A fun Saturday

Will suggested that we do something fun like Chuck E. Cheese today and I threw my suggestion into the mix as well. I wanted to go to the mall and say Hi to Santa and get pictures. I figured it would be early enough in December that the line wouldn't be very long, but boy was I wrong. The line was no less than strollers deep. We decided to bag my idea and looked threw a few stores for our Secret Santa people and didn't find anything. Better luck next time.

My little chatterbox really had fun with the phone game at Chuck E. Cheese. It was the first time that she could actually ride some of the rides and help me out with Ski Ball. Between Will and I we won 167 tickets so Sophia picked out some junk (2 rubber frogs, stickers and a big brown bug that "creeps" down the wall).

Our trip to PA

Wow. What a trip. We had a great time in Pennsylvania and Sophia even got to wake up to snow flurries one morning. It was cold, but bearable.

We got off to a late start on Tuesday because Sophia's dance class was getting their pictures taken in their Nutcracker costumes. The dance instructor told me that Sophia did not smile for any of her individual shots. She said they got some very serious artistic shots. We'll see on the 10th when the proofs are ready. I got a few cute shots of her before the photo shoot began. I got a few good shots of Sophia and Haley hugging each other. Take a look.

After the shoot we drove straight to Grancy and Big Daddy's house for a quick overnight stay. We barely got to see them because we arrived late and headed out again fairly early on Wednesday morning.

We arrived in PA in the late afternoon. Sophia and Lilly were both anxious to get out of their car seats and run around in the house. Lilly especially enjoyed exploring Nana and Poppy's house and playing with all of Nana's toys for the very first time.

On Thanksgiving day we celebrated Thanksgiving by indulging in a wonderful meal and then opening Christmas presents. The kids couldn't have been more excited. Again, Lilly got to open presents for the first time and loved it. She didn't need any instruction, she just saw Sophia and then dove right into her presents in the same fashion.

Sophia was really beside herself when she opened up with Wonder Pets Fly Boat. She's been wanting it for a few months now. Nana was the "big winner" this season. Sophia also loved her princess costume and set of Disney princess dolls...all 6 or 7 of them! (Cinderella, Snow White, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, Pocahontas, Ariel, and the new princess whose name eludes me right now.) She also got a white princess horse. Right now she's absolutely obsessed with princess. Her favorite is Snow White and the 7 dwarfs. Santa is going to bring her the movie.

My mom and I braved the crowds on Black Friday and went to Kohl's and Target. We were in and out in less than 2 hours and even made it home with enough time to get back into bed and catch an hour of sleep. We had fun. . . or at least I did. My mom spent most of her time in line for me.

The rest of Friday was spent visiting family. First we went to visit my cousins and their kids. All of the kids are getting so big. They all played individually, but in the same room. Maybe next year they'll want to play together. Here they are in order from youngest to oldest. (Kale, Lillian, Morgan, Riley, Sophia and Cole). Kale and Morgan and brother and sister and Riley and Cole are brother and sister.

In the afternoon we visited my grandmother. Well, my brother and I visited with her while my mom played with the kids.

My mom was prepared. She had a craft for Sophia to do (with help from Mom and Nana). When we were finished our snow cottage looked really good. I was impressed with our ability to "figure it out" without any directions.

On Saturday Sophia got to decorate cookies with Nana, Poppy and Uncly Danny. She loved dumping the sprinkles on the icing, but even more so she loved showing off her creative decorating talents. I think she ate a total of one cookie even though she took bites out of three of them. Lilly, of course, finished all of the cookies she was given. . .probably 5 of them. She routinely out-eats Sophia.

Poppy and Nana had fun playing with Lilly and she fully warmed up to them by the time it was time for us to pack up and go home.

Lilly and Sophia shared a room and Lilly's crib was near the light switch. Since light switches are one of her new interests she got a kick out of turning the light on in the dark. Once she even woke up her sister in the middle of the night. Lilly woke up extra early two mornings in a row so Will carried her into our bed to sleep with us. We haven't done that since she was an infant. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing her tiny little breaths and feeling her warm body next to me.

