Eve's Birthday Party

Eve and Josh decided weeks ago that the perfect party for a four-year-old was a zoo party. We planned the day, shopped for presents for the guests, and made zoo cupcakes. The morning of the 10th dawned sunny and warm and that afternoon we all headed for the zoo. Eve had received a beautiful dress for her birthday and Sophia had a matching one, they looked adorable and Eve loved matching with her sister.
When everyone had arrived, we gathered to eat cupcakes and exchange gifts. The cupcakes were sadly melted beyond recognition, but everyone was a good sport and ate them anyway. Eve loved each and every present and when we had all finished we set off to see the animals.
The kids ran from animal to animal and didn't get fussy or tired even though it hit 100 degrees and they had all walked a very long way.
When we got home that night we were all tired and thirsty, but Josh made a yummy dinner, the girls had baths, and we all felt much better. So ended "the best birthday ever" according to Eve.

Animal cupcakes.

Cute baby kangaroo!

Cheetah! My favorite cat.

Eve discovered this bunny and sneaked up on it. :)

Eve in her new cooking gear.

Full, clean and happy.

Tape Faces

Eve has discovered the hilarity of using tape to make silly faces. I taped her nose to her forehead (That sounds a lot stranger than it really was.), and told her to go look in the mirror. She walked away to the bathroom and there was a pause while she turned on the light and climbed onto her stool, then she burst out laughing. She wanted to tape my nose too and we laughed and laughed. She kept saying "You're the mommy pig and I am the baby pig!". Who needs the latest and greatest toys when you have a roll of scotch tape? Sorry if the pictures are a little blurry, I had trouble holding the camera still while I was laughing so hard.

Crawl Baby Crawl

Sophia is crawling! She started last week, going very slowly doing a perfect baby crawl. Now she is much faster and we are all rushing to baby-proof the house. She looks so adorable I had to capture it on film.

Bread from Scratch

Eve and I made bread from scratch last week and it was very yummy! This was our first attempt to use yeast. It was my turn to do the story and craft for the kids and we were going to do the story of the widows oil. I wanted the kids to make bread as their craft so I looked up a recipe online for bread. The only yeast we had was three years past it's date, but we tried it anyway and it paid off. Here is the recipe, we hope you like it!

Yummy in Your Tummy Bread

5-6 cups flour
3 T sugar
2 t salt
2 pkg yeast
2 cups water
1/4 cups veggie oil

Combine 2 cups flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. Blend well. On stove heat water and oil until luke warm. Add warm water and oil to flour mixture. Blend till moist, then beat with electric mixer for 3 minutes. Stir in remaining flour until the dough pulls cleanly away from the sides of the bowl.
Knead the dough for 10 minutes adding a little flour when the dough feels sticky. Grease the lump of dough and put it in a bowl to rise covered with a cloth. (For me I had to put it in the warm oven at about 100 degrees for it to rise well; may have been the 3 year-old yeast.) Let the dough rise to double the size, punch the dough down and divide into 2 loaves and let rise again under the warm bowl. Reshape the dough and divide between 2 greased loaf pans. Place pans in a warm place to rise until the dough is 1 inch above the pan. Bake 30 minutes. Brush with butter (optional).
Remove the bread immediately and cool on a wire rack. Serve when it's cool enough to eat. Enjoy!

My Dancing Princess

Today I am sitting at the computer doing my morning catch-up-with-the-world thing, listening to the new Jack Johnson CD and Eve is dancing. She put on the beautiful, peach ballerina skirt that Aunt Lizzy gave her and she's just twirling and smiling. I love to watch her dance. She gets so into it. She tilts her head just so and has a sweet, romantic look on her face. I can tell she just feels so beautiful and grown up. Every girl wants to feel that way... sometimes I'm surprised by how grown up she seems when she dances.

