Little Grassclippings: After the year is over...

So here we are in 2013. Our lives are still pretty chaotic... it seems we are needed by a child every minute of the day. I celebrated getting my floor all clean at the same time for the first time in months yesterday. Eliot is preparing to start another semester teaching. And the kids are being their super-cute selves.

James has been doing great with his language... sometimes he won't stop saying the same thing over and over. When he counts, he says, "2, 2, 2, 2, 2!" and thinks he's counted to 5 haha! He knows how to say 2 and 8, and when he sees them in random places he gets very excited. James also has a running commentary on what all the members of the family are doing at any given time..."Baby go night night" "I eat that" "Daddy go away" (when Eliot goes to work) "Mommy go pee pee" (yeah, no so fond of that one when we are out and about).
"Mommy make baby go night night bed sit up book" means I'm putting Ellie down for a nap, and naturally the only way that happens is when we sit up together and read a book, since that's what we do with James. :-)
His logic makes me laugh, I can see his gears turning in his head as he puts the world together in his mind. When we were driving home the other night, He kept saying, "I get the AA!" I looked around wondering what the heck he was talking about, and it turns out he was looking at McDonald's golden arches and thought they looked like two As!

Ellie is growing much too fast... I can't keep up. She's roly poly and getting quite heavy. She hasn't rolled over from back to front yet, but she has great head control that I let her sit in the bumbo for a few minutes at a time. James thinks this is great and says, "Baby sit up! Baby sit up!" when he sees her in it.

We've been dealing with some nursing issues with Ellie... we thought we may have thrush and treated for it with awful staining gentian violet, only to find out that's not what is going on (so if you see pics with Ellie having a stained mouth, you know what happened there). I think we have the situation almost resolved, though... had more to do with blood vessels contracting and causing me pain. But I soldier on...

Ellie has had her ups and downs sleep wise... she's only sleeping 30 min for her naps in the daytime, and was only doing 3 hr stretches at night until last night when she did 7:30pm-4am. I am hoping this is a new trend because we've all been exhausted with round the clock childcare for quite awhile now.

In other news, we are making plans for some home decor changes and some possible trips at the end of the summer. Nothing set in stone yet though so I'll wait to talk about it.

I updated the Winter 2012/2013 album with more Christmas pics and just regular pics from around the house. Enjoy!