Monday, December 6, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
12 Days Old
Willow and Alenni are 12 days old today. They had their first appointment with the doctor yesterday and are doing well. Both of them have surpassed their birth weight. Willow, who was the smallest at birth (5lbs, 10oz) now weights 6lbs and 4oz. She's by far the biggest eater and is diligently working on developing a double chin! Alenni weighed in just under 6lbs. She weighed 5lbs, 12oz at birth. Both girls received a clean bill of health.
Both girls are great sleepers. I have been able to sleep up to 11 hours each night though I do wake up every 1.5-2 hours to feed them and change diapers. I can handle this. Emma was a lot harder on us at this stage! I even get a nap in the middle of the day! Despite all the rest, I'm still tired.
Emma has been a huge help. She fetches diapers, wipes, clean clothes. She takes dirty clothing to the laundry and brings me food and drink when I need it. She loves her sisters and gets pretty upset when they cry.
Both girls are great sleepers. I have been able to sleep up to 11 hours each night though I do wake up every 1.5-2 hours to feed them and change diapers. I can handle this. Emma was a lot harder on us at this stage! I even get a nap in the middle of the day! Despite all the rest, I'm still tired.
Emma has been a huge help. She fetches diapers, wipes, clean clothes. She takes dirty clothing to the laundry and brings me food and drink when I need it. She loves her sisters and gets pretty upset when they cry.
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| Alenni - 12 days old |
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| Willow - 11 days old |
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| Willow - 10 days old |
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| Willow - 11 days old |
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| Willow - 12 days old |
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The Heigl Twins Have Arrived!
Our twins have finally arrived. Willow Adeline and Alenni Suzann were born on Friday 19th of November at 9:46 and 9:56 am. Willow was born first and weighed 5lbs and 10 ounces. Alenni weighed 5lbs and 12 oz. Both girls are 19inches long and very healthy. The little ladies are believed to be identical and do look very similar though their heads have yet to recover from being squashed in the womb!
Willow and Alenni already have a special bond and do not like to be far apart. They are most content when they are tightly wrapped and placed in their bassinet together. The nurses at the hospital said that both girls even managed to share a pacifier during one of their visits to the nursery! I wish we'd gotten pictures of that. They also enjoy sucking on each other's hands. If one baby cries, the other will respond which makes the evenings quite fun for Mommy and Daddy.
Enjoy a few pictures and celebrate the wonderful blessing God has given us. We'd ask that you continue to keep us all in your prayers as these two are already proving to be a bit of a challenge. We're only four days in and we're already sleep deprived!
Their names are pronounced Willow Adeline (Add-a-Leen) and Alenni (Ah-len-nee).
Willow and Alenni already have a special bond and do not like to be far apart. They are most content when they are tightly wrapped and placed in their bassinet together. The nurses at the hospital said that both girls even managed to share a pacifier during one of their visits to the nursery! I wish we'd gotten pictures of that. They also enjoy sucking on each other's hands. If one baby cries, the other will respond which makes the evenings quite fun for Mommy and Daddy.
Enjoy a few pictures and celebrate the wonderful blessing God has given us. We'd ask that you continue to keep us all in your prayers as these two are already proving to be a bit of a challenge. We're only four days in and we're already sleep deprived!
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| Willow - 4 Days Old |
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| Alenni - 4 Days Old |
Alenni on her birth day!
Alenni and Willow on their birth day.
Willow sleeping on her birth day.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Pretty Famous!
Emma is featured in an article on clickertraining.com - a site that receives more than 120,000 hits a month.
I'm such a proud mom.
Included in the VERY informative article are also a few pictures of Emma practicing her training techniques on a stuffed dog and a human friend.
Are you feeling pressured to join the other 120,000 visitors yet?
Read about Emma!
I'm such a proud mom.
Included in the VERY informative article are also a few pictures of Emma practicing her training techniques on a stuffed dog and a human friend.
Are you feeling pressured to join the other 120,000 visitors yet?
Read about Emma!
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Long Awaited Update
It's been four months since my last post. I've been keeping so busy that I
haven't taken the time to update.
Updating is also daunting because Emma has been busy too. There is so much to write about that I don't even know where to start.
She's still about 21 pounds but she's getting taller. She now has to duck when I open the fridge.
She talks constantly and is now in the yelling stage. She talks so loudly that sometimes I can't wait for her take a nap.
Emma is also in the climbing phase. There isn't a horizontal surface in the house that she hasn't managed to climb up on. She even knows how to open drawers and use them as stairs to get on top of a piece of furniture. She also pushes chairs up next to tables and other surfaces in order to climb higher. She never stops. She likes to climb onto a kitchen chair and then go from there to the table top, at that point she'll crawl across the table and climb into her highchair.
