So we now have a 4 and 2 year old and they both nap.
They both take good two hour naps still.
At the same time.
I am one very lucky Mama.
But...
This weekend we've been having so much fun that we've gotten pretty lax on
the nap taking. As long as they don't get too cranky, skipping naps is ok with us. Lily skipped a few times, showing us that she really does still need her nap. Emma on the other hand, just can.not.make.it.
She makes it to 3pm and then we find her passed out somewhere.
Our first clue is that she asks for her bink.
Second clue, the house gets really quiet.
Then we find them like this. A sight that we have seen the past few weekends :).
We've been busy this month out in the yard. Finally, after six years of living here we are getting busy. I mean how much yard work can you really do with an infant strapped to you at all times and then have a toddler learning to walk. Not much. Not much at all.
So, here we are.
We rented a tiller to get our garden started. We tilled, added new dirt, Mike built a border, put up a fence and planted lots of plants! The girls and I had fun planting seeds to watch our flowers grow.
This weekend, we are finally almost done. The veggie plants are all planted. We have tomato plants, a variety of peppers, parsley, cucumbers, zucchini, squash and green beans!
Our potted plants are looking good too. I'm in love with these green leafy plants on the corners, they are scented geraniums and are great for mosquito control. Haven't seen very many since I put these on the deck! Yay for our sweet legs :)
Our side yard now has a pretty planter with azaleas, gardenia plants and pretty shade plants :).
Emma and I stayed three mornings this week, with help from other moms, to sort, organize, price things for the Whale of a Sale. Some cute stuff but more importantly lots of books at 25 cents each :)
By the end of my shift working the sale Mike and the girls were there ready to play some games.
Flower Ball Toss
Tic Tac Toe
Lil and Em just stood there like that listening to the directions.
They hit the cupcake walk perfectly!
Yep, first time got a cupcake. Last year I think Lily played a dozen times
before she got a cupcake!
Funny picture.
And, the last thing was they wanted to do the bounce house.
The line was long the entire time we were there but by the end it was bearable.
Timing was perfect since Melissa was in line with Kira, Leah and Natalie and Lil and Em could go in with them. I was hesitant knowing they are not big fans of these things.
And, lo and behold...
Our Girls "bouncing".
They pretty much sat right there the entire time and got bounced around that way.
Emma exited early but Lily stuck it out. Found out she wanted to bounce by herself so she wouldn't get knocked over. Pretty smart but only if she knew falling down wouldn't hurt.
Emma is loving her letters. She is a lot more active than Lily was at this age so I have been surprised in how interested she has been in her letters, words and books.
Every night for bedtime, Mike or I, have to read her favorite books. She has a few Dora books, Super Why, I Spy Books or an Arthur flap book that she loves. She is beginning to show signs of the fabulous memory that Lily and Mike have and says parts of the stories with us. If we read, then stop she'll finish the sentence(s).
She can go through the entire alphabet and tell us the letters. She may not be able to sing the ABC song along with melody, although she tries, but she does know all of the letters. She is getting pretty good at identifying the letters in isolation and knows her name and how to spell it too.
Emma also loves practicing writing. When she sees Lily writing, Emma of course wants to join in. She is thrilled when I help her write words. She gets so excited when she thinks she wrote her own name, or Nana's name or Pa's name or Molly's name, which are the only ones she really wants me to write with her.
Here is Lily at age 2 with her letters. Guess I'll have to get a video of Emma now since watching videos of them is the best thing EVER.
Since Lily began school we have a ton of placemats that have come home that she has made. She loves to use a different one at each meal, which is fine, until Emma wants one. Lily is wonderful in sharing them with Emma but I feel bad that she doesn't have one of her own, so we made some.
I got a posterboard pack of 5 different colors perfect size for placemats. I wrote their name in the middle and their entire name at the bottom. They got to draw and put stickers all over the front to decorate it and they loved every second of it.
But, I wasn't done. I did some teacher stuff on the back. Simple stuff for Emma, just pictures and words to help identify and expose her to the words. Lily, though, I did little matching blocks. And, she loves, loves, loves it. I think it's due to her using a dry erase marker, but who cares. She wanted to skip bath with Emma tonight and take a shower because she was so busy doing her placemat.
Love how she is tracing right over the letters of her name! Hopefully we can transfer to paper and the practicing will help stay in those lines on the paper. She loves this so very much that I'm in the process of making her a little book using page protectors :) Gotta love the dry erase markers!
To say it was a rainy Sunday would be an understatement. It rained all day from 6 AM to 6 PM. Needless to say we did not leave the house. Gave us the opportunity to catch up on some house chores and of course, do a craft activity. We decided on Shrinky Dinks, a Lily birthday present from Nana & Pa. We have vague memories of doing these when we were kids, yet we couldn't exactly remember how small they got. We don't have a picture, but I think all four of us (5 if you count Maci just being nosey) were huddled around the stove at one point.
