Smorgasbord

A smattering of recent photos

Sunday morning nap before church. It kills me to wake her up every week to leave.

Sorry, this is a little gross; the clump on the right is a knot I had in my hair. My hair knots super easily as I use the blow dryer on it. If I don't constantly brush it I get knots like this. The ring is just to give you a size scale. Ouch

Sadie enjoys writing the alphabet and drawing something that starts with that letter. She comes up with the item herself, but it is frequently from an alphabet book or video she has seen. She is actually pretty good at sounding out the first letter of a word. The other day she sounded out the entire word "Texas" on a shirt I was wearing.

 A- apple, B- ball, C- cat, D- dog(below the D), E- elephant, F- frog, G- gorilla, H- heart, I- ice (in a cup), J- jumpoline (Sadie thinks this is what trampolines are called)

 Indulging me with a picture before church on Mother's Day

Popsicles outside by the kiddie pool. Pretty much every afternoon.

Spinning in her new dress from Aunt Coco. 

Sadie was exhausted one afternoon but wanted to look through pictures on my phone. 

Helping with dinner clean-up.

The helping was over once the camera was spotted.

Cobs

Corn on the cob season has begun and my girls enjoyed their first experience chowing down directly from the cob. I don't know why, but it made me laugh a lot to watch these little girls going to town on corn cobs. Sadie ate 3 of them and Elise ate 2. 

Flour Power

Last week as I was making dinner I heard lots of laughter coming from the basement. So cute that my girls were laughing together. As the laughter escalated I started wondering what could be the cause. All at once my mom superpower took over and I just knew what they were doing. I grabbed my camera and headed downstairs. I came around the corner to find this.

  Both of them were dumping handfuls of flour on Elise's head. 

A few days earlier Sadie had helped me open our Costco sized flour bag and refill the container upstairs. I had stupidly left it in the middle of the floor, just begging for children to get into it. 

All I could do was laugh at them. I called Daniel downstairs and we laughed so hard we cried. But then the girls thought it was funny and continued to do it.

 I gave the girls a bubble bath while Daniel rid the basement of flour. Unfortunately, my first instinct was to try to wash the flour out of Lou's hair. I didn't stop to think that adding water to flour would make a doughy mess. I should have just vacuumed Elise's head. Finally, almost 2 weeks later, we have all the clumps of flour off her scalp. 

 Sadie happily posed with one of the dustpans of flour after her bath. 

Since this incident she has talked about it multiple times and suggested that next time we do it we should have it outside. 

Was there any kind of lesson learned there? Maybe don't laugh so loud if you want to enjoy the mess for longer?

Fun Fun Think About Fun

On Elise's birthday we had 2 of her friends along with their families over for dinner, cake and a pinata. Lou's friends are dictated by which of Sadie's friends have younger siblings Elise's age, so Sadie was happy to have 2 friends there as well.

These 6 kids were happy to eat pizza, but no one was more excited than Elise. That girls loves her pizza.

She likes to tell me she is two.

And, of course, the best part of any kids party is the present opening. Sadie, Claire and Hunter were happy to help Elise open and play with her new gifts. Quinn and Emett are a little too inexperienced to realize how fun it is to crowd the birthday child as they open presents.

Following presents we had a pinata. And unsurprisingly, an adult had to break it open. The kids got heaps of candy and then it was time for cake. 

Elise reacted adorably to the birthday singing. Watch it below

At Elise's 2 year appointment we found out she is in the 95th percentile for height and 50th for weight. I doubt she will maintain that kind of height percentile, but Daniel can hope.

Selfie Apprenticeship

Elise is learning the art of the selfie from Sadie. 

Sadie got frustrated after Elise totally bungled a few attempts, catching a blurry mom arm and the chevron shirt. 

About the only impressive thing Lou did behind the lens was to catch Sadie pouting.

Then we let the professional step in. Sadie immediately got the money shot of Elise's adorable pig tails and then moved on to the important stuff....

....some selfies

Lou is Two

Happy 2nd birthday to the funniest little girl I know. 

Two years? Time flies.

Since Elise was young- we are talking less than 10 months old- we felt like she had a great sense of humor. I don't even know exactly what it is, she is just funny. Sadie does and says funny things, like all kids do, but Elise is funny. She regularly does things in an attempt to elicit laughter. She'll start fake laughing until she has all of us laughing for real. Or she makes up words and repeats them while laughing hysterically. I love when Elise gets Sadie laughing harder and harder until they are deliriously giggly and happy. It reminds me of how my sister Meredith and I would get each other laughing.

More on 2-year-old Elise:

-Lives for nursery at church. Regularly wakes up and asks for "chuch??" Whenever she sees her nursery leaders around the neighborhood she runs and hugs them.

-One of her favorite things this week has been to walk up to us and squish/pinch our faces and laugh.

-Started to take a special interest in all things princess. Nooooooo.

-enjoys making me or Sadie play games on my phone. She will take my hand and put it to my phone to try to make me play games. She is also Sadie's biggest supporter when Sade is playing on the iPad. Elise is content to sit and watch, with the occasional annoying finger swipe on the screen

-Likes animals a lot, but is starting to get more scared of dogs

-On a bit of mean streak as of late. She has started hitting and throwing things more and yelling things like "don't!!" and "no!!!". She has even bit people a few times. (Still nowhere near the tantrums Sadie was throwing at this age)

-loves sugar. Frequently begs for "fuu nacks"

-Still gets lots of comments on her big eyes

-Good eater- favorite foods are pasta and pizza

-very snuggly. She often wakes up from naps and snuggles for a few minutes

-kind of a wimp when it comes to playground slides. Last summer she went down any slide any place and now she will only go down small ones.

-loves baths

-thinks stickers are the best, but gets frustrated that the stickiness wears off. She wants to put them on paper, transfer them to her shirt, then her hand, back to the paper, etc. 

-cutest thing she says: "Dank youuuu Daydeah!!" (thank you Sadie)

-loves her milk. We took away her milk sippy at night but we still allow her to have milk for her naps. 

-extremely sensitive. She gets very sad if she thinks people are laughing at her when she isn't trying to be funny. She puts her head on her shoulder, puffs out her bottom lip and then bursts into tears when her mom or dad picks her up.

-an avid reader. She frequently interprets an open lap of an adult as an invitation to read. She will go pick up a book and just sit right down in an unsuspecting person's lap. She will even say a preemptive thank you before they start reading just to get the point across that she won't take no for an answer.

We love you Elise! 

Tulips

We went to the tulip festival at Thanksgiving Point with Sadie's friends, Hunter and Jenna (and each of their moms and younger brothers). I have never been before and it did not disappoint. Of course it helped that it was a perfectly sunny day with a slight breeze to keep us from getting hot. 

As walked along the paths the 3 older kids raced ahead. I was afraid we would be done quickly but I had no idea how massive the Thanksgiving Point gardens are.

The saddest part of the trip was that my camera phone was doing crazy things. Notice how the sky is a crazy color in the picture above? I thought the camera was breaking until a few days later I figured out that Sadie had put it on some weird setting. Score one for the next generation- already confusing us parents with newfangled technology. In any event, I didn't take many pictures of the tulips because the coloring was crazy.

We probably could have spent 2 hours feeding the fish. The kids begrudgingly moved on with the promise of more cool stuff. 

 And this pool with fountains came through in a major way. 

 It is pretty much a miracle that we got out of there without anyone falling in. Elise and Emmet's little legs dangled in the air as they reached for the water.

 The kids took the opportunity to rolls down a couple big hills and then we ended the trip as any good trip to Thanksgiving point should.

 Free ice cream.