Silly and Sweet at 25 Months

Emma loves to giggle, and most of the time can be found with her head thrown back, laughing about something.  She loves to be silly and loves to tease Lucy as well.  Emma will chase Lucy around the house yelling "ROOOAAARRRR!  I'm a big monster!" while Lucy screams, "Mom!  Emma's going to bite me!"  All the while, Emma is cracking up at Lucy's fear.  When Emma isn't pretending to be a monster, she is still chasing Lucy but will say, "Pop goes the weasel!"  Emma also gets a rise out of Will by saying, "Daddy Anne, I need you!"

I love to ask Emma, "Who loves you?" Emma responds with, "Mama, Dada, Lucy, Grandpa, Swiper" and then throws her head back laughing.  Emma's humor with Swiper has not stolen her love for both of her grandpas who she talks about all the time, especially on her pretend phone.  Here she is below reading a story to Grandpa T. while Great Grandma J. looks on.

When Emma isn't being silly, she can be found climbing.  I caught her trying to get something off of Lucy's dresser in the below picture.  No matter that the stool she chose to use is actually a rocking cradle.

Emma is just as sweet as she is silly.  The other night I was snuggling her before bed when she wrapped one arm around my neck, and her other arm around her doll Polly and said, "I've got both my girls!"  

Here Emma is below next to a patch of daffodils.  I always tell the girls that daffodils bloomed on the day Emma was born and tulips bloomed on the day Lucy was born.  Every time Emma saw daffodils this spring she would squeal with delight saying, "There's Emma's flowers born!"  

This girl has grown an inch since her birthday a month ago.  

And if it's possible, her personality continues to grow as well.

Spring Fever in April

April flew by with both girls birthdays, Will's spring break and lots of fun and projects.  Spring fever hit us in full force, and despite the winter like temperatures we rolled up our sleeves and worked hard and played harder this past month.

Let's start with the fun.  Below are the girls with Great Grandma J. at the Sunday brunch we had with Will's side of the family for the girls birthday.

The girls wanted a rainbow cake and kept changing their mind as to what type of theme would decorate the top.  I finally told the girls that I would make a surprise cake for them since they couldn't seem to make up their mind about anything except the rainbow colors.  In an effort to avoid food coloring, I made a rainbow out of fruit and found two rainbow My Little Ponies to put on top.  I may have been the most excited one when I revealed the cake to them on the morning of their birthday brunch.   

Here are Emma and Lucy with Uncle Mike and cousin Ellen enjoying a story time snuggle.

I took the girls to Rochester Play (think indoor playground) with a friend of mine over spring break and ended up meeting another friend while there too.  It was crazy busy, but a great time was had by all.

We spent time at our neighborhood Elementary School playground bundled up in winter gear...

...and took advantage of the cold wind and soccer field to fly the kites the Easter Bunny brought the girls.

We even took a class on Catching Rainbows at the local nature preserve, since the girls love rainbows so much.  It was cute to seem them in a class together.  Lucy was intent on following directions and listening to the teacher while Emma was fascinated with people watching and staying as close to Lucy as possible.

Since the temperatures of April were more like winter than spring, we had an indoor picnic in the living room while watching a movie for a family movie night.

We made crafts almost every day...

...and I even had a chance to work on a craft of my own!  I decorated the shelf that Will made in Lucy's room with scalloped wood trim, mod podged fabric and a fresh coat of white paint.  Thank you Pinterest!

We did tackle some outdoor projects, although they would have been a lot easier if it had been warmer out!  Here is Will below, espaliering a pair of apple trees we planted last fall along the west facing wall of our garage.  Pretty much this means that we are going to train the trees to grow two-dimensionally along the wall in an effort to save space.  It will take several years for us to get the shape just so, but once it is set we shouldn't need to train it anymore - just prune it annually and enjoy the apples.

