Why no, Elianna's not a military brat, why do you ask?

Because she's lived in more houses than she has years?  Well add one more to the list because the Sokoloffs are moving yet again but this time it's going to be ours!  Our current landlords got the early retirement boot from the military and decided to take possession of their house.  That was all fine and dandy except that with average closings taking about 6 weeks, it meant that we needed to find a house yesterday.  But we did pretty well.  We looked about 5 times and settled on one we'd seen the first day. We close on June 20th and movers come June 25th.  It's not the way we wanted to do it but no matter...we bought a house!

Elianna had her first recital yesterday and gosh was she a cutie.  It was interesting though, they practice and practice, doing their little routine and game day comes and it's over in about 2 minutes!  She did great though; pointed her toes, did her pliès, spun around all on cue.  She didn't seem phased at all by the bright lights or the darkened room.  She even said she heard Marielle saying something from the audience about playing with my phone.  She seemed a mite concerned during rehearsal that neither Mike nor I would be backstage with her but you'd never have known it by her demeanor. 

Marielle is kind of getting the short end of the stick when it comes to activities; by this time in her life, Elianna had been in 2 Mommy and me type classes.  We are going to start her in a gymnastics M&Me class next session and I think she'll like it.  She's a climber like her sister so being able to climb something without Mom or Dad automatically pulling her off it (coffee table, back of couch, headboard) will be novel and, I think, welcome!

Our nursing life is still active and strong.  I think the last time I nurse her will be the day we drop her off at her dorm.  Kidding.  Kind of.  She shows absolutely no interest in weaning.  I tried the, "never offer, never refuse" method and we started nursing even more because she asks all the live long day.  Again, I kid but not by much.  The kid loves mommy milk.  If I do offer, "Marielle are you ready for mommy milk?' she immediately comes back with, " YEAH!" with such a happy tone in her voice and she'll roll over and get into position.  It makes me laugh and laugh.  And there's nothing wrong with that so...I guess we'll keep it going for now.  

Marielle with a neighbor friend...they look like twins!

Elianna with the above neighbor's brother

Sisters...

Recital ready!

Too much! Too fast!

That's my feeling these days about pretty much everything the girls are doing.  It's all important in one way or another, and it's all stuff I want to remember but by the time I realize it, they've moved on to the next big thing.  For example: Marielle had one week where everything you'd do for her was received with a 'thank you'.  Change her diaper?  Thank you!  Bring her water?  Thank you!   Buckle her in her car seat?  Another thank you.  But it wasn't any ordinary thank you, no.  This was more along the lines of: thang-KEW!  with the 'Kew' increasing about 2 octaves.  Anyone who has heard Minnie Pearl's " Howdy! " would have heard a startling resemblance.  I thought I might die from the cuteness but I was unable to get it recorded.  Anytime I'd have my phone set to record, she wouldn't do it.  Of course.  And there are many more of these type of things that I want to make sure I don't forget.  But of course I'm going to and it makes me sad.

Elianna has gotten even more sassy if that's possible and she's our little negotiator.   Her usual bedtime routine included reading 2-3 stories and singing a song.  If she loses one of them because she's been stalling she'll insist, "no, how about ONE story and a song?  Okay, 2 stories and a SHORT song?" etc. etc.
She's got her own little cadre of friends and her best buds are our next door neighbors.  They have a 9 year old, Sabrina and a 3 year old, Samantha and if everyone would be in agreement, they'd be playing 24/7.  She's even taken to renaming our family the names of the neighbors;  I'm Marcia, Mike is Mark, ( the parents) Elianna is Sabrina and so on.  She'll holler down the stairs, "Marcia!  Marcia!  I need help with XYZ..."  and get quite perturbed with me if I don't answer.

Favorite things right now for Elianna include, playing with her friends, reading (yes, she's actually reading.  Blows my mind), coloring, and putting her sister in time out.  Poor Marielle.  They'll be playing outside and we'll see Elianna leading her sister back inside, telling her she's not being a good listener, and she can come out when time is up.  Then Marielle will get mad and not come back out to play and Elianna gets angry...it's hard not to laugh.

Marielle is talking up a storm and if we knew her language, we'd be all set but since she's speaking fluent Marielle-ese we're up a creek because none of us took that in high school.  She's becoming more understandable but there's a lot of guessing going on.  If we didn't have signing, we'd be totally lost so thank God for Signing Time.  As it is, there are more than a few tantrums caused by frustration with us not knowing what she's saying.  The things that we CAN understand make me smile every time I hear them because they are so stinking cute!  "Byebye, see you later!" is one and it's usually followed by her running off and hiding in Elianna's closet.

She's also starting to hit that independent phase where she wants to do everything 'by self'.  It's interesting because juxtaposed with that is her continued desire to be anywhere Mommy is, preferably 'up!'  So one second she'll be screaming at me to 'walk!walk!WALK!'  and the next she's sobbing because I put  her down so she could, you know, walk.  She's always had a temper and we are starting to see it come out more as 2 years old approaches.  It's going to be interesting.  Good thing she's cute, heh heh.  

Okay, here's the real reason you all came...pictures!

Elianna in her dance recital costume:

And in a bad mood.

