Haven is 2 1/4 years old!

3 more months until her half birthday, lol!!  (I LOVE half birthdays, haha!)

No clue what happened this last week, but my little Haven has ACTUALLY been whining!!!  This from the girl who I didn't think knew how to whine!  I think her last molar has been bothering her a lot.  Her finger is always back in that corner and I can feel a couple of places where little spikes of her tooth are starting to cut through.  I can't WAIT until that tooth is through- it is taking the longest out of all of them!  We have also been way off-schedule during the holidays.  Staying up HOURS past her bedtime some nights (and, of course, waking up at her normal time), skipping naps, moving around eating schedules, etc, etc.  I'm hoping to have my deliriously happy and well-behaved princess back when everything starts getting back to normal!  I might also bring her into the doctor's to check on her ears again, since I never did go back to do an ear-check after her last round of double ear infections!

As far as Haven's nasty cradle cap, that is MUCH better!  I was almost going to write that it was fixed, but after a few weeks of stopping the anti-dandruff shampoo (that stuff smells DISGUSTING!), I can see large flakes coming off again in her problem areas.  The hair is sparse in a few areas on her head, but not BALD, bald.  She did end up losing most of the hair though in the worst patches of it! :(

As far as what Haven is up to now, she has been learning her letters and is doing a great job!  We are working on upper case letter recognition, letter sounds, and how to draw the letters.  I made Montessori sandpaper letters a few months ago and those have been AWESOME!!  She already knows how to draw a bunch of capital letters from doing them.  She still needs work on her hand positioning, but she's got how to draw them down! :)  Here is a video of her drawing a few of the letters she knows how to draw:

She is always bringing me her Magnadoodle (which the other day she called her "Whiskerdoodle" and made me laugh hysterically, lol.  Then, when she realized that wasn't right she kept saying "Where is my... you know, my Doodle thing?" LOL!) and making me draw letters, people, or snowmen! :)

Other than that, we haven't been up to too much!  It has been way too cold to be outside and we don't have any money to go anywhere cool, so we are starting to get a little stir crazy!  I can't wait until our library classes start back up again!

Here is some more recent videos of Haven at Monkey Joe's.  She is so fearless, lol!

And some more recent random pictures of Haven!  You can never have too many pictures of my little Haven! :)

♥

Christmas 2011!

Christmas was the best yet this year!  Each year that the girls understand more and more, the more fun it becomes!  Both girls were so excited all month long!  (I'm sad the Santa threat is over now though, lol!)

* We saw Santa a total of FOUR times this year, lol, and I was so impressed with how well my super-shy girls did!  

*We counted down the days until Santa came with Advent calenders that the girls reminded me EACH and every morning that we needed to do, lol!

* We made cool "stained-glass" gifts to give to family as presents and the girls loved doing it!  They kept asking me each day if they could make more and more, lol!

* On Xmas Eve night, the girls threw "Reindeer food" out on in the backyard that Venily had made at school.

Here is a video the girls made Xmas Eve night!

And here is the girls sleeping Xmas Eve night!

* Here are some videos of the girls opening some of their presents!

And I LOVE this one of Haven after putting on her new dance shoes!  ♥

* Santa was on a definite budget this year (as usual...), but delivered tons of smiles and pure joy with no presents over $10 under our tree.  (Well, for the girls, lol, I got a new vacuum and swiffer wet jet mop, but those were opened before Xmas and were very much a necessity rather than anything fun!).

And proof I was also present during the holiday season, lol! (Taken by Venily)

* Some of their favorite toys included:  their Happy Nappers that they have been talking about for months (buy one get one free at Walgreens on Thanksgiving day!), an RC car (that they have been fighting over, lol), lots of cool new dress up stuff including 5 new wigs! (Halloween clearance, lol).  Lots of new learning toys (Haven is on a letter kick right now).  A new camping chair b/c we hope to do LOTS of camping this year, new games, books, etc.

