so I made sure we did some Easter things since we will be alone and with no car.  Butler's Orchard opened today, we went last year too but this year she was able to do more things.  They have little areas they set up for Easter egg hunting just for fun, kids collect plastic eggs and then return them for them to set it up in another area.  She really enjoyed doing it but after a while she was not impressed by the obvious ones and wanted the more difficult ones like finding a treasure.  Also at the Orchard was giant slides, pony rides, face painting, rubber ducky derby's, hay rides and some animals.  We mainly focused on the hay ride, seeing the animals (she even got to pet a baby chick!), doing the egg hunt and playing on some small slides.  Also a thanks to Auntie Jan for Lillian's dress she is wearing!