I have so much to tell you! That's probably because I haven't written a real entry in a week! This time, I've taken notes though. Heh. First up, James has godparents! Uncle Mathias and Auntie Carrie have agreed to be his godfather and godmother. Now we have to coordinate schedules and have the baptism. I'm happy we at least have the asking part done though.

Last Friday Annika and I went outside to play in the snow. We had just had a big snowfall (around 14" at our house on top of the 6" or so that came a few days before that). I got Annika all dressed up and outside we went. We were so excited. Annika climbed up the huge snow hill between our house and the neighbors where the plow had shoved all the snow from our driveway. Then she slid down the other side on her butt and landed in the back yard. And that's when our adventure started going downhill. There was so much snow that Annika could barely walk. She ended up crawling across the top of the snow, sinking in a little each time, to get anywhere. About ten minutes after we went outside, she was ready to go in. It was just too much work to play! And I had a hard time getting her back up and around that big snow hill to get back in the house! It's going to be 40+ degrees outside this weekend. I'm thinking we should go play in the snow now before it's all gone!

Tuesday night Auntie Shelly and Uncle Dale babysat Annika for a little while so Kris, James and I could attend baptism class at our church. Annika absolutely loves it at their house. When I asked her that day if she wanted to go to their house she immediately said yes and then said "And play piano? And sing Twinkle Little Star?" They have a piano, you see, and they let Annika bang on the keys and "play." She loves it. When we arrived at their house I walked Annika inside and took off her coat. As I was hanging it up, she walked into the living room, tore off her hat and whipped it back behind her and she headed for the toys. She was ready to play and wasn't looking back to even say good-bye to me. I told her I was leaving and she looked at me like "What, you're not gone yet?" Stinker. When we got back after the class, we brought James inside so Auntie Shelly and Uncle Dale could meet him. The both got some snuggle time in with him. While Shelly held James, Annika played with Dale; jumping on him, riding on his back as he crawled down the hall looking for the "big cat" (of which there was none, he was teasing her and she was loving it), and calling him "fuzzy face." Dale currently has a beard and Annika doesn't know too many men with beards. I don't know if she came up with fuzzy face or if Dale or Shelly did but it was hilarious anyway to hear her say it.

Wednesday we all went to story time again at the library. I think Annika really likes story time. I wish it wasn't ending at the end of March. Well, this session at least. I don't know when the next session starts though. This weeks theme was animals so each book was about animals. It was interactive (each kid having an animal during one book and when the page came with their animal, they were to hold it in the air for everyone to see). We also sang songs and there was even a little craft at the end. And it's free! You gotta love free! We are definitely going back every week until it's over.

Annika is such a girly girl sometimes. She absolutely loves dresses. She's always asking to wear them. I think I'll have to get her a bunch of inexpensive dresses for this spring and summer that she can play in. Today after her bath she put on her Timberwolves dress and exclaimed "I'm Cinderella!" She's Cinderella pretty much every time she puts on a dress. She even twirls while holding up her dress with one hand, as if it were skimming the floor. I'm not sure where she learned that but it's pretty cute. Wednesday night I put her nightgown on her. As it slipped over her head and slid to the floor Annika exclaimed "I'm a woman!" I giggled and then agreed and told her that yes, she was a woman. Where does she come up with some of this stuff? She cracks us up all the time.