The weather was beautiful and it was a good thing, because we had an action-packed day on the agenda. Mommy and Lily had their own thing going (Sara had another craft show, table looked awesome!), so that gave Daddy and Emma some time to do our own thing. We brought breakfast to our craft show girls, went to Harris Teeter to get some groceries, and a quick stop at Wal-Mart to pick up a belated Emma birthday present (see below). I don't get much one on one time with Emma without big sister, so it was quite nice. We came home and played, ate lunch and had some good conversations, then she passed out.
Since Emma was napping, Mommy and Lily went to Miss Kira's birthday party. It was an awesome pirate party where Melissa had come up with games, activities and a really fun pirate treasure hunt. The food was delicious and her cookies and cupcakes divine :) We had so much fun.
Happy Birthday Kira!
We spent the rest of the evening enjoying Emma's present, a new swing! She had definitely outgrown the red plastic baby swing, but wasn't quite ready for the "regular" swing. Sara found this one online at Wal-Mart and it is quite the heavy duty swing. Emma loves it! She literally spent like 30 minutes in it, swinging back and forth and just soaking up the sun! (It is definitely "her" swing, she doesn't look too thrilled when Lily comes near it).
Lily and her friends Ava and Audrey all met this morning the field in front of the school. They all ran to one another like they were in a movie being reunited after a long separation.
We all laughed and had to get a picture of them. They also held hands, welcomed Emma into their group and walked into school. Mrs.Johnson seemed to be thrilled to have all of her little friends back together once again. I think the end of May is going to be kinda sad.
We also attempted to get the same picture as last year, but this was as good as it was going to get.
Not much to report, everything is pretty status quo.
Their stats and measurements are a tad bit off, in my opinion, so we'll be doing a bit of our own measuring in the days to come. But here are their measurements as of now...
Lily is now in the 85/90th% in most all categories.
39lbs (which I believe is waaaay off) and 41 3/4"tall (off again).
Emma is in 25th% for weight at a whopping 25 lbs (generous weight :) )!
and measuring 34" tall (waaaay off).
They also had shots and a finger prick today. :(
We decided to separate them so that they wouldn't be too scared watching the other one as they waited so Emma was first. I took Lily out to the waiting room so Mike could hold Emma down. She's tiny but super strong and difficult to hold on to. But, as Lil and I walked back into the room, there were no tears, we heard no screams and Mike said she just sat there and watched the entire thing.
Lily on the other hand, well that's a different story.
She screamed. She cried. She was ok but she did not enjoy this as much as Emma did at all. I had to hug/hold her down on the table. Gosh, what a gut wrenching feeling watching your girl's eyes well up with tears and absolute fright and there's nothing you can do about it because she needs the shots. Ugh. Didn't like that at all.
When we all got into the car on our way to get our treat Lily said, "You know, that wasn't that bad. I had my mommy and she gives me hugs when I need them. Thanks Mommy."
We went to a patch that we've never been to before and got there early enough to get two full buckets of strawberries! Lily and Emma were absolute champs at choosing ripe strawberries.
Since Lily and Emma were on top of it, Mike and I only did minimal picking and we were done within 20-30 minutes. And, it was tons of fun! The past two years were fun too, but man nothing beats having two kids semi-sufficient!
Wow. Miss Emma, our sweet, sweet girl, Happy 2nd Birthday!
Thought the interview would be fun even if she could only answer a few * questions.
Just like Lily, an entire post dedicated to how grown-up you are is in order.
But, for now, your birthday...
First, you woke up to all of us singing Happy Birthday.
You were excited, started jumping up and down and yelled "party, party, party".
And, without any chocolate milk you dove into the pile of presents Lily and I wrapped.
We were worried about you not feeling special since you weren't going to have a huge party like Lily did but we soon found out that a few balloons made your morning spectacular.
I'm pretty sure this balloon party lasted about 45 minutes :).
And, I think you loved every second of it.
Decorations. Last night as Mike and I were doing this we came across a new Check Bday Tradition. TP'ing their chair. Hahaha..Emma loved it. Although I'm not sure she really sat in it all day.
We also took the girls to Cinema Cafe for lunch and Chipwrecked. They loved it, Emma made it through 3/4 of the movie before she realized that there was a lobby and it was a lot more fun to have Daddy chase her.
We then had made plans to have dinner with Amy, Matt, AJ and Logan this week and Thursday seemed to work out the best so we made it into a mini-bday party for our girl. She loved the Hello Kitty pinata and especially the cupcakes and ice cream. We loved having our friends over and made the day that much more special for our Emma:).
