The helping song.

The leaves are finally falling off the trees and Sophia wanted to help rake them yesterday afternoon. Please note: She only wanted to help rake them off the street curb - NOT the yard! Stubborn! I raked a pretty big pile of leaves for her. She was amused for the first 5 jumps and then she thought spreading the leaves out all over the yard was way more fun.


Today when I picked her up from school I noticed her shoe were on the wrong feet. It didn't seem to bother her when she walked, but it really looked strange. She told me she took them off and put them on all by herself. She was so proud. So cute.

Aubrey enjoyed hanging out in the back of the minivan while we raked.

HOLY S**T

Will left to go out of town this morning until late Wednesday night and it didn't start off so hot. Before he had even left the house Sophia had stumbled on a black permanent marker in our kitchen junk drawer! I was upstairs and when I came down to check on her (because I found her complete silence a little suspicious) I discovered that she'd been drawing on everything. Not just the 8 different wall spots, but also the top and front of the garbage can, both red throw pillows on the leather couch, the couch itself, the table my brother just made us, another table (much less nice), the marble fireplace, my Boppy pillow, the Pack-n-Play, her own face (as a cat), AND Lamby's face (she told me he was now a YAK!). Didn't you hear, yaks are making a comeback!?!

Oh man!!!!! What a mess. Here are the pictures to prove it. Poor Lamby will never be the same. He's scarred for good. I have wall and trim paint so I can take care of those messes. I also found a way to remove all the marker from the table and marble, but it's going to take a long time. Not sure about the leather couch yet. I think the throw pillows are gonners! Sophia's face and arms are looking much cleaner after a 45 minute bath tonight.

Don't take my picture

Anticipation gripped Sophia all day while she waiting patiently for to build our gingerbread house. Who knew they were so complicated? Will was 100% into building a well formed/framed home able to withstand an attack from the Little Friendly Wolf AKA the Big Bad Wolf.

Neither Sophia nor I had the patience to build a masterpiece and we began throwing mini Spree like candy on the roof to help along the decorating. It was fun watching the roof slide off and trying to save it for just ONE picture.

Our plan is to save it and eat it on Christmas day. That's going to be this coming Saturday in our house. Kind of crazy, I know, but Sophia understands that on a certain night Santa comes into the house and fills up her stocking and leaves her the doctor kit and new doggy that she's asked him for. For those of you wondering if she knows anything beyond the Santa Christmas theme. The answer is yes. Thanks to the Wiggles Sophia knows about the woman named Mary who has a baby boy. I think she knows Christmas is his birthday.

Anyway, I'm flying to Pittsburgh with the girls on the 17th. Will is driving up with Sadie on the 20th and we'll be celebrating Christmas with the Tereks. We're all leaving PA on the 23rd and driving to Northern VA for celebrate Christmas with the Alexanders. It's going to be jam packed and really fun.

Daddy and Aubrey

Just chilling out with his other little princess.

Holidaze Craze

We went to an outdoor festival today called Holidaze Craze with three of Sophia's friends: Haley, Addie and Cameron. We met for lunch first at a gourmet hot dog joint. It was a really fun day. Sophia made and decorated a gingerbread house with pastel marshmallows and fruit loops, played some games, sat in a real ambulance and played nurse with a Paramedic, wore herself out on the playground, got a super cute snowflake painted on her cheek and then screamed her head off when I wanted to take her photo with Santa. I might have screamed at the sight of this particular Santa too!

Here's Sophia playing some sort of bean toss game.


Aubrey sat in her car seat the entire time. She stayed completely warm all bundled up under jackets, hats and blankets.

Sadie licked the snowflake off Sophia's cheek when we got home. Boy was she sad/mad about it. She turned to Will and pouted, "We need to get a new dog!"

Imagine how she felt when we arrived home later that day only to find that Sadie had actually eaten the entire gingerbread house! Well, she left the milk carton frame behind as evidence. BAD, FAT DOG!

Take a look at all of the pictures.

Cat Face

She's at it again. Sophia painted her face like a "cat" again yesterday when Mom was upstairs with Aubrey. It was only water color paint so there really wasn't any mess at all.As you can tell by all the photos in the series Sophia wasn't in the mood to have her picture taken so she gave me lots of "yucky" faces.

