4 Months Old!!!

Well Sophia has made it to 4 months old. Not sure on her stats as we go to the doctor later today but She certainly looks bigger and her clothes are proof. Emily desperately wanted to take some pictures with Sophia as well but wasn't in the mood to pose for them.

My daughters the purse models

The whole idea as to why I have taken pictures of my kids with a vintage older than dirt green purse is not important :) However, I thought some of them turned out absolutely adorable to I am going to post a ton of pictures of my kids. I am kind of glad my kids are girls because Sean had to take some pictures too and he looked a little fruity in his!!!! Emily loves purses of all kinds and at the age of 2 had her first Coach purse(not purchased by me for the record!).

The carefree look at my purse pose

Sophia taking a snooze

Emily's runway walk with the purse

 Emily taking a moment from modeling to check out what's on tv

 Emily's "I am done posing for you Mommy look." But notice she still has a death grip on the purse.

The Joys of Storytime-Super Long But pics at the end :)

Basically if you want to have any sort of fun around here for free you have to go to the library. Weird thought, I know. I NEVER thought I would go to the library for activities & to just play with their puzzles. I mean, we have puzzles at home but for some reason at the library Emily puts the pieces in them & then puts them away vs at home where the pieces are just everywhere. While our libraries(we have 3 we can go to) have some sort of free toddler storytime/craft time every single day I limit us to two times a week for my own sanity. On Thursdays is the two & three year old story/craft time and thankfully Ed is usually off so I take Emily by herself for some Mommy & Emily time to make sure she feels special still. Its a hit or miss on if she is going to behave & love it or just be a complete mess. Usually its either she's very good for the storytime part & then freaks out during craft or is wiggly & obnoxious during storytime & rocks the craft. This week was wiggly during storytime & she totally LOVED the craft. As a mother I was so excited when our craft did not involve a glue stick as Emily just likes to use it like a crayon & not for its original purpose. It was a jingle bell necklace! How freaking cool is that. Emily totally wanted to help me put all the beads & jingle bells on & actually was very cooperative with letting me do a color/bell pattern. And of course she had to put it on the minute it was done & actually ended up wearing it the rest of the day, yes even naptime.  I think we finally got it off of her for bedtime.


Then on Fridays since Ed works and just one day a week didn't seem like enough since we have nothing better to do I take both kids to baby/toddler storytime. This one is a little different where they do more songs, shorter books, dances, and parent/child reading time. Oh, plus bubbles which is Emily's favorite part. Its so exciting to see how far Emily has come with this storytime. I started taking her when I was pregnant & all she wanted to do was run away to go play with the toys after five minutes. Then it was 10 straight, then 15, then 20, & FINALLY she would participate for the whole 30 minutes. I love that she does the motions & is starting to be able to answer the questions the woman asks. How do I accomplish this task since for those of you who know Emily & her past history of running at storytime? Well, right now thankfully Sophia either sits or sleeps contently in her carrier in my super huge stroller that is a pain in the butt. What's gonna happen when Sophia isn't happy in there anymore.....NO CLUE!

Also, on a side note. While its awesome that Emily is potty trained, it sucks with two kids at these ages. So during storytime Emily says POTTY. I am just like seriously, are you kidding me? So I start to drag my super huge needs to be oiled up because its squeaking & the tires aren't moving like they should stroller across the room because the other moms decided to sit by the door when I got there so I had to go all the way farthest from the door. Then the pregnant woman who sits in a chair(which is fine with me but for the record I sat on the ground with my kid at 9 months pregnant :) ) put her chair smack dab in the doorway. Really? Come on. So as I am trying to avoid peoples feet & kids to get out of the room and get stuck at the door, the pregnant woman kind of looked at me like I ain't moving honey. So thankfully, the other moms are like we will watch her for you just go. I had a thought of I wonder if I should but Sophia was sleeping, not doing anything bad & I can get Emily to the potty & back in 2 minutes without Sophia vs the probably 5 or more if I have to drag her too. Thank you other mom's!

So after another successful outing with two young kids by myself I was in the parking lot loading my kids up next to another Mom. I had put Emily in the car first(for safety) & then went around the other side to put Sophia in, the other Mom had her kid on that side so I decided to get the stroller put away first, then I picked Sophia up & figured I could get the door open & put her in too. I put two kids & a stroller away before this Mom had her one. She then stops me & is like, how do you do it? I can barely handle my one(realizing I totally schooled her on putting kids in the car). My response is quite simple: You just learn to deal with it.

