Gotta love creativity

After I was done with the laundry both girls climbed into the basket. The fun didn't last long, but at least I got a cute picture.

Snow buddies

Snow update

It's snowing!!!!! Sophia is beside herself. She can't wait to get outside and play. I'm volunteering Will for that fun activity while I stay indoors and keep warm. Afterall, that's why we live at the beach.

Snow

It's supposed to start snowing tonight overnight and continue through tomorrow night. We're expected to get 12 - 18 inches. Should be a fun day for the girls.

Sisters and friends

I was trying to get a cute picture of the girls today so I asked Sophia to put her arm around Lillian while they were sitting on the couch surrounded by Sophia's stuffed friends. (Side note: From day one Sophia has loved stuffed animals and so far Lilly prefers baby dolls.)

I didn't get a good closeup picture of them, but don't they look adorable? Lilly was so tired she just collapsed on Sophia's leg - and Sophia let her!

How big is Lilly?

She's sooooooo big.

She's really growing up . . . and way too fast.

Within the last two days she's figured out how to climb up onto the kitchen chairs and stand up. This new talent is quite scary to mom. I can turn my back for only a second and she's already standing on the chair. It's cute how she gets up there. She uses her arms to pull herself up instead of using her legs. I think we may have a climber on our hands.

She also loves drinking out of a real cup. See the before and after below. She's so proud of herself.

All dressed up

Sophia thought it would be a good idea to play dress up with Sadie. She put a headband on the dog to "make her look pretty". Sadie kept the headband on for a good hour. She's such a good dog.

It was raining

It was raining so Sophia dressed herself yesterday morning and decided to go outside to play. She's crazy if you ask me.

Isn't she pretty?

Play date with Haley and Carlie

On Tuesday my friend Michelle dropped off Haley (Sophia's friend) and Carlie (Lilly's friend) for a few hours while she got her hair highlighted and cut. I know my girls had a fantastic time with their friends. Sophia and Haley played dress up and princess the entire time. Sophia hasn't taken her Snow White dress off for the last three weeks so that's the costume she wore and Haley wore the other Snow White costume that no longer fits Sophia. They quietly played together for three hours. I'm serious. I never heard a peep out of them. Neither did they make a mess. They have wild imaginations so I can only guess how they were acting out princess scenes.

I spent my time refereeing Lilly and Carlie. Well, that's not completely true. They loved playing in the ball pit together. You should have heard them laughing at the other one. They both love baby dolls and seemed to each want the one the other had.

We ate lunch and did some painting too. I'd call our VERY first drop off play date a huge success. Of course Sophia wanted to know if it was going to be a sleep over. She keeps asking me when she can have one.

My little Picasso

More about Lillian

More Lilly Words

NO THANK YOU - She mostly says this when she doesn't want to eat what I'm offering.

NI - This is how she says good night.

TEE - Short for brush my teeth. She loves to brush her teeth.

I've noticed that she can say the first two letters of each words that she repeats/says (like NI and TEE above). She does sing her little heart out though. She knows the ABCs, The Wheels on the Bus, the I Love You Barney song, Row Row Row Your Boat and Happy Birthday. Oh yeah, and she can count to 10 with a little help. She can get to 3 on her own.

Tantrums - Lilly's new favorite afternoon activity

For the past two afternoons when she wakes up from her nap she's been throwing a temper tantrum for an hour. Nothing consoles her. She doesn't want to be held, but if I do pick her up she doesn't want me to put her down. She basically stomps her feet and cries alot. If I offer her a drink she throws it on the ground. The first day she was having such a fit on the floor that she scooted herself completely under the couch. I had to laugh just to muddle though the crying. I'd post the movies, but I don't want anyone to think I'm cruel for taping her when she was crying her eyes out.

Lilly is just the cutest thing ever.

She's talking. Well maybe I should say she's repeating ALOT and talking a bit.

Here's some of her favorite things to say:

BARYEE - This is her way of saying Barney. She loves Barney as much as Sophia did.

THANK YOU - She's so polite.

BABY - What she calls all of her baby dolls.

WHERE.ARE.YOU - This is all one word, but she walks around looking for BABY or one of us and says WHERE.ARE.YOU

HUNG.REE - (It sounds like 2 words - hung and ree) - This is her way of saying hungry.