We also attempted to remedy a problem we are having with our chickens.  The lowest three chickens in the pecking order of our flock are literally being pecked at until they have bald spots on their backs.  This has been happening since the weather got cold but doesn't seem to be letting up now that the weather is getting warmer.  We read online that you could put aprons on the backs of the chickens to give their feathers a chance to grow back and the other chickens to forget about bullying them.  Around this same time my favorite pair of jeans ripped beyond repair.  I decided to use the comfy soft denim to make the aprons.  It was a little emotional for me to cut into my favorite pair of jeans but at least it would be going to a good cause and it wasn't like I could wear them anymore.

Unfortunately, the chickens didn't seem to appreciate the sacrifice my jeans had made for them and found a way to get out of the aprons before any healing could take place on their backs.  We are back to the drawing board on this situation.  Anyone want a set of three chicken aprons?

The most exciting project we worked on this past month however involved our latest endeavor.  I have decided to start bee keeping this year!  I have spent the last year researching the heck out of all things honey bees and have talked to many seasoned bee keepers.  I have never been afraid of bees, and I am taking this as a good sign for my new hobby.  The more I read about bees, the more fascinated and excited I became about the prospect of having my very own.  Thanks to Will who built the two hives for me, and to Lucy and Emma for not laughing at me when I tried on my bee suit for the very first time.

Ironically, I may be more afraid of the smoker that you use to keep the bees docile while I work on the hives than the bees themselves.  To tackle my fear of fire head on, I spent the month of April practicing how to light and keep my smoker smoking.  The first time I lit the smoker I started screaming when the flame rose about a foot out of it.  Will thought this was hilarious and is looking forward to seeing me handle 30,000 bees at a time.  The more I practice, the more confident I feel and I am hoping that the same will hold true for handling my bees.  I am as ready as I'll ever bee and can't wait for our bees to arrive next week!

Lucy At Four

Since Lucy hasn't had her own post since she turned three, I thought it would be nice to do a separate post on all things Lucy for each of her birthdays from here on out.  Below is a picture I took of Lucy when she was dancing to the radio with me in the kitchen.  Lucy loves to dance to music.

Lucy seems to have a grasp of the English language better than Will and I most days.  Sometimes this can be highly entertaining and at other times super frustrating!  

This morning while I was brushing Lucy's hair our conversation went something like this:  Me: "Lucy, hold still!"  Lucy: "Well, I didn't hear a please OR a thank you mom."

The other day while Will was driving in the car with the girls, Lucy told him from the backseat: "I love Mama to the moon and back.  And I love Emma to the sun and back.  And I love Luke to heaven and back.  And I love you Dad to the sidewalk and back."

When Lucy is excited, she will yell "Don't say another word!"

In the below picture, I went into Lucy's room in the morning to start our day and this is how she greeted me, yelling "STOP!" while holding a miniature Stop sign from the train table.

Lucy loves picking flowers and arranging bouquets.  One of the benefits of having a "lawn" and not grass, is that the weeds grow a lovely assortment of flowers all season long.  Here Lucy and Emma are below picking me a bouquet.

Lucy loves playing with Will and loves swinging too.  Put those things together, and this is what you get.

Lucy loves being creative with her art supplies.  I've noticed that she doesn't "do" coloring books as you or I would.  She uses scissors, tape, staples, markers, crayons, colored pencils and glitter sticks on coloring books like I have never before thought possible.  She is definitely an outside of the lines kind of girl, and seems to be at her happiest when she is creating on her own terms.

Lucy's other favorite past times include building with her Duplo Legos, listening to stories and looking at books, and playing with her dolls.  She gives birth to twins multiple times a day, and loves having visitors come to admire her new babies.  She loves telling us their birth weights and if they are sleeping through the night or not.  She is a great mommy and is very proud of all of her babies.  Sometimes it is hard to show excitement when we've done the make-believe role-playing for the thousandth time, but it is always worth seeing Lucy's happiness when we do.

Lucy is a fun loving girl who knows exactly what she wants.  She enjoys making deals with us and negotiating situations to her advantage.  Life is never dull with our girl and we are looking forward to seeing her grow and change over the next year!

