The Bquarium

Yes, you read that correctly. Sophia calls the Aquarium the Bquarium. HA

The Aquarium, of which we are members, just started a Toddle Thursday program called Nature Walks. We've gone to the Toddler Tuesday programs before and liked them so I thought we should check it out. Both girls had an awesome time. On this nature hike we were in search of different types of leaves on the ground to celebrate the new Fall season. When Sophia found a few leaves that she liked we got to place them under a piece of paper and then run a crayon over it to show the veins in the leaves. (See photo: that was our best one)

When the nature walk was over we strolled around in each of the buildings and on the path between them for another hour and a half. While we were walking from one building to the next Lilly only wanted to walk and Sophia only wanted to ride in the stroller, of course.

Sophia is becoming a little less camera shy than she used to be. She actually asked me to take photos of her with Lilly sitting on various benches along the path. I took at least 50 of them...and I don't think I got a nice one of both of them looking at the camera at the same time and smiling! It's hard to coordinate such a shot because by the time I'm done making an incredibly embarrassing sound to get Lilly's attention Sophia has drifted off into her make-believe world and is either "talking" to one of her friends or acting out a Diego scenario.

We had fun and plan on going back next week Thank goodness for cool memberships. See all the pictures and I warn you, there are a ton.

Big Daddy comes for dinner

Big Daddy has not been to our home since we got married - over 5 years ago. His visit was surely a treat for all of us. He arrived with gifts in tow. He brought the girls matching purple fairy princess dresses and tiaras, although I suspect Grancy was responsible for picking out such adorable costumes. (I'm now considering changing their Halloween costumes!)

Sophia was beside herself with anticipation for Big Daddy's arrival. Of course she did ask if Grancy was coming too. It just so happens that earlier in the day Sophia had her very first dental appointment. She was absolutely wonderful and even allowed them to take X-rays. They gave her a goodie bag to bring home (toothbrush, flossers, toothpaste and a rubber blue frog). They let her scratch off a "lottery ticket" and she won a $2.00 gift card to the Dollar Store. Of course I had to take her that very day. She picked out a unicorn on a stick and a squishy centipede. She couldn't wait to show Big Daddy her finds!

As soon as he arrived Sophia immediately began talking and didn't stop until her head hit the pillow that night. She took Big Daddy's hand and decided to show him where Mommy and Daddy sleep! So much for me or Will giving him the grand tour.

Lilly went to bed only a little bit after Big Daddy arrived, but I don't think we really wanted her to stay up with us because she was pretty grumpy.

Sophia didn't want the adults to be talking because she wanted to be the center of attention and show off for Big Daddy. It was really cute. Or maybe it wasn't.

When Sophia woke up on Wednesday she asked if Big Daddy was coming back.

Lilly's new words

Lilly has two new words/phrases.

BA = bone. Lilly constantly feed Sadie. She knows where bones are kept and several times per day she'll grab a bone, start yelling BA and run off to find Sadie.

GOO GIR = good girl. Lilly sleeps with her lamby and a paci. Neither one is allowed to leave the crib in the mornings, but I let her have them while I change her diaper. When I'm done we walk over to her crib and she drops her paci and then says a quick good-bye to lamby and drops him too. I always say Good Girl to her and now she's repeating me.

Other things that Lilly can do:
- Go down a slide by herself. She also likes to follow Sophia's lead and tries to climb up the slide the wrong way.
- Chew gum. Whenever she finds it in my purse she unwraps it and then shoves in the whole piece. I always take it from her and she knows that I'm not happy about her chewing gum because she takes off running away from me.
- Put her shoes on. Well, ok, maybe she can't actually put her shoes on by herself yet, but she gets an A+ for effort. She sits down, holds the shoe to her foot and literally looks like she's going to get it on her foot. She doesn't discriminate though, she loves all shoes...mine, Will's and of course, Sophia's.

Bragging rights.

So I'll just say it. I think Sophia is super intelligent. She's a sponge for information and learning how to do things.

At school the teacher works with each kid individually every day. So far Sophia has known everything that the teacher has asked her to do. She comes home with Supers and Wow and Excellent written on her pages.

First she had to identify shapes and colors. That's a piece of cake for her so the teacher moved on to bigger and better things. Each day the Mrs. Harden has her draw a line to the matching letters. She does this with ease. Now, she's tracing letters. She did the "S" for Sophia on Monday and yesterday she came home with her page of "A"s and "B"s. WOW! I think this must be impressive for her age, but I'm not sure. Maybe Grancy can weigh in on this amazing kid of mine!

