Fall Fun!

All Summer I was complaining to my sister, Kelly, because we only have one mature tree in our yard to provide shade from the hot sun. Now that Fall is here, I am extremely grateful that I only have to rake the leaves from one tree. It has taken awhile for enough leaves to fall to make raking worthwhile, but last week we were able to create a large enough leaf pile to jump in for the first time at our new house. Faith sat in the middle of it all for a good 45 minutes while I slowly raked a large pile to surround her with.

She spent the majority of the time tasting the different leaves and then constantly sticking out her tongue in order to get out the pieces stuck in her mouth.

Gracelyn really had no interest in the raking of the leaves. She preferred to ride her bike with some of the neighbor kids. However, as soon as the pile was big enough, she invited all of her friends over to jump in the leaves with her. Pictured above is Brianna Reinoso, Alyssa Reinoso, Sydney Richards, Gracelyn & Faith.

This is Faith deciding that her tummy is full from all the leaves and she has had enough. What perfect timing though! At this point, all of the leaves had been gathered into a pile and all I had left to do was bag them up for the trash man. It was such a beautiful 60 degree day and we took full advantage of it by spending most of it outside! I love warm and sunny Fall days!!!

Slumber Party!

This past week has been a busy week so I'm just now getting around to posting this from last Friday. Gracelyn and I decided to settle in for a girls' only night filled with movies, popcorn, matching jammies & a slumber party in Mommy's room. This is one of Gracelyn's favorite things to do, so we try to do it a couple times a month. Gracelyn likes to bring all of her "special" blankets and her menagerie of animal friends into my room and make up a little nest on the floor. She wanted Faith to lay on the floor with her and Faith was all smiles as soon as I placed her in the middle of all of the animals.

About 20 minutes into the movie, both girls ended up in bed with me. Faith fell asleep about halfway through, so after I moved her to her crib, Gracelyn and I were able to cuddle like we used to. I didn't realize how long it had been and how much I had missed cuddling with my first born until that moment. We used to do this all of the time, but it became uncomfortable about 5 months into my pregnancy with Faith and after the baby was born Faith usually ended up with the prime cuddling spot because either she was eating or I was rocking her to sleep. Oh, how Gracelyn has grown in the past 11 months! My petite, little kindergartner is now this long-legged, beautiful girl. It won't be long before she's as tall as I am!

So. . . . Movie Night was a success and I was reminded of all the wonderful changes we have gone through in the past year that have turned our family of two into a beautiful family of three!

The Gypsy Mama

I'm sure each of us has come across at least one situation in our lives where you have a choice to teach your child a real life lesson that will draw alot of opinionated public attention or to skip over the lesson so as to not make others uncomfortable. Where do you draw the line? Do you do what you know in your heart is right, or do you allow others to influence you? I was reading one of my all time favorite blogs today and I came across this story. I applaud this mothers courage and I pray that I would choose to do the same in this situation. Please read her blog and let me know what you think.

The (Not So Easy) Easy Bake Oven

Today after school, the girls and I decided to throw Gracelyn's Webkinz, "Mittens", a birthday party. Well every birthday party needs a birthday cake, so we busted out the Easy Bake Oven. Here is a before picture of Gracelyn in her apron, all of the Webkinz party attendees and the unopened package of graham cookie smores that we substituted in lieu of an actual cake. Take note of how the cookies are supposed to look.

Step 1 of the instructions says to mix the cookie graham mix with 2 teaspoons of water. Thinking it was easier if I just did this part, I added the water and then Gracelyn stirred everything up.

Once I looked at step 2, I realized that everything was NOT as it should be. I, being the brilliant chef that I am, had accidentally added 2 Tablespoons of water instead of the called for amount. So, basically we were one step in and I already had to alter the directions to accommodate my screw up. Opps! Apparently, The Easy Bake Oven is made easy for 8 year olds and NOT easy for 28 year olds! I'm absolutely positive that Step #1 was a trick to make sure that I was paying attention to Gracelyn while she was cooking. I'm also pretty positive that I am not the only one in the world who has screwed this up - At least that is what I am going to keep telling myself!!