We left on Sunday and headed back to stay with Grancy and Big Daddy. It took us over 7 hours to arrive. Not a fun trip because Sadie had rolled around in something really stinky and her stench was permeating the minivan. YUCK!

We arrived at Grancy's house in time for dinner with Rob and Christina and then we headed over to their place for a look at what they've done to it while Grancy put Sophia to bed for us.

We finally arrived home on Monday to five loads of dirty laundry and a full week ahead of us. Sadie got a bath that night and STILL smells good five days later. We're all glad to be home, but wouldn't have missed out on our chance to visit our family in PA.

Take a look at all the photos.

Too cute.

First words

Lillian said her very first unprompted word(s) yesterday. I put her into her car seat and was getting ready to shut the door when she started pointing and saying something. I listened very carefully to what she was saying and then I looked at what she was pointing at on the passenger seat. She was saying HEAD PHONES and it sounded exactly like HEAD PHONES. I was amazed. Of course, she wanted Sophia's headphones so she could hear the Tom and Jerry movie in the DVD player, so I don't know how happy I should be...but I'm ecstatic.

Yesterday while Sophia was in school Lilly put on this crown. She wears it around her neck thinking it's actually on her head. She does the same thing with sun glasses. So cute.

Their half birthdays. . .

Yesterday was Sophia's 1/2 year birthday. She's now officially 3 and 1/2 years old. Lilly only has two more weeks until she's 1 and 1/2 years old. The girls are really becoming friends now. It literally took 18 months for Sophia to warm up to her little sister, but we've reached the beginning of something really special, I can just tell.

Family shots

We really need to have a picture taken of the four of us. We have lots of me with the girls and a of Will with the girls, but not very many of the four of us and definitely not in the last 6 months!

These ones were taken this morning. The girls and I were off to church and Will was off to chop down the fallen tree in our driveway. He was just finishing up as we pulled into the driveway three hours later. Perfect timing!

Sophia and Will went to a neighbors house for the Redskins game while Lilly and I stayed back so she could take a nap and I could putz around the house. Another instance of perfect timing because Lillian woke up a minute before Will arrived home. I immediately left the house to go on a run. I felt like I was kid-less all day. It was a nice change of pace.

Cameron's birthday party

Sophia and I went to Cameron's 4th birthday party this afternoon. We pulled up to an enormous princess bounce house. Sophia loved it and wasn't even scared. (yay!) She's definitely gaining some confidence and bravery the older she gets.

Cameron, Addie, Sophia and Haley all had fun playing in Cameron's bedroom after most of the guests had left. The only way I could bribe them to sit on the bed together for this photo was to tell them each to grab a stuffed animal, a "stuffy", and sit down on the bed with it. All four of them grabbed one and hopped up for a photo. It only took 6 takes.

It's still raining

Day one: It's a warm rainy day. Not too bad.

Day two: The worst of it is rolling through today. Winds of 70miles per hour. Our neighbor's tree fell down in our driveway. Thank goodness the Exploder is in the shop or the tree would have fallen on Will's car because the truck is usually parked in front of Will's car. We lost power for almost 2 hours early in the afternoon and then again at 6:00 PM. It's a good thing I have a million candljavascript:void(0)es. Our entire first floor was fully lit. Will and I finally went to bed at 10:30 and the lights still weren't on yet. (I was bitter that I missed my favorite TV show, Project Runway. Hopefully I can catch it on a rerun.)

Day three: We woke up without power and it's still raining! The lake behind our house is dangerously high on the opposite side from our house. We got our power back on at noon. I drove Sophia all the way to school only to discover that they didn't have power either so they were closed today. In the process we must have gone through a foot of water and past at least 5 houses that got flooded and were sitting in water. It's really flat here.

Will took these photos this afternoon.

