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We have conversations daily about what CareBear is going to be when she grows up. It changes hour to hour… a bike rider, a doctor, a princess, a ballet-er, a baseball-er. It’s a fun game.

And then I ask what LiliBee should be when she grows up, to which CareBear inevitably answers “a porcupine!”

Poor LiliBee. I’m sure she’ll be much happier when she can speak for herself!

We had lots of fun this week…

Our Mother’s Day festivities continued as we took my mom out to lunch. CareBear was less patient than usual with the whole restaurant thing, but LiliBee had a great time trying all the food.

CareBear was much happier when we stopped at the park on our way home. Both girls showed off their sliding and swinging skills for Grams.

On Saturday, Chris took me to the Farmer’s market as my own Mother’s Day outing. The weather was fabulous and there was lots of fun stuff to look at.

The girls got balloon animals made and played on the playground there.

There were hot dogs and popcorn and we all had a great time.

Sunday was spent in the backyard. I did a bunch of weeding and a little planting while Chris prepped the compost for me.

He enlisted the girls to help him sort out the worms for return to the compost bin, but that didn’t last too long.

They much preferred getting as sandy and then muddy as possible. LiliBee took two baths and they both had several outfit changes that day!

We ended the day with out first BBQ and picnic of the year.

Today was LiliBee’s 18 month doctor visit. She’s happy and healthy and still tiny, but at least she’s consistent! She did finally make it to the magical 20 pound mark where she can turn around in the car, though! That will make our vacation road trip much easier. LiliBee was fascinated by the dr and loved the book that he gave her.

She’s such an easy going kid!

We didn’t get to do as much visiting as we’d hoped last week and our visit with Auntie T and kid Z has been postponed once again (3 times so far, due to illness… we’re taking turns being sick!). At this rate, summer will be over before we get to have that play date!

We’re looking forward to the nice weather and long weekend this week!

We had an exciting week around here! CareBear had two big milestones and, of course, there was Mother’s Day.

We took CareBear to the library to get her very own library card. Chris helped her fill out the application, but she did everything else. She decided to check out some dinosaur books so she asked the librarian where they were.

It was very cute how excited she was about the whole process. We’ve read her library books several times a day since then, too!

CareBear’s other big event this week was getting a brand new booster seat. She’s just big enough to move out of her old car seat, which is handy as LiliBee is finally growing out of the baby bucket (infant seat). We let CareBear pick out her new seat and made a big deal about what a good big sister she was to give her old one to LiliBee. It was so successful that we ended up taking a trip to the park since CareBear was just going to sit in the car in the garage for awhile. 

The park  that we went to is one that I remember well from my own childhood so it’s fun to watch my kids enjoy it, too.

CareBear and LiliBee both loved the creek and the playground.

The also played a nice game of “Pooh sticks” with Chris. Once it gets a little warmer, we’ll have to take them back to actually wade and play in the water.

Chris made me a lovely Mother’s Day breakfast on Sunday and then let me have a luxurious bubble bath while he entertained the kids. It was quite relaxing, though I did end up with company after awhile! Then we headed down to Olympia for lunch/dinner with Chris’  family. It was fun to go out with everyone and the kids all did great.

This week is looking a little busy, but it’s mostly fun stuff. Chris is away tonight having a sleep study done. I think it would be kind of hard to sleep knowing that someone is watching and listening and recording everything, but I guess they make it as home-y as possible. We have some fun visiting planned later this week and more Mother’s Day fun.

Plus, LiliBee will be 18 months old!

A couple of days ago, it was stormy around here. It’s fairly unusual for us to have the kind of wind and rain we’ve had this week in May, but I like interesting weather. So one windy afternoon, I was giving LiliBee her pre-nap nursing and cuddling session while CareBear was in the living room entertaining herself and watching Backyardigans.

If you know CareBear, you know that she tends to be a noisy kid. She enjoys seeing how loud she can be and screams and yells for fun. People say she’s just like Chris at that age…

Anyway, she’s running around making all kinds of noise when, suddenly, the power goes out. It was only out for about 30 seconds but it caused an unusual silence in the house, including CareBear. I thought she would come find me to ask what happened, but she didn’t. 

From the living room, I heard her say in an uncharacteristically quiet voice “I think I was too loud“.

I’ve been thinking for awhile that I need to use this blog to capture some of the more interesting/funny/entertaining things from our lives. I’ve been so excited to be able to add pictures and videos to my posts so easily and make creative entries, that I haven’t really done many “quickies” (short and texty posts… pictures and videos are just too much fun!). So I think I’ll start adding little excerpts from life around here from time to time. There are lots of things that happen that I want to remember!

This week’s update got a bit delayed and our website is acting funky, but here it is!

 

We actually had lots of stuff going on this week, most of it fun. We took an impromptu trip to the zoo on Wednesday after CareBear declared that we should take a trip to Africa. We figured that the elephants at the zoo were as close as we could get on such short notice so off we went.

The weather turned out to be quite nice and we didn’t get rained on at all. CareBear and LiliBee had fun playing in the kids’ area and we had a whirlwind tour of the animals (small children don’t have much of an attention span sometimes,  do they?).

We topped off our trip with a carousel ride and the girls slept all the way home.

This weekend, we went to Cousin H’s birthday party at “Charlie Safari” down in Olympia. (Happy Birthday, Cousin H!) I can’t believe she’s four already.