Once I figured out how to correct my mistake and the graham cookie smore cake was finished baking, we were finally ready for the birthday party to start. Gracelyn invited all of her Webkinz, Faith and Grant - her friend from the neighborhood - over to celebrate. We lit a birthday candle and stuck it in the cake and everyone sang "Happy Birthday" to Mittens and Gracelyn blew out the candle. . . . Then we had to do it all over again so that Grant could have a chance to blow out the candle too.

I'm pretty sure that Mittens had the best birthday party that any Webkinz has ever had. Here is a picture of what the cookies were supposed to look like and of how the cookie/cake actually ended up looking.

And, here is a picture of Faith's favorite part of the birthday party. She spent most of the party trying to eat "Star", one of the party guests. My guess is that Star won't want to come to another one of our parties ever again. Oh well - Her loss!

Six Months & Standing!!

No - You do not need your eyes checked. Yes - You saw it right. Faith is 6 months old . . . . . AND STANDING!! She reached this milestone yesterday on Nov. 12th and boy was she thrilled. She had this huge smile on her face and she took 3 little steps along the edge of the little black footstool that she was holding onto. And then she let go and did a total faceplant - Oops! Luckily, I stuck my hand out and caught her before her face smashed into the ground. Gotta love those mommy instincts!

She is also working on mastering the skill of sitting up unassisted. Right now she can sit up for about a minute before she looses her balance and falls over. This is such an improvement from the 10 seconds that she could sit up last week though.

Although Faith has not shown much enthusiasm for eating Rice Cereal, she does enjoy a good cereal bottle once a day. This seems to fill her up pretty good and it gives her a chance to get used to feeding herself. Here is a picture - She took to holding her own bottle from the first day I tried to give her one at around 4 1/2 months.

And here is Faith's favorite new game. One-by-one, she likes to stuff all of the toys on her excersaucer down through the leg holes of the seat - while her legs are in it. Sometimes they get stuck and create quite a toy-jam but she doesn't seem to mind. Every once in awhile I will pull a few of them out and put them back on the top of the excersaucer and she will continue to be entertained as long as she doesn't run out of toys to stick around her in the seat.

Playing with Nathan

I babysat my Nephew Nathan this morning while my sister took Katelyn for her 6 month well baby appointment. Whenever Kelly asks me to watch Nathan, I really look forward to playing & spending quality time with him and we always have alot of fun when it's just the two of us! I usually keep a basket of toys at my house that are just for him. Today, we painted a picture, played catch, lined up all of his tractors, sang the ABC song, watched Play With Me Sesame and built a really interesting car with lots of "lights" out of Lego's. Oh yeah - AND he locked me in the garage. That wasn't as much fun for me but he obviously liked it since I could hear him giggling through the door. After he stopped laughing he must have gotten pretty worried because he kept wiggling the door knob and he said "Help Me, Lindsey." I explained to him how to unlock the door and he got it on the first try - Pretty Impressive for a 2-yr old! I wasn't too worried about it though, because I knew that if he couldn't figure it out I could just open the garage and go in the front door. Anyway - Crisis Averted.

Here are some pictures of Nathan playing with his tractors and Faith laughing at Nathan.

Sweet Potatoes & Spelling Tests

Gracelyn has really been struggling with her spelling this year, but last Thursday she got her first A+ on a spelling test. Yay!! Each week when she brings home her new list of spelling words, I am so full of optimism that this is the week the complexities of spelling will finally click for her. We work on it a little bit every night and every time we are in the car I quiz her on the words. She usually starts off the week by getting most of them right. However, by the end of the week it seems as if she is struggling with the ones she knew just a few days ago. I decided that my anxiety over her getting a good grade was rubbing off on her. So last week I just decided not to stress over it as much. We still did the same amount of work, however, I did not push her as much to focus on the words she was having problems with. Instead, we just spent the same amount of time on each word and I just prayed that most of it would stick with her for the test. Apparently, It worked. I am SOOO proud of her and she could not wait to get home from school to tell me how good she did. Now that she knows what it feels like to get an A+, I think that she will be trying a little harder to get another one!