The Hokey Pokey

Sophia knows the Hokey Pokey. She was singing it in the bathtub the other day. By the time I actually ran downstairs to get the camera to film her, she didn't feel like singing anymore...surprise, surprise! Here's what I was able to get:



Once she realized I was video taping her she quickly turned nasty and started fighting with Lilian. Take a look:

Coastal Storm Brings Awful Weather

Yep, we're getting POUNDED with rain. A full blown Nor'easter. The schools are all canceled today and it's really miserable outside. On a cheerier note, Sophia loves to play in the rain and yesterday morning she got all decked out in her rain gear and went outside to have some fun. The fun didn't last long and she was back inside within a half hour. I think it was too windy for her.

We had a fun day inside not doing much of anything and today will be more of the same. Maybe we'll make a cake. Speaking of cake, here's a conversation I had with Sophia yesterday:
Sophia: Mommy, do Moms get presents on their birthdays?
Shirley: Some Mommys do.
Sophia: Oh. Will you get a cake for your birthday?
Shirley: Who's going to make the cake? You and Daddy?
Sophia: You're the cooker, Mommy. You have to make the cake.
(I laughed so hard and her calling me the cooker).

In the afternoon Sophia and I played school while Lilly was rummaging though their bathroom drawers. At Sophia's parent/teacher conference last week Mrs. Harden told me that Sophia is ready to get her first phonics book and start learning how to read, BUT she can't put her into the book until Sophia can write her upper case letters. Mrs. Harden must have said it 10 times...she's ready to read! We've been practicing writing her letters at home, but I'm sure she listens to Mrs. Harden better than Mom or Dad. She goofs off every time I try to work with her. I bought her a few phonics story books and we've been reading them to her at night.

Back to our pretend school yesterday:

I wrote the word C-A-T on her chalkboard and she immediately said CAT. Wow, I thought. I said how about this one and I immediately wrote the word R-A-T underneath C-A-T. Sophia shouted out BEAR! HA HA

One more thing about Sophia's parent/teacher conference. Mrs. Harden stated a number of times that Sophia is really bright. She came into the year knowing her shapes, colors, letter and their sounds, and numbers. She can count all the way to 30 (not something a lot of kids her age can do). Mrs. Harden was especially please by her ability to rhyme words too. She said not many kids can do that at age 3. Sophia was described as a sweet little girl with two very opposite sides: One is sensitive "boo hoo" as Mrs. Harden put it and the other side is "domineering" at times. I had to completely agree with Mrs. Hardens synopsis, but all in all I'm so happy that I got a fantastic report about Sophia, my big girl.

Bathtub songs

Listen to my other natural-born performer. Lilly does an awesome rendition of "The Wheels on the Bus" in the bathtub and then she shows off some of her words.

My girls

Tried to get a good picture of the girls at the aquarium yesterday when we went for a nature hike. The girls had a blast, but didn't get a good closeup of them together. You can tell they were having "fun" together. Take a look at the photos...

Why am I awake at 4:30 in the AM?

This is completely unlike me, but I can't sleep so I decided to come downstairs, have some coffee and blog about it. The coffee is because I know it's going to be a long day and the blogging is because I need to vent!

Since Will is out of town for the night Sophia asked me to sleep with her in her teeny tiny full size bed. It's actually a great size bed for two people, but she likes to squirm and wriggle all night long. I've slept with her before and never noticed it, but this time I swear I felt her touching me all night long. It was either a foot or a knee or a hand or something. I'm not the kind of person that likes to be cuddled or touched when I'm sleeping and she just wouldn't leave me alone. At one point I woke up to her scratching my back with ONE finger. Strange.

I went into my room before I headed downstairs and I found Sadie sprawled out on my side of the bed. It kind of stinks that my dog gets to sleep in a California King size bed while I'm down here wishing I could sleep. Actually it's pretty nice to be the only one awake enjoying some peace and quiet.

Next I will take a long shower in silence. I can't wait to relish every single second of it. Normally I only have a few minutes in the morning to shower and get ready for the day because if I don't do it while Will is getting ready for work then I'm fighting two kids opening the shower door, rummaging through my stuff and just getting into trouble.

