Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Walking and Talking

Walking and talking…that’s Lilly these days. She is on her way to walking since she took her first step a couple days ago. She catches herself by surprise when she realizes she is standing up without any assistance. Often, when she is balancing her weight and standing up, she’ll start clapping, so excited with herself. Of course, her enthusiastic clapping usually causes her to fall down! Her little vocabulary now consists of the basics: Mama, Dada, bye-bye,….. and dog. She is obsessed with dogs… if she finds a picture of a dog in one of her books, she pets it just like she learned to pet Hemi a couple weeks ago. She also loves to kiss the dog, getting the pages of her book all slobbery!

Speaking of kissing, that’s Jake favorite thing to do lately. We have caught him a few times kissing Lilly while they are playing. It is the cutest thing ever! I even got lucky enough to record one of his “smooch episodes.” Of course, I had to send it to the whole family! What everybody doesn’t know is that right after I stopped recording, the sweet little boy who was kissing his sister started pulling her hair…hard!! Needless to say, she was soon in tears and the moment had passed!

We are enjoying having Great-Grandma here. Both kids are not going to know what hit them when she leaves. They adore her! I also love having an extra pair of hands to help out. We are trying to take more pictures of her with the kids during this visit since the last time she was here (for six weeks in the fall) we only took one!!! But those were the early days… life has gotten sooooo much easier now that Jake and Lilly are older. We have a very nice routine that works out great for the whole family.



Here are a couple shots of Grandma with both kids. They love rocking in their rocking chairs! Except they both want to rock at the same time!


Lilly loves to rock on her own, and then when she decides she's had enough, she just puts her arms out and lunges forward. Whoever is near, better be ready to catch her because here she comes!

Jake is always making funny faces! I have a hard time capturing them, though, because of his fascination with the camera! I'm not sure what is going on in his little brain right here, but he looks like he is thinking hard!


Lilly loves brushes.... hair brushes, toothbrushes, etc.

And Jake loves hair bows.... Lilly's hair bows, that is! This one lasted only 10 minutes in her hair! If she's not pulling them out, he is!

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Happy 90th Birthday, Great-Grandma!

This past weekend we celebrated Jake and Lilly’s Great-Grandma’s 90th birthday. (Great-GrandPop turned 91 the day before!) My mother-in-law helped us surprise her with a beautiful photo quilt. She loved it!


Of course there was plenty of time to play with Poppy, Noni, Uncle Dave and Auntie Bri and Uncle Jay. Even Jake and Lilly’s other Great-Grandma from New Jersey was there to celebrate with us!









Both kids discovered Hemi, Noni and Poppy’s rat terrier! They loved crawling after her, chasing her around the house. I have never seen that dog run away so fast! She literally spent the whole first day hiding in my parent’s bedroom. By the end of our stay, Hemi would tolerate the kids petting her, but she was still not so sure about them invading her territory.


Monday, May 9, 2011

Every Day Is An Adventure

Never a dull moment in this house, as we now have two extremely curious and very mobile babies! Things we love: windows, blinds, stairs, doors, and everything we are NOT supposed to be playing with! Here are some pictures of them exploring new territory.

Lilly loves looking out the window! We have a bunch of low window sills that are right at her level!


Both Lilly and Jake are intrigued with the stairs. They can both climb up onto the first step, and Jake even surprised us by climbing up about 10 stairs last week. He is still learning how to come down once he's climbed up as far as he wants to go!


Whenever Jake or Lilly come across a door that is open, they think it must be shut immediately. I bet "closed" will be one of their very first words!