Another Birthday Already!

I'm busy planning my baby's third birthday. THIRD! How can she be three already!?

Her favorite book these days is The Very Hungry Caterpillar so I thought that'd be the perfect party theme. I have found lots of cute ideas on Pinterest... from invites to crafts to food.



I'm thinking the kids can make their own caterpillars
and take them home in little baby food jars!?



How cute is this?

 

We'll have the party at a local playground which has picnic tables under a shelter (that came in handy for Lea's Lego party last year as it rained half the time!).

 

 

Here are some pics I just took of Emma this afternoon (I needed one for her invite). She is growing up so, so fast!

 

Sassy!
 



TWO YEARS

Has it seriously been almost two years since I last blogged???

Just goes to show you how busy my life has been!

There is no way I can or will even attempt to catch up on everything that has happened in the past two years, so I will just pick up where we are now....

Lea is 5 1/2 years old and will be starting kindergarten this summer. Emma is 2 years old and will have her 3rd birthday in two and a half months. Kevin got a new job a year ago and now he has more free time with the family (his old job was working him to death!). And me?... well, I am still staying home with my girls. I keep busy around the house with projects here & there, help plan play dates for our local MOMS Club (as well as, serve as a board member) and make sure the girls have educational, active & fun things to do.

Fall 2014

11 months old

Yikes! It's been two months since I last posted. :(

I hate "catch-up" posts for several reasons... it's overwhelming, I never know where to begin and I always leave something out. So, I am just going to ramble a bit...

Let's start with Miss Emma, shall we? She is almost ONE!  I can not believe an entire year has passed since she was born. She is finally cruising around on the furniture. (I say "finally" because it took her a lot longer then it did Lea....but that's ok.) Emma is very cautious and careful. She is not a big fan of thrills or lots of action (the opposite of Lea). Actually, Emma is pretty much the opposite of Lea in almost all aspects! She keeps us on our toes.

Emma's first time pulling up to standing - 10 months old

Although Emma is pretty quiet, she babbles a lot, quietly. It's adorable! She points at everything and says, what sounds like, "That?" as if to ask "what is that?" She knows who Mama, Dada, Lea and Bailey are but hasn't really tried calling any of us by name yet. She nods and shakes her head all the time. Just recently, she has started doing it at appropriate times. For example, when I ask her if she is hungry, she always nods!

Emma is still very petite. I am guessing she weighs less than 20 pounds. She can still fit in some 9 month size clothes but is mostly wearing 12 month. Her feet seem small...she wears size 2 and/or 3 in baby shoes. I think she might have an "outie" belly button! When she stands or stretches out when laying down, it pops out ever so slightly. I love it!! She looks more and more like Kevin every day. I think the only thing she got from me is my large ears. :)

Emma LOVES books!

Miss Lea is an independent, strong willed and sometimes bossy 3 1/2 year old. She is so energetic. She loves action and can not stay in one place long. One of her favorite things to do is to run in circles through our kitchen and living room after dinner... every single night.

Sassy

Lea is still in preschool two days a week. She loves her class and her teacher! It's usually hard to get her to actually talk about school and what she does, but I love getting her little works of art each week... everything from finger paintings and drawings to a homemade candle and the life cycle of a frog collage. :) She has made several new friends, most of them all boys since she is one of three girls in the entire weekly class! Her best friend, Jackson, is in her class, too.

Emma's first Easter was a lot of fun. Like all holidays, we got to have three "celebrations"; once at our house, once at my in-laws and once at my parent's house. Lea went on several Easter egg hunts...and Emma enjoyed playing with the plastic eggs. I made a large, crocheted bunny for Emma just like the one I made Lea a couple years ago.

 

We recently took a nice, long trip to the zoo with my brother and sister-in-law. We were there from 10:30am until almost 5:30pm. What a looong day! We had a blast, though, and both of the girls were such troopers. There was a special, animatronic dinosaur exhibit there that Lea really enjoyed. (As much as Lea loves princesses and jewelry, she equally loves dinosaurs and Spiderman!)

Lea was serious about reading the map!

The highlight of our zoo trip was definitely the gorilla and chimp babies. We spent a lot of time watching them. The two gorilla babies were being slung around by there moms while the HUGE, silver-backed dad stayed close by. The chimp baby slept safely in his mother's arms while she rested her chin on his little head. I think she purposely sat right at the window so she could show off her baby!

 

Exhausted family!

Busy Family/ 9 months

It has been a LONG time since I last posted. Sorry! We've been busy... and when we're not busy, I admit, we've been lazy. ;)

I'm working on a couple projects... still trying to finish Emma's crochet bunny (like the one I made for Lea). I am also trying to motivate myself to work on/finish Emma's first year movie. (I made a movie of Lea's first year that included photos and videos from her birth to her first birthday, it is an hour & a half long - i.e. lots of editing! - so, I want to do the same for Emma. It just takes a lot of time.)

Kevin has been working from home a LOT recently. At first it was a bit annoying as we don't have a dedicated office in this house. He works in our bedroom. But, the pros far outweigh the cons. He can pop out and see the girls throughout the day, he doesn't have to waste time commuting and he is home for dinner at 5:30 (rather than 6:30).

Lea had her first sleep-over at Uncle Dave & Aunt Sarah's house. They said she was good. ;) She seemed to have had a great time so hopefully she can do it again soon. I love having them back in NC!