Now for some pictures of my sometimes absolutely sweet & adorable kids. First up Sophia's monthly pictures.

One month:

Two months:

Three months:

And my babies together today after storytime. Emily thought it was awesome I let her put her arm around Sophia. She didn't want to move it!!!

Thanksgiving-Part 1 & Part 2

This year we only had one stop planned for Thanksgiving. I was looking forward to only having to travel 10 minutes away since you never know how two young children are going to handle the stress of so many people around. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out exactly like planned. Ed woke up with a migraine that morning. This sucked on multiple levels. 1) I seriously wanted to do some shopping since I wasn't going to be able to on Black Friday so I figured I'd shop a few stores on Thanksgiving instead. 2) He was not well enough by the time we had to head to my Grandma's so yet again, its me & my two kids all by myself.

I decided to head to one store with both kids in tow. It wasn't terribly crowded. We managed to grab the stuff I wanted but then of course with a full cart Emily had to go potty. This is definitely when two adults is more handy than one. We survived, checked out Santa's Winter Wonderland & Emily enjoyed it because Santa had not arrived yet. I really wish Ed could have gone because there would have been no wait to see Santa unlike the other night when we were there.  Oh well. We went home & I then got everyone ready to go, well except for Ed who was still milking his migraine.

We headed over to Grandma Gato's & it was a light crowd of 25 this year instead of the usual 50. It was strange to be able to walk around & not bump into someone every second. I think the kids enjoyed the fact that they could run around too but they spent most of their time in the back room playing or on the organ. Sophia was happy just being passed around & Emily actually did eat some corn, potatos, & fruit. She held up pretty well considering the festivities were during nap time. Sorry there are no pictures, didn't even think about it because it was just me.

I did manage to take a few pictures of Sophia when we got home. She was a little tuckered out at first:

But then I gave her a bottle & she perked up

Even though I brought Ed home a plate of leftovers, which is was completely able to eat by the time I got home(its a miracle isn't it?). I could tell he was upset he didn't get the "fresh" meal so I offered to make Thanksgiving for him on Saturday since we already had a turkey in the freezer. Ed was in charge of the turkey & then made himself in charge of the stuffing because he wanted White Castle stuffing & wanted in the bird(I am not a fan of the cleaning or putting stuff in the bird...bleh). So we had turkey(which seriously turned out so juicy it was like one of those tv turkeys), white castle stuffing which turned out awesome, corn, green bean casserole, mashed potatos/gravy, homemade cranberry sauce because apparently Ed has an aversion to the jelly stuff, & homemade bread. And then contrary to what you might think, no we did not have a Costco pumpkin pie(mainly because I wasn't making a trip there in the short time) so I made us a pumpkin pie as well. The meal was fantastic & Ed got his Thanksgiving, just a few days late.

Emily vs Sophia

Posting to motivate myself to start blogging again!

Still here & ready to blog again!

Me & My Tutu

Hey guys! Emily here! I got this awesome tutu & heels for my birthday & wanted to model them for you! Here I am clunking around in my very own high heels instead of stealing Mommy's!

Here I am doing a quick twirl for you!

And here I am taking a quick break from vacuuming to strike a pose for you!

The Zoo...yet again

We headed on up to the Zoo again last week as we became members so its the "cheapest" activity we can do that is actually semi exciting. Emily LOVES animals & riding in the wagon so its a win win for her. Here she is that morning all set to ride in the car:

Here she is taking a quick picture with the Bison & Daddy

Heading into the NEW Great Bear Wilderness exhibit. It is incredibly nice but for some reason I thought it would be bigger or more bears. Maybe next time when there are not one million children milling around I'll get to take a closer look.

Emily was checking out the monkeys

But wanted nothing to do with the really large fake frog....

My little zoo keeper :)

Checking out the Sea Lions at her own height

Walking along with Daddy

How was Emily's day at the Zoo?

Emily enjoying her food

So somtimes my little princess is the neatest eater ever! It mostly depends on what she's eating. However, if sauce of some sort is involved it can get quite messy & hilarious if you are snapping pictures at the same time. Emily is learning to pose(on her terms, not yours!).

So in addition to her eating poses here are some other randoms I snapped because Emily is just so gosh darn cute!

That's all for now!!! I am attempting to organize the 1000 pictures off of our camera right now to print before Emily's 2nd bday so I'm sure I'll find some more with some hilarious stories behind them!

