Yackady Yack... ongoing.

Ellie took my blood pressure with her itsy bitsy doctor kit. When the blood pressure cuff barely fit around my arm, she said "oh you're a big girl." Nice. And then when she was done, she took everything off and said "good job sweetie."

"Mom, that spider said you weren't very nice to it" (after I squished a spider for one terrified tot)

"She's in time out because she said "no" all over the place. She cracks me up." (talking about her baby)

"Mom, are we going to Hobby Wobby? And then the grocery store? Cause we don't have any food?" (my response: yes, yes, yes) "But Mom... we have pretzels and water-yemon." (watermelon)

Julia is 10 Months!

Here is the Little Miss unloading her baby food for our short trip to Louisiana (which we are already back from... so much for blogging while I was down there). When she saw the camera she came a-crawling. Well, belly-crawling anyway.

Julia likes to poke at the eyes of her baby dolls, stuffed animals, her sister, dog, random kids at Ellie's swim lessons, whoever gets close enough. I think these pictures are a tad creepy looking...

Julia Claire is now a 10 month old (as of the 19th). And what did she do to commemorate her 10th month? She stood up in her crib at nap time! Then about 4 days after that, I walked in and she was sitting in her crib after her nap. I'm sure sitting in the crib usually comes before standing, but who follows rules at this age?

Just a bit more about Julia:

- Julia is still a delightful baby, passing out smiles to those she knows

- Still loves her big sister to pieces

- Apparently the stranger anxiety is cool at this age

- Tires easily when there's a lot of commotion (over stimulated but does not get fussy)

- We have a very enthusiastic eater on our hands. Drinks water like a champ. Breastfeeds before breakfast, before lunch, and before bed. Going to be dropping the before lunch feed during this 10th month.

- Naps twice a day (9:30 am and 2:00 pm)
- Still on the same schedule as last month, waking a bit before 7am and can barely stay up until 7pm

Seize the Day

I picked up Ellie's cup from her playroom to wash it and found that she had raided some mini scrapbook stickers. I noticed she selected this sticker from the dead middle of the sheet and left all the others. Seize the Day!

Only the biggest freaking goldfish I've ever seen.

The fish swarm the food and steal it away from the ducks. Poo.

We took the girls to Joseph Beth (bookstore with a pond out back) the other day for some duck feeding, browsing, and dinner consumption. We packed our picnic and had a jolly time. It was Julia's first time and she spotted the fish right off the bat, gnawed on Dan's water bottle, yelled at the fish, and tried escaping her stroller (thank goodness for the buckle). Ellie was surprised that the ducks were afraid of the fish (as were we) but had a good time throwing the bread at the fish anyways. We were all surprised at the size of the giant gold fish. Now, I know no one has ever lied about how big a fish was, but this one was at least the length of Dan's forearm and probably fatter. Crazy. Good times.

Purple "hair"

Does this really need any explanation? Ellie figured that she needed some purple hair so we made a mini-Bedouin out of her. Complete the outfit with swimsuit cover up and it's a winner.

Discovering the Stopper

Whilst crawling on your belly many discoveries can be made and this doorstop was a hit. Julia quickly discovered that the white tip comes off if you grab and pull hard enough. I think that's why I don't have any more pictures because after that last one, the plastic piece came off in her hands an I had to retrieve it.

Softer Side

Ellie hasn't really been much into "mothering" her babies in a good while. In fact, since Julia has been born, she's been quite concerned with helping me with Julia and abandoning her babies all together (however Gus, the stuffed dog, remained in good standing). I was most surprised today to see her get Zoe (initially known as "Blue Baby"), put her in the highchair, put on her bib, feed her some acorn squash, and even clean her up with a rag when she was done. Impressive! We shall see what is to come of this, does she have the baby bug... time will tell.

Finger-lickin'

These are self explanatory, really... Julia is now eating more finger foods and she's loving it! She's still digging her pureed foods, but her dexterity has improved enough to shovel the grub in herself. I think Dan and I were the most surprised by her ability to completely obliterate a triangular-shaped wedge of watermelon. She worked on it for a bit and ate it down to the rind. Wow.

Weekly Activities (are back!)

