Callie is such an AMAZING little person, and really growing in leaps and bounds. She has a huge vocabulary now - can name almost all major body parts, from eyebrows to back to armpits and toes, as well as count fairly well up to 20-30, and visually recognize most letters and numbers. She is making intelligible long sentences and gives the BEST hugs and kisses around. In short, she's a total joy.

Okay, not a *total* joy, but tantrums are few and far between. She's also become a pickier eater, but what toddler isn't? 98% of the time she's great.

One new skill she picked up just last weekend was peddling - she can now ride her tricycle at Grandma and Grandpa's, and with impressive speed. Climbing, swinging, and sliding are also very popular pasttimes. Her favorite food is cheesy lentils, and her favorite color seems to be purple most days, and blue sometimes.

We're also almost positive that Callie is right-handed, and her eyes are still entirely blue. She's a very observant little girl, preferring to scope out a situation rather than jump right in. Animals are a good example of that - she likes looking at petting zoo animals, but isn't too fond of the actual petting. Once she figures something out, though, she is almost fearless.

Callie regularly uses 'please' and 'thank you' when asking for things, and always tells us if sister Lilah is upset. She's very good at watching out for Lilah and treating her kindly, only rarely stealing toys.

So yeah, that is Callie in a nutshell, these days. She is regarded by our friends at church to be a very happy, mellow kid, and she and Lilah are still two of the easiest babies in the nursery. Speaking of nursery - Callie will sit quietly and color through almost 50 minutes of church service now, and is well on her way to graduating from Nursery. They boot them out of there on their third birthdays so we wanted to have her trained to sit quietly and patiently by then, and she is doing remarkably well for only being 2 and some change.

Hopefully new pictures and DVDs are on their way, we'll try to keep this a little more updated. Until then!

On Callie updates: she's learned how to jump and hop successfully, her vocabulary has exploded to include pretty much every body part from eyebrows to elbows to thighs, in addition to all the major stuff like 'TOES!' and 'TUMMY!'.

She can also count out loud to about 15, which not-so-coincidentally also happens to be approximately the number of steps it takes to get up our stairs. I started counting them as she'd walk up, and now she can fairly reliably count them herself. She definitely have 1-6 down cold, but she's doing well with higher numbers too.

Except for occasional confusion on interim hues like lavender and teal, Callie also has her basic colors down. Her favorites seem to be blue, green, and pink if her drawings are any indication, but yellow and red seem to be more fun to say.

Her only verb is 'go' right now, and she uses this to string together all manner of words. "Baby go nap", "Daddy go work go car", "Mommy go....WUNCH! (lunch)", "Wiwah (Lilah) go play go ball", etc etc. She understands others, but just doesn't use them in sentences. Despite her difficulty pronouncing L's and R's the pediatrician isn't worried, and in fact thinks she's very verbally advanced for her age, which is great considering she was at or a bit lagging behind the average skillset at 18 months.

I take the kids on walks around our block (up a HUGE hill) and down to the park almost every day, and especially on the trip out it is nonstop chattering about cars, dogs barking ("doggie go WOOF!"), school buses and trucks, boys, girls, and anything else she sees. Not all of it is intelligible, but a good deal.

And on 'so cute it breaks your heart' news, Callie is now consistently saying "Hi!" and "Goodbye" or "Bye Bye!" with enthusiastic waves to almost everyone now. She also FINALLY said "I love you" when I said it to her before she went to bed. It was very gratifying to hear it, especially given the tantrum levels of late.

Callie's just chugging along and doing very well. She's healthy, friendly, and still tantrums less than most kids her age. YAY!

She loves to color now that she's getting older, but she also loves expanding her horizons to... surfaces other than paper. Yes, this includes her teeth, too. Best invention ever? Washable crayons.

I should have gotten pictures of The Sharpie Incident. Truly. It was epic. I leave the room for ten minutes and BAM! A purple, scrawly explosion on every.single.surface of the living room, dining room, and kitchen.

Cue mommy freakout.

She walked up to me, purple from head to toe, so proud of herself and her art. I was in such shock and she was so cute I couldn't even be properly mad. I think the only thoughts that crossed my mind were "Uh oh, the counters are officially open for business" and "man, she must have RUN around the room to hit that many surfaces to fast!".

Fortunately for me a lot of elbow grease, rubbing alcohol, and a sense of humor can go an awfully long way to covering up the damage wrought by a toddler and a purple permanent pen. The surfaces I thought it would be the worst to get off and the worst if they stained cleaned up the EASIEST, and the ones that were harder to clean are ones we can easily fix with a bit of sanding or paint touchup. With the exception of a spot or two on the exersaucer and some faint lines left on our cabinet you'd NEVER know the entire room was covered in it, Callie included.