Charlie Safari is one of those pizza and fun stuff kind of places. There were giant bouncy things, climbing things, mini golf, laser tag and arcade games. The whole party took over one of the bounce houses for awhile and it was like a little mosh pit for preschoolers. CareBear and I climbed to the highest slide (and that climbing structure is not really made for grown-ups, even the short ones like me!) and played all kinds of games. LiliBee spent a lot of time trying to keep up with the bigger kids (and did pretty well) before settling down to play with balloons with Grandpa.

Chris got to indulge his pinball craving. Everyone had a great time.

Yesterday, Chris took the day off for an appointment so I went along with him. After that was over, we had enough time to go see a movie before picking up the kids. We saw the new X-Men movie, which was actually pretty good. It was fast-paced and full of action, plus I enjoy Hugh Jackman. It was nice to get out on a kind-of-date.

Meanwhile, the girls had a great time playing with Grams and Pas. They never want to come home with us after that!

I wish the weather was nicer this week since I’ve gotten used to kicking the kids out to play in the backyard (ok, I go with them), but I like the rain and wind, too.

Another week, another Easter celebration.

This week, we went to my folks’ to color Easter eggs (because, of course, everything got postponed due to flu).

CareBear had a great time helping to make the colors and coloring the eggs. She also liked hiding them herself and then finding them again. She fell in love with her green egg and slept with it for a few days, until it cracked and we had to say goodbye.

 

LiliBee, on the other hand, was very concerned by the egg coloring. She liked it when she could stir the egg around in the cup of color, but got really mad at every other part of the coloring process. I’m still not sure what her problem was, she’s usually a pretty easy going kid.

Apparently, it was terrible to subject the eggs to things like drying and moving around.

We celebrated Earth Day by planting some seeds.

Both girls thought that was a lot of fun and particularly enjoy the watering part of gardening.

The weather has been nice enough to play outside most days, even when it’s overcast and sprinkly. LiliBee has learned how to climb up the ladder and go down the slide all by herself. She’s a scary kid.

CareBear likes digging in the dirt and we usually all come in covered with sand. The other day, LiliBee somehow ended up with a diaper-full of it when I wasn’t looking!

This weekend was fun. We did some birthday gift shopping at Freighthouse Square, which is always a fun place to visit. We also stopped at DeCoursey park downtown to play and look at ducks. LiliBee was so enchanted by the ducks that she was inspired to learn how to say “duck”!

CareBear is off at a sleepover with her cousin tonight. I miss her terribly and it’s way too quiet around here, but I hear she’s having a blast at Grandma’s. I think LiliBee’s enjoying “only child” status, though.

We’re looking forward to a nice week of doctor visits and a birthday party. The party will probably be more fun.

 

We’re finally flu free around here. It’s been a long three weeks of fevers and staying home. We more than made up for that this past weekend, though.

After toddler gym on Saturday, we headed to the Spring Fair. I love fairs, have I mentioned that? It was pretty crowded being Saturday afternoon and all. We managed to have lots of fun in spite of the long lines, though. CareBear got to go on a few rides and won a new ball at the “fishing” game (plastic, magnetic fish). LiliBee complained about not being able to do that stuff yet but enjoyed the people watching. We all enjoyed visiting the goats and chickens in the barns.

Sunday was our belated Easter Egg hunt down in Olympia. Auntie Trina hid sugar filled plastic eggs all over Grandma’s yard and the girls had a great time finding them. CareBear is an egg finding machine, her basket was over-flowing! LiliBee wasn’t sure what the fuss was at first… it was fun to put eggs in the basket, but she doesn’t have the competitive streak yet and was more than happy to just look at the eggs. Grandpa did some grilling and we had a whole Easter Party! The girls slept all the way home.

Today, we had CareBear’s appointment to recheck her vision. She tested as normal this time around, so there’s nothing to worry about at this point. It was a pretty painless appointment.

Then we headed out to the park to take advantage of the nice weather. After walking the paths with Grams and Pas, we turned the kids loose to play at the playground. CareBear got over her initial hesitation about the slides (I don’t know where that’s coming from) and spent a lot of time going down the tunnel slide. LiliBee wasn’t sure which slide she wanted to go down for awhile, but she sure did enjoy climbing around the smaller equipment.

It’s nice to be well in time for the fleeting warm spring weather!

CareBear loves to go down slides. She goes down big slides at the various playgrounds we visit with little to no apprehension. She’s a big kid who goes down big slides. So why did the little slide in her backyard cause her to panic?

You can do it, CareBear!

Of course, it’s easier when someone catches you…

Greetings from flu-ville. Chris came home early Tuesday with a fever… the flu strikes again! Because he was watching for the symptoms, he was able to go to the doctor early enough to get Tamiflu. It seems to work very well for making the flu symptoms much milder than they would otherwise be. He still had several days of not feeling well, but little in the way of fever, cough, aches, etc. Though having the flu on his birthday was no fun.

And then on Friday, the last holdout succumbed… LiliBee came down with the fever. She’s doing pretty well right now as she’s in the middle stretch of lower temps and feeling better. If it follows the same pattern as the rest of us, she’ll have another couple of days of fever and then be done with it by the end of the week. She and CareBear had the flu shot, which seems to make it a bit milder for them. Neither of them got the terrible cough that I did (and still have) and CareBear certainly recovered faster!

Consequently, we didn’t get to have much fun again this week. We’ve had to postpone Chris’ birthday and family Easter fun and we missed out on the first week of classes at the Y. My mom pointed out that we at least have an end in sight now since we’ve all had it! It will be nice to be done with the flu and able to leave the house again. The girls and I are dealing with a bit of cabin fever.

This week, I’m looking forward to no new cases of flu in the house! And lots of fun stuff this weekend, assuming everyone is feeling better.