Spring

That wonderful season when the sweetest little boys bring their mommies a "pretty yellow flower!"

I love every single one =)

Happy Easter!

The Easter Bunny came to our house! I was so excited to see Luca's reaction to his basket and all the eggs that when Tessa woke up at 7:30 I considered waking him up too. Reason prevailed and I waited another half hour for him to get up. The bunny brought him a car for his doll house that honks and plays a couple songs. We were listening to him play with that for about ten minutes before he told us he was awake. =)

an egg behind the curtain!?

After he showed us what the bunny brought him we went down the hall to see what he brought Tessa. We reminded him that the bunny also hid eggs, he looked over the landing and saw some in the family room, and started running downstairs. He is gonna have to figure out a new plan of attack next year when Tessa is mobile. He still gets an egg and opens it and inspects its contents, recloses it and then puts it in the basket. Tessa will collect them all while he's still eating the candy from the first one.

After about 4 passes around the house all the eggs (except one) were found. We ate breakfast and headed to Oma and Pa's. The Easter Bunny hid their eggs outside and Luca had fun running around "doing summer" in the nice weather. A picnic snack and then it was time to head over to Great Grandma and Papa's for Easter dinner.

Mmm... fishies...

Luca had a lot of fun playing with every one there and looking for bird's nests in their trees. Tessa enjoyed being passed around from family to family and dancing. Good food, good company, good Easter!

Coloring Eggs

I have fond memories of dying eggs with my cousins when we were young. And at the edges of that memory is the impression that it was kind of a pain for the adults. Spending forever hard boiling a thousand eggs and trying to make sure the dye doesn't get every where and everyone gets the colors they want and all. So I wasn't sure if it was a form of celebration in which we would partake.

Then pinterest (always pinterest) had an answer. They put baking soda in the bottom of a little bowl, mixed in some powdered tempra paint, placed the egg on that, and then the kids poured vinegar on it. It bubbled up the baking soda and colored the egg. I thought it was perfect! Luca isn't trying to carefully dip an egg in, having to wait until it's well saturated, and then carefully transfer it to the carton to dry. Only problem is tempra isn't edible, so if any color was on the egg when it was peeled it would have to be thrown away.

I figured using food color in the vinegar would do a similar thing and the results would be edible, so that's what we did. And Luca loved it! He placed the egg in the baking powder, picked the colors, and poured the vinegar. He was so entertained watching the ensuing bubbles. So much fun, so little mess =)

Plus, I get to eat sort of tie-dyed egg salad!

Seven Months

She has all kinds of new noises. Clicking sounds, screeches, and funny little giggles. She can be very vocal! Mostly she loves to say "Ya ya ya ya ya ya" a lot. And she tries to have conversations. She'll look at someone (mostly Luca) and say "Ya" and then watch. When Luca says something back she waits for him to finish and says "ya" again. It's fun to watch.

Here comes Tessa Cottontail

Rolling from her tummy to her back is no big deal now, and she has definitely figured out that if she's tired of being on her tummy she can just flip over. So far no rolling the other way, but she does roll to her side sometimes.

It's funny, but she is totally my kid when it comes to eating. She is not a fan of apples, like pears okay, and is suspicious of bananas. But she loves butternut squash, sweet potato, and carrots. Even tolerates peas. My little vegetarian!

Mmm... cheerios!

We were way late in moving her out of our room and into her crib, and we may be paying for that now. She was sleeping beautifully! Then we all got colds and she stopped sleeping wonderfully. Then, (I'm guessing) she went through the 6 month growth spurt, so she was crabby, constantly hungry, and not sleeping well. Then we finally started having her lay flat to sleep, so she was sleeping poorly. And because babies are kind of weird, when they start missing out on sleep, they start sleeping less. So she gave up all her naps but one, and was consistently up 3 or 4 times a night, usually for at least an hour each time. It sucked. We tried feeding her food for breakfast as well as dinner, we tried sleeping her in the pack in play so it can be swayed while she's sleeping, we tried ignoring her until she got really mad hoping she'd put herself back to sleep. We tried making her room warmer, colder, lighter, darker. Nothing was helping.

Finally it occurred to me, when we started trying to get Luca to give up his morning nap, he responded by shortening his afternoon nap and being crabby all the time. With Luca, he set his own schedule, and it totally worked for him. It seems Tessa does not set her own schedule to work for her. So now we're forcing one on her. She's got a set wake up time, nap times and bed times. Working within those means set feeding times too. Hopefully we'll start seeing some real progress soon. Just in time for her 9 month growth spurt =)

Just for fun, here's a comparison of all of us at six-ish months. Me, Josh, Tessa, Luca. Genetics, man =)

Soapy Rain

You remember those soap bubbles that Luca used to wash everything outside, including the patio? This is what happens during the first good rain following all that fun...

A patio full of soap bubbles!

Egg Hunt

The church Easter Egg hunt was today, and man was the weather cooperating! So much better than the subdivision egg hunt last year, when we had the last snow of the season...

They had a least a hundred kids come, but that was just fine, since they put out 8,000 eggs. Yes, Eight Thousand eggs. So Luca happily wandered around the field filling up his little bucket.

Little tongue

Even Tessa got a egg for each hand. =)

After Luca filled up his bucket we went back inside and had some cookies while inspecting the contents of all his eggs. So glad Grammie and Poppie invited us, we had fun!

Big, Big Bubbles

I saw (on pinterest, naturally) somebody took water and dish soap, took a hand mixer on high to it, and made bubble foam. So I thought to myself, Water? Yep. Dish soap? Cheap stuff that is at least three years old. Hand mixer? An appliance Luca enjoys using. Add in nice(ish) weather and an empty sand table and we've got some free, easy entertainment!

The tongue is out--he's concentrating hard!

He spent an hour washing everything in sight. And enjoyed every minute of it. Woo hoo free (and productive) fun! Our patio has never looked cleaner ;)