Momma to Twin Girls left a comment on my last (brief) entry about potty training. First, MTTG, can you please leave your website URL or e-mail it to me? I used to have it and have somehow misplaced it. I need to check in on you too! OK, so potty training. Things are great with it. Annika is completely trained and pretty much was back in November. She rarely, rarely has an accident. She had two this week, oddly enough but hasn't had one for at least a month since this was the first time since James has been born. She has started waiting as long as she possibly can before going. I see the toddler "pee-pee" dance every day now. And if you ask her if she has to go she'll say no until she's running for the bathroom. I've started making her go again where as previously she would tell us with plenty of time. She just doesn't want to break away from playing to go. Anyway, this is how we did it. First we had a potty chair in one of our bathrooms for a long time. I got it last year for Christmas actually. We let her play with it for a long, long time. Sometimes she would sit on it while I went. Or her dolls/stuffed animals would "use" it. Or she would sit on it and read books. Then one day last October, we got serious. We decided this was it and we didn't look back. The first day we stripped her butt naked and let her run around the house that way. Every 20 minutes or so we would sit her on the potty or ask her if she had to go (sometimes making her sit by reading her a book on there or something). Sometimes she would go but most of the time not. And there was plenty of accidents. Luckily we kept her downstairs on the wood floors for easy clean up. And we diapered her at night until we got the day time down. The second day we put underwear on her (it was a little disconcerting seeing her butt naked all day) but still asked her all the time to sit on the potty. The third day I went to Target and bought little seats that attach to the standard toilet and some little stools. Now Annika could go potty upstairs or downstairs. We pretty much abandoned the little standalone potty chair at this point. And the rest was all Annika. She picked up the concept of peeing in the potty really quickly. She was still having poopy accidents though. I kept asking her where pee-pee went and she would respond "In the potty!" all excited. We made it a little sing-songy, upbeat and positive at all times. Eventually I asked her where the poopy goes and she said "In the underwear!" That was my a-ha moment. So I corrected her with "In the potty!" and something clicked for her. She was pretty much day-trained within 2-3 weeks. And luckily for us she wasn't afraid of going straight on the standard toilet so we could take her out places and not worry about her being afraid of those toilets. Once we were sure the day time was down, we started on night time. She had that down in a week flat. There was only a couple accidents but mostly she woke herself up when and called to us over the monitor when she had to go. And we would race to her room and bring her to the bathroom. I have to say that it was mostly Annika in the potty training. We really didn't do much but give her the tools and help her along. We always stayed positive with her though, even when she had an accident. We would just say "Uh-oh!", clean her up, reinforce where poopy or pee-pee went and re-dress her. Not so much with the advice, I know. E-mail me if you want to know more!

James has contined to be such a good little baby. And his sleeping is improving! More often than not, he sleeps for 4-5 hours at a stretch at night. Three nights ago he ate at 10pm, 3am and 7am. Not too shabby! Of course then two nights ago it was every three hours. But he's done the 4-5 hours thing 3 or 4 days in the last week! I know I could be totally jinxing myself by typing this. I'm really liking it though. Now if only everyone else would cooperate! Between Kris coming home from work, then coming to bed later, then Annika waking up occasionally, I still don't sleep the whole time James does. At least I can sleep in if needed since Kris is here and I usually get a nap in the afternoon too. Sleep is not a problem around here, at the moment.

When James was born he had these skinny little arms and legs. Boy has he filled those out now! He has the cutest chubby little thighs and arms, complete with rolls and everything! I just love them! He's outgrowing a bunch of his 0-3 month sleepers. I'm going to put some of them away after they get washed next. Isn't that sad! He's only a month old and he's already so big! I "weighed" him on Tuesday. I stepped on the scale alone then stepped on with him. The difference was 12.2 pounds! No wonder he's outgrowing his 3 month clothes. Most of them only go to 12 pounds! We'll have to make sure he wears each of his big boy clothes before they don't fit him!

I'm just waiting for James to give me that first real smile. He smiles in his sleep all the time and oh man, it is so cute! And yesterday I swear he gave me half a smile while I was cooing and talking to him. Annika's first smile was around 6 weeks of age. I can't wait! It could be soon!

I have a whole bunch of tasks I need to get accomplished! I have a bunch of thank you's to write. Our friends and family have been so nice and given James some really nice gifts. And I need to order birth announcements and get them sent out. And I need to put a birth announcement in our local newspaper too. It is my goal to have the thank-yous written and mailed by Monday. And I want the birth announcements ordered by Monday and addressed/mailed by next Friday. It's good to have goals with concrete dates attached. At least, for me it is. I work much better with deadlines. I'm too much of a procastinator otherwise.

And now I'm going to close this novel. There's more to tell but I'll leave it until tomorrow.