So how dang long has it been since I've done a weekly activities post? I actually looked back and am embarrassed to admit that it has been since January 29th that I posted one. To my defense, I started a few posts in February... and I don't know why I didn't finish them so that's not really much of a defense, now is it? The main reason I haven't posted much, is that we haven't been doing much (in the way of semi-organized activities). Sure, Ellie's been coloring, painting, cutting, gluing, sorting, reading books to Gus, but not much and not for long.

Ok, so I really do have a good reason for the absence of activity posts. For several months, Julia's crib was in the playroom. Since this is where all of our activities take place, and Julia was asleep in that room 3 times a day (not to mention how often I was seated and breastfeeding), I didn't get very far in the way of organizing activities for Ellie. Which is usually something I do while the girls are sleeping so I can think without being interrupted or asked "what's that?!" Just under a month ago we moved Julia's crib into Ellie's room and they've been sleeping in the same room. It's been awesome! During this switch of Julia's sleeping space, the playroom was junked up for a few weeks and things were in total disarray. So I spent about a week (off and on) totally organizing the playroom and all of our supplies. I realized that I have a LOT of stuff for Ellie to do, and I have just as many ideas for new things that I can't seem to get done or made (I am completely jealous of my friend Elizabeth who has a retired Montessori teacher at her disposal! Shouldn't everyone have one of those? Yes!). Once I had it all organized, it was like a new space... one we wanted to spend more time in again.

So, here are a few pictures of our activities for last week. Ellie had swimming lessons every morning at 9am for two weeks and it liked to wore us slam out. So these are pictures of the things we mustered up the energy to tackle.

Personalize a slideshow design

Goin' to the grocery store...

A few days ago Ellie decided she needed to go to the grocery store. So, I set up one on the bed in her room and she donned her dress up shoes, her purse, had her keys in her hand all ready to go. Just before she was about to leave, she realized that she had no list. No list?! What's a girl to do without a list? (Dan would say something to the extend of: "that is YOUR daughter" if he were watching over my shoulder as I typed this. Which I hate and he never does because he knows how much I hate being spied on. Besides, he's at work on this lovely Sunday). Here are two grocery lists Ellie dictated to me. She was sure to tell me that she didn't like onions or bell pepper, but we needed some anyway.

A peach for the Peach

I got some Georgia peaches at the farmers market this week and they were so juicy the juice dripped down Ellie's arm. Yum! It was Julia's first peach experience, she had a hard time picking them up, but LOVED them. Ellie ate an entire peach and Julia had half of one.

Babyfood (in the) Making

Just in case you were wondering, I still make my own baby food. Actually, my babies own food. Anyway. I took a grand total of two pictures of the process a few days ago and thought I would share them. I was cooking butternut squash, yams, yukon potatoes, carrots, & acorn squash. First I peel everything, cube it, steam it, blend it, & pour into ice cube trays and freeze it (moving to ziploc bags when it's frozen). There is a custard cup in the first picture with two frozen cubes about to be heated up for Julia's dinner that evening. Making her food isn't that much trouble to do, and Julia is getting a much larger variety of foods this way. I still use the store bought stuff when we are out during her lunch/dinner time because I'm usually running too far behind to heat up her food and take it with me!

Swimming Lessons!

On the way and very excited!

She wants to swim so dang bad

Oh my. Our 3 year old is already in swimming lessons! Real one's... not the mommy & me kind. One of the local universities (Transylvania University, and no the name isn't taken out of some book of kiddie tales) has a pretty good swim team that gives lessons during the summer, a fundraiser, I believe. Anyway. They start with 3 year olds, so we decided Ellie would benefit from some lessons. I was MOST surprised that Ellie entered the pool without the least bit of encouragement from me. She joined her little class of two other girls, sat on the side of the pool and had a blast (although we had been watching youtube videos of swim lessons so she wouldn't be in for a complete shock, and I told her I wasn't allowed in the pool). These pictures are from the first day of lessons.

Backyard pool

So we broke down and bought one of those goofy blow-up pools for our back yard. You know, the kind that gets dirty, kills your grass, and is heck to move? Yeah, that kind. Hopefully the fun stuff will outweigh all of the dirty stuff. So far, I think it has! Ellie and Julia have both enjoyed being outside swimming in their very own back yard and have been swimming every day since we set it up. And I have loved NOT having to be at the pool in order to enjoy swimming. Double bonus.