*  The girls had 3 different family Xmas parties and my mom and step-dad stopped over (on separate occasions, of course, lol) and they got tons of gifts each time!  They got lots of new clothes, babies, Barbies, a new camera (that takes actual pictures and videos), new earrings (I haven't changed their earrings in 2 years when they both got them pierced!- and so far, no problems!) as well as a ton of other stuff!  I desperately need to go through all of their toys yet again to make room for everything!!!

Oh, and we ended up getting lots of cool stuff to help us decorate our house.  (We've been living here for 3 years and hardly have anything up on the walls!  It is starting to come together nicely now!)

And, I almost forgot!  We got some new family members as well! :)  Three new goldfish who took over Edward's tank while he was moved to a smaller apartment since he wasn't being nice to his new friends!  Venily named 2 of the fish- "Careful" and "Puffer" and Haven named one "FishAlisha" since Alisha (and Adalein) gave them to us, haha!

I hope everyone else had a fantastic Christmas as well!!! :)

More Videos of the Girls! ♥

A Message to Santa From Haven
I LOVE this!!  I love that she says "Wuggles pets are junk!" (they totally are) and asks if Lisa has reindeers.  LOL! (Haven- 2 years, 1 month)



 Girls Crazy Dancing
Disclaimer- I did NOT teach them to dance like this.  They do NOT watch dancing like this.  This is all their own, lol!  I think they are really good dancers! :) (Venily- 4 years old, Haven- 2 years, 1 month)


Haven singing Adele
This is actually My, Venily's, and Haven's "song".  We like to turn it up in the car and sing as loudly as we can, lol.  Haven actually knows almost all the words, but this isn't that great of a video, she has a cold and is distracted.  I just thought Kylee was super funny in it, lol.  (And she was right!) (Haven- 2 years, 1 month old)


Carving Pumpkins!
I forgot to add this to my Halloween post!  LOL!  Talk about perfect timing.... haha! (Haven- 2 years old, Venily- 4 years old)


Haven- Halloween and Ballet
This was pre- trick-or-treating!  And showing some of her ballet moves as part of her "home-therapy"! ;)  (Haven- 2 years old)



And One From Haven's Birthday

Latest Videos!!

I actually have a bunch more that I haven't gotten uploaded yet, but I have to start somewhere, lol!

Haven- 22m, singing "I love you Mommy" song and playing the guitar! ♥

We went to the Racine Zoo on August 31st (the last day of our membership)! :(  The girls had so much fun as both girls LOVE animals.  Debating between buying another Racine pass or going for the Milwaukee one next time!  I have a hard time driving places I don't know so the Racine one we definitely go to more often, but the Milwaukee one is so much bigger and cooler!  The Racine one also only takes a few hours to walk through while the Milw. one is an all day event. 

We fed the giraffes, parakeets, and goats which was both of their favorite parts!  We had to pretend Haven was 2 even though she wasn't yet but nobody questioned us at all, lol! ;)

Venily talking about her first day of 4K!

Haven STILL talking about the zoo 4 days later, lol.  23 months old.  And I LOVE that she gets a sudden urge to be the "big bad wolf" at the end! :)

Playing and jumping on the trampoline.  Haven- 23 months.

Driving their new princess car (they have a jeep too, BOTH free at the dump, lol.... people actually spend hundreds of $'s on these?! haha)

Haven counting to 10 in Spanish.  She is up to 21 now in English!! :)

Santa's sack of kids!   As soon as I stopped taping Haven says "Can we do that again?!" LOL!  Haven- 23m, Venily- 3.5yrs

Venily and Haven videos! ♥

Haven singing "Yahnkee Doodle".  This has been stuck in her head for days.  This is my newest video I watch when I'm feeling sad, lol! :) (Haven- 22 months)

Venily singing (3.5 years old).  She sings ALL THE TIME too, haha!

Both of the girls slide jumping!  This is a daily occurrence in our house.  They HAVE to jump off of anything and everything.  So far, no emergency room trips yet from this, lol, but give it time!... (Venily- 3.5 years, Haven- 22m_

Crazy Venily at dinner time.  It's no wonder I am tired all of the time!  Oh, and I don't know why she was messing up her rhyming words so badly, usually she does pretty good, haha!  (Venily- 3.5 years old)

and my little Haven while Venily was in timeout!  Could NOT love this girl any more than I already do! :)  (22 months)

More videos of the girls!

