Playdate with Blake

Erica and Blake came over this afternoon for lunch and a playdate. The girls had fun playing with all the different toys that take up our family room, and the mommies had fun catching up. We were able to snap a few cute pictures, but with Vivian's fussiness because of her teething, and their constant movement, it was definitely a challenge. Blake however, had no lack of smiles for the camera ~ cutie!

Takeout night

We had the Taeschner's and Molly and Nate over for dinner tonight since Tim was out of town. The kiddos had a ball playing together and us adults enjoyed some tasty Thai takeout. In February we'll have another baby to add to our collection. :)

Vivian is 11 months old!

* Wearing 12-mo & 18-mo clothes

* Size 5 diapers

* Drinking 26-28 oz of formula a day

* Has her two bottom teeth and just this week cut one of her top middle

* Sits in her high chair to eat meals with us

* Loves Cheerios, puffs, yogurt melts and YoBaby yogurt

* Actually drinking the water out of her sippy now at mealtime

* Still sleeping with her paci, sleepy giraffe, and silky blankie

* Starting to laugh more easily for us, especially after meals and in the bath

* Still not fond of diaper changes, but less squirmy this month

* Crawling fast now, going straight to anything that she can pull herself up to standing with

* Can stand up on her own for awhile and loves to wave her arms to show how good she is at balancing :)

* Started walking - can take 5-6 steps before falling on her bottom

* Enjoys walking while holding onto our hands, even giggles sometimes while doing it

* Loves giving sloppy open-mouth kisses ~ so cute

* Says "da", "ma-ma" and "ba" and is starting to point at things

* Smiles when I use baby sign language with her

* Favorite playmate is her brother

Video clip of Vivi walking

Finally got a good clip today!

Happy 11 months to our little girl! (11-mo photoshoot re-scheduled for tomorrow due to extra long naps today. This walking stuff is hard work!) :)

First steps

Vivian took what I would call her first steps tonight! And she waited until Daddy got home from work to strut her stuff so he could see too and we could celebrate together!

I got a few videos, but haven't had a chance to upload them yet. I'll work on that tomorrow. :)

Silly boy

Owen went to bed as usual around 7:45pm tonight. At about 8:45pm he woke up and I heard him on the monitor. I looked over and he was sitting up at the foot of his bed. I went upstairs to see what he needed.

Me: "Owen, what's wrong bud?"
Owen: "I need to go pee-pee on the potty."
Me: "Okay, let me unzip your sleepy blanket."
Owen (proudly sticking his index finger in my face): "And look at this big booger!"

Ahhh, the joys of toddlerhood. And yes, it was a nice green one the size of a pea. :)

Like father, like son

Go SKINS! (even though they lost)

Teething hurts

Miss Vivian has been super fussy lately since her two upper middle teeth are making their way through the gums. I wish they would just cut through already and put her out of her misery. Luckily, she's been a trooper. It won't be long now.

Sippy love

Viv's getting good at her sippy. Now we just gotta break big brother of his sippy habit.

Ivory soap experiment

I read about an Ivory soap experiment you could do with your kids on a Mommy blog and wanted to try it with Owen. (Vivi happily munched some yogurt melts while we conducted this very scientific experiment.)

I cut an Ivory soap bar in half. We put it on a paper plate and I asked Owen what he thought would happen. He said it would "get hot".

We put it in the microwave for 60 seconds. This is what happened:


After it came out of the oven, it was a little warm to the touch. We let it cool off, and then I let Owen "decorate" it with drops of food coloring. He had a ball making his sculpture all different colors. We then did the other half of the soap bar, letting it go a little longer this time. It got even bigger!


At the end, we crumbled the second soap sculpture up into tiny pieces of snow to use later as hand soap. We recycled! :)

It was a fun little experiment and I'm glad we did it. It was definitely worth the 15 minutes of busy time.