Bathtub babes

The girls love to take a bath together. Sophia enjoys the company and Lilly wants to copy everything Sophia does. It's cute. Together they make quite a pair. Lilly thinks it's hysterical to stand up even though she gets in trouble. Sophia loves to take everything Lilly is playing with and call it her own.

Mommy, how did Lilly get in your belly?

Um......think think, Mom. Come up with something quick!

Well, Sophia, the stork bird put Lilly in my belly through my belly button when I was sleeping one night. She also put you into my belly. Nobody ever sees the stork. She's just like Santa Claus. (pathetic answer, I know)

Sophia then asked if the stork bird hurt Lilly with it's beak or did it just pick her up by her hair and put her in that way.

Yes, Sophia, that's exactly what happened!

Please, can I have some more?

My Pirate Piggie

The games we play

Sophia is obsessed with playing the following games and nobody knows how to play them except her. She tells us what to say and what to do.

Pirate Piggies: Mostly she pretends she's sleeping and we have to find clever ways of waking her up, but she never actually gets up! ARrrrr. I just got her a pirate costume today at one of my favorite consignment store. They were having a huge Halloween costume extravaganza. I also got her a few new princess dress-up costumes.

Diego: He's Dora's cousin. She's moved on from constantly needing to be called Dora to constantly needing to be Diego. The cat that Aunt Carole got her is Baby Jaguar (Diego's pet). In this game we have to rescue Baby Jaguar. This involves me pulling on Sophia's waist and her pulling on the cat. Sometimes we free the cat and other times we don't. We play this over and over and over and over to the point of exhaustion.

Adorable Photos..

I thought about not sharing these pictures until I had a chance to mail out copies, but they are just so darn cute I can't keep them to myself and I have no idea how long it's going to take me to accomplish the goal. Click here to view all of them. Enjoy.

Fundraisers!!

Okay, so Sophia has a fundraiser for school and another for dance class, if you can believe that! I've decided not to participate in the dance class one for more reasons than one. First of all the fundraiser proceeds will go toward a new dance floor for a completely different dance studio. And secondly they are selling Party Lite candles which go for $20 a pop. I've already coughed up enough money for dance class and don't feel the need to participate in supporting another dance studio. Enough said.

I am going to participate in the fundraiser for her preschool because 50% of the proceeds go directly to the school and I would like to extend the invitation to out-of-town family and friends. You can help earn prize credits and support the school by shopping the Innisbrook Online Store by clicking here. If you're part of our closest inner circle you will be receiving an email from Sophia about the fundraiser and how you can help. Act quickly because the sale ends on October 8th. Thanks in advance for your generous purchase.

Just FYI: Innisbrook Wraps has beautifully designed gift wrap printed on quality recycled paper, coordinating gift wrap accessories, gourmet foods and fine Helen Grace Chocolates that make great gifts, Time Inc. magazine subscriptions, and more.

Hide and Seek

Sophia and I were playing hide and seek before school today. Mostly I hide and she tries to find me. She hides in the kitchen pantry every single time and then gets mad at me if I come find her too quickly. She threw me a curve ball today when she hid inside the toy box.

Lilly playing with sidewalk chalk

I took these pictures

First Dance Class

Sophia's dance class started today at Art of Dance Academy. She and Haley are the only two kids in the class. How special for the two of them! They truly are best friends and thoroughly enjoy each other's company and silly jokes.

There is a one way window that I could peek through and I saw the girls playing a version of "Simon Says" with Ms. Monique while she taught them some ballet moves. They were giggling and jumping around a bit, but Ms. Monique does not tolerate any horseplay so she kept trying to get them to focus. And they did. WOW! I need Ms. Monique at our house. She doesn't call it discipline she calls it structure.

Both Haley and Sophia went to Ms. Monique's Princess Camp earlier this summer and remember there that the class was much longer and that there was a snack time. On the way home Sophia kept asking me why it was so short and why there are only 2 kids in the class and why they didn't have a snack.

Ms. Monique requires all the dancers to wear buns in their hair and it must be tied back with bobby pins and a hair net. Talk about strict (and unreasonable if you ask me). I'll have to practice that one before the next class. It's literally a battle every day just to brush Sophia's hair. I have no idea how I'm going to put it into a bun!