Faith started eating solid foods 10 days ago. Since she does not really care for the Rice Cereal, I have decided to move onto other more interesting flavors. Yesterday, she tried Sweet Potatoes for the first time. While she didn't seem to love it, she doesn't hate it. I usually have to trick her into smiling by making funny noises in order to get her to open her mouth enough to fit the spoon in between her lips. She still spits more out than she swallows, but we seem to be making progress. Here are some pictures of her eating cereal last week and of her eating sweet potatoes today.

Kids Say the Darndest Things!

Over the years, Gracelyn has grown from my sweet little innocent baby into a little girl who definitely has a mind of her own. Sometimes the way her mind works simply amazes me. We were on our way downtown to visit the ZooBoo Halloween Exhibit at the Indianapolis Zoo the other day, sitting stopped at a light, when out of nowhere she says:

"Mom, do you see that wall with all of the colors?"

Well I looked around and all I could see was a large monochromatic brick building. I said "What colors?"

Sure enough, She pointed at the brick building and says "Those colors on that wall".

Then she says, "I've been collecting those in my mind"!

Once I figured out that she had been counting all of the brick buildings that we had passed in her mind, I couldn't help but laugh. After that, she kept counting all of the brick buildings we passed on the way to the zoo. (According to her, there are 67 - Just in case you were wondering.) I am so proud of how far she has come with her numbers. At the end of Kindergarten, she was still struggling to count to 20. Now, just one quarter into first grade, she can count almost all the way to 100.

Here is a picture of Gracelyn when she was 4 years old.

Also, here are some pictures that we took at the zoo:

This is the first year that we have gone to ZooBoo! The zoo was decorated for Halloween and there were alot of fun Fall/Halloween activities to enjoy. Almost all of the kids there were dressed in their Halloween costumes, which made the sport of people watching my favorite part of this trip. We also went trick-or-treating through the Plains Exhibit, watched the penguin feeding, petted the sharks in the shark tank, jumped in a haunted bounce house, went pumpkin bowling, saw the Spooky Dolphin Show, rode the 4-D Dinosaur Ride twice, and took a ride on the Abracazebra Express Train. The train ride was pretty neat. It stopped three different times and at each stop they put on a little Halloween skit with full costumes. We probably spend more time at the zoo on this trip then we ever have on one trip to the zoo before. We were there from 2:30-7pm but it was definitely worth it!!

Thought I would share. . .

I found this blog by the Gypsy Mama the other day and I really love hearing her take on life and being a mom. This is a post that she shared as a guest on Like a Warm Cup of Coffee.

Happy Birthday to Me and My Blog

Well. . . I've finally decided to start my own blog instead of living vicariously through my sister's! I really want to document the day-t0-day joys and struggles of raising two unique, wonderful little girls and this seems to be the best way to go about that. Today is my birthday and I'm going to kick-off my 28th year by trying something new. Here are a few of the new things that took place today:

• Faith had her 6-Month Well Baby Appointment and she has finally started to gain weight. She is now in the 9th Percentile! Hooray!
• I decided to treat myself to a pedicure and took Faith with me for her first spa experience. She spent the first 20 minutes trying to squirm off of my lap and into the bubbling water at my feet. Fortunately, She did NOT succeed!
• My 6-Year old, Gracelyn, threw her first birthday party ever. She invited all of her neighborhood friends over to sing me "Happy Birthday" and they all gave me cards and pictures that they had drawn. (I'm pretty sure that she made them do this - but it was really sweet!)
• My neighbor invited me and the girls over for dinner with her and her two kids for the first time since we moved to this neighborhood. It was a great evening full of good conversation. She even surprised me with flowers, a birthday card and a really tasty chocolate cake! Let me just say - I LOVE MY NEIGHBORS!!!
• Faith tried cereal for the first time! She was NOT a huge fan. She mainly just gagged on it and spit it back out. I'm hoping it will just take a little bit of time and then she will start to like it, so. . . we will try again tomorrow, and the next day, and again the next day. . .

All in all, It was a great day! I will post some pictures once I get a chance to upload them.