Bridget's Backpack

For not being two yet, Bridget has a lot of things figured out.  Yesterday Jillian was playing in the sandbox with all the horses and Bridget wanted some to play with too, so Jillian handed her one and Bridget shook her head "no".  Bridget got busy playing with something else but as soon as Jillian went to play elsewhere, Bridget took the backpack and stuffed it with all the horses and wanted me to put it on her.  She wore that backpack for the longest time.  She was pretty smart for biding her time to get what she wanted.  It's hard to see the backpack in this picture.

Today Bridget was all into dress up.  Before this outfit, she was all in cowboy gear including a cowboy hat.  Then she got into this get up, I would say a hula girl, and she put on several necklaces to complete the outfit.  I don't think she realized how to get this top on right.  You can see the pile of clothes she was digging through.  During all this time, Jillian decided to play with every doll set here.  She discovered some sets like the veterinarian set that she had forgotten about.  She had a great time using her active imagination.

Naptime

Just the last couple of times Jillian has been able to nap with Sophie, instead of putting Sophie in the cage by her. It's great because I tell her she has to lie still so Sophie will stay asleep and in no time Jillian is asleep too.  Sophie likes to sleep right next to someone so even when I took the picture Sophie stayed asleep too.  By nap time they have worn each other out.  Jillian wants a bow on Sophie each time she comes.  I told Jillian I was going to take a picture of her and Sophie sleeping and she asked me if I could put it on Daddy's computer for her to see.

Since Papa was on a scooter trip all day, Ty filled in and went with me to watch Bridget and Jillian while I took pictures at volleyball.  He watched the girls almost all day as he is trying to earn extra school clothes money.  He is so good with them, playing games and entertaining them and they love that extra attention.  When they were riding their trikes and scooters, he was going in circles right with them.  He even was right on the spot to give them more tea for their tea party today.

Keeping Busy

                                                       

 Early this morning when the girls came, they saw the new sandbox and had to go play in it before breakfast and getting dressed.  It took some convincing to get them back inside.  Luckily it was clear and sunny in the morning.  Not too long after breakfast, Rielee got to come play and of course, they headed right for the sandbox again.  Lots of time spend there today.

After the sandbox came finger painting.  I think they had more fun making their hands blue.  After a while they took off their pictures and were thrilled when I let them paint the Formica.  That was no more messy than the sink and themselves.  Bridget also got to finger paint in her high chair.  She used only one hand and wasn't too thrilled to get that messy.  She did like washing her hands herself in the sink.

 

Next they decided  to set up houses on the deck and brought out the stove, blankets, pillows, babies,  and whatever.  There was the Mommy (Rielee) and her two not so obedient children.  And the dogs joined in too, disrupting their homes.  Later there was the tea party there with chocolate milk and snacks. They were so happy to have Rielee there and they played so well together.

New Toy

It took Papa two days to put this helicopter teeter-totter together.  There were multitudes of parts that didn't fit together perfectly.  But now the girls enjoy playing on it.  Bridget was afraid of going up that high at first but it didn't take her long to enjoy the thrill.  Two kids can ride inside also, so it's ready when the twins come.

I decided that the water play area didn't go well with the sandbox as it was always a muddy mess, so I moved it in front of the house.  They had a ball playing in the water, plus watering everything around, including each other.  Bridget had at least three changes of clothes.  Jillian colored on baby and then decided baby needed a good bath.  Plus she showed me how baby knew how to swim by putting her face in the water.

Pool Party

The day that Jillian had been waiting for had finally arrived ... Maya's birthday party! Maya (and her cousin Emma) had been Jillian's classmates at preschool this past year, and Jillian was missing both of them this summer. So, when Sweetie-Pie received the invitation to the party, it's all she wanted to talk about. They held the party at Briarcliff pool, where Jillian has swim lessons, so that made it even more exciting. When she saw both of them, she ran to them and gave them big hugs. Then they were off to the pool, where they played for nearly two hours, interrupted only by some birthday cake and presents. It's only a few more weeks before the trio will be reunited again at preschool.