I've been bad about taking videos again so here's some recent ones of the girls!!

Here is Haven singing the end of "Baa, baa, black sheep", "Twinkle, twinkle" and "ABC's".  Both the girls seriously sing ALL day long, haha! :) (she's known all these songs for a while now, she just was singing a way as usual and she was too cute for me not to take a video!)

Here is Haven reading books with Aunt Lisa while she came to visit.  Venily needs more attention apparently, lol.

Here is Haven talking about camping the night before we went for the 1st time! ;)

Here is Venily singing a song in the car.  Her song writing sings are phenomenal, LOL!!  And, yes, she is this crazy all the time!  The song was originally about blood and switched to bones right before I took the video.  She is strangely morbid, but a lot of fun! :)

And I don't know if I posted this video or not yet.  It was taken when Haven was 19 months and she is saying her shapes.  She also knows diamond and square now.  Sometimes rectangle.

Haven spelling her name!

Here is a video of Haven spelling her name! :)  She's was doing it a while ago and then stopped and now does it all the time! (We have a song we do where we spell her name at each diaper change).  You would think she'd get the 5 letters of her name in order before she memorized all 26 letters of the alphabet in order, but I guess not, lol!

You can never take too many videos...

right?!  That's what I tell myself!!  Here's more of our latest!


Haven missing her Aunt Lisa who is across the country for 10 months working with Americorp!  :(  She is so the cutest thing in the planet!!



And Venily missing her as well!


Here's one of the girls being goofy! :)


And 2 from Venily's baseball camp.  I am seriously considering putting her into dance class next (it's a 6 week class and has a female teacher, but money is super tight right now).

17 months old!

Each month I have a mini-breakdown that she is growing up too fast.  Can she really be 1 1/2 years old next month?!  It just doesn't seem possible... :(
I don't have a ton of updates since her 16.5m updates, I'll have a bigger update next month for the big 18m.  Just some random funny stories from my little Haven...

Haven woke up in the morning, crawled into bed with us and the first thing she said was "Mommy.... make popcorn?"  lol!  It has been weeks since we've had popcorn, so the only thing I can think is that maybe she had a dream about it! :)


A few days ago I was holding her and she said "Down please.... for my birthday?"  Venily says the "for my birthday?" line all the time when she wants something b/c she got it from iCarly!  It was soooo funny to hear Haven say it though! :)

She's picked up a ton more new songs!  I love listening to her sing- she is just the cutest thing in the world!


She will identify the following shapes correctly almost every time: heart, star, crescent moon, triangle.  And most of the time circle. :)  Her favorite magnidoodle game is make Mommy draw shapes while she tells me what they are!  Over and over and over and over, lol!


I don't know why... but Haven LOVES laying on floors and rolling around, lol!  She does it everywhere... in the gym, at storytime, at home, doesn't matter where she is! :)

And here are some more videos:


Singing ABC's while watching a movie.  She was so cute laying there singing them over and over again that I just had to take a video.  Of course, as soon as I take out my camera she starts being goofy!


More counting too!  She counts all day long as well!

She can sing the whole alphabet now!!!!

Sooooo proud of her!! ♥

The best I was able to get on video is of her singing A-V and then she coughs up a piece of popcorn and thinks it's a ladybug and gets all distracted, lol!  (Well, a few weeks ago when I was sick and laying in bed and Jason came to check in on me we heard Venily yell "Haven just ate a ladybug", so it's not like it hasn't happened before, lol).  Venily started singing the whole alphabet at 20 months!  Gosh, I thought Venily was early at everything and Haven has consistently done everything even faster... but her big sister does make a really great teacher! :)

And here are 2 videos where you can hear her counting to 10 and saying 13 and 14.  I really wish I had a video editing program but you get the idea, lol! :)  She's been counting to 10 for me all day today!  ♥

16.5 months update!

I guess I really haven't done away with the 1/2 month updates, lol!  Haven is always learning so many new things, that it's hard to wait the full month!