Happy 4th Birthday Lucy!

On Sunday Lucy turned four.  In the days leading up to Lucy's birthday, it seemed to me as though Lucy was already four.  Imagine my surprise then, when I went into Lucy's room to snuggle my three year old for the last time on Saturday night and I started crying when I realized she was already asleep.  It had taken me too long to tuck Emma in and I didn't get to have our special "chit chat" as Lucy calls it on her birthday eve.  Mom guilt kicked in, and I felt the full weight of her quickly disappearing childhood hit me in full force.  I wrapped her presents that night, still wiping away tears and wondering where the last four years had gone.  Lucy overheard me talking to Will about it the next day, and she told me that she promised to stay up for our chit chat on the night before her fifth birthday.  Fortunately, my good cry the night before made way for only happy emotions on her birthday.  Here is my four year old below, ever so proud to be four!

Weekend birthdays are the best.  Since Lucy's was on Sunday, we got to dedicate the entire day to celebrating her birthday.  We locked the child gate at the top of the stairs in the morning and had her wait until we were all ready to go down stairs to see her presents and start her day.  She waited as patiently as she could as we tried to wrangle her younger sister and put her in clothes.  Here Lucy is below coming down the stairs for the first time as a four year old.  Yes, I am sentimental!

As is our tradition, she came down the stairs and saw her birthday presents arranged in the living room. Despite our video camera's memory card being full and our camera's battery being dead, we were still able to capture some memories on my phone.

Lucy got her very first big girl bike, princess Duplos, sunglasses, a pillow case I made to match her bedroom, and, drum roll please.... GUM!  Lucy was super excited to finally be able to chew gum.  When she was about two, she had started asking for gum and I told her she had to be older.  At that time I didn't know how much older until she would know not to swallow it so I picked the age four, as that seemed super old and capable.  Well, she has held that number in her head ever since and I of course have had to stick with it.  Four may be on the old side in retrospect to chew gum, and I think she would have been perfectly fine at three, but I had to show some follow through!  Later on that day Lucy overheard me tell Will, "I can't believe Lucy is four!" to which Lucy piped in, "I can't believe I am chewing gum!"  She has been chewing it like a chain gum chewer ever since, and only spits it out for meals and bedtime.

Lucy requested waffles and bacon for breakfast.

After breakfast we headed to the zoo, at which point Lucy informed us that, "I'll most likely chew gum the entire way to the zoo mom."

We had a great time at the zoo, despite the fact that it rained.  The.  Entire.  Time.  Fortunately Grandma and Grandpa T. had gotten the girls umbrellas for their birthdays and we worked out a way for our earthly family of four to stay dry with only three umbrellas.  Will had to keep a kid holding an umbrella on his shoulders at all times, while the other kid held their umbrella and I held mine.  The animals didn't seem to mind the rain and we were able to see more activity than we had ever seen before.  Will is teasing me on how when we arrived at the zoo I said that I'd take rain and cool temperatures with no crowd over a hot, crowded zoo any day.  I even went so far as to say that I couldn't get over how cute our kids were with their umbrellas and wasn't the sound of the rain drops on our umbrellas beautiful?  And because there were no crowds, they were doing face painting for free!  Lucy scored a beautiful glittery dolphin on the side of her face.  Lord knows Will and I would have never paid for it, despite it being her birthday!  We really did have a nice time at the zoo despite the rain and one of my favorite memories was in the Polar Bear tunnel, watching the rain drops fall above us on the surface of the water.  It was so peaceful and calm.  And then we had to walk back to the car.  And it was wet.  And it was cold.  And it was miserable.  And would you believe there wasn't a single dry place to eat the special birthday picnic lunch we had packed?

We ended up eating our lunch in the car, looking out of the parking garage at the zoo.  And despite the fact that we didn't dare light the birthday candles we had brought to stick in the fig cookies, Lucy seemed content.  Both girls fell asleep on the way home and I think I did too.  Fortunately Will stayed awake and got us safely home where we all dried off and put on warm clothes.  We did a family snuggle under an afghan on Will's and my bed and then headed downstairs to measure Lucy on the growth chart.  She grew about three inches since her last birthday!