New Stuff LIII

Hot summer fun with those wild Woodruff girls:

1. Current Reading Selections: Jillian's favorite book right now is Paddington's Garden, while Bridget loves to listen to Clifford's Halloween. By the way, they both managed to get their hands on some of Mommy's gardening books, so both of them now carry around their own "flower books".
2. Current Favorite Play Activities: Doll houses combined with role-playing are Jillian's favorite at the moment (along with using the supposedly off-limit breakable things on her dresser), while anything that Jillian is playing with is Bridget's favorite, so Sweetie-Pie is receiving lessons in sharing and patience.
3. "Well ...", "Because ...", "Ummm ...": Bridget continues to use her sentence starters well, usually to give her time to think about her response.
4. Dry All Night!: It's taken some work, but Jillian has been making it through the night without any accidents for over a week. We started working on it a while ago, and it was pretty much hit and miss every night. When it didn't look like much progress was being made, we decided to use an incentive ... if she wanted to watch a morning cartoon, she had to stay dry all night. Well, it only took a couple of accidents (and no morning cartoons) before Jillian realized she needed to get serious. And she did! Mommy and Daddy are thrilled with this milestone. Next up: Bridget's potty-training!
5. Morning Hot Chocolate: With Daddy home every day due to grad school being done, the girls have gotten used to the every-morning routine of hot chocolate on the sofa while watching their cartoon. Jillian still slurps it down in record time, while Bridget is working on staying clean.
6. Lighter Brunette: Bridget was born with very dark brown hair, and it stayed that way for awhile, but as the summer has gone along and she's gotten some sun, her hair has really lightened up so that it pretty much matches Jillian in color. Mommy also noted some highlights in her hair recently.
7. Darkening Tan: While Bridget's hair lightens in color, her skin is definitely darkening. She has no problems tanning, and is sporting a nice brown tan. This is the opposite of Sweetie-Pie, who is very fair-skinned and tends to burn easily.
8. Letters for the Mailman: Jillian likes to write a lot (her usual several lines of squiggles on paper), and she also likes to mail them. So, she puts them into the mailbox for the mailman to pick up, though the mailman can't actually get them in there. So, eventually Daddy fishes them all out.
9. The Vanishing Nap Time: At home, Jillian has recently been spending her nap times in her room either reading books or quietly playing with her toys. It's been awhile since she's actually taken a nap, so we figure her nap times are starting to go away, or at least lessen. She still takes naps at Grannie and Papa's house and Papa Ken's house, probably because she plays so hard when she's there.
10. "Jen": This is what Bridget calls Jillian, because she can't quite pronounce the "L" sound.
11. The Nighttime Cleanup: While Jillian has always tended to make a mess in her room every day, it got pretty bad lately, so that we couldn't walk across her floor. So, we decided to have another incentive (condition) each night; namely, if she wanted to watch her evening cartoon, she had to clean up her room first -- and the more time it took to clean, the less time she had to watch TV. The first night of this was quite the cry-fest, and it took forever but eventually got done. The next couple times were much quicker, but only because she chucked all of her stuff into the closet out of sight. Sadly for her, this didn't pass inspection and she had to re-do the cleanup. After doing it for awhile, she's accepted it and does a decent job.
12. The Shadow: We guess Jillian has gotten used to having Bridget following her around everywhere and copying everything she does. The only thing that doesn't work is when there's one of something, so Bridget can't copy -- this usually leads to a lot of wailing until they both move onto something else.
13. The Boss: Jillian has definitely taken the lead role in her and Bridget's sisterly relationship, not being afraid to tell Bridget everything she should or has to do. For the most part, Bridget takes it all in stride.
14. The Translator: Well, Jillian just thinks she knows what Bridget is saying (that is not clearly understood). If we look at Bridget like we're unsure what she just said, Jillian will repeat Bridget's sentence, using words that make no grammatical or contextual sense.

