Emma and Irene

Hello Everyone! :) Irene is 8 months old and a sweet little peanut doll baby. Her head is as perfectly round as it looks in this picture. She is very expressive. He bright eyes light up and they crinkle up in the corners when she breaks into a smile. She has started to find her voice and is very social and opinionated. She is beginning to imitate movement and vocalizations that we do with her.

She can sit up for long periods with assistance from the boppy or a pillow behind her. Love her big bright eyes! They are sort of gray. She likes to scratch at the pictures in her books. She graps for toys and likes things that rattle or clack together. She can sit unassisted for about a minute before you usually falls to one side or throws herself back. She is still not a big fan of being on her tummy and prefers her back to get around. She is not really a snuggler. She likes to be held but won't lay her head on our chests unless she is super tired and even then she fusses and fidgets as she does it. She is a thumb sucker. She is always busy looking at what is going on around her.


And Emma! Huggable, squeezable, and sweet as pie. She is toddling all over the place and even starting to run at times. She wants in on all the action of her older siblings.  It is precious and sweet to watch. She is using words constantly and making know what she does and doesn't like. "I no like it" or "Daddy! drink!" Daddy's princess girl might just be prone to a few 2 year old tantrums these days too. ;)

 



She wanted to sit next to these kids over and over. She would get down and come tells us something about them or talk about the book they were reading and then go back and sit with them again. She had a lot to tell us.



She finds some really silly things to keep her busy. She wants the attention and she still laughs with such a hardy belly laugh. We can often find her singing to herself. She repeats just about anything her sibling tell her too, which of course is not always a good thing. She loves to go outside and will come tell us she needs "shoes and socks" and then run for the door and say "outside". She likes to bring us books to read or will sit quietly on the couch with a blanket and some books to look through. She is a total snuggle bug still.

Snow!

Well... at least a little bit... OK, it really was barely a dusting, but hey, we take what we can get. This kids, of course, seized upon the opportunity to pull out the new sleds that their Great Aunts Bethany and Kelly had bought them. First, we tried the front yard.

 That was pretty much enough for Gabe, Emma and Ezra. They discovered again that snow is cold!

Emma wasn't exactly the most enthusiastic sledder.

 Later, I took Olivia and Gabe across the street to the bigger hill in the park. 

Olivia bravely went down, but scared herself the first time.

After that, though, it was smooth sailing.

Hopefully, that's not all Old Man Winter has for us this year!

Celebrating 40

Last April, Olivia went to the Airbound Trampoline park in Winston-Salem with her friends and had a blast. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go because I was on a field trip with the Piedmont Farm School. So I said I wanted to go for my birthday! I don't care if I'm 40, I love trampolines! While celebrating Emma mostly overshadows me (as it should be! I wouldn't have it any other way!), Rebecca and the kids did a great job of giving me some great moments throughout the day. Olivia made me a bracelet that I love and Rebecca brought me lunch from Chipotle, which is a favorite of mine. In past years, I have asked for a day to do nothing. While that is relatively impossible anymore, Rebecca came close with a gift for one hour in a sensory deprivation chamber. I am looking forward that blissfulness! :) After dinner in the evening, though, we decided to pile the kids in the van and go to the Airbound Trampoline park they opened here in Greensboro. I was not disappointed. :) It was so much fun! I really enjoy trampolines so this was right up my alley. The kids, of course, loved every minute of it and Rebecca and I got to bounce around with them. I was sore the next day though...old age i guess. :)

Irene is doing her own jumping/bouncing here.

Rainbow Party Day

Today, Emma turned 2 and Jeremy turned 40. So it was a day to celebrate around here. Emma is our sweet, happy, sunshine child. On this dreary winter day, we gave her a rainbow party full of color and fun. We decorated the dining room. Lets face it, we spend a lot of time there as a family so it was the place of our many activities today.

 The kids greeted Emma with Happy Birthday singing this morning. She was super excited to see the decorations.  Then a little later in the morning we made crafts. We made a rainbow hand/foot print art piece. It was a fun group project. We did that one in stages through the day as each person's color had to dry. The hands go as follows, Olivia, Gabe, Ezra, Emma, then Irene's footprints, and then Jeremy and I at the bottom. The kids made rainbows from construction paper. We gave them rainbow paints and let them just free paint.

For lunch we had a rainbow assortment of veggies, fruits, and goldfish. We also made rainbow colored ice cubes for their drinks. The kids layered rainbow cake batter into jars and for rainbow cake and then they iced them with vanilla icing mixed with rainbow sprinkles. We should have used much smaller jars as they made large cakes.

Jeremy made Emma a rainbow tutu and we gave her a rainbow streamer and she really enjoyed prancing around for a while. We also gave her some of "her own" colored pencils as she really enjoys just sitting and coloring pictures just about every day. She asked to use them immediately.

Well, that was Emma's birthday celebration. We taught her to say, "I am Emma. I am a girl. I am 2!"I wish I could catch her sweet but excited little voice saying that on camera. It is adorable but she is a bit shy. We had such a fun family day celebrating her sweet little life.

Stay tuned for how we celebrated the 40 year old tonight....