So I say hello to Thursday! Please be a good day.

Sophia jumping in the hay

I just found this video. It was taken when Nana and Poppy were here and we went to Hunt Club Farm. It's cute...you can see Sophia having fun in the large haystack.

I tried...

I mentioned before that I've been trying to get a photo of the girls in their matching purple princess costumes. Well, so far I haven't been able to. This photo is as close as I've come. They both had their dresses on over top of their clothes yesterday, but wouldn't let me snap a shot of them together. I got a few separates. Take a look.

Snow White and the two dwarfs

GRUMPY
HAPPY

A rough day

Not for me. For Sophia. She bit the side of her tongue this morning and literally cried about it all day. Probably every 1/2 hour she remembered that she bit it or perhaps she kept re-biting it, but like clockwork she would cry out that her tongue hurt.

If that wasn't bad enough, Will is on an overnight work trip so she didn't have Daddy to read her stories tonight and tuck her into bed. That's truly one of the high points of her day.

On top of that she suddenly became scared to go to bed. The going to bed process took almost an hour tonight because she was so worked up about monsters, spiders, ghosts, dragons, bats & bad, scary things. I guess I blame Halloween for her new fears or maybe it's just a 3-year old phase.

The only thing that seemed to go right in Sophia's world today was that she was the line leader at school. This is a coveted position and she looks forward to it every M/W/F.

Tomorrow I'm going to her parent/teacher conference at 10 and then we're trying to get to the Aquarium by 11 so we can go on their adventure hike. We've gone once before and she and Lilly both loved it. We've got Sophia's dance class from 4-5 and that always proves to be a fun time. Fingers crossed that tomorrow is a better day or at least her tongue is healed.

Halloween Party

Our party was a huge success. All of the kids had so much fun, in fact each mom emailed me the next day and told me so.

I didn't take very many pictures, but the ones I did take are on flickr.com. You can see them here.

She was the loudest kid!

These videos are from Sophia's Halloween show at school. She dressed up as a ballerina and even let me put her hair into a ballerina bun. Tomorrow she'll be the hula girl for trick-or-treating because it's supposed to be 80 degrees! (Yeah!) The Halloween show was awesome and she was the loudest kid in all of the songs that she was part of. She was really hamming it up on "stage". A natural performer.

Chris is the boy on the left. Adrianna is the girl in the middle. Addie wasn't at school today.

Halloween Festivities

We've got a big weekend planned (again). On Friday morning we're going to the Rec Center for a Halloween Parade. I think the format goes like this: open play for 1/2 hour, snack and craft for 1/2 hour and then a trick-or-treating parade from the Rec Center to the Library. Fun fun.

Sophia's got a parade at school at 12:45 and then a special Halloween party. All of the food at the party will be orange in honor of the holiday. Sophia's bringing Cheetos and Halloween cupcakes that we made/decorated today. She's also giving the three other children a treat bag filled with candy and goodies.

I'm not sure what her costume is going to be for these two parades. If it's nice she wear her hula outfit or maybe her ballerina outfit. I'm leaning toward the ballerina outfit, but we'll see what she wants to be. (Probably a princess)... The best thing about Friday is that Will is going to stay home from work so he can come with us.

On Saturday we're having a Halloween party at our house. We will have a total of 24 people - 12 kids (all ages) and 12 adults. I've got some fun games planned for the kiddos. I put up cobwebs and different types of pumpkins all over the house. It looks very festive and Sophia is beside herself with excitement. The fun starts at 3 and then we're going to go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood together.

On Sunday we're going to Zoo Boo at, guess where, the Zoo. We've gone in the past and it's been really fun. Tons of vendors will be there handing out candy and trying to get us parents to sign our kids up for various classes. We'll pass, thank you. We've got enough activities already. This will be an extra special visit to the Zoo because Sophia just finished a month of studying zoo and jungle animals at school. A visit to the Zoo is just what the "teacher" ordered.