So no harm no foul. The sharpies were moved up to a high cabinet, the little girl was put down for a nap and given a thorough scrubbing later on, and the paint help up remarkably well to cotton pads, solvent, and a teensy bit of swearing.

Now, the Bag Balm incident was earlier today, and yes I do have photographic evidence of it. Callie managed to grab Peter's hand balm off the counter and decided to not only dip her fingers in it, but slather her clothes, the couch, my jacket, her hair, and yes, even her tongue, in the lanolin/vaseline-y goodness. It took two separate baths and dish soap to even moderately cut through the slick in her hair, but she seems fine even for the little ingesting she did (it doesn't taste very good, I would hazard that was what limited it).

We do have literally dozens of photos of Callie and Lilah to upload to their sites, but things have been ridiculously busy around hereewith all manner of car, computer, and furnace trouble, work deadlines, the holidays, and just plain forgetfulness when it comes to these blogs. But we're not dead (not for Callie's lack of trying) and the girls are growing well. Callie can name most of her body parts, which we will video tape and post here one of these days. Lilah has learned to roll around (though she still can't sit unsupported for more than a few seconds without toppling) and started solids almost at six months on the dot. She's a great, enthusiastic eater, too. Peter and I are surviving, just barely, but have been very blessed in our circumstances and the Lord providing exactly what we need right when we need it.

Either way, the blog silence isn't for lack of trying, we're just ridiculously busy :) Hopefully pictures will be coming in the next week, but for now I leave you with these:

Callie and her baby mesmerized by Blues Clues

Callie: The homeless can stacker (who puts on her own pants and hat, thank you very much!)

Lilah says "I am OBVIOUSLY a girl. DUH!"

Yummy Yummy Solids!

Anyway, yesterday once we got home, Taryl decided to drink the coolaid. Grape coolaid to be precise. She gave Callie a sip and Callie's sippy cup full of water went over her shoulder and she started begging for more of that grape stuff. I took Callie's sippy cup and filled it with the grape drink and tried to give it to her. She thought it was still full of water, so she got all mad, wouldn't drink it, kept pushing it away, etc. I stuck it in her mouth and she finally accidentally took a sip. It was hilarious. She went to recoil away and kept trying to push it away for a second, then she realized what she had just tasted, and greedily grabbed hold of the cup.

Coincidentally she also is finally realizing sitting in poop is no fun. Yesterday she came up to me very deliberately patted the front of her diaper, and low and behold she has just gone poop. The first step to potty training is realizing you need to go, so we're making progress!

I cut Callie's hair, pictures forthcoming as soon as Daddy posts them. I was just going to let it grow and grow (since I favor longer hair on girls) but she can't stand hair clips or headbands and it kept getting in her eyes. In addition to being super long in the front it was SHORT in the back because she still rubs it like crazy. It was split and matted back there, the hairs just looked like a completely different texture thanks to her friction on it.

We aren't big fans of paying for haircuts, especially for babies (and rarely do they do a decent job from what I have seen!). So I did it myself. I decided it would be better to just even it up now and make it short so that when it would continue to grow out the back wouldn't be damaged and could get some length on it. So I aimed for bangs that weren't cut too far into her hair (which I think I achieved pretty well, actually) and evening up the back and sides (which, truth be told, also wasn't all that bad except she has a crazy cowlick over her ear that makes it look hacky even though it's completely even with the other side!).

I was afraid she'd look like a little boy, I really was, especially since I can cut hair quite well but I had no idea how well she'd sit still. But cartoons, a few Hershey's kisses and strategically doing the bangs FIRST, when she'd have more patience? It worked very well. My friends online have seen the pictures already and everyone thought it looked quite cute and feminine (and I trust they weren't just blowing smoke en masse, but I can't be sure!). The high chair made it extremely hard to cut the back but I did the best I could, hopefully next time the urge to cut her hair strikes me Daddy will be home to help so I can put her on a stool or booster instead.

It really does look fine, but it's SUCH a change! I miss my baby's curls :( She looks like a toddler now, not a baby, but it was surprisingly more emotional to give her the cut than I thought it would be. I hadn't realized how attached I was to everything about her until a little piece of it was gone. But after a few hours I got more used to it and now I like it. It needed to happen, I was just resisting. But when Grandma commented on it I decided I just needed to suck it up and stop procrastinating.