All the work they are doing in class will culminate into a Nutcracker performance on December 19th. I can't wait. They were measured for their costumes today before class started. (A side note: Sophia grew so much this summer that the ballet shoes she wore in July for Princess Camp are too small!)

I was a little bit nervous that Sophia wouldn't get a lot out of the class at this age, but after seeing her today I feel confident that she's going to love it and learn alot. If nothing else she'll learn proper posture.

First Day of School

Sophia started school today. She was so excited to go and play with the Potato Heads. When we went to the open house last week she was obsessed with them.

This year she's going in the afternoons (12:15 - 3:00). There are three other kids in her class and hopefully it means she'll get extra special attention. Her friend, Addie, is one of the kids. There is also a boy named Christopher and another girl named Adrianna. We met Adrianna at the open house and, guess what, I think she's taller than Sophia! I can't wait to see them side by side.

Mrs. Harden is Sophia's teacher this year. She was very welcoming this afternoon when I dropped Sophia off. Sophia made her a book this morning before we left. Mrs. Harden really liked it.

I got Sophia a new backpack with her name painted on it and she was very excited to put it on and get in the car and go to school. In fact, she was ready this morning and thought it was a bit odd that she wouldn't be eating lunch at school.

We arrived a bit early because I wasn't sure how much traffic we would hit in the middle of the day. We didn't hit any and it only took us 8 minutes to get there. A blessing for sure!

There is a small bench (toddler size) at the entrance to the school. Sophia sat down and I placed Lilly beside her. Don't they look adorable? There are a few more pictures to look at here.
Sophia came home with an apple picture that she colored and an Shrinky Dink apple necklace.

Happy Labor Day

My brother and his girlfriend, Ali, came to visit over the long Labor Day weekend. We hit the beach Saturday and Sunday, but Saturday was the nicer of the two days. We took the girls with us on Saturday when we went to Sandbridge Beach. Sophia and Lilly had a blast at the beach. Sophia was busy making sandcastles with a few buddies she met that day and splashing in the waves with Will. Lilly was eating every thing in sight including the sand. A great time was had by all and we all got some nice color from the sun too.

On Sunday morning Will and Daniel hit the tennis courts while Ali and I took the girls to the playground.

Take a look at all the pictures.

She's finally signing

Yesterday Lillian performed three signs for me. I've been trying to get her to do a few for the last few months and I think my persistence is finally paying off. I'm so proud of her. She did the signs for EAT, MORE and FLOWER. She can also do the sign for DUCK.

Cucumbers

Both of my kids love cucumbers. I peeled and sliced some up for them tonight for dinner. Lilly loves to dip hers in ranch dressing. She loves to dip dip dip.

When I presented the cucumbers at the table Sophia started to cry and told me she wanted the crust on hers! Ha ha ha

Princess Sophia and Princess Haley

I pooped my pants

I totally forgot about this story until Sophia reminded me earlier today. On Saturday when we were at the beach Sophia told me that she pooped her pants. I was dumbfounded. Since she's been potty trained she's never had an accident let alone a poop accident! When she told me about her poop we were in the process of moving to a new spot on the beach and all of our hands were full of beach gear. As Sophia ran ahead of everyone we could see the big lump in her swimming suit and I plotted how I was going to take care of this fiasco. When we finally arrived at our new spot I immediately pulled out Lilly's wipes and planned to put the poo into one of Lilly's extra diapers so I could toss it out. Sophia was smiling and grinning from ear to ear as I braced myself to peek in her swimming suit. Guess what? It was a huge pile of sand! It wasn't a poop! She totally tricked me (and everyone else). Later in the day I caught her shoveling more sand into her suit. Crazy girl.

Growing like a weed

Sophia is growing like a weed. I had her weighed at the doctor's office on Monday and she was 43 pounds! Yep, 43 pounds! That puts her into a size 6 clothes. To be honest I'm not sure if she needs a size 6 or a 6X yet.

I didn't have the nurse measure her height, but according to my chart she's over 42 inches. My little baby is almost as tall as me! Well, not really, but I think she'll pass me up pretty soon.

Little Miss Toothy

Lillian just got 2 more teeth for a total of 13 and you'd never even know it. She handles each one like a pro. I took her for her 15 month checkup on Monday. She's completely healthy, but we already knew that!