Emma still naps for about 2-3 hours every day. She also sleeps from 9:30pm until about 9am. She insists on having the door closed while she sleeps. If I forget, she'll yell "Door, please!" until I come and take care of it. She comes with Dave and me when we visit our friends. Sometimes we hang out at our friends' homes until 12am. She doesn't stay up the entire time. Instead, she is VERY well-behaved and lets us put her to bed at her bed time. Because we've always done this (we take her porta-crib everywhere), she goes down easily and with very little fuss. We're very proud of her.
Emma still eats like a piggy. She has molars now, so she has more food options. Her favorite foods are:
Wasabi
Olives
Grapes
Raisins
Mandarin Oranges
Beans - any kind
Bread
Puffed Wheat
Shrimp
Broccoli
Pineapple
Popcorn
And tons more. She especially loves anything with sugar in it. She is no longer breastfed. I wasn't ready to wean her, but she doesn't wish to nurse anymore. She drinks cow's milk once every other day or so and juice only on the rarest of occasions.
Emma's favorite hobbies include drawing, going for long walks (she can easily walk a half mile on her own), and playing at the park.
Emma can draw a perfect number 2. And is currently learning that drawing on something that's not paper is a bad idea. Lately, she's been drawing on paper, but usually they're documents which are important to me.
Her favorite thing about the park is the slides which she insists on going down (no matter the height) on her belly. She loves to watch the other children, is learning to enjoy the swings, and of course, she loves to climb.
Last month, she met Patrick Rothfuss (best-selling fantasy author) for the second time and even got to be part of a cosplay group that introduced him when he made an appearance at Central Library during GenCon. She dressed as a little street urchin.
Next month, she'll be featured in an article for clickertraining.com an internationally-known resource for clicker trainers and animal behaviorists. I'm extremely excited about it.
Emma is still working on training my dogs, but is having tons of success training our black cat. If she continues to enjoy it, she'll make a phenomenal trainer one day.
Emma is also facing forward in the car now. She knows that red lights mean stop and green lights mean go. She recognizes "speed limit" signs and "stop signs" and "construction sighns". She also recognizes our street when we turn down it on our way home from somewhere.
Emma recognizes most of her alphabet and seems to favor vowels most of all. She is also learning to count out loud. I'm in the process of teaching her left and right. She seems to be getting it, but isn't correct 100% of the time yet.
She knows all of her body parts including: shoulders, knees, wrists, ankles, thighs and neck.
Next month, she'll be two years old. I can't believe she's been part of the family for that long.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Corn and Babies
As usual, it's been a long while since I last sat down to give an Emma update. She's doing well. Several weeks ago, I took her to her 18-month doctor's appointment. She weighed 18.4 pounds. She was very well behaved though she kept trying to take the doctor's stethoscope.
Emma is now 19.5 months old and her latest fetish is her baby doll. She doesn't go anywhere without it. Sometimes it's hard to get her to put it down for a nap so I can bathe her. We usually have to tuck the baby into my bed and set a book beside it before Emma will leave it unattended. She also feeds it, gives it water, and prays with it. The baby can sit and clap its hands. Emma likes to shove it in random people's faces and demand that you "Kish!" it. She doesn't seem to need it for security at all. She really just likes imitating those things that Mommy does for her each day. I am glad that Emma hasn't thought to demand a diaper for it. I don't have any that fit and I'd have to tear the house apart looking for something that will suffice.
Emma's vocabulary is continuing to grow. She still has a hard time pronouncing many words, but most of them are understandable. She is still spot-on with the number of syllables in any given word, even if she doesn't pronounce the word correctly. She is starting to use two and three word sentences as well as string thoughts together. Emma woke up one morning after Daddy had gone to work. She searched the house for him and came back to me. She showed me her empty hands and said, "Daddy all gone!" She can also say things like:
See, Socks!
Hair Band
Dog, Link (Shade, Phyzzy, Lucy, Winnie...whatever dog she's with)!
Brussels Sprout!
Socks and Shoes!
Look, Moon!
A bird!
Kitty, Kitty, Kitty
Kitty, MEOW.
Link Come!
Purse, Keys, Bye-bye!
One, Two, Three
Three, Two, One
Elephant!
She's also learned the names of our friends: Muk! (Mark), Anana (Alena), Gon (Jon).
Animal noises: Meow, Quack-quack, MOOOOO!, Woof. She grunts when she sees a pig.
