Easter Weekend 2011

This Easter, Leah had 2 pretty new dresses: one from Nana and one from Aunt Karen, given to us before she was even born! She wore Nana's last week on Palm Sunday and she thought she was such a princess!!

We decided to attempt dyeing eggs this year with Leah, and she really loved it. She was very careful in choosing her colors, carefully put the egg in the dye, and then took her time stirring it all around with the spoon. She only managed to get a little dye on her shirt and break only one egg.

We also decorated sugar cookies. I wasn't really sure what tools one should use for something like that with kids, so we just used our fingers. Of course, the sprinkles were Leah's favorite.




Even Andrew had a taste of the frosting!!

And the finished products:

Friday night we had our Easter dinner as a family, since the rest of the weekend was going to be busy.

Saturday we had an Easter Egg Hunt at church. What a great turn-out!! It was so well-run and a lot of visitors showed up! They had crafts tables set out for the kids to work on when they first arrived. (Leah loves pasting!)

Then Brett used the Resurrection Eggs to tell the story of Easter. I really want to get some of these for our family next year!

Then came the hunting! Leah did not run around gathering them like crazy as I thought she would. She carefully picked up a few, and I had to encourage her to get more. I think she was more excited about the book she got after the Bible time than she was about the eggs. She did enjoy the chocolate candy inside the eggs, even though it was so hot outside everything was really melted!

Andrew didn't care what was inside the egg. He just wanted to hold it!

And of course, today we dressed in our Easter best. The bunny came and brought Easter baskets while we were at church. Leah was so excited, especially since her basket had Princess things inside! She really didn't go too crazy over the candy. She daintily ate her chocolate bunny over the course of an hour or so, and a couple jelly beans. I have hidden away the rest, of course, to dole out modestly, but she hasn't even asked! Later, we had an Easter egg hunt in our backyard, and Leah even wanted to "hide" them again on her own!

Visit to Sarah & Ben's

This week the kids and I had the chance to ride with our friend Noreen (and her teenage son) to visit Sarah & Ben at their new house in the mountains. It was kind of a last minute thing-- Noreen was going anyway so she offered to take us along. She's great with the kids, so I knew I'd have plenty of help. And I'm glad we went. The ride was long, and Andrew is definately not a traveler (we had to stop to feed him twice both ways, and it's only a 5 hour trip), but Sarah & Ben's new place is beautiful! They live on a lot of land, surrounded by mountains and a pretty river.

The first day we attempted to drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway. However, the rain foiled our plans. It did end up slowing up the last few minutes of the drive and we got out to see the view. It was cold and foggy, but I think Leah was happy to get out of the car!

Then we stopped by to see Ben at work. His office is on a big farm, and they have cows! Leah loved to look at them-- of course she wanted to pet them so we had to work hard to keep her away from the electric fence!

For lunch, Sarah's friend Megan and her 2-year-old daughter Neelie came by. We had a picnic at the river. Leah's favorite thing was probably throwing rocks & sticks into the river-- the bigger, the better!! She asked to go to the river all day long!

We also went on a short walk to see an old firetruck on the property. My prissy little girl headed straight for all the mud puddles!

For dinner that night, we cooked hot dogs on the campfire!! Even Andrew had fun being outside! Both my kids love being outdoors.


We miss seeing Sarah all the time but we're so glad she sacrificed her house (and sleep) for us to visit her!

Andrew @ 9 months

Andrew weighs just over 19 lbs. (in the 25th% for his age & only 1 lb. more than he was about 3 months ago!) and is 28 1/2 inches long (the 75th%). So he is thinning out, but doesn't really feel like it when I pick him up! He has moved to 9-12 month clothes, at least on top. Opposite of his sister, his things fit him well around the waist but end up being too long-- i.e., he's bigger around the waist & shorter. He has much more hair, but still no teeth!!













He mostly sleeps through the night now, but is still getting up very early, around 5am! Sometimes he'll go back to sleep, but usually he's AWAKE. (He goes to bed between 7 and 8.) He will still wake up every once in awhile at some point during the night and just scream. I usually let him cry it out, and he usually won't cry longer than 5-10 minutes, but each night he doesn't seem to learn that I'm not going to come get him. I've also found he needs a little extra rocking before bed to help him get to sleep and stay asleep-- goes back to the extrovert thing-- he needs time to wind down!
















He's doing much better with solids now, usually eating a whole jar/ tub of Stage 2 food per meal. He doesn't really favor any one type of food over the other and will really eat anything. He has also taken off with finger foods-- I'll give him a few cereal puffs or yogurt melts or something while I'm preparing his food and it keeps him quiet/ busy for several minutes while he hits at it and attempts picking it up with his pincer fingers. He usually gets most of it in his mouth, although much still ends up all mushed up inside his palm. (I even gave him some cut up pieces of a meatball the other day & he loved it!) He still nurses during the day pretty much every 3 or 4 hours, about 5 times a day total.