She continues to expand on her vocabulary by leaps and bounds!  I estimate that she is at well over 1,000 words now!  She will repeat anything and everything and can retain the meaning of words after only hearing them once!  She also can memorize songs like crazy!  I have no idea how both my girls got such great memories, especially if you know Jason, haha!   She can sing all of "Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" by herself now and most of "Twinkle, Twinkle".  Most of the time something will just trigger the memory of the song for her (like saying the word "star") and then she'll just start singing the whole song without me ever having known that she knew all the words, lol!

This isn't a good one of how she sings her ABC's, but I love that she says "Yeah, baby!" at the end, lol!  :) 

Her huge vocabulary is also getting Venily into more trouble!  Haven now comes up and tells on her all the time.  She'll come up to me all serious and say "EE.. big mess!" and I'll be like "Venily made a big mess?" (nods head yes) "where?" and she'll say "bedroom... c'mon!" and pull my hand all the way to the bedroom!  She's also told on her for banging her head and all the time for taking her toys, haha!  Venily can't get away with anything any more! :)

She counts to 10 now all the time!  And when I say "11, 12" she'll say "13, 14"!! :) 

She has also become really focused lately on correctly adding the plural "s" to the ends of words that need them.  She is so serious about it that it's actually funny.  If I accidentally say something without the "s" and there is more than one, sometimes she will correct me and say "cupSSS", "ballSSS", etc. She is so funny!

She has a new favorite shape!  The other day she brought up a tiny little foam piece that is shaped like a moon and told me "crescent moon!  crescent moon!"... Venily must have taught her that, lol!  Now every time she sees a crescent moon she freaks out saying "crescent moon" and she wants me to draw crescent moons for her on the Magnadoodle all the time, lol!  She is so funny with the things that really fascinate her, haha!  And I had no idea how many "crescent moons" she could find around our house!  She even insisted on bringing one to bed with her the other night!

Speaking of things that fascinate her, like Venily, she too LOVES dinosaurs!!  She can say the names of several different dinosaurs and knows that (on Dinosaur train) Buddy is a T-Rex and Shiny, Tiny, and Don and pteranodons! :)  She is also obsessed with "rocket ships"!  Thanks Little Einsteins, lol!  Is it weird that both of my little girls love rockets and trains and dinosaurs?! :)

The other day she also brought me the bedding of a pretend dog's bed which kind of looks like a pillow in the shape of an oval and told me it was a "pillow pet"! :)  Her ability to understand things and make connections with other things astounds me! ♥

Also, one of her newest favorite animals now are "Spider monkeys" and she loves to talk about them!

Venily also taught her say "Cheeseburger!" instead of "cheese!" when looking at a camera!  Then Mommy taught her to say "veggie cheeseburger" haha!

Instead of saying "Poop!" after she poops or when she sees a poopy diaper, she now sometimes says "P-U, stinky poop pants!" LOL!!!

Oh, and despite the fact that we have gotten a TON of snow, Haven still does not like the snow or cold!!  Which is fine by me, because I don't like it much either!  We can't wait until it all melts and we can play outside again!!!

 

Her darn incisor teeth are still giving her trouble and none have cut through yet!  I can always tell when she is in pain b/c every little thing makes her cry when normally she hardly ever cries!!  She also gets more clingy whenever she is teething! :(

 

Though she can usually turn the whining on and off whenever she wants!

The girls were momentarily Packers fans for the Superbowl (the only day that it's acceptable, lol)!  Jason is a Packers fan so the girls got all Packers'd up for him! :)

 

She absolutely loves to pretend to have things pee and poop in the potty!  So goofy!

She is starting to pick up more and more Spanish words as well!  Thanks to Dora and Diego, lol!  I took 4 years of Spanish in high school and 2 semesters in college so I always thought it would be cool to teach some to my girls!  Haven says "bobos, monkeys!" and "abre, open" all the time and can repeat Spanish words really well so I think I'm going to start giving her a little more Spanish vocab to learn.

Newest Sayings!

Haven:

"Shake your booty"

"Yeah, baby!" (learned from her sister, lol)

(video coming soon)

Venily:

"But I was JUST trying to be helpful" (said so cutely you almost believe it, lol!)