Funny Daddy

While looking through pictures recently, I've noticed a reoccurring theme. Josh likes to do out-of-the-ordinary things to make Eve laugh; this is generally accomplished by sticking something somewhere on his face. Sometimes we exercise his talents by seeing how many pieces of popcorn we can fit in his mouth, or trying to fit 20 whole Cheetos in his mouth. (We succeeded with this by the way.) While I was unfortunately unable to capture the previous two endeavors on film, here are a few exampled of the many talents of Josh Lanier. Enjoy!

Our Little Ones

Josh and I were watching Sophia play on the floor last night and we started thinking about how unplanned and unexpected she was. We had both been fine with living out the rest of our lives with our one sweet Eve; then along came Sophie. It was so hard to adjust our expectations and lives to welcome her, but we did it and here she is.
When Eve came along, I felt so unprepared and young and I rushed her babyhood. I was always impatient for the next stage and now that I know how fast it goes by, I am determined not to make the same mistake with Sophia.
Sophia is such a joy to me. She is so sweet and cheerful. When I go in her room to get her up from naps she is usually awake and laying there quietly waiting for me. Now that she's eating enough she's getting chubbier and I can't get over how cute she is. She adores Eve, who can always get a smile out of her and make her giggle. I love the pictures I get of the two of them together. They are so silly together.
Before Josh and I were married, we would talk about how we wanted two girls who could grow up to be friends. We wanted them close enough in age to share life experiences and far enough to have different friends. How lucky we are to have received all of that!
I should be used to how sweet and wonderful Eve is by now, but every time she does something extra sweet I am taken aback. She continues to be generous and kind and loving. She will be wandering around the house in all her beautiful things, singing to herself and following some elaborate story line in her head, when she will drift up to me and say " Mommy, do you know what? I love you so much." She is always gentle and patient with her sister and eager to show all of us how much she loves us.
If I had tried to design the perfect children, I know I would have fallen short of the perfection I have received in my two girls. They are not only what I've always wanted, but they are exactly what I've always needed.

What a Laugh

Sophia is discovering more and more just how much fun her big sister is. I love watching Sophia when she first wakes up from her naps; she looks all around searching for Eve, her face breaking into a huge grin when she finally spots her. Tonight Sophie was sitting in the highchair (such a big girl!) and Eve was playing peek-a-boo with her. Sophie was laughing so much and I just managed to catch it on video. You should see Eve's face when she watches this video, she can't stop giggling.

Bath Time

My friend Michelle gave Eve some tablets to put in her bath to turn the water different colors and Eve has wanted to take a bath every night since then. Eve loves to linger in the bath once you get her there, but sometimes it takes a bit of convincing before she'll get in. Now all I have to say is, "What color do you want your bath to be today?" then I have to hold her back to keep her from jumping in the tub before it's full. She's tried every color so far and the only time she's opted for clear water was when she scraped her knee and was certain the color would make it hurt more.

Sophia's Solids

I started Sophie on solids three weeks ago because for about a month or so I'd had a feeling that I wasn't producing enough milk for her. She absolutely refuses formula in any form and now we've got her wary of bottles in general and she won't accept them even if they have my milk in them.
So as soon as she was old enough, I got some rice cereal and she loved it! She has now tried oatmeal, green beans, sweet potatoes, peas, and prunes. Every new flavor she accepts eagerly and eats as though she's been starving. In the evening she will eat a full cup (if not more) of baby food and nurse afterwards. I can't believe how much she eats! After I feed her she will lay on the floor and play happily until bedtime, her tummy tight as a drum. She already feels heavier and I am so glad to be relieved of the pressure of being her only source of food.