Happy Thanksgiving a little late....due to technical difficulties

I had to get a new laptop a month or so ago because my old laptop could no longer receive a battery charge. We can still get it fixed and plan to, but in the meantime I had to get a new one. I hadn't gotten around to connecting the printer/scanner up to it yet and literally it took Will and I 4 or 5 days of pure frustration at the idiocy of Lexmark and Windows AWFUL Vista to finally get it working! Pair them together and you have a major pain in the butt, but my computer genius husband can fix anything and he got me up and running last night.

So, long story short:

I took the girls to have their photos taken in Nov because they hit milestone birthdays. Aubrey turned 6 months and Sophia turned 2 and a half going. It's a good thing we wore the pink/purple outfits first because by the time I changed them into their Santa suits Aubrey was screaming so much and Sophia had reached her threshold on listening to someone tell her to smile. (Side note: Sophia does not smile when asked! Instead she repeats the command and says it right back - SMILE). Or she'll make a goofy face or put her fingers in her mouth or pull on her clothes or look away ... well you're getting the drift by now. It ended up that I literally had to jump into the picture with them to get Sophia to sit still and Aubrey to stop crying. (Forgot to scan that photo last night so will have to do that later today).

Intended to post these two pictures on Thanksgiving, but wasn't able to. So Happy Belated Thanksgiving to all. And...moving on to Christmas. We went to see the holiday light show at the beach on Thanksgiving evening. Sophia absolutely loved it and was simply speechless which we all know is quite difficult for her. Tonight we're going to ride the tram through the light show at the Botanical Garden with Haley and Addie. Can't wait.

Where does the time go?

Aubrey turned 6 months old on Thanksgiving day. She's really sleeping much better than she was just two weeks ago. She's still not making it all the way through the night, but we're getting closer. At this point she's going to sleep between 7 and 7:30pm, I wake her up for a dream feed at 11:30pm and then she's usually OK until 5am. I'm hoping to eliminate the 11:30 and then push the 5am forward to 7/7:30am. That would be 12 solid hours of sleep and 12 solid kid-free hours for mom! (and dad).

Aubrey had her 6 week appointment last week and she's exactly in the 50th percentile for kids her age. It's amazing how different she and Sophia are -- not only do they look nothing alike, they are definitely not following the same growth path.

AT 6 MONTHS

Aubrey - 16lb 3oz and 25.5 inches and no teeth in sight

Sophia - 17lb 1oz and 27.5 inches and got first tooth 4 days before 6 months

Aubrey is trying to get up on all fours now when she's on her belly. She's working really hard to communicate these days. She just started leaning as far as she can towards what she wants when I'm carrying her around in my arms. I remember Sophia doing this too.

I've added peaches and bananas to her solid food menu and she loves loves loves the bananas. I think she still likes thawed real peaches to the baby food version. I think next up will be green beans. Hopefully she'll take to those better than the peas.

Aubrey doesn't like the exersaucer. Her legs are so short that they just barely touch the bottom so she can't really bounce in it yet. Her favorite activity at this point is to sit and play with Sophia and me on the floor. As long as she's included in our picnic or our book or our Little People games she's happy. She's started to coo and squeal out loud a lot while playing too.

November Artwork

Sophia did some really fun artwork for fall in the last few weeks at school. They made a raccoon which we've named Rocky and she knows that he likes to eat food straight out of the garbage can.

Then she made Indian corn. I think it's one of my favorite "pieces" so far.

I also really like the Indian guy because when I picked her up from school that day she told me she drew his smile. It's it a fantastic smile?

I'm assuming she also put his eyes on all by herself as well. I looked around at the Indians her classmates had made and I have to admit that hers was one of the better looking ones.

She made the little turkey at school. We call him Fat Turkey. The larger potato looking turkey was created by yours truly at a play date at Haley's house two weeks ago. The brown potato looking body is Sophia's feet - outline traced, cut and glued together. The "feathers" are her hands - outlined traced, cut and glued on. Imagine tracing and cutting all those pieces while holding a squirming 6 month old! It's no wonder I glued the hands onto the bottom of the turkey body instead of the top! Oh well.

Funny

We've all heard of a "rabbit in the hat", right? Well how about a "carrot in the shoe"?

I gave Sophia 2 mini carrots to hold her over before dinner on Friday. She really wanted chips, but I said no. She protested that she didn't want the carrots! I told her to eat them! She screamed NO! I guess she meant it because later that evening I found both mini carrots shoved into her shoe!