All part of growing up! *sniffles*

Other Callie news, let's see... She's in a big 'getting dressed' stage right now, and likes putting her clothes on and pulling them off around the house, which is fine by me (except it means more laundry!). If I ask her for her arms she puts them in the sleeves and she understand what "give me your leg" means and reacts accordingly. She's also learning to label body parts and has a particularly good time with (n)ooshe (nose) that sometimes does or doesn't have the 'n' on the word. It delights her to no end to poke our faces and label. She also likes grabbing eyelashes and making our eyes open and close - we don't let her demonstrate this new ability on sissy, needless to say!

Books are her new favorite thing. She actually want to READ them instead of just turn pages, rip pages, and generally destroy them. Thing is, she wants to read the same one OVER AND OVER. So we have been rotating the downstairs 'toy' books so mommy doesn't go insane. A good two dozen times per days she'll grab a book, whack us in the leg with it and ask to be read to (kook, koh, khk are all the 'book' word) and it's quite nice as its the only real cuddle time she'll allow anymore, as a toddler who never stops! She'll also sit around and 'read' to herself, making silly noises and sounds and turning the pages and pointing at the pictures. It's very cute.

She's also wielding a fork and spoon better and better. She's learned to spear food and things she WON'T eat any more of she'll often take a few more bites of provided we skewer them on a fork and hand it to her. Spoons are rather amusing, she doesn't *quite* get that you shouldn't tip the spoon upside down before delivery into the mouth. But she's definitely getting the idea and especially with the fork can now manage to 'feed' herself for a few minutes with reasonable proficiency and dexterity before ditching it in favor of hands or face-in-the-bowl.

She was 26 pounds at her appointment and if I recall right around three feet tall, 75th percentile for both weight and height (which is WAY up from when she was little and definitely on the small side!). She's very, very healthy and hardly ever gets sick, she eats from all the food groups very well and won't drink juice - just water most of the time and milk with breakfast and dinner. Her coordination is good and she's right on target with all her milestones. She did get her shots, which as I mentioned on Lilah's blog were followed by ANGRY cries more than hurt. She got over it though the site of the shots on one of her legs puffed up and then scabbed over and she keeps picking at it. Then she gets mad when it hurts and cries but picks at it more. Bandaids make her pay more attention to the bump than she would if it was naked, but it is slowly healing on its own no thanks to her fingers!

Oh! What we didn't mention is that for cost purposes we switched both girls to cloth diapers. Diapering two at once was ridiculously expensive and we decided cloth would just be less fuss. I tried it initially with Callie when she was a newborn but between our novice, nervous parenting and my real inability to do much of anything after the c-section we promptly gave up. Prefolds and covers were not a system we could make work readily enough.

Now we're using Pocket diapers, which are contoured with fleece and have inserts that go into them and vary the absorbancy. They're also one-sized diapers, so Callie and Lilah can wear the same diapers and we essentially get to cloth diaper two for the price of one, and if one girl runs out she can use her sister's. It's a lot of washing each day and each change does take a bit more time but it is worth it and very workable. We're using two brands, Fuzzibunz for Callie and BumGenius for Lilah. They're both one-sized, but one style fits Callie's shape slightly better than Lilah. Initially I thought I liked both equally but now I am finding the BG's seem slightly more durable and hold up better. So when we need to buy more for both of them I will likely only buy more of that brand.

We stick the girls in disposables for other people and church but truthfully these are only one step more complicated than disposables, and that is stuffing them. They work remarkably well and I'd estimate in the month we've been using them that we've probably recouped half their cost already in what we haven't spent on disposables. The single size means that it's essentially like diapering only one child financially, which is an extra savings. Each diaper just has extra adjustable velcro/aplix tabs and several rows of snaps on the front so the rise of the diaper can be adjusted - Lilah on the smallest setting (though she is almost into the next setting, wow!) and Callie on the largest. There is PLENTY of room for Callie to grow and I am hoping that this will make it easier to potty train her. I have heard that to be the case from multiple cloth-diapering moms as the kids feel wetness much better than in a disposable and they function more like big-girl underwear.

Anyway, that's a new development. I feel crunchier already ;)

She's also in 2T (toddler) sized clothing now! Another big step towards growing up, and MAN is she growing fast. I still can hardly believe she's not even two yet, some days she feels like she was just a baby and other days I swear she's all grown up already and have to remind myself she's still very, very young. Time flies when you're tearing around the house like a maniac!

Okay - to be nice, I will include a preview of Callie's new hair since I am not sure WHEN Peter will update pictures - it's a bit "Mia Farrow", thank goodness, and not "bowlcut"! Ignore the chocolate dribble, remnants of the bribe!

Posting new pictures tonight too.

Oh, and all four eye teeth are erupting sat the same time, there's varying levels of white points showing. This leads to... you guessed it - teething poops! Diaper rash and crabbiness abounds. Good times.

Callie's version of "banana" is "manamas". :)