Lea with Aunt Sarah the morning after the sleep over.

We took a mini family 'vacation' recently at Great Wolf Lodge (thanks to a Groupon deal!). Poor Emma was really sick the entire week before we planned on leaving. She had a fever for five days in a row! Other than that, though, there were no other symptoms. The actual morning we got up to pack the car, she was much better, so we headed out. Lea (and Kevin & I) had a blast! The water park was pretty cool. There was a fenced in toddler area, a big "tree house" area, a wave pool, a regular pool and a few big water slides for the adults/big kids. Everywhere you looked there was water dripping, spraying and dumping. Lea really enjoyed exploring and even some of the bigger water slides. Kevin and I took turns watching the kids so we could go on the big slides... a couple of them were HUGE. It was so much fun!

(I forgot to take a single "real" camera so all I had was my phone. It takes terrible photos... I have no idea why b/c it wasn't a cheap phone! Oh well... here they are...)

First she tried the toddler slide...

Then she tried the bigger slides!

And she rode them over and over again!

Emma wasn't such a big fan of the water (or the noise).

I made Kevin stand under the big bucket dump!

Emma had her 9 month well check after our trip. She is a petite 15 pounds. :) Other than a tiny delay in her gross motor skills (she doesn't like to stand on her own and shows absolutely no signs of trying to cruise around the furniture), she is as healthy as can be. She's a pretty cautious girl. She's not into "thrills" and observes her surroundings carefully. She very well may not be walking by her first birthday... the opposite of Miss Lea who is quite the adventurer and risk taker! Lea was walking at 10 1/2 months old.

Emma says "buh" and "blah" a lot. She likes making non-consonant sounds, like growling, raspberries, humming, etc. She waves when you say "Hi" to her. She tries to clap her hands when you say "Yay!" and if you say "How big are you? So Big!", she throws her arms up over her head. Believe it or not, she loves to eat! Every meal time, she likes to grab the sides of her hair, too. Not sure why... but it's pretty funny! She ends up with sticky, dried food in her hair every night. She can be a little bit picky sometimes, but once she has something she likes (avocado, banana, black beans, peas, puffs, strawberries, bread, chicken) she will chow down! She has three teeth; two on the bottom/front and one top "vampire" tooth. I call her snaggle tooth!

 

We had a couple snow days recently. Emma was indifferent but Lea & Bailey enjoyed playing in it!

Eating an icicle after the first "snow"...

It wasn't really snow... mostly ice. But we had fun ice skating on the sidewalk!

Making tracks through the second snow!

Daddy and Miss Emma

A happy dog!

Valentine's Day was fun this year. Lea got to take cards into school for her classmates. She made butterflies with tootsie roll pops as the heads. :) That night after dinner, we had chocolate fondue. Our favorite was dipping a marshmallow and then rolling it in crushed graham crackers. YUM!

We're slowly beginning the process of putting our house on the market. We have spoken with one realtor and have another one lined up to meet. We've been brain storming on things we want to get done beforehand, like power wash the house, steam clean the carpet and take a BUNCH of stuff to storage. We have been in this house for eight years this summer. While we haven't exactly outgrown it, we are very close! We want a house with a dedicated office for Kevin and a separate playroom for the girls. I also dream of having an actual laundry room (rather than a closet) and a big master bathroom! :) We've been looking at homes online for years now. We just found a new neighborhood that is the perfect location for us and the thought of building new is SO appealing. :)

Other than that... as if that's not enough... we're just trucking along!

A Very Merry Christmas

We had a great Christmas this year with our two girls! I still don't think Lea completely understands the whole Santa thing but she had a blast, none the less.

Like always, we started on Christmas eve at my in-law's. We watched the five children open their gifts and we snacked on yummy food. Then we headed to a small, local church for a pot-luck dinner with Kevin's dad's side of the family.

The girls with their cousins.

It was a nice, low key Christmas morning at home. We set our alarm to be sure we would be awake & ready before Lea woke up. She came out of her room, looked over the balcony and was so happy to see the train table and train set Santa left her! We took out time opening presents until my parents and grandmother came over for breakfast. The rest of the day was spent hanging around the house, watching our girls play with their new toys.

My beautiful girls, first thing in the morning!

Watching Lea play a new Mobigo game.

My grandma and her great-grand daughters.

Four generations.

Christmas day was so gorgeous and mild outside... Lea got to try out her new ride!

A few days later we headed down to my parent's house for Christmas there. (My brother works in the tv news industry and didn't have Christmas day off, so we gathered when he was able to.) Again, we opened presents and ate a lot of food!

My dad has his OLD Lionel train set (an extensive set) from when he was a little boy. They set it up around their tree every Christmas. When I was growing up, Santa brought it and set it up under our tree for Christmas morning. Since this is such an extensive set, it took "Santa" awhile to put it all together. Luckily, our tree was always in the basement. So, coincidentally, my dad decided to paint the steps leading to the basement every year RIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS. lol Looking back on it now, it amazes me that we never caught on!

Anyway... my dad got out the trains and set up half of it for Lea to play with this year. She loved it!

We enjoyed our vacation and I really liked having Kevin home for two weeks. :)

I helped Emma stand up at the train table.
She loved watching Lea play and Lea pretended
Emma was the "monster" trying to grab the train!