Here are her stats: (She's the ideal model child according to her height and weight. She's smack dab in the 50th percentile in both.)

Length: 30.5 inches (50%)

Weight: 22 pounds 11 ounces (50%)

Side note: She's really slimmed down from her 1 year appointment. In May she weighed 22 pounds 3 ounces and was an inch shorter. All that walking must be paying off. It does make me a bit sad that her chubby little legs are getting slimmer and slimmer.

A couple of smiles

Weekend

We had friends visiting from Northern Virginia, Alexandria to be exact, this weekend. Sophia had a terrific time with Ben and Katie. Their little boy, Gavin, is only 8 months old so he was a little young to play with Lilly, but she really enjoyed getting some extra attention from Katie.

We hit the beach on Saturday for a few hours and couldn't have asked for a better day. The weather was beautiful, their was a nice breeze blowing and the water was perfect. The beach was packed with activities including 2 tents with live music, a BMX competition and a surfing competition. The guys enjoyed some body boarding while Courtney and I played it on the safe side. Court got clobbered by a big wave while she was laughing at Ben for getting knocked over by one. It was hysterical. Talk about karma.

That night Sophia and "the kids" as she was calling them tried to have a sleep-over on our air mattress which was in Lilly's room. It didn't work out because Sophia didn't quite understand the concept of going to bed when there were fun kids to play with her. At my suggestion she ended up moving into her own room and was sleeping within minutes.

We had a great time with Courtney and Joe and hope to make it an annual family get together. We even tossed out the idea of going to Great Wolf Lodge with them this winter. We're keeping our fingers crossed for this because we had such a great time when we went there a few months ago.

Allergies

Will was getting ready to take Sophia to the playground yesterday when I asked if they wanted to take Lillian with them. Sophia commented that she didn't want Lilly to go because she was allergic to her. Ha ha ha

Critter

Yesterday morning I took Sophia to the Rec Center for a stuffed animal story hour called "Let's Go to the Beach". She got to bring Kitty and Lamby with her to listen to the story. Then the kids got to make a craft (Critter dressed up as a snorkler) and have a snack.

Lilly was too young to even sign up for the story hour, but she came with us anyway. She toddled around with a little girl that she made friends with.

The craft was pretty difficult for the 3-5 year olds present. First they had to color all the "clothes and accessories" which Sophia tired of after a few minutes. Then each thing had to be cut out with super dull school scissors and pasted onto Critter. Sophia helped with the pasting, but for the most part I was on my own while Sophia ate her snack!

After the Rec Center we went to the library and spent some time looking for books and playing with their toys. We found two books about Critter and 7 other books about cats and dogs. (I think we've checked out every single book they have about cats and dogs.) Sophia sure loves her animals.

It's Christmas all year round

Sophia loves her Mrs. Santa outfit and thinks of it as a costume. She wears it 3 or 4 times per week!

As we were cleaning out Sophia's closet to get ready for some new school clothes (because she's outgrown everything from last year including her shoes) we found the matching hat for the Santa dress.

Sophia thought she struck gold. She immediately put it on and actually asked me to take her picture! She even posed for me. Incredible.

**Note** Notice she's holding Lamby and Kitty. Now they both have to come with us wherever we go.

some cute pictures

She can spell ! ! ! ! ! !

Well, at least she can spell the word CAT. She knows it spells cat too. Yesterday she amazed me by sticking letter stickers on this bowl to spell the word cat. When she showed me I just about fell over. Then she added another letter to the end of it and it happened to be an S. AMAZING!!

This morning she spelled CAT with her blocks. She's also grouping letters together and trying to sound out the words. She doesn't use a lot of vowels so the words are completely impossible to really say, but I try my hardest to help her.

We made a cat mirror craft this morning before Dad and Lilly got up. Sophia is absolutely obsessed with cats and ever since Great Aunt Carole gave her "kitty" she's been extra obsessed.

I just can't resist sharing

Her baby doll

For a few days now Lilly has been carrying around a naked baby doll and a baby bottle. Boy does she love her doll. I'm not quite sure how she caught onto the idea of carrying around a doll other than she's mimicking me with her. Or maybe perhaps it's just instinctual. I've seen Lilly sharing the bottle with her doll, but for the most part Lilly sucks on the tip of the bottle herself.

