Friday, November 30, 2007

I have an announcement...

After 8 long months of cruising along the furniture and 5 long months of crawling around....Eleanor is finally walking!!!!!!

I'm so excited...I feel like I won the lottery or something. I can't believe it just happened so suddenly!



Be sure to see the video below (if you haven't already) of something else new and exciting she can do!

Thursday, November 29, 2007

My baby can read

So, I discovered today that Eleanor can read. It went down something like this...

I was sitting in the (parked) car trying very hard to entertain her, so I whipped out the mini-magnadoodle, and began playing her new favorite game. That game consists of me writing letters on the magnadoodle, and her telling me what sound they make. She's up to 11 letter sounds now. She would rather do this little pop quiz all day than play with any of her toys. Anyway, I decided to write down a word and see what she would do. I wrote, "apple." I showed it to her, and she quickly said, "Apple." I thought it must have been a coincidence, so I wrote down, "ball." I showed it to her, and she said, "Ball." I was shocked. My sister returned to the car, and I showed her a replay of what had just happened. She was shocked too. We started driving, and my sister wrote down a few more words (doll, purple, and dog), which Eleanor read. I discovered a couple of more words she can read once we got home- baby and banana. I'm not sure how many other words she can read, but I'm definitely on a mission to find out.


Gingerpeople revealed

Well, I'm glad to see that our creativity and paper-cutting talents were not wasted.

Thanks to Robin, Jessica, and Casey for playing my silly game!!

The true identities of our fine-looking ginger crew are:

1. Justin Timberlake (who has apparently stopped wearing ball caps over one eye as I cannot find a picture anywhere of such a thing)
2. Dwight K. Schrute
3. Macy Gray
and, of course
4. President Abraham Lincoln

Seriously, if you have to click on the Wikipedia link to take a look at Abraham Lincoln, I'm turning you in to the US citizenship police.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

A little holiday fun

So, my sister had this really fun holiday craft idea- making gingerbread men (and women) to hang in my dining room window. Well, one thing led to another, and before we knew it, this little project had gone in a completely different direction than we had originally anticipated. We ended up making the gingerpeople into celebrity look-alikes, which made for lots of hardy laughter (the kind that can be dangerous while you are wielding the grown-up scissors).

I thought it would be fun to post our little friends, and have you all guess who they are supposed to be. I'll even give you a few little helpful hints (mostly so that our feelings don't get hurt when no one can decipher our creative renderings). You just post your guesses as a comment, and in a couple of days, I'll reveal the true identities of these cooky cookies.

First, a couple of future celebrities...

Future Eleanor

Future Chloe


1. Not a jockey. A singer.

2. Not Harry Potter or Drew Carey. A television show character.

3. Another singer. Her name and Eleanor's name have something in common.


4. Um, duh. It's just un-American if you can't tell who this is.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

We got elfed!

Okay, I totally stole this idea from Jeannie, but it was just too hilarious to pass up!

Just click HERE and you'll see what I mean.

And if you elf yourself, be sure to leave the link in a comment, so we can check it out!

Thursday, November 22, 2007

It just wouldn't be fall without...

...a ton of pictures of kiddos hangin' out in the beautiful leaves. Seriously, I have been so amazed at the breath-takingness of the fall colors here- even in my own yard! I was pleasantly surprised when my trees turned all these gorgeous shades of red and orange over the past few weeks. Tonight, a little front blew (quite ferociously) through and now my entire front and back yards are covered with beautiful leaves.

The weather has been sort of up and down. It was super cold over the weekend and the first part of the week, then warmed up, and (since this afternoon's little front) now quite chilly again. We took advantage of the warm weather yesterday and today, and headed out to the P-A-R-K! The girls had so much fun, and were so glad to be outside!

These pictures are from two different days. The ones in the hats are in my yard earlier this week, and the others are at the park today.






"Look, Chloe, this is how you ring the chimes."



Sunday, November 18, 2007

Mmmm....eggplant and artichoke

Here are a couple of videos of Miss Priss showing off her tricks. The first two (it was over the 100MB limit) are of her naming the fruits and veggies from her food basket. (This in no way indicates that she will eat any of the featured items.) The last one shows her identifying a few letters and the sounds they make. (There you go, Gigi.) She can now pick out A, S, D, B, M, and Z in books or out of a group of letters. That kid...

Blogger refused to upload my videos, so back to Photobucket. I would use YouTube, but someone tried to invite me to be their "friend", so I took all of my videos off, and won't be going back. I hope everyone can see the Photobucket videos this time.





Friday, November 16, 2007

Just pictures









Thursday, November 15, 2007

Zillions and zillions (actually 200) of balls!

I decided that I would put our blow-up kiddie pool to use this during its off-season by filling it up with plastic balls. What kid wouldn't love to play in that?? So, I bought two 100-packs of balls from Wal-Mart, cleaned out the kiddie pool, and my sister poured away. It was a huge hit!

Right now, it's on our screened-in porch. It's like being outside, but without the wind blowing on the girls' little punkin' heads. Once it gets too cold to even venture past our doorway, we can bring it inside, and put it in the playroom. Hooray for a really cheap way to entertain toddlers for hours during the less-park-friendly months!!


The screened-in porch is also where we store all of our super-fun riding toys. Here's Chloe chillin' in the Cozy Coupe...

Thursday, November 8, 2007

We have company!

So, for the next few weeks, I probably won't be blogging too much because my mom and sister and adorable niece are here visiting us. WOOHOO!!!

We're having so much fun just hanging out and enjoying each other's company. Eleanor and Chloe are having a blast together, and Eleanor has learned a lot about sharing from her older (by 7 weeks) and wiser cousin. It's awesome to watch them interact and show concern for eachother. Also, Eleanor has caught on to the fact that the word "nana" can be a fruit and her grandmother's name, and she and Aunt Jen have developed their own special language to express their love.

Here are some pictures from the Fall festival we went to last weekend.






And here are the girls (in their jammies) intently listening to Nana as she reads them a story.


Saturday, November 3, 2007

Eleanor is 14 months and 6 days old!

In other words, I'm very, very late...



And here's what she's up to...
  • Talking like crazy. I can barely keep up with all the words she knows!
  • Doing lots of new baby signs that she learned from her "Baby Wordsworth" video. My favorites are "table" and "swing."
  • Saying five letter sounds- a, s, d, m, and b.
  • Speed crawling all over the house.
  • Enjoying all kinds of new fall activities- hayrides, trick-or-treating, and most of all, playing with apples and pumpkins!
  • Becoming very independent (i.e. wanting to do everything her way!)