The newest members of the household are...

FISH! Yep, as of tonight we've got a cute 10 gallon tank set up with three little fishies in it. The kids are so excited to have "pets," and I think that even though they're really young they definitely understand that Mommy just isn't a pet person and this is the closest they're likely to get to having animals in the house!

The fish are the result of a successful round of the chore chart, which we labelled "The Fishy Chart" in honor of the reward at stake. The chart was honestly for Sienna... we told her she could earn a fish if she had no accidents for five whole days. We couldn't really do this for just Sienna, and since Maddie has been asking for a fish for a long time, we told her that if she cleaned her room - and kept it clean - for five days, she could also earn one. Lyla earned one by default if the other two did, but I guess that's the benefit of being the baby! So Sienna took a couple of extra days, but she did in fact earn the fish -- she's not exactly 100% trained because she still hasn't got the pooping in the potty thing down, but she's wearing underwear all day long and doing really well even out in public. She's waking up mostly dry, too, so I'm hoping we'll get rid of the nightime pull-ups soon. But even still, it's nice to be getting back to only one in diapers!

So Madelyn picked a black and white spotted fish; Sienna picked an all-black Molly. And Lyla got a red/orange fish with a black tail, picked by Mommy. The girls are still contemplating names, but so far Maddie has tossed around Spotty, Speedy, and Miss Caitlin (in tribute to her and Sienna's dance teacher, and enthusiastically seconded by Sienna - but I told them I wasn't sure if Caitlin would consider it a tribute to have a fish named after her, though we can ask tomorrow at dance!), as well as the very descriptive "Black and White Spotted Fish." Stay tuned for the final decision...

Hopefully the fish survive the introduction into the H household. Sienna has already been asking if she can pick the fish up in her hand tomorrow (um, NO!!) and Lyla has already gone straight for the tank a few times. But it's great to see them so excited, and proud of their accomplishment in earning those fishies!

The Babbler & The Roller

I think certain toddler phases are just so adorably cute that it's hard to want to move past them. Right now Sienna is in the phase where she is talking up a storm, in many full sentences, but she still spends a decent amount of time having an entire conversation of jargon that seems like she has something very important to tell you, but only has a word or two here or there that actually make sense. If she stops to think about what she wants to say, she can generally say it. But when she wants to go for speed and full chit chat, we start to get the toddler babble. I LOVE it. She's likely to come up to me, gesturing hands and all, and say:

"Goodble duecelks blakeuullley GOLDFISH. Gooodswerttbl umberloofy UPSTAIRS."

And she'll tilt her head to the side, wide-eyed, and look at me like I am absolutely crazy for not understanding her. If I could bottle up those cute little non-sensical conversations and store them forever to bring out when I was feeling down, I'd totally do it. You can't help but smile.

Now Lyla, on the other hand, is going through a somewhat less enjoyable phase: the rolling phase. She rolls both ways, and rarely stays on her back anymore if you put her there. This is fine during the day, but at night it's like she forgets how to get herself OFF her belly, even though she can, and wakes herself up by practicing rolling all over her crib. I end up having to go in at random hours and pick her up off her belly, help her get back to sleep, and usually end up feeding her. It's like we've gone back towards the newborn days again all of the sudden, which I really don't mind except for this nagging tiredness. Hope she masters this skill soon so her little mind will let her sleep again at night (maybe even -- dare I say -- through the night?) and therefore let mommy sleep again at night!