Indian Headband

Yesterday Sophia's craft at school was an Indian headband. She was really pleased to tell me all of the feather colors.

Typically when Will arrives home from work she runs to the frig to show him her craft from school. Yesterday she was irritated that he took the headband off the fridge to try it on. NO NO NO DADDY!!!!

Jingle Bells

Goodness, what a fantastic memory my little Sophia has! Or....maybe she's learning some "bad" songs at school, but I doubt it.

For a while she didn't like riding in the stroller for long walks, but Sadie, Aubrey and I enjoyed it. To make it more enjoyable for Sophia I would sing songs to her. Usually we got stuck on Old MacDonald and the ABC's, but one day I sang the Alexander version of Jingle Bells for her. It went something like this:

Jingle bells
Aubrey smells
Mommy laid an egg
The Dad-mobile lost a wheel
And Sadie ran away.

Then we sang the other bad version:
Jingle bells
Batman smells
Robin laid an egg
The Bat-mobile lost it's wheel
And the Joker got away.

During Sophia's quiet time today I heard her singing this:

Sophie goes to school

This photo was taken on one of Sophia's school days. She loves to get dressed up and go to school. Each day in the car we talk about what she's going to do in school that day and we decide what she's going to tell Ms. Lisa and Ms. Dawn when she gets to her classroom.

Last week I picked up an extra large tub of pretzels from BJs for her to take in to share with the class for their snack. She was so proud to carry them in with her that day, but when I picked her up to go home she started to cry because she wasn't bringing the pretzels home with her.

Aubrey weighs in on solid foods

YUM
- sweet potatoes
- carrots
- frozen strawberries
- frozen peaches

YUCK
- peas

TOLERABLE
- peas mixed with sweet potatoes

Finger Paints

Ever since Sophia dressed up like a cat for Halloween she's been really excited about painting whiskers on both of our faces. In fact, the other night she painted some on my face with purple eyeliner after her bath. I forgot (and Will didn't think to say anything about it) and walked out the door to go to pick up dinner at Chili's. The whole way home I wondered why the girl acted so strange toward me when I was paying for our food. When I got home and saw my face in the mirror I realized she must have thought I was a total weirdo.

I guess I should add that Sophia doesn't have a steady hand yet so my whiskers really looked like some strange war paint.

Here's how she "finger painted" whiskers on her face while I was upstairs putting Aubrey down for a nap last week!

Mommy, I see Super Letters

Super Why is Sophia's new favorite TV program. It's a group of four characters that reinforce the alphabet, reading and letters in Story Book Village on PBS. Each episode is about a different fairy tale. Sophia now knows Little Miss Muffet, the Three Pigs, Jack and the Beanstalk, Humpty Dumpty, etc.. Sophia absolutely loves acting out the fairy tales and finding letters all over the place. Now every time we're driving in the car she spies letters and numbers all over the place - on road signs, buildings and even cars.

I appreciate her yelling out, "Mommy, I see a 4 and a 5" when I'm driving because I know that's the speed limit sign. I'm always going faster than the posted limit.

Aubrey in the exersaucer

This is the one time Aubrey actually enjoyed being in the exersaucer. Of course, for Aubrey, everything is better with a little Sophia!

Aubrey - 5 and 1/2 months old

Aubrey is now eating some solid food. She's gobbling up her rice cereal and in the last few days I've introduced sweet potatoes. Each time I offer them she acts like it's the first time she's tasted them, but then remembers and eagerly eats the whole bowl full.

She's got a funny piece of long hair that just keeps on growing. It's on the left side by her ear. The hair on the right side has fallen out. Doesn't she look a big goofy? And below her is her goofy sister at 5 months old. It looks like she had already lost most of her baby hair.

My birthday card

Sophia (and Will) made me a birthday card. How sweet.

The front has tiny bits of toilet paper glued all over it. The inside has a perfume scent insert from a magazine glued to it.

Playing at home on Friday

Friday was a rainy, ugly day so we didn't leave the house! We played all day. We had a fun Girls Day at home. Here are the pictures (and movies) to prove it.

Sophia stayed in her pajamas for half of the morning. She was trying on her Dora hat and playing Peek-A-Boo. We play it with Aubrey all the time. Then Sophia decided she was going to put on her boots and coat and go out to play in the rain.