"Schlumply"

Eve went through a stage almost a year ago where she'd make up words and casually integrate them into her daily vocabulary. The most prominent of these words was schlumply (I'm guessing on the spelling here). She'd say things like "Oh mommy, your hair is soo schlumply!", or "Daddy, that's pretty schlumply isn't it.". We thought it was so funny but then I found myself saying it at work where I'd get the funniest looks before noticing what I'd said.
I'm still not really sure what it means but I think it it some kind of cross between frumpy, silly, and cuddly with a little bit of fun mixed in. I suppose that about describes our life so I decided to use it as the name of our little blog. You should have seen the spellcheck go berserk (perhaps another child's invention?) with all these made-up words. :)

A Tragic Loss

The time had finally come to cut Eve's hair. Every time I had to wash, brush, or fix Eve's glorious mane she would fuss and whimper pathetically and finally I couldn't take it anymore.
Occasionally I would ask her if she wanted me to cut it she'd emphatically say no and on Thursday night she confessed that she was worried that her babies might not think she was their mommy anymore if she had short hair. I told her that I would cut it the same length as mine and she came to see that this haircut must be the "mommy haircut", so after carefully thinking it over she agreed (I must say that sometimes I am amazed and a little apprehensive that I have so much power to sway the minds of my children...).
It was with great sadness and a bit of relief that we cut her hair on Thursday night. I cut it so that it just brushes her shoulders. She looks adorable with it short and after her bath yesterday she didn't fuss at all when it came time to brush her hair out, but Josh and I both miss her long blond highlighted, beautiful silky hair. I think I may just let it grow out again. We'll see.

Spanish

Last weekend while I was at work, Eve, matter-of-factly told Josh that she now knows how to speak Spanish.
"Really?" he asked with eyebrows raised.
Eve then sat on the chair and began to recite all the Spanish words she "knew". Having just learned how to twirl her tongue she assumed that when one is using this highly developed skill to speak, the twirling sound turns any English words into Spanish words. The placement of the sound doesn't matter and isn't confined to places where an "r" is present. Any old place will do just so long as the sound is used.
"dthrear means ear, haidthr means hair, dthreye means eye..." and so she went, sounding superior and almost bored, as though she couldn't believe Josh didn't already know these words.

Our Little Sleepers

Josh and I have been feeling pretty bummed about our little Sophie being such a bad sleeper. We had finally gotten her to sleep through the night when she was 12 weeks old (twice as long as it look her sister), but after about a month of blissful sleep she stopped. After three more months of waking up once or twice each night I was becoming a horrible monster of a mommy. I'd hear her cry at night and squeeze my eyes tighter, a little voice in my head saying "She's going to go back to sleep, give it five more minutes." Somehow I will have myself half convinced that Josh has started lactating sometime during the night and would be overjoyed to get up and nurse the baby. Finally I would drag myself from bed, stumble to the girls room and swear to myself that tomorrow night I'd make her cry it out.
Eve and Sophie share a room since we are in a two bedroom apartment right now, so needless to say Eve wasn't getting much sleep either and had taken to spending half the night in transit between our bed and hers. Finally we'd had enough.
We set up an air mattress and sleeping bag in the living room for Eve, turned on the bathroom and kitchen fans for background noise and hunkered down for a long night. The first night Sophia cried off and on for close to an hour, but she went back to sleep and slept in until eight o'clock. Feeling triumphant we moved did it again the next night and this time she didn't wake up at all and slept for more than ten hours. Success! Triumph!! Feeling giddy with a full nights sleep we had a most wonderful day and decided to let Eve sleep on her little palate for the rest of the week to ensure that this was permanent. That weekend Josh went camping with David so I let Eve sleep on his side of the bed. Little did I know this night would bring great enlightenment on the sleep issues of our girls. As I was dropping off to sleep thinking of moving Eve back to her room in the morning I receive a swift kick in the small of my back. I turned to look at Eve and she, though still sleeping, was thrashing around and fussing. I figured it was a bad dream so I told her it was ok and rolled her over. This turned out to be the first of about four such fits. I put her next to the bed on her palate so I could sleep, but I still woke up every time she thrashed. Once I was awoken by her laughing hysterically in her sleep. As I lay there in the dark, my eyes wide open I realized our Sophie had been misunderstood. Could she talk she would have informed us that she would love to sleep all night but was disturbed by her fitfully sleeping sister across the room.
Eve has set up a cozy sleeping nook in our spacious closet complete with glowing stars and a little spot for her babies. Now all is quiet in our house at night except, of course for the little thrashing sound coming from the general direction of the master bedroom's closet.