Columbia River

The girls took a little dip into the Columbia River on Saturday, when we joined the Stephenson family picnic at Vista Park in Skamakowa. It was a nice, sunny day, and the girls were ready to play. We took them right down to the water, which was pretty warm, and let them jump the waves. It was windy, so the waves were almost like the beach, except coming in much faster. Jillian liked going way out, while Bridget was a little hesitant about the whole thing, especially when she fell face first in the water ... not a happy girl. She did better when they spent their time digging in the sand.

A Trip to the Vet

Jillian has been excited all week as Sophie had an appointment Friday for a check up and shots and she could go watch.  She was enthralled the whole time while the Vet checked over Sophie.  The only time she said anything was that she had a fish that died when the Vet asked if she took care of Sophie.  She was quite shy.  She was worried that Sophie would cry when she got her shots and then impressed that Sophie didn't even whimper.  Jillian got to take home a healthy Sophie.

Lots of Play Time

Ava and Harper got to come to play this morning.  They thought pulling the wagon was the most fun.  They all took turns driving or riding in the wagon.  Actually the sharing of rides went pretty well.  Sister Dianne got a good picture of all of them riding but by the time I got my camera, Jillian had decided the slow speed I made them go was too boring so she rode other things.  After a fun time here they went up to play in the BIG sandbox with Ava, Harper, Rielee, Auna, and two cousins of Auna.  By the end of this busy morning they were more than ready for naps and since Papa was gone, I called Tierney to come up and read Jillian a story while I put Bridget to sleep.  Papa got back in time to put Bridget down but Jillian still preferred Tierney to read to her and Jillian went right to sleep.

Storyteller

Jillian likes to get this glass bear set out and tell stories about them.  She gave me a pencil and paper to write down her story, which she told so fast I couldn't keep up and only got half of it down.  The baby bear got lost and the mother bear searched all over for it.  Jillian has quite the imagination in these stories which are all different.  Then she had Daddy read what I wrote which was hard for him to decipher as sometimes I missed some of the story.  First she told Papa to write it down but he kept telling her she was going too fast so she gave up on him.

Backyard Activities

When it's nice outside, we like to have the girls play outside. Unfortunately, our backyard is by no means finished, so there's lots of dirt and other stuff to get into. The girls have their beach toy shovels and pails, and they spend most of their time digging and moving dirt and rocks from one spot to another. It gets to be a very dirty activity.

The photo of Jillian shows her working on her "cake". She adds little scoops of dirt from all over the backyard, and slowly stirs them in. This cake has been a long time in the making.

The photo of Bridget shows her scooping up rocks from the side path into a little bowl. We tell her that dumping the rocks into the lawn is a no-no, but she seems to forget this most of the time, so our lawn is pretty much full of gravel.

Summer Fun

Jillian wanted the water slide set up but she had a problem. The sprinkler along the sides was hitting her in the face and she still doesn't like water in her face so she solved that problem with the scuba set.  The car was to ride on fast through the sprinkles.

I had bought this Hello Kitty umbrella for 50 cents at a garage sale so I didn't care what happened to it.  They were fighting over it so Papa got the hose so they could take turns under the shower he was spraying.  They thought that was very cool.  Bridget went first but couldn't figure out how to hold it to keep from getting wet, so by watching Jillian do it she knew exactly what to do.

While I was fixing dinner I suggested that Jillian do Starfall since she hasn't done it all summer.  She started playing songs on it and when I looked, Bridget was sitting enjoying it too.  Neither moved for about 25 minutes and then didn't want to come to dinner.  I'll have to remember this.

Bridget and Kitty

Bridget woke up from her nap first.  She always goes out to the deck to get the stone kitty (not a soft, fluffy kitty) to play with.  I asked her to sit in the chair to get a picture of her and the kitty.  She is getting to be a "ham" as it was quite easy to get several pictures.  While sitting there she winked at me so I tried to get a picture of that but she did it so quick I couldn't catch her in a wink.  It's amazing that she hasn't dropped the kitty on her foot or broken it.  It does have a few chips out of it's ears though.  I really liked this picture as it shows both of her dimples.