More fun with family

Here are a few more fun pictures of our weekend. Alexa and Sophia sitting in carseats reading books. Everyone in our family loves books.

After meeting we went to Ruby Tuesdays for lunch, the waiter took our picture.

Sophia and Holly.

Sorry Nana for putting in a picture where your eyes are partly closed, but Jamie's grin was so big I had to share it.

Right before meeting.

Alexa helping Daddy work at the computer.

More silliness.

Surgery, potty training cont., family visiting

Alexa is so tired and stressed from the potty training stuff she woke up for a while this morning and then went back to sleep before breakfast and slept until after noon. During the brief period of time before she went back to sleep she helped Daddy make pancakes for our company.

We finally got Alexa to wear headphones and listen to Sophia's mp3 player for a while. She loves music, but hasn't been willing to wear headphones before.

Sophia got some cold weather accessories from Nana which she modeled for us.

Nana and Sophia reading a Fancy Nancy book.

Surgery went well. I have stitches which itch me periodically, but it isn't hurting much unless I walk around or stand too much. The screw they were taking out turned out to be broken, so they only took out the half they could get to. That was the part pressing on the nerve and causing problems, and they didn't want to go digging around for the other half. I got the stitches out of my face yesterday. (I had two moles removed and had stitches on my face for a week.)

We finally have company over

I finally decided to stop waiting for my house to be clean before inviting friends over for supper. It works better for me to invite them and then clean the house up before they get there! We had the Nelsons over for supper Saturday evening. They have been so good to us, they often babysit Alexa when we have a date. Alexa adores staying there, a home with five kids is so much fun for her. She and Philip play with trainsets. Alexa's eyes go a bit crossed when she won't wear her glasses. (She usually wears them, so not a big problem)

Miles and Neil.

The Momma and Poppa and Osten.

Lenore had to work, so she didn't come.

My surgery is Monday morning. Alexa is staying with the Nelsons so David can work, and Mom is coming with me to drive me home afterward and help out. Alexa is still resisting the potty training, but we are going to keep working on it.

I got a new laptop, which I am quite enchanted with. I am typing my blog entry on it. It is so nice to be able to work on my computer in whatever room Alexa is in. It also has a webcam and microphone, so if I can figure out how to use it I can try and call Nana on it so she can "talk" with Alexa. Does anyone else use this? Does it work with Yahoo Messenger?

Alexa decided to grow out of her shoes quite suddenly. I am pondering the interesting growth patterns of children's feet. In the course of one year her feet grew almost four shoe sizes, from size 5 to size 8.5. Then they stopped and it was a year and a half until they grew again. She is a size 10 right now. I am getting her some new shoes made from the Soft Star Shoes place here in Corvallis. I hope they last a few months at least!

Painting and pottytraining

I still haven't figured out why Blogger is reversing the order of the pictures I upload. Anyway, Saturday, we pulled out the paint and let Alexa get really colorful. We took off her shirt for this, so she painted in her underwear. She is kind of funny about getty her hands messy, she isn't sure she like it. The potty training is going slowly. We have only taken Alexa out of the house for Sunday morning and a quick meal out afterward. Other than that she has been stuck in the house in her underwear trying to learn how to go on the toilet.

She loves sitting on the toilet since we sing and read and play with her, but she doesn't like to actually go potty there. I am not sure if there is something scary about it, or that she has just been going into a diaper for so long she can't adjust to the change of it. She seems to know when she needs to go, and she comes to me right after she wets her panties, but getting it in the toilet is still not happening very much.

Grandma Penny came up Friday and stayed until after meeting yesterday, so we were thankful for her help. We have mice still/again. I stuffed the holes with steel wool and put a bunch more stuff in hard plastic containers, and cleaned up the mouse droppings, some of which were still damp. YUCK! Do you think we need to put the cereal in plastic too? I am wondering of there are more holes that I don't know about (other than the ones under the sink around the pipes).
I will learn to be more patient through this experience whether I want to or not!