this was such an incredible month for you -- reaching lots of developmental milestones, spending lots of time with friends and family, and growing in independence. you are interested in everything around you, but you also play happily with your toys by yourself for long stretches. you absolutely adore Greta and Cecilia. whenever you see them, you flap your arms and squeal with delight. they love to include you in their imaginary play and you love it too, even when they are making you be the cafeteria lunch lady in their pretend school. for now, they can keep their tiny toys out of your reach, but pretty soon we'll have to banish the Barbies to a baby-free zone!
yes, your sisters made you wear one of their ballet hairnets to play lunch lady
the perennial favorite 10 Little Ladybugs book that Grammie gave to Greta, still going strong!
hanging with the big girls
this month we visited the zoo with our dear friends Amelia, Ryan, Adeline and Elias. the whole zoo was decorated with incredible creations for the Asian Lantern Festival. it was a hot, humid day and at one point while Elias was out of his stroller, you got to borrow his stroller fan. you were immediately so much happier that we obviously had to get you one of your own!
the cool parents and babies club
born in the year of the bull! (so was Mommy!)
had to get this picture, since you were wearing your elephant onesie
ahhhhh, this is the life!
in mid-August, we flew to Washington state to visit family, including the newest member of our clan: your first cousin, Milo! of course, you had lots of snuggles and playtime with Grammie, Grandpa, Auntie Kris, and all your aunties and uncles. on our way to eastern Washington, we drove through the Bavarian-styled town of Leavenworth for a delicious lunch and you got to taste your first soft pretzel. it was a big hit!
the restaurant had cool misters running to temper the 100+ degree heat
sister snuggles ... melt my heart!
helping play Herd Your Horses
i'm so excited for you and Milo to grow up together and get into cousin mischief. you were intrigued by him, but probably more so by his blanket and possibly his pacifier, since it's the same as yours. watching the two of you together, my mama (and auntie!) heart was so full!
the cousin crew! (photo credit to Tia Genesis!!)
so happy for Auntie Kelli snuggles!
our family is so blessed!
first tandem Ergo walk! (can't blame you for being more interested in the sunset!)
another milestone of this month was that you had your second taste of ice cream, and liked it! you still made a face at the cold temperature, but you loved holding your very own adorable miniature cone.
on our flight back to Pittsburgh, you were absolutely entranced by the flight attendant's safety demonstration. the sweet couple sitting in the row behind us snapped this picture! after that, your delight continued as you got to eat your first Biscoff cookie.
this month you learned how to scoot around on your butt, just like your daddy used to do. we still haven't seen anything resembling actual crawling, but you can get up on your hands and knees, and given enough time, you manage to scoot yourself around wherever you want to go. you can stand while holding on to something. and literally on the day i took your nine month photos, you clapped for the first time! you cut four of your top teeth this month, and have taken to gnawing on the legs and tag of your penguin Wubbanub in addition to the pacifier.
it's about time for a good old airing of the grievances. while we have ever so much for which to give thanks, sometimes we need the catharsis of enumerating our woes, big and small. (you can read the 2023 edition here.) _________________________________________ first up, potty training. I buckled down and trained Greta and Cecilia both around age 2 1/2, and it went fairly well (I'm a big fan of waiting until the kid is practically ready to train themselves). Elizabeth turned 2 1/2 near the end of the school year, and logically it seemed like a great time to buckle down -- we wouldn't be driving around to after school sports and activities and we'd have more time at home. I kept waiting for the day when I'd wake up full of excitement and motivation to strip off the diaper and chase a naked toddler around the house. and ... shockingly ... that day never came. then we were preparing for our trip to Seattle in July and it definitely didn't seem like the right time...
Easter was "late" this year, April 20, which has the added benefit of slightly warmer temperatures. it always seems incongruous to me when Easter falls at the end of March and all the pretty Easter dresses are covered up by coats and we might have to choose snow boots rather than sandals! this was the first year Elizabeth was allowed to be more involved with hands-on egg dyeing and she was so excited. I bought the "deluxe" PAAS kit with extra supplies to make glittery and foil-bedecked eggs and somehow, by the grace of God, did not end up with glitter all over the house. I don't know how this one was so blurry but you get the idea! Greta's pastel eggs Cece's jewel-toned eggs I debated once again about which Easter mass to attend. we have attended the evening vigil once before , but that involves a lot of faith and perhaps a dash of insanity to attempt solo with young kids. so we typically go Easter morning, but I asked the older girls about it and they...
volume 1 volume 2 volume 3 volume 4 volume 5 1) Trader Joe's. prior to this week, I hadn't set foot in a Trader Joe's in years. the closest ones to me are at least a twenty-minute drive (as opposed to Giant Eagle and Aldi which are ten minutes away), and since they don't offer curbside pickup or delivery, I couldn't even peruse their offerings to decide if I wanted to pay a visit. but Greta has been asking me to pick up these PB&J snacks that her friends bring to school, and I keep hearing about amazing products TJ's offers (mostly from the hilarious Girls Next Door podcast -- every show with a TJ's mention is linked here !). for some reason, I was thinking that Trader Joe's price point was even with Whole Foods (or as it is sometimes known, Whole Paycheck), so I wasn't in a big rush to check it out. finally, last week I had a rare pocket of time after dropping Greta off for a school event close to a TJ's location and decided to take a ...
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