Fishies

Emily is obsessed with fishies. She had a teeny goldfish in a bowl ever since October. She loved her fish. Its name was fishy(yea we were really original but we didn't want to confuse her). So after awhile, and after Emily got way more powerful she felt the need to look at her fish ALL DAY LONG and then eventually wanted to pet the fish as well. After a few days of constantly helping her look at her fish and making sure it didn't end up on the floor we went and got a real fish tank. Most children would get a nice 1 gallon tank, not the children of Ed. He got her a 10 gallon tank(although the price was awesome so I can't complain). We moved over her teeny goldfish that has been hanging on all of these months and 2 other HUGE fat goldfish. We tried to give them names but I don't remember which is which and I'm guessing Emily doesn't either. She still tries to touch them but now its a lot harder for her to cause damage.

Easter Marathon

After the Easter egg hunt the day before I knew that Emily would be tons more excited about Easter day and her multiple baskets and egg hunts she would have today. At Christmas she still wasn't into opening presents but she is definitely getting the hang of it. We were going to head up to the Rog's for Easter soup so we only had a few minutes to give Emily her Easter basket. Thankfully, that's all she needed. I put it out on the couch for her when she was around the corner and when she saw it her eyes lit up.

Don't worry there are plenty more eggs full of candy underneath the huge pink ball!

She immediately went for the pink recorder. She was actually the one who picked it out for herself at the store but I managed to hide it from her for 2 weeks. She started tooting away.

She checked out "a book" (scratch & sniff!) and her new pink ball to replace her smaller one that had broken. Then she saw some eggs in her basket. Being such a smart girl that she is she assumed there was something in them so she opened one and candy came out! So she of course had to have a sample of some chocolate at 7am. Oh well, its Easter!

Then it was off to the Rog's for breakfast. Emily didn't quite understand that a hard boiled egg was still an "egg" because according to her only scrambled eggs are eggs but she eventually ate a little bit along with some sausage. She opened her Easter basket and again started tearing through it. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures because for some reason I always forget to bring out my camera when we are at other people's houses. Emily then started her Easter egg hunt. She was becoming a pro at it. These eggs had money in them so she got a kick out of shaking them up. Also by this time candy count is still at 3 little tiny chocolate eggs!!!

After the Rog's we headed down to Great Grandma Gato's for some ravioli. As I hoped Emily did take a quick snooze in the car so she wouldn't be a total crab. We got there and immediately started her egg hunt. It was probably a good thing that Cousin Sean had his egg hunt in another room already because I could see them drawing blood over a plastic egg. Then we had our ravioli. And then the Easter baskets came out. It is a good thing we waited until after we ate because otherwise the 2 of them would have been on candy overload. Sean had to sample pretty much everything in his basket but Emily was more interested in the fruit snacks. All in all, Emily was a pretty darn good girl all day on Easter and is eating her candy a little bit everyday. What more could a Mom ask for!

Easter Egg Hunt

The Rog family was all set to ride down the road about a mile to go to the neighborhood Egg Hunt. As I started checking out the weather report throughout the week I knew things didn't look good. When you are 8 years old looking for eggs in the rain probably is tons of fun....not for a toddler(or her parents). So I needed a backup plan of course.Luckily, while we were at library storytime on Friday they had put out the new "Free" kids magazines with all the fun activities and events going on around Chicagoland.

And there it was....The Hippity-Hop Egg Hunt! It sounded awesome, egg hunt(indoors) &(by age group!), prizes, refreshments, the Easter bunny for free pics, face painting, magician, juggler, games, petting zoo, moon bounce, etc....It definitely caught my attention. Then I figured out where it was at, a retirement community. It definitely burst my bubble for a minute but I thought, hmm, maybe this could still be awesome.

I somehow got Ed on board(I think the whole indoors thing sealed the deal) and of course we had to invite Sean along. So per the weather report we woke up to pouring rain, retirement community here we come!!!
We got there and the place was already packed!!! It was crazy! However, I was feeling much better since there were people here :)

The set up for the younger kids was actually really cool and very kid friendly. They made an encased balloon pit:

And then they would let 10 or so kids in at a time. Here is Emily checking out the pit:

At her first try in the pit she kind of just wanted to play with the balloons. But can you blame the kid? How fun is a pit of balloons?

Then on her second try(she only got 1 egg the first time because she had some ruthless kids in there with her) she started to get the hang of it and pushed those balloons around like crazy!!

(You can kind of see her hand, she went completely under all the balloons)

And afterwards she was rewarded with a cupcake and cookie. I assure you she at one point was licking the frosting off the top but I apparently missed that picture!

All in all, a fun DRY Easter Egg Hunt!!!