PHONE - She loves playing with phones.

PAHI - Paci.

CUP - She says this when she wants a drink.

Want a little chuckle?

Today Sophia and I were playing with her Snow White/Seven Dwarfs cottage. It came with a wheel barrow and a few other stand alone accessories. I was Sleeping Beauty and Sophia was Snow White so I asked her if I could put the wheel barrow outside instead of it cluttering the cottage. Snow White said sure. A little while later when the dwarfs came home from work Snow White told Sneezy not to trip over the weird barrow outside. HA HA HA

Christmas Eve in Virginia Beach

I was just looking back and realized that I never wrote a post about or posted any pictures from our very first Christmas Eve at home. It was awesome.

We went to church and then went to a neighbor's house for a holiday party. We enjoyed a nice spread of food and then came home to prepare our plate of cookies for Santa and to spread reindeer food in the backyard. Sophia thinks that Santa shared the cookies with Rudolf, but Santa really did eat all the cookies by himself. I had to remind him to leave a few crumbs.

I lugged all of the presents out from their hiding spots and then we hit the sack because we knew it was going to be an early morning.

When she woke I asked Sophia if she heard the reindeer on the roof. I told her that I had. I could tell she was a bit disappointed that she hadn't heard them too.

Next year...

4:00 am

Since we got back from our trip to Northern Virginia Sophia has been coming into our room at 4 in the morning and asking to sleep with us. Of course she comes to my side of the bed and asks me. I don't even think Will hears her. She crawls in between us, but she shares my pillow so it's not like she's really sleeping in the middle of the bed. It's funny. Will gets his whole side of the bed and I have to share my side with Sophia at the top and Sadie at the bottom by my feet. Talk about cramped, but I can't complain one bit. I love my family.

In my non-professional opinion...

Sophia must be a math genius just like her dad.

She loves math problems and counted all the way to 100 last week. I actually never even thought to ask her to do it, but Cynthia told me that Will counted to 1,000 when he was only 3. When she told me the story I immediately wondered if Sophia could count to 100. Well, she can with a little help. I had to tell her the words forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety, but she knew the pattern to use to get to the end of each sequence. Before she turns 4 she'll be able to count to 100. (smile)

At school Sophia aces the math papers. She can identify how many objects are grouped together (up to 12) and then find and circle the corresponding number.

She remembers numbers extremely well too. Will showed her how to get to channel 105 (Noggin) and she always repeats one zero five to me when I'm changing the channel. She also knows the last 4 digits of her phone number.

She's one smart cookie if you ask me.

Magic mirror on the wall,

Who's the fairest of them all?

Snow White, of course! And Sophia literally wears her Snow White dress every single waking second. She wears it until she gets to school and then I take it home with me. She's getting quite good wielding my broom too.

Addie's 4th birthday party

It's hard to believe that Sophia's friends are all turning 4! It'll be her turn in only 4 months.

Addie's birthday theme was cooking. Each of the girls got a homemade apron and they decorated their own chef hat. They made pizzas by rolling out the dough, spreading the sauce and then adding their toppings. They also decorated cupcakes. Sophia ate two of them. She didn't even have one bite of pizza. Just 2 cupcakes.

Here's a picture of all the birthday goers. Most of them have their aprons on, but Sophia refused to wear hers (I don't blame her because it was a tad small). She wore one of Addie's costumes the whole party.

Random videos from last night

Santa brought Lilly a ball pit for Christmas and she likes turning on the music and then taking a lap. By the time she cycles through to the song that she likes she can barely get up and make her lap before the music ends. I think it's better in person.



The next video is Sophia "hogging" the camera.



This last video is of Lilly singing her ABCs. I think we've all heard her do it before, but this is the first time I've gotten it on film. I think she makes it all the way to V.

Our New Years Picture

The Wizard of Oz

During my senior year of high school I was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz musical. I have very fond memories of the show and was lucky enough to receive all of the characters as Christmas ornaments. I have a tiny little tree that I put them on every year. Sophia was intrigued by them this year, but didn't know the story.