We had my homemade vegetable soup from last year's garden per Lucy's request for dinner with tiny little star pasta in it.  We were surprised when she requested this for her birthday dinner as we had assumed she would ask for hot dogs and mac and cheese but it turned out to be the perfect meal after a cold and wet day spent outside.  After dinner we braved the weather which had turned from rain to a fine mist and Lucy rode her bike for the very first time.

Finally, we headed out to our local frozen yogurt bar for Lucy's birthday dessert and it was a sweet ending to a great day.

That night, Lucy made a point to stay awake until after I tucked Emma in and we got to enjoy birthday snuggles and chit chatted about the highlights from the day.  She wanted me to tell her about the day she was born and I did my best to put into words the amount of happiness she has given to us and how much we love her.  Who knew that a tiny baby we were told in a dream would be a healthy baby girl named Lucy could fill such a big part of our lives.  We love you Lucy Anne!  Happy Birthday!

What Emma Loves at Two

I had so many pictures from Emma's birthday that I decided to divide up the post instead of deleting photos.  So, here is Emma at two...

Emma loves to be naked.  I found her taking a break on the rocking chair the other day and had to take a picture of my cutie.

 She also has a great sense of humor, and loves to make us laugh.  She likes to tell us we have to say "Abre!" (open in Spanish, used frequently in Dora) to get through a door she is blocking.  She also enjoys hiding things behind her back and asking us, "Which hand?"  But her favorite thing to do is tell us our, "Butt crack" is showing whenever anyone bends over - whether it is showing or not.

Emma is almost as talkative as her older sister and we sometimes still have trouble deciphering what she is saying.  In social settings, Emma prefers to observe the situation first before joining in.  After she warms up however, she is literally unstoppable and puts every fiber of her being into whatever it is that she has decided to do.  Here she is below playing with the parachute at story time - she has not completely warmed up to the idea yet.

Emma loves balls and is really good at kicking and throwing them too.  It goes without saying that she loves to climb and physically interact with her world.  I find it ironic that she is always humming the song "No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed."

Emma loves singing and can sing the words to most of the top 25 pop songs right now and when a song comes on the radio, within the first three seconds she knows which family member likes the song and points it out to us.  Her all time favorite song is still "The Wheels on the Bus."

Emma loves any sort of processed meat - hot dogs and sausage being at the top of her list.  Will and I were still making dinner when I caught her swiping a hot dog off of the table.

Emma loves most foods actually, and is always the first at the table when we say that a meal is ready.  Here she is below at her friend Grace's Tinkerbell Birthday party, wearing her own princess outfit while enjoying a slice of cake.

Emma also loves getting her hands on my phone.  It is amazing how fast she can get to the camera on there.  Here she is below taking a self-portrait.

Emma loves snuggling.  She is very affectionate and is always telling each of us in random moments throughout the day that she loves us.  She even compliments us on our attire when it seems like we are having a rough time.  The other day she had an accident and as I was cleaning up after her she said, "Mama, I like your outfit!"  Well played Emma!  I have a maternity sweater that I still wear around the house on chilly days and she loves it when I wrap her up in it.  Here we are below wrapped up in my sweater.

Emma loves our chickens.  This is a relief, because she is deathly afraid of most other animals including dogs and cats.  But she seems to have no fear of the chickens, and loves it when we let a few out in the yard so she can play with them, feed them, and boss them around.

And Emma is finally old enough for her very own apple tree!  Will made one for her over his spring break and she is so proud of it!

So far, the only thing that seems to motivate Emma is who gets to tuck her in for naps and bedtime.  Threatening the loss of a story before bed, or not getting to go somewhere falls on deaf ears.  But if I say, "Uh oh Emma, if you don't get in her right now Daddy's going to tuck you in tonight!" she comes running.  She only wants me to tuck her in which is both flattering and tiring at the same time.