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And here are some more videos of the girls!!

Venily talking to Santa, haha! 3 years old

Haven reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear (she is doing a lot better at calling animals by their names rather than their sounds, but still needs to be reminded sometimes!) Haven-16m

 Singing "Rudolph" over a month AFTER Christmas, lol, it's still one of her favorite songs! Haven-16m

Two of her favorite things, lol! I'd like to think she's going to be a dinosaur veterinarian when she gets older! :) Haven-16m

She is always pretending to hurt herself so I have to kiss it, lol! Haven-16m

Newest Videos!

I'm a little behind on putting videos up on here!!  I love taking videos of them though, they do the cutest things!  Hopefully they appreciate it some day! :)



This song gets stuck in her head and she'll keep singing it over and over and over! LOL!
Haven- 15m

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She knows how to do all the end words correctly except that I always sing "You are my Haven, my only Haven" lol, so she now sings it with either Mommy or Daddy, haha. Oh, and she thinks it goes "when skies are grape"! She really is my sunshine! ♥
Haven- 15m

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Sooo naughty! The first time I saw her up there I thought maybe Venily helped her up, lol! She is so like her Daddy! :)  Haven- 15m

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She says this ALL the time! :)  Haven- 15m

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I ♥ this dance!!
15m

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I call that Haven's "broken-wing" dance! :)
Venily- 3 years
Haven- 15m

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Love, Haven 15m

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that turns into "knick-knack", lol. I never know what she's going to sing! :) And the one was "I love Grandma with the dogs" lol!
Venily- 3 years

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Haven grabs my camera at the end, haha.
Venily- 3 years

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"And that's what Christmas is all about..."
She sings crazy, made-up songs all day long! :)
Venily- 3 years

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Xmas day 2010
My favorite part is when she says "I'm the luckiest girl!" lol and Haven is in the background saying "Cashew! Cashew! Cashew, please! Cashew, please!" Haha! :)
Venily- 3 years, Haven- 14m

My newest favorite Haven saying!

Did I not say she is the cutest thing EVER?!  She does it with a sideways peace sign too that completely cracks me up!!

Haven Video!

I realized I didn't have a lot of updated videos of Haven talking, so I'm going to try and get some.  Here is one of her reading her book!  She says "out" for the picture of the boy standing in his crib b/c she thinks he wants to get out, lol, it took me a while to figure that out! :)

I am trying to do better at keeping up on her monthly updates too, so hopefully I'll actually have her 15 month update up on time! :)

11 1/2 months old today!!!!

I think this will be my last "half month" update!  After a year, I'll do monthly updates from then on!! We'll see if I can wait a whole month, haha!

I reserved the pavilion at the park for the girls' birthday party!  It's all set for October 3rd!  I had to pull a few Jason moves in order to keep the cost lower (Jason can literally get anyone to do anything he wants!).  I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.  Now I'm just hoping for nice weather!!

Haven continues to add new words to her vocabulary each day!  A few new ones this last month include:
roll (while rolling her hands), weeee (when she wants to go down a slide or on a riding toy), out, Yay!, bib (she loves to take her bib off and say "bib!  bib!" lol, she also calls anything she puts over her head (like a necklace) a bib *(see below)), door (she loves doors!!), spoon (says it for spoon or fork), blue (not sure she understands the concept yet, but she points to the blue rock on her bracelet and says "BLUE!"), jump (while attempting to jump), na-night (as she lays her head on me or a pillow when she's tired or pretending to sleep, lol!  The other day we were in her room and she was super sleepy.  She goes over to her crib and points at it and says "na-night!" and tries to climb up on it!!  LOL!)  She also says a ton of more "words" that are just the beginnings of words like "bub" for bubbles, etc. and she tries to say grandma (her favorite person besides me, Jason, or Venily!)!