At dance class yesterday afternoon Sophia decided she wasn't going into class again, but while we were waiting around watching the class she noticed a Wizard of Oz poster on the wall. (Side note: even though we are paid through the end of January, I am not taking her back to class. It's a waste of our time and I literally have to drag her out of the car. I don't want to be "that" mom.) When we got home she asked me to get out the ornaments for her to play with because she lost her TV privileges. Luckily they were in the one bin that I hadn't had a chance to put away yet.

She's been asking questions about the story for about 12 hours now. She claims she never wants a TV in her room because she doesn't want to watch the Wicked Queen part. Will and I have been singing the songs. She wants to watch the movie....Mom, can you please mail me the VHS tape of the musical? (Another side note: Our neighbors have a converter that will take VHS tapes and make them digital files. So we can preserve it forever.)

Ok, we're finally back to our "normal" routine.

We've been home since early Monday morning and it's taken us until this evening to fall back into our normal routine. We just spent 6 frigid, but lovely days in Northern Va. visiting Will's entire family.

Sophia was in Grancy Glory. Lilly was being a little Dora the Explorer. Then the Kansas cousins arrived and Sophia instantly turned a bit shy. Madeline asked Sophia to play right away and the two of them became quite good friends on that very first day.

By late afternoon they were outside sliding down the hill together on a cardboard box. I think Sophia was excited to have an "older girl" pay attention to her. She adores older girls and Madeline is the perfect age. I think Terra is a bit too old to enjoy hanging out with a three-year old.

Sophia was thrilled to see and play in the snow. She and Will spent some quality time sledding. Sadie joined in the fun too. Heck, I even went down the hill a few times with her.


As quickly as Madeline took to Sophia so did Terra to Lillian, but by the end of the week Lilly and Jack were playing magnets and trucks together. I even saw them give each other a hug. At times they were chasing each other around the house and other times they were imitating each other. It was completely entertaining.

One day we went to Chuck E. Cheese. It's always a big hit for my girls. Sophia used her tokens with Grancy. Will, Lilly and I played lots of ski ball to win enough tickets for Sophia to win a bag of cotton candy, four suckers and some stickers. Lucky girl!

One afternoon Sophia wanted to have a parade with everyone. She found some colored ribbons in the garage and doled out the colors to a few suckers. I know better than to have a parade with her because they literally last all day. This time she managed to keep it pretty quick on that frozen day. It was one of the colder days, but she still led them up and down the driveway a few times. I tried to get it on video:



Wednesday was an incredibly fun day. We went to the very tippy top of the Washington Monument. Each view was better than the next, but I think the side facing the Lincoln Memorial was my favorite. We managed to keep our entire group (5 kids and 5 adults) together the entire day. This is an especially amazing feat considering that we navigated through a massive sea of people at one of the Smithsonian cafeterias.

New Years Eve was spent at Rob and Christina's place playing Rock Band (or something like that). We took turns and had a fun night.

Oh yeah and the best part: we celebrated sans children. Can you say Happy New Year!? Thanks Grancy and Big Daddy!

While there were many, many fond memories from our Christmas visit with everyone, I think there are a few that really stand out.

Here are my favorite
Memorable Moments:

* Despite losing power on Friday night (at dinner time) we all managed to look good in our holiday family photo (seen above).

* Lilly finally started calling Sophia something. She's settled on SIA, but sometimes it sounds like SHIA. We'll see if it morfs into anything else.

* When asked how she could tell her cousins apart Sophia replied by pointing out that Terra is the one with polka-dots on her face. The polka-dots are really freckles. It's funny how a three-yr old thinks.

* It was the year of repeat gifts: knives, robes, ruby rings(smile).

* Like mother-like daughter: Mom slept through Avatar and Sophia slept through Princess and the Frog.

* Finding the penny in the Find It! game.

* Sophia's scooter and music show.

* Lilly and Jack playing like old pals.

* Delicious grasshoppers - every night. (Yes, I did gain at least 5 pounds from these alone).

* Will forgetting his lap top. He realized it when we were an hour away from home. We turned around and drove back to get it. We had to. Finally got home at 3 AM.

Can't wait until our next Christmas together...didn't we say it would be a destination Christmas? Anyone up for Disney?

Take a look at the rest of the pictures.

I found the penny!