My kids amaze me every day!

Hugga played with a little "laptop" for the majority of the day yesterday. It has letters AEIOU on it, a picture of a corresponding item starting with the letter next to it, then it has colors, shapes, and numbers on it. There's a little game you play and it asks you to "Find it" by matching what is shown on the screen. My 2.5 year old has mastered this little laptop. She matches them all and rarely has a mistake. I'm so proud of her!

She's also recognizing most of her colors. We went through a phase where she called everything Orange. If you pushed her to tell you the real color eventually she would but she'd always start off by saying "orange." Last night we were picking out pajamas and I asked her if she wanted to wear her piggie jammies or her princess jammies. She told me mommy.. no, purple princess jammies (wasn't even one of the options.) She caught me off guard though. I said oh, which ones are purple? Sure enough she reached to the bottom of the pile and pulled out the purple Ariel pajamas. So I ask her what color her shirt is and she replies "pink", what color is mommy's shirt "orange", what color is the couch "green" - we haven't really been going through this with her because everything has been orange but I guess it all clicked in her little head one day :)

My last gush for the day about Hugga is that she loves her Mommy & Me DVD. It had been packed away for a while because we never opened up the boxes of DVDs after we moved (because we still haven't come to an agreement about what to do with them - we have an obscene # of DVDs.) Well we started going through them in the process of purging excess "things" in our house and I found a whole stack of Hugga's DVDs. She loves this one in particular because it's like a video of a mommy & me group singing and dancing to nursery rhymes. She knows all the moves and she dances around the living room happy as can be :)

Taters loves that video too. She actually stood up completely on her own with her hands in the air (because they were singing about up & down.) She went from crawling to walking around the coffee table, couch, and loveseat - all in the same week. Now she's making every attempt she possibly can to step out on her own. I am NOT ready for her to start walking! She's pretty much the best a baby can be - perfectly well behaved, rarely cries, etc... but she gets into EVERYTHING, she's very curious to say the least! I'm afraid of what her curiosity will get her into once she's even more mobile!

She's starting to say "mama" more often. Her first word was "dada" which is fair, I guess, because Hugga said "mama" first (though it's a little frustrating when I do everything for her and yet she calls me "dada" much to my chagrin.) No matter how many times I say "mama" back at her up until this point she's just smiled at me and babbled on about "dadadada" sigh. But now I think she finally got it - I'm mama, not dada!

It's funny how it's so exciting to hear these first words and you feel as though you can't wait for them to learn how to talk but then reality sets in. They learn how to talk and then you wish that just for one minute out of the entire day they would "hush" and quit saying your name and get out of your rear end long enough for you to get something done or have a thought to yourself. Hugga has a problem with saying something over and over again while she thinks of what she's saying next or saying your name until you acknoweldge her. It wears my nerves thin to hear "mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy" over and over again and then hear "I, I, I, I, I, I go to bed with daddy!" - as if she has a stuttering problem. She doesn't really though, I think her little brain just works to fast for her to spit all the words out.

What happened to my babies, they're growing up way too fast! Furthermore, Who told them it was allowed!?

Hugga (03-04-06)

Taters (12-31-07)

We had a fabulous day today!

It's been unusually chilly around here lately and so all week I was looking forward to this weekend because it was supposed to be warm(er) and sunny!

Well as it turns out it was perfect weather for what we had planned! I decided this morning that I wanted to make Hugga a special outfit for the day & this is what I came up with. I'm pretty happy with it too! I didn't use a pattern, just winged it. It's the first time I've done a top with sleeves because up until this point it's been warm and I've cheated and done simple sleeveless dresses. It's also my first time doing a traditional neckline, my first time doing a stretchy gathered waistline, and my first time making tights! There were a lot of firsts with this but it really wasn't that difficult. I had the idea in my head and I managed to create it - that is simply amazing if you ask me :)

She wore it all day & I didn't have time to take pictures before it went on so I didn't get any pictures of the outfit itself. Unfortunately there was an accident too.. her leg got caught on FILs walker and it ripped two holes in the tights :( but I can't complain.. this was fabric that I scored big-time on. I found it on the Wal-Mart $1 rack and I was able to get this outfit and a pair of Gaucho's for me out of 2 yards of it! The Halloween fabric was freecycled to me - so essentially this outfit cost me $1.



One of the local townships sponsored a "Not so scary pirate forest." They actually had a lot of fun little events, certainly worth the $2 cover charge in my opinion.

• Tractor-pulled hayride
• Wax hands
• Temp. Tattoos
• Storytelling
• Karate presentation
• Magician/Juggling/Fire Juggling
• Inflatables
• Miniature Golf
  
• Fire Safety demonstrations
• Nature walk with silly pirate pin-ups & cheesy (not scary) decorations
• Cider & Donuts
• Pirate masks & treat bags for all the kids
  

It is definitely something that I would take the girls back to next year if they have it again. Kiersten had fun! I'm glad she went along with another little girl (slightly older) into the inflatables though because she got stuck climbing up the ladder inside because it wasn't sturdy enough for her and she couldn't get her grip I guess. Random little girl (I think her name was Rachel) saved us from having to climb in and help her out!

Where was Taters during all of this you ask?


She was perfectly content on my back just taking in the fresh air and watching everybody :) As usual I got a hundred different people who came up to me asking me where I got the Mei-Tai. I say - I made it and I think a few of them expected me to whip out a business card or something. I even had a lady tell me I was crazy for not selling handmade items because she loved Kiersten's outfit and loved the Mei-Tai. I'm working on it people!!! I just don't have the time!!!

Our next adventure was the Applefest in New Boston. I didn't expect it to be as big as it was, but it was two streets of the town completely packed with people. I was really surprised at the amound of handmade goods, especially soaps and children's clothing! I found myself silently criticizing some of the work and drooling over others. We bought something, but i'm not going to share that because who knows if the person who'll be receiving it will read this or not ;) It wasn't clothing or soap though - even though the yummy smelling soaps were soooo tempting!


After that we went to Apple Charlies! I wanted to do U-PICK apples but we didn't get around to it :(. Hugga got to feed the animals though. Last year she wasn't so sure about letting them near her hand but this year she was fearless! I was shocked to see her going right up to the fences - not scared at all!

I have to wonder how much food these animals can really eat though. There were a ton of people at Apple Charlies today and everyong was throwing food at these little guys... I can't imagine that's healthy for them!

Last but not least we treated ourself to some cider and donuts. We sat down at the pavillion with some random singer on stage and listened to the music and had our treat and relaxed for what seemed like the first time all day. Afterwards we went to the corner restaurant by our house for some warm soup and some dinner. We were so busy all day I don't think we thought about food much at all and even though we had breakfast and lunch, dinner was late because we were at the orchard. We were all hungry though and no one fought bed-time tonight. They both crashed before I even had a chance to get them into their jammies!

If that's not a good day, I don't know what is!

Tomorrow I think we're going to put up some Halloween Decorations!

Why am I blogging?


Ummmm.. everyone else is doing it!? Is that really a good enough answer? I've had a LiveJournal for years and at this point it's mostly just to keep in touch with the people that I've known for so long on there.

I guess I just see my girls growing up way too fast and find that there's another year almost over and realize that I should write down some things so I don't forget them later on.

I also want somewhere to put everything I sew to see my progress so I'll be posting that here as well.

So (sew) stay tuned because there's more to come!