Nelli the Ele.

 

So, When Nelli was just about 6 months old we started teaching her animal sounds.  Taylor decided to use his trombone skills to show her what an elephant sounds like.  Nelli started crying...  A few weeks later he tried again and she loved it!  She even tried to make the noise herself and got it down pretty quickly. The elephant became linked to her after a while, so when I saw this elephant costume at Costco I had no questions what she was going to dress as for Halloween.  In the pictures above Nelli's making the elephant sound with her daddy.

For Halloween night, we went to Bothell Main Street for a "Safe Trick or Treat" that the shops were putting on.  We walked around to the shops and then decided to knock on a few of our neighbors doors. We met a new people and enjoyed talking with them.  Nelli was quiet and observant throughout the experience and seemed not quite sure what to make of it. She love the "lolly pops" afterwards and brings them up pretty often.

Just playing around in her costume.

Return to St. Louis

 

 

 

Welcome back Nelli!

 

 

I took Nelli on a trip back to St. Louis and we had a blast!  We stayed with the Cheneys' and visited a few other good friends. One of the days we went to Eckerts' Farm. We watched a few pig races, picked apples in the orchard and played in the pumpkin patch.  It was so fun and the weather was perfect -- a sunny fall day in the 70s.

 

 

Watching the pig races--I really like this one.

 

oh, Marlee.....I love this girl!

 

Nelli and Marlee had to find the "baby" apples and eat them.

Nelli liked to hug those pumpkins...

I looked over and they were standing just like this, watching the girls play--I had to capture it :) 

The girls loved playing in the St. Louis leaves. We took them to Blackburn park and they played in the leaves more than the playground.  While they played, Meghann shared with me some great ideas for family scripture study and FHE for Nelli's age.  She said they just found a good balance of how much to do with Marlee. It was so helpful and enlightening. They read about 5 verses each morning and night from the Book of Mormon. For FHE they do a lesson from the Nursery Manual. Meghann said she also teaches Marlee a few things from the Nursery Manual during the week, too.

One thing I love about Meghann, is how hard she works to teach Marlee. I love her parenting style! We've swapped many ideas throughout this year and a half we've known each other and it's been so helpful. I feel like we strengthen each other as we're both figuring out how to be awesome mothers and wives.

The girls watching Shea cook breakfast:

 

Then we took them on a walk to the duck pond behind the Park Forest Apartments.

 

Shea made an awesome apple cobbler using the apples we picked at the orchard. It was Dee--licious!

We also had the girls help us clean out some pumpkins. They were both a little grossed out by the sliminess at first, but ended up liking it.

We also spent a little time with the wonderful Gradens.  They were our next door neighbors when we lived there.  We still wish they were just a door away.  The kids played and we got a little time to catch up.  Sarah is seriously one of the best people I know. I'm so glad I got to see her!

Sarah, Alex and Brie

 

Nelli and Brie

 

The lighting on this picture is horrible, but it does record a memory so I will post it.  I went out for a girls' night with Sarah, Meghann, and Lindsay, who are some of my closest friends in St. Louis.  We had Thai food at a restaurant called Zen Thai. It was good, but the talking with these women was the best. Lindsay gave us a 20 minute monolog about 7-11 Slurpees  =) I wish I would've recorded every word.  She loves her daily Slurpee!

 



Brie, Marlee and Nelli  at Park Forest play ground.



Lindsay, Aurora and Marlee.

 

Potty Training

 

Nelli's potty trained! I can hardly believe it!  I think the picture above is quite symbolic of this new skill she's learned. =)  Nelli started showing interest around June. We had just moved to Seattle and I wanted to wean her off the binky first, so I decided to wait.  I met my wonderful visiting teacher, Debbie Allen, who potty trained her daughter, Abby, at 20 months. She said Abby was ready and pretty much trained herself. After hearing her stories and ideas in August I started gathering more information and prepping us for the change.  Nelli was getting low on diapers at the beginning of September and I decided that I wasn't going to buy any more, we were going to do this! 

 

Nelli and I hit Target to get a new pink, cushy toilet seat, pink training panties, salty snacks, and some new activity items. I set a date to start (Sept 19th), cleared my week, and planned super simple meals.

 

The day before I almost broke down. I was worried, not knowing what I was getting myself into or how hard it would potentially be.  Like an angel, Debbie came over. She was bringing some extra training panties she had at her house. We talked about it and she helped me realize I didn't need to teach Nelli everything at once, just set a realistic goal, like helping her learn how to use her muscles to "hold it" and helping her understand that concept was an awesome goal. whew! That took a lot off my shoulders.  Much of what I had read was about was teaching them everything at once, so the parent can be freed up of the responsibility of it. I don't mind taking Nelli to the bathroom every time she goes for now.  I can teach her the other skills little by little as she gets older.

 

The week went great!  We spent most of it in or near our house. We went to the playground in our complex and went on a few short bike rides to feed the ducks. It was great to really focus on Nelli and teach her a new skill.  She pretty much did do it herself though.  I told her "no more diapers during the day" and she loved it.  It took me a bit to realize that she would tell me every time she needed to go and wouldn't go if I had her "try." I gave up initiating it after the first week and by the end of week 2 she was out of diapers completely. Until last week she struggled to go on any other potty than ours. Now she'll go anywhere-although I wish she was afraid of a few of the bathrooms we've been to...

 

I'm so glad we did it! Having a potty trained girl is a lot easier in many ways. We prayed about it along the way and I felt Heavenly Father's kindness and love throughout this experience. I'm learning that He cares about the things I make an effort to teach this sweet daughter of His.

 

Here are a few pictures of the first week:

 



Our duck spot along the Birke-Gilman trail, in front of the river.
I think Nelli ends up eating more of the bread than the ducks.

The charts (I think I enjoyed this more than she did.)

Even the smallest panties look like shorts on her :)

 

 

 

At the end of week 1, Nelli was doing so good that I decided to venture out and see how she would do on a new potty.  We met Ali and Thayne at a park. We got the kids new sunglasses and they loved them. Nelli was afraid of the potty there, so wet out... oh well, we tried and then I knew it was something to work on.