He also feels the need to kill his food before he eats them. Exhibit A:

He absolutely cannot sit still! He always has to be on the move. Even when I'm holding him in my lap, he's trying to bounce up and down or get out and crawl. (He really really wants to get up on his knees to crawl, but he still rocks back & forth and then falls to his tummy to scoot around!) He seems so much more mischeivous and into trouble than I remember with Leah at his age. He is naturally drawn to electrical cords and anything on the floor he shouldn't have. His favorite toys are Leah's, which are forbidden if she's around! He loves to be outside, and could be fussy all day until we go outside and he'll just sit and watch forever (especially if he has a stick to hold). He can sit up well now, but still prefers to play on his belly so he can go where he wants to go easier.

Here's a few videos of how he plays!

Yay for Andrew!

He thinks clapping is so much fun! Since he figured it out on Saturday, it's all he wants to do!

Chronicles of Mischief

Once there was a very mischievous little boy named Andrew...

His favorite things to play with were anything that he really shouldn't be playing with...

He loved to follow his mommy all around the house and bite her ankles, like a little puppy dog...

But no matter how much trouble he got into, he still looked really cute while doing it...

10 Funny Things (Leah @ 32 Months)...

I know I have done a list like this before, but I like lists. And I like Leah. And I want to remember some of the funny things she says and does. 1. She likes to pretend that big floor lamps are "scary monsters." And she wants Mommy or Daddy to "hide from it" with her. In our room, that consists of going under the covers on the bed. Beneath the covers she says, "Is it still there?," peeks out, screams gleefully, and goes back under. 2. In the morning, her usual cry is "Mommy, I all done sleeping!!" (To which I would love to reply, "I'm not!") She can also be heard saying, "My cover's messed uuuuuup!" 3. We have been learning a hymn a month in our family devotion time, and sing it at bedtime. She now knows all the words to "In Christ Alone" if you sing it along with her. And she carries a tune really well! She is also starting to make up some of her own songs now, and they can be funny!

(She can sing it much better than this-- she just acts silly outside!)

(Here she's working on a "school" worksheet from a new Tracing book I bought her to start learning how to print letters! She understood drawing the straight lines, but not so much the curved lines, like in a maze. She seemed to enjoy it-- at least the part where she got to use a dry erase marker & wipe it clean afterward!)

4. She has a growing selection of VHS movies (Disney & other cartoons), thanks to Nana and various consignment sales I've been to. She will "fixate" on one movie for a week or two until I convince her to watch something else, or bring a new one out, and then she'll move on to that one. She'd watch her weekly favorite 2 or 3 times a day if I let her! Currently, her fave is Mulan, as well as Princess Stories, which are a series of cartoons with some of the Princesses in them. Before that it was Jungle Book 2 (and to this day she still calls Andrew a Jungle Boy when he acts crazy!). Though I usually don't sit down and watch the whole thing with her (neither does she, really-- she plays while watching)-- I can probably sing the songs from all of them! 5. Though she really hates anything in her hair (bows, etc.), her Daddy has convinced her it's fun to put them in just to "show Mommy." So he'll go upstairs, put rubber bands in for pigtails or a ponytail and then make her really excited to show me. (Of course, they come out seconds later, but hey, it's better than nothing). She LOVES to be a "princess" and show me or Brett how pretty she is! 6. She apparently has a lot more friends than those friends even realize. She can play with random kids at the park for just a few minutes and when they leave or go somewhere else, she will say, "Where did my best friends go?" Or, after a Sunday school class cookout where Leah got to play with lots of kids, I heard her say, "These are my best friends!" 7. She has some pronoun trouble; for example: "She's going to she's house." or "He has he's hat on!" 8. Though she really does show great concern for her little brother most of the time (and loves to make him giggle and teach him how to get into mischief), she still hates when he goes anywhere near her toys (and all the toys in our house are hers', apparently). We have been working on sharing, though, and lately she will take him a big pile of baby toys, that she does acknowledge are his. She will surround him with them and then declare, "I was good sharing!!" And she's so proud of herself for sharing his toys with him! When he's moved on to another toy, she will tell me "He gave this to me," so happy that he "let" her play with one of his toys!

(No, I do not normally make a habit of letting my children play with electrical cords. They're actually Andrew's current favorite toy, and you can see how his sister encourages his obsession!)

9. She is able to spot even the tiniest Dora or Disney Princess or Elmo from long distances and will loudly and excitedly announce to everyone that she sees it.

10. She has started to reach the questioning age-- though she doesn't know "why" just yet, she still asks, "What's that?" or "What are you doing?" or "Where are we going?" (and sometimes even if I've told her the answer many many times-- she will ask until she learns it for herself). Though she can be whiny and not always express herself in ways I like, and though she can be irritable when she doesn't obey or do what I expect of her, Leah is a fun little girl, very bright and imaginative, and you never know what to expect!