they are so smart!

The girls understand so much more than I was aware of. We were getting ready to go to the dining hall for dinner. Daddy asked Mabel to bring in his shoes. We didn't really think she understood what he was saying. But she ran out of the bedroom and into the entryway, fetched one of his sneakers and brought it directly to him. Daddy asked for the other one and then Stella ran out to the entryway and brought it back too!

TMI?

This might just be a little too much information, but it's a noteworthy accomplishment for Stella. She sat on her potty and pooped. yay! she's done it before, but it was so long ago that I'm sure it was purely accidental. This time she seemed to fully understand what was happening.
I figured that with both of them each eating an entire banana on the way home from a very filling breakfast, there would be some elimination happening very soon. Stella happily fetched her potty when I suggested it and sat down on it to watch Clifford the Big Red Dog. She got really nervous when things started happening for her. She just wanted to get up and do it where she normally does it...in the diaper. I settled her back down and put my arms around her so she might feel more secure and then she just let loose.
When she was finished we had a great celebration for her, complete with singing and clapping. Both girls scrutinized the potty with a look of disgust on their face. They seemed to be a bit conflicted as to why I was so happy about this unpleasant little mound that she left behind.
After getting Stella's diaper back on it was Mabel's turn. But I was about 10 seconds too late to get her on the potty. Ah well, there will be plenty more times to practice.

crib climbing

Now that Stella has perfected the art of high chair climbing, she is ready to work on crib climbing. She must have been formulating her strategy for scaling the crib walls for quite some time. As soon as she saw that Mabel's crib rail had been lowered she set her plan into motion. She walked straight over to the crib, grabbed a hold of the upper rail with both hands, placed one foot on the lower rail, slid the next between the slats onto the mattress and with a final calculated movement, leaned over the upper rail and landed inside the crib. I'd have to give it a 9.5 only because the landing was a little rough.

she's mastered the highchair

Stella climbed INTO her highchair yesterday. Mabel was standing by watching in awe, trying to figure out how she could get up there too.