Marielle after she fell in the bathtub, right after her bath.

And in her helmet which she refused to take off for the better part of the day!

Ah, three.

This was going to be a musing post about loving being a mom to a 1 and 3 year old...that is until Elianna hauled off and smacked me in the face.  For no reason.  Three year olds are a challenge; at least ours is.  She's smart and she knows it and she tries to get her way in all things whether it's negotiation or just outright defiance.  Discipline gets hard when she doesn't care about time out and you've already taken away everything you can think of.  She's spending a lot of time in her room lately while we feel like crappy parents who don't know how to outsmart a 3 year old.  Ah me, this too shall pass I'm sure.

Marielle is her own challenge.  She's quite the mama's girl which is very refreshing after Elianna's independence but along with her need for snuggles (which are very nice, I can't lie), she's got a stubborn streak and a voice!  Trying to get things accomplished can be hard while she's hanging on my leg saying, "up, Up, UP!!!!" in increasing volume and tone.

That being said, I do love being their mom.  There are times while Elianna is working her wiles that I just stare at her and marvel at her logic that is surprisingly, well, logical.  And she gets in some snuggles that she didn't used to want and having that head nestled on my shoulder brings this rush of feeling that can't compare to anything.

Marielle changes almost daily.  She used to do this awesome shooting down the stairs on her belly like a Jamaican bobsledder that we never got on video because it only lasted about a week.  She says, "Anna" clear as day now and other words are coming.   And having this little girl want to cuddle me makes me feel like maybe I'm doing okay as a mom.

So, this post started out irritated but is ending, like most days, feeling like I'm the luckiest mom alive because I have 2 absolutely wonderful, smart, funny, beautiful girls.

My sad little blog.

I'm not even going to look and see how long it's been since the last post.  I'm pretty sure it'll be criminal and then I'll feel even worse.  Eh, it (life) happens.  We've been crazy with a move that we're still not unpacked from (and yet, here I am, writing a blog post!), birthday parties, family visits, weddings to plan for (our attendance, that is) and somehow with the use of FaceTime, blogs tend to get pushed to the back of the priority list.

Okay, I lied.  I had to check and see when I last wrote so I wouldn't duplicate anything.  I mean, if you're even still following, the last thing you want to see when a new post pops up is a repeat of information you already knew, right?  So, without further ado, the recap!

We have moved...not far but man have we moved up!  Our old landlords decided to put the house up for sale (good luck with that) so we needed a place to live.  Originally I put my foot down and said I wasn't moving to another rental but it turns out that it was really only a toe and a pinky toe at that.  If I don't want to stay in Spokane, I can't really force us to put down roots so, I had to be content with another rental.  This rental is the bee's knees however.  While it's not perfect, it's closer to what we would want to buy than the other house ever was.  There's an actual backyard, not a splintery deck with rickety stairs to a concrete slab.  There's baseboards, crown molding, actual storage...I'm in heaven.  

The girls have adjusted quite nicely, thank you.  Elianna loves the playroom and the basement.  One of those will mostly likely end up being a workout room unless we use the heated garage (did I mention I'm in heaven?) but for now there are toys galore in pretty much every room of the house.    Even with all this space we still act like we've got the one little family room so we stick to the main room mostly.

More recap later, I better get everyone up to speed on the girls.  Elianna first:  since the last post, she has started preschool in a Spanish immersion school.  She seems to really like it and they rave about her so I think we'll stick with it for awhile.  It's a little concerning that they never have anything but glowing things to say; she's our daughter and while we think she's pretty fabulous, we KNOW she's not perfect.  It kind of makes us wonder if it's a glorified daycare.  We'll see.  It's the only thing like it in Spokane and we really like the exposure to another language.

Elianna loves coloring and is really trying hard to learn how to read.  Sometimes I think she's just got the books memorized but then she'll look at a new book and dang if she doesn't know most of the words and the ones she doesn't are awfully close.  She's also our little negotiator, sometimes to her detriment.  For example, "Elianna we'll read one more story and then it's bedtime."  "What about 2?  Or 3?  Or 10?"  Or another example,  one that says that more is not always better, "Elianna you need to clean up for 5 minutes and then we can do XYZ"  "No, I think I need to clean up for 10 minutes." Okay sweet pea, you got it!

And Marielle.  She's doing so awesome.  She loves Signing Time and has picked up so many signs.   She uses them all the time which is really helpful because she wants to communicate so badly.  She isn't as clear as I remember Elianna being but the signs really help.  She also tries to color and loves 'reading'.  Basically, anything that her big sister does, Marielle wants to do. She climbs all over everything, shaking her hands up and down, asking for help if she needs it.  We're going to start her in a Mommy and me tumbling class and I think she'll love it.  She's still not sleeping through the night but it's better and I have hope that it's in our near future.  She still loves nursing so I think we'll keep on doing it, at least as long as Elianna did (20 months).

Okay, that's totally just the surface scratched but it'll have to do.  Bring on the pictures!


Marielle loves baths and would take one twice a day if we let her.

Cheese!

 Elianna falling asleep despite her best efforts.

Tea party with Miss E.

Marielle trying on her sister's wings.

Enjoying the shopping cart.  She loves the grocery store!