She's got a particular baby doll that she's taken too and it's not her Bitty Baby, but I'm kind of glad about that because Sophia played with her Bitty doll all the time when she was younger and now Bitty's face is has black marks all over it. Lilly's doll is still in mint condition even though she's naked. For some reason Sophia undresses every baby doll that we have so I've stopped putting the clothes on them.

I love my whole family

There's a lot of love going around in this family. This morning Sophia told us that she loves her whole family. So do I.

Lilly loves to cuddle. She gives great kisses (even though they are open-mouthed (smile)) and she's still an awesome hugger.

Her own URL

www.LillianConstanceAlexander.com now works and goes straight to the Alexander blog. Speaking of Lillian. Check out this adorable video of her new dance moves. She's also singing, but I'm not sure if it's audible in the video.

Yucky Princess Sophia

This is no way for a princess to act, but yesterday when I asked Sophia to smile for a photo she stuck her finger in her nose and posed. After we both laughed about it I asked her again to smile for me. She grabbed her brush and put it over her face and smiled away for me.

Princess Sophia

Sophia's been wearing costumes all summer and she just raided a box under her bed and found two new favorites. She also found all of my old crowns and acts like royalty when she wears them. Take a look at the game that we've been playing for days now.

Even mom can make a mistake

I erased some really cute pictures and a great movie of Sophia and Lillian opening presents from Aunt Carole. She sent each of us a Boyd Bear: mine was holding a heart that read Moms are Angels, Sophia's was holding a frilly purple "Princess" pillow, and Lillian's bear was wearing a tutu because our little Lilly loves to dance. Sophia was thrilled that all three bears could be pals, as she put it.

Aunt Carole also sent a black and white cat which Sophia hasn't put down since his arrival. At first she named him Cookie, but now she's changed his name to Baby Jaguar (from Diego). She's been pretending to be Diego and rescue Baby Jaguar in different scenarios. She'll wrap her jump rope around the cat a few times and each time she gets so lucky it doesn't fall off the cat. Other times she just refers to the cat as Kitty. She sleeps with Kitty. She holds him sometimes with Lamby and sometimes chooses Kitty over Lamby. Kitty has also accompanied us on a few car trips already.

I'll preface this next part with this: Sophia always calls people by the wrong name. She gets so excited that she calls me Daddy and vice versa all the time. After Grancy left she called Ms. Sue, her swimming teacher, Grancy.

This was on the video that I erased: Sophia had opened all the boxes and she looked up at the camera and said: THANKS, AUNT CLAROLE. (This is a combination of Aunt Carole who has the perfect knack for giving Sophia stuffed animals that become her favorites and Aunt Claire who had just visited a few days earlier!) It still cracks me up when I think about it.

Sprinkler Garden...again

It's a good thing we have a membership to the Botanical Garden because Sophia really enjoys going there to cool off and run around in the sprinklers. She overheard me on the phone talking to a neighbor about going to the sprinkler garden and then begged me to take her. Since we didn't have anything planned I decided to pack up and take the girls. I should mention that it was going to be 100 degrees.

It was so sweet when I asked Sophia to hold Lillian's hand while they were walking to the spitting frogs. Sophia was going a bit too fast for Lillian and she took a nose dive. After I picked her up and dusted her off Sophia took her hand again and this time went at a much slower pace. It was a beautiful sight.

There were actually times when Sophia and Lillian were the only two kids in the whole sprinkler garden. I think most people stayed away because of the heat, but it was so refreshing I couldn't figure out why more people didn't take advantage of it. We all had fun and at the end of our two hours we ran into some friends...and so we stayed for almost an hour. The girls were both exhausted when we left and so was I. I treated Sophia to a Dairy Queen cone and then she fell asleep for a about ten minutes in the car before we got home.

I too a lot of uninspired photos.

Hegg Bake

This is a funny story.

We were invited to a brunch today. I signed up to bring an egg and sausage casserole which I was calling an egg bake when Sophia was helping me make it this morning. She helped me stir the egg/cheese/milk/oregano mixture. She repeatedly told me she didn't like hegg bake - even though I was calling it egg bake. (You say tomato, I say tomato. You say hegg bake, I say egg bake.)

We went along with our morning, got ready to go and hopped into the car. About half way to the Shepard's house Sophia shouted out from the back seat: "!!Mommy!! Did we bring the hegg bake?"