Emma still really likes to sing. She seems to enjoy music by Celine Dion, Whitney Huston, pretty much any woman with a huge voice. I personally don't like that kind of music at all, so we watch a lot of youtube together.
Emma still eats well. She eats more food at each sitting than I do and takes much longer doing it. I've taken to bringing a book to the table to read while Emma enjoys a full hour of munching and crunching. The only thing difficult about her eating habits is that they're unpredictable. For the past month, Emma has been crazy for grapes. Earlier this week, I bought some more for her and now she refuses to really eat them. One day she'll be in love with chicken and the next, she won't really wish to eat it. If she ever liked a certain food at all, she'll choose to eat it again after a few days but sometimes food isn't fit for consumption after that amount of time.
Creativity - Emma is extremely creative and loves to experiment. She loves to tear her food into bite-sized piece and put them in her cup of water. Dave and I are both annoyed by this, but we also strongly believe that since she really isn't hurting anything, we should let her be. She usually doesn't waste the soggy food. She continues to eat it. Sometimes I want to tell her, "No, Emma. THIS is how we use the fork." I have to remind myself that she is learning and should be allowed to do so. I see a lot of other parents constantly telling their kids "no" to everything, harmless and not.
I also want to cut the "no" word from my vocabulary as much as possible. If Emma is holding her fork incorrectly, I can instead say something like, "Hey Emma, great job with the fork, now...can you hold it like THIS!" If she holds it correctly, she gets praised and loved on. Instead of telling her what she's doing wrong, I wish to tell her what she CAN do right.
Emma is now 19.5 months old and her latest fetish is her baby doll. She doesn't go anywhere without it. Sometimes it's hard to get her to put it down for a nap so I can bathe her. We usually have to tuck the baby into my bed and set a book beside it before Emma will leave it unattended. She also feeds it, gives it water, and prays with it. The baby can sit and clap its hands. Emma likes to shove it in random people's faces and demand that you "Kish!" it. She doesn't seem to need it for security at all. She really just likes imitating those things that Mommy does for her each day. I am glad that Emma hasn't thought to demand a diaper for it. I don't have any that fit and I'd have to tear the house apart looking for something that will suffice.
Emma's vocabulary is continuing to grow. She still has a hard time pronouncing many words, but most of them are understandable. She is still spot-on with the number of syllables in any given word, even if she doesn't pronounce the word correctly. She is starting to use two and three word sentences as well as string thoughts together. Emma woke up one morning after Daddy had gone to work. She searched the house for him and came back to me. She showed me her empty hands and said, "Daddy all gone!" She can also say things like:
See, Socks!
Hair Band
Dog, Link (Shade, Phyzzy, Lucy, Winnie...whatever dog she's with)!
Brussels Sprout!
Socks and Shoes!
Look, Moon!
A bird!
Kitty, Kitty, Kitty
Kitty, MEOW.
Link Come!
Purse, Keys, Bye-bye!
One, Two, Three
Three, Two, One
Elephant!
She's also learned the names of our friends: Muk! (Mark), Anana (Alena), Gon (Jon).
Animal noises: Meow, Quack-quack, MOOOOO!, Woof. She grunts when she sees a pig.
Emma still really likes to sing. She seems to enjoy music by Celine Dion, Whitney Huston, pretty much any woman with a huge voice. I personally don't like that kind of music at all, so we watch a lot of youtube together.
Emma still eats well. She eats more food at each sitting than I do and takes much longer doing it. I've taken to bringing a book to the table to read while Emma enjoys a full hour of munching and crunching. The only thing difficult about her eating habits is that they're unpredictable. For the past month, Emma has been crazy for grapes. Earlier this week, I bought some more for her and now she refuses to really eat them. One day she'll be in love with chicken and the next, she won't really wish to eat it. If she ever liked a certain food at all, she'll choose to eat it again after a few days but sometimes food isn't fit for consumption after that amount of time.
Creativity - Emma is extremely creative and loves to experiment. She loves to tear her food into bite-sized piece and put them in her cup of water. Dave and I are both annoyed by this, but we also strongly believe that since she really isn't hurting anything, we should let her be. She usually doesn't waste the soggy food. She continues to eat it. Sometimes I want to tell her, "No, Emma. THIS is how we use the fork." I have to remind myself that she is learning and should be allowed to do so. I see a lot of other parents constantly telling their kids "no" to everything, harmless and not.
I also want to cut the "no" word from my vocabulary as much as possible. If Emma is holding her fork incorrectly, I can instead say something like, "Hey Emma, great job with the fork, now...can you hold it like THIS!" If she holds it correctly, she gets praised and loved on. Instead of telling her what she's doing wrong, I wish to tell her what she CAN do right.
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