Deep almost 3 yr old thoughts...

Elise and I were doing a puzzle just now before bed, all of a sudden she said "Hey Mama, do you have buns?" Upon a yes answer came "and bugs haves buns too?". Upon another yes answer, "Oh, OK, wank you". And back to the puzzle :)

A day at the park

P's kinda started waving, he's sooooo big, especially in this picture!





Yes, Elise is hanging from the bar on the edge of the platform, her favorite thing to do - swinging back and forth :)



She sooooo wants to be able to do the monkey bars herself and is so close, I barely have to hold onto her when she does it.



No Elise smiles on command this day, but sometimes these serious ones are the best - I especially love the serious ones in the post below.

Our Nature Girl on Earth Day

Here's Elise - our nature lover - picking the leave seedlings - for almost an hour and a half. I can't tell you how happy it makes me watching her doing things like this, so intent and focused, just SIMPLE. Patrick was so content watching her. I just love the one where he looks like he's posing with the ball.

Happy Belated Earth Day

I'll post pics later tonight, but we THOROUGHLY enjoyed Earth Day yesterday! A long walk and then we looked at all the actual leaves on the trees that Elise has been following as buds, found a birds nest, we have a bunny nest with a baby bunny in it in our backyard so we gently checked on that, checked the online bald eagle cam multiple times with 3 chicks and a mom in it, played outside ALOT, pulled all the fuzzy seedlings off the cat-tail on our walk, found a worm a put it back "to be with it's Momma", saw a couple of butterflies, tried to "catch a Robin", and attempted to collect all the "worms" that fell off our front tree when the leaves came. Elise spent 1 whole hour in the front yard collecting these seeds that fall from the tree. She was very serious and loving it all at once. While I was taking pics of her, Patrick must have grabbed one, I turned and he was munching away at something. I pulled it out of his mouth and it was one of the long wormy seed things. We just love love love that she's a nature girl!!!
All in all an AWESOME Earth Day :)

P.S. We did all of this while singing the "Days of the Week" song and "Zippity Do Da, Zippity EIGHT (aaay)" the whole day. Elise is so cute and funny and just sings all day long - makes me happy and feel like, despite the rough times, we're raising a happy little girl :)

Sibling Rivalry

Elise is a bit bent out of shape these days, as Patrick is mobile. Needless to say the past few days she's been busy freaking out.
Anything she puts on the floor he does his version of commando crawling that looks like doing the worm over to it and grabs it and eats it. Then, she'll sit on the couch and play with whatever she was doing on the ground and he'll go over and grab her toes...let's just say that's enough to set her over the edge and she'll scream. He laughs at her cuz she's making a high voice, pushing her further. Then she yells in his face and he now growls back at her. Priceless...Ohhhhhh the times we have ahead of us!

GO TWINS GO...

A days worth of photo shooting the kids in their TWINS gear (Elise is wearing Patricks 12 mo jersey) - they were so goofy! Daddy was at his first outdoor Twins game while we enjoyed the gorgeous weather at home.

8 months old

Our little man is 8 months old, it still ceases to amaze us as each month passes! Time flies!
He's commando crawling - soooo close to real crawling, but he gets excited on his hands and knees and catapolts himself forwards like doing the worm. He's babbling a ton - da-da-da, ba, and other silly noises. He's eating soft solids now too and does the cutest little tongue rolling thing when he chews. Still no teeth, but that's fine by me :)
As usual Elise jumps into his monthly pictures, I love this one of the two of them, both in brown and jeans :)

Serious Palattao Swinging...

Our serious little swinging kids...




Then...
Elise was a happy swinger who didn't want me to take pictures of her.
And Patrick was giggly and smiley :)




And ending the event...our little nature girl feeding the ducks (after she learned what burrs were and had the biggest smile on her face when they stuck to her fingers :) