Playing Inside

Reading books while mom cooks dinner.



Mmm.....yogurt.



D and the letter U.



M doing his puzzle.

It's a Bonanza

Cute little girl. This is how I found D when I went to wake her up from her nap. She had neatly spread out the blanket on top of her bedspread and then fallen asleep on top of all her covers.



M doing the fish puzzle.



D with her letter S's.



D wanted to illustrate a scene from Winnie-The-Pooh (D and I are reading the book together--the A.A. Milne "original" version). This is a picture of Pooh getting his head stuck in rabbit's hole when he went over to visit him.



We took the kids to the Teddy Bear Park in Stillwater on Mother's Day (so did everyone else! It was packed, even though it looks pretty empty in these pictures). Unfortunately, these are essentially the only two pictures I took before my camera battery died.



This is the face M makes when I ask him to smile now.



I sold some of our baby stuff at a sale called the Baby Bonanza this weekend. This is everything I brought, before packing it into the car. It doesn't look like much in the picture, but I had 22 boxes of clothes (that's right, 22 boxes!).



The car was packed to the gills. I don't think I could have brought one more thing.





I'm happy to say the sale was a huge success (a bonanza, if you will) and I sold a ton of clothes and almost all of the other toys/miscellaneous items that I brought. I was left with only 14 sort of full boxes instead of 22 overflowing ones! Yeah! It was great to make some space in our house, but also bittersweet ending that chapter in our lives (babies, that is) and "letting go" of outfits I loved and have fond memories of thd kids wearing.

New Do's

M posing with a smile.



D and the letter R.



Peek



A



Boo



My friend Nikki cut the kids' hair today. They both sat still and listened extremely well. They look great and are ready for warmer weather with their new do's. Here is D before...



...and after. Pretty girl!



M looking so handsome.

Dress-Up

Dressing up in Mommy's boots.



The letter Q.



A preview of the show in June...all dressed up for dance recital pictures.



Just when we think Luna has found every possible spot to take a nap in the house, she finds a new one. I guess M's crib just looked too comfy to resist.

Easter

School time! M is playing with the How to Build an A pieces and creating his own alphabet letters.



D and her N's (we skipped printing the M's as she said she didn't want to try them).



Fun times at the cabin. M is using the pegs from our furniture as a microphone while he belts out a tune.



Steve and D invented a game where he threw the balloon and if she didn't catch it before it touched the ground, she had to run upstairs to the loft and back down. She loved the game.



D loved making her O's (can you tell?)



Finding goodies Easter morning.



Dressed in our Easter best!

Letters and Stickers

D and the letter L.



D is doing really good with her puzzles. Here is a new Snow White one she did at the cabin (our favorite indoor pasttime there).



D and the letter M.



M showing us what he plans to use our new mudroom storage bench for once the doors are on.



My sister gave us the Elmo costume in a bag of hand-me-down clothes for the kids. I hope it will fit M by Halloween (grow, boy, grow!), but as you can see it fits D right now. She wore it off and on all day and insisted I call her "Elmo" whenever she had it on.



D's first attempt at writing her name.



D and M in front of the vegetables we planted. D is also modeling a dress that used to be mine (isn't is just screaming 1970's!). She was so excited to wear it when she found out it was mine. I'll be so sad the day she figures out she doesn't want to wear hand-me-downs anymore!



I know I should really be more suspicious when things are "too" quiet in the house, but it's still a new phenomenon here and I'm so happy to have 10-15 minutes to get dinner prepared uninterrupted that I'm a little reluctant to bother their playtime. Although, of course, putting stickers all over the door isn't half as bad as it could be, right?

(Pre) School Time

Fun times at the cabin. Getting ready to talk a walk outside.



D loves reading books to M, which is a good thing because he is obsessed with books lately. He will walk around the house all day long carrying books that he wants to read.



School time. D has been working on her cutting skills. She loves to cut and is currently trying to practice cutting in a straight line.



M is sorting his bears by color. He loved doing this and kept on sorting them, then mixing them up, then sorting them for about 20 minutes. I was afraid he would only want to sort the blue ones (he is partial to blue--he only plays with the blue Mega Blocks for some reason), but he enjoyed doing all of them.



D's future profession? Rescuing cats from trees? She insisted on wearing this "birthday" hat when we went out to Red Robin for her birthday last Monday.



When I went to get D up from her nap, I found her wearing her princess ensemble. She must have changed before laying down.



D and the letter K.