Sophia just discovered my "secret" drawer in the dining room buffet. This is where I have a stash of fun things like Play Doh and markers to play with and other things I'm saving for her until she's a little older. Now that she's discovered it, she thinks it's a free for all. She even pulled her stool over to get a birds eye view and have a browse on her own. She's asked several times to FIND SOMETHING TO DO.



Here she is (below) dressed up and waiting for Cinderella to pick her up for a tea party they were going to have with Snow White. She picked this out all by herself - and she even asked for some money to put in her purse! We found some plastic Barney money for her to use.

Aubrey wanted to play dress up too so we gave her a lei.



Click here a look at all the pictures.

Then this happened....

Total Opposites

These two are TOTAL OPPOSITES! Here's a short list of examples, but I could go on and on....

So far their similarities are: They will both end up with green eyes.

Take a look at all of the pictures in this series. Sophia decided she was going to pick on Aubrey...and make her cry! Is this a glimpse into the future? I hope not.

SOPHIA	AUBREY
Fell into a natural sleep schedule and was sleeping through the night at 4 months	Still gets up EVERY 2-3 hours ALL NIGHT LONG. Can you say serious sleep deprivation for Mom?
Loved the exersaucer	Doesn't enjoy the exersaucer
Needed/Still needs constant attention and entertainment	Likes to just sit and explore on her own. She's so fascinated by everything that she can entertain herself for short periods of time
Hated just sitting in the high chair to play	Loves chilling in the high chair

The Wiggles

I took Sophia and Aubrey to see the Wiggles on Thursday night. Sophia was utterly speechless for the first part of the show. She seriously couldn't believe she was going to see Wags the Dog, Dorothy (she says Dorothly), and Henry (she says Harry) the Dinosaur. When they appeared on stage she went bonkers!!! We stood in a huge line to get the Wiggles light stick that Sophia is holding in this photo.

We had great seats. We sat at the end of the second row in the upper level. Sophia was able to dance in the aisle and steps through the whole show.

Aubrey enjoyed her very first concert too.

Take a look at all the pictures.

Video with Aubrey and Sadie

Mama Sadie

Top: Sadie and Aubrey.
Bottom: Sophia and Sadie.

Halloween is over

Sophia told Will that Halloween was over because Mommy put the pumpkins away. How cute. Now we can finally move on to the next holiday season. Afterall, we did see Santa Claus at the mall in Norfolk last week! He waved to us and Sophia seemed pretty excited to see him. I hope her enthusiasm continues.

SOPHIA'S HALLOWEEN ARTWORK & SCHOOL PICTURES:

Redskins vs Steelers Weekend

Thankfully the Redskins lost and thus upheld the tradition that... "If the Redskins lose the last home game before an election then the opposing political party will win and take over with a new Presidency" or in this case "Hope for Change".

We arrived in Northern VA on Sunday afternoon and had fun playing some poker with the Alexander clan...including Rob's new girlfriend, Christina. As is turns out I woke up with a stomach bug and mostly slept on Monday. Apparently there is another tradition that was upheld too..."Shirley gets sick in November"! This will be the third November in a row that I've been sick when we've visited with Grancy and Big Daddy. The first year it was in Kansas for Mike and Misty's wedding. Last year it was at Thanksgiving. What gives?

We didn't end up going to the game that night, but Will did get to watch it on Rob's new big screen tv complete with 6 or 7 (I can't remember) surround sound speakers! I think Will is a little jealous of his younger bro's entertainment system.

Sophia had a blast, of course!

Teddy Bear Tea

On Saturday morning Sophia had our first "date" day sans Aubrey. We signed up for the Teddy Bear Tea at the Botanical Garden from 10-12. Addie and her mom, Amy, also signed up for it with us. Sophia dressed up and decided to bring her friend, Lamby. Go figure. I tried to encourage her to take a teddy bear friend since the program description led me to believe we would actually be having tea with teddy! Instead we each decorated a cookie, Sophia decorated a tea cup and a plate using the only two colors offered (you can see it in the photos) and then we instructed to go outside to explore the kids sprinkler garden (done that a million times) and then return for a story about a tea party (done that a thousand times). Can you say LAME? Amy thought so too.

We still had a good time...Sophia, as usual, loved finding and shouting out all the names of the letters on the Alphabet Path. She's really into walking on walls these days. We do it every time we take a walk in the Castleton Loop, we did it at the Library today and again last Sat at the Botanical Garden.

Aubrey tries rice cereal