She also exhibits the easy-going side of her nature by always replying to requests with "O-tay" and "Sure!"  Then she proceeds to not do what we asked.  She's lucky she is so darn cute and I am lucky that she still has those droopy, chubby cheeks for me to smother in kisses!

Happy 2nd Birthday Emma!

We celebrated Emma's 2nd birthday yesterday as a family.  Will took the day off from work and we did what we could to make the day special for Emma with all of her favorite foods and past times.  And since she is two, we spent the day watching her run gleefully around the house naked, playing outside (with clothes on) and eating things like pancakes, sausage, hot dogs, fruit, mac and cheese and of course pink cupcakes.

It took some convincing to get Emma downstairs in the morning to open presents.  Like I mentioned already, she was perfectly happy to celebrate the first hour of her birthday running around the upstairs of our house naked.  We finally pinned her down and got enough clothing on her to be decent while we took pictures of her opening presents.  

The day before Emma's birthday she started telling us how she wanted a pink baby doll for her birthday.  After the fourth time she mentioned it, we decided it would be worth a late night trip out to make sure she got what she was hoping for.  Besides the baby doll, she received a "like-new" tricycle, princess Duplos, a flower necklace, and a big girl bed complete with matching hand made pillow cases I was inspired by on Pinterest.

Here she is below eating her birthday breakfast.

After breakfast we set up Emma's big girl bed while we waited for the temperature to warm up enough to play outside.  This was more emotional for me than anyone else in the family.  Will has been pushing for this for a long time as he wants a more comfortable place to go when Emma kicks him out of our bed.  I on the other hand, was quite emotional as I put Emma in the crib one last time, and then ceremoniously took her out of the crib one last time.  Thank goodness she humored me.

In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best idea to start something new like sleeping in a big girl bed on her birthday.  Nap time was definitely a challenge and she finally fell asleep at the time she would have normally woken up.  Bedtime was only a little bit better but she didn't fall asleep until 10:30.  I woke up last night at around 4, opened my eyes and saw Emma staring at me.  I have no idea how long she was standing there, but told her next time to say something so I know she is there!

After setting up her bed, we headed outside to try out Emma's new bike.  The weather was perfect with sunny blue skies and only a slight breeze.  And although the previous two years had lots of daffodils blooming on Emma's birthday, we did find one or two cold hardy daffodils this year so I can still tell Emma that her birthday comes when the daffodils bloom.   Will surprised Emma with a message on the driveway when she came outside.

 I have no pictures of Emma riding her bike outside, as it was a full time job keeping Lucy from pushing Emma over, and to keep Emma pedaling on her own.  Lucy had some issues with all of the gifts Emma received and at one point after a "time out" was over, she told me that on her birthday she wanted all the same things as Emma.  It would have been easier if the older sibling's birthday came first but yesterday was a good learning opportunity for all of us - for Will and I to not forget other family members needs while we are trying to make one member feel special, and Lucy to realize that everything isn't about her and life doesn't always seem fair.  I may or may not have told Lucy that we were getting her a bike for her birthday, and after she learned that her attitude seemed to improve.  Only eleven more days and Lucy can have her special day too.

Around lunch time Will and I were beginning to think we either needed to separate Lucy and Emma permanently, put them down for an early nap or feed them lunch.  We decided to put them in the stroller which had a set of five-point harnesses and headed for a walk downtown.  We had a great lunch and it was the perfect change of scenery for all of us.

For dinner we had a picnic outside for the first time this year.

And for dessert, we took Emma to a local bakery and let her pick out her very own cupcake.  The rest of us also picked out our own cupcakes too and the best part was there were no leftovers to tempt us today.

 The day was not without it's surprises for all of us that is for sure!  We are so happy to have Emma as a part of our lives though, and wouldn't trade the challenges of a family of four on earth for any other life!  Happy Birthday to our sweet, cuddly, funny and loving little lady!