*Side story- This morning she was done w/ breakfast and took off her bib saying "bib, bib" and threw it on the ground.  Then she continued eating a few bites.  Then when she was really done she tried taking off her shirt and was saying "bib, bib" b/c she forgot she had already taken her bib off.  Maybe you had to be there to see it, but I was cracking up!! :)

She memorized her first song a few weeks ago!  She sings it all the time and gets it stuck in her head!!!!  We learned it in her Building Blocks class and she'll start singing it out of nowhere all the time!  It goes "Roll it, roll it... up, up, up.... roll it, roll it... out, out, out... roll it, roll it... clap, clap, clap... roll it, roll it... pat, pat, pat!"  I usually have to help her with what comes next, but sometimes she does the whole thing by herself!!!!!  She has also started to try to sing other songs.  She doesn't say any words to them, but she 'sings' while I'm singing, sooooo cute!


We've been to the zoo twice in the last few weeks and Haven just loves it!!  She LOVES animals so much!  And she loves to say what sounds they make!  She's learned 3 new animal "sounds".  Frog (ribbit, ribbit, while bobbing up and down), giraffe (what?!  You don't know what a giraffe says?!  lol.  She touches her neck b/c giraffes have a long neck! :)  ) and yesterday she FINALLY learned what a pig says (she makes the pig noise...hmmm.... not sure how you "spell" that, haha!).  That puts her at 19 animal sounds!!!!!  I wish I could get a good video of all of her sounds, but she is a crazy one.  Here are a couple that I took a few weeks ago...



And here's some pics from the zoos:

She is getting really good at answering yes or no questions!  She doesn't say "yes" yet, but she has the "no" down good!  Like I can say "Are you hungry Haven?"  and if she is, she'll say:  "Eat, eat, eat!" and runs to her highchair and tries to get in! and if she's not, she'll say "NO!"

Unfortunately, her frequent use of "no" means that she is arguing a lot more with Venily!  Especially in the car!  They go back and forth all the time.  Here is a video, but it gets a lot sassier than this, lol!  And one time Venily was busy doing something and Haven kept saying "NO, NO!!" (then wait for Venily to answer) then say "NNNNOO!" (wait) then she said "TES!" and then she was back to "NO!" again, arguing with herself! :)  And if she is playing by herself in the house and I hear her saying "no, no, no!" she is for sure doing something naughty, usually climbing up on something!


While I'm laying on the floor, she loves to run over and sit on my back and say "neigh, neigh!"  :)  HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I ABSOLUTELY LOVE HER?!  lol.  She has me laughing ALL day long!  She also rides anything else she can get on!

She loves washing her hands in the sink and whenever I wash mine she rubs hers together like she's washing them too!  She also dries her hands and face on the towel all by herself.  She is obsessed with stealing wipes and wiping her face and the floor and everything else she can find as well!  I guess there are worse things to love to do, haha!  Sometimes I just give her a wipe to "clean" things while I try to get chores done!


She is doing so great on whole cow's milk!  She has been drinking one cup a day with lunch and has had ZERO problems!!!!!  We are still nursing 3-4 times a day, and I'm trying to wait until her 1 year check up before I start trying to cut out more nursing sessions and adding in more milk!  But I don't see any problems at all with the whole weaning process.  The only time she every REALLY wants to nurse is sometimes in the morning and if we are ever out in public and it's past her nap time!  The other day at the zoo, she didn't get to nap and was pulling open my shirt saying "Milk! Milk!"..... kind of embarrassing, lol!  I think my sister and I are the only ones that noticed though! :)


On Tuesday she started cutting through tooth #7 (bottom left).  I just checked this morning and it's finally all the way through and tooth #8 (bottom right) is starting to cut through today also!!  Hopefully both the bottoms finish up soon!  I can't believe that she will have 8 teeth for her first birthday, since Venily only had 4! :)


There have been a few times now that Haven has said "poop, poop" right BEFORE she's pooped!!  One time I was able to get her on the toilet first.  Hopefully that's a sign of good things to come in the following months!


Her current favorite song= "Old MacDonald Had a Farm".  She likes to give me the animal sounds.  I will have to get a video.  Really, I should just get cameras installed all throughout my house b/c she's just so darn cute ALL DAY LONG!!!  ♥

And some "just because" videos I haven't put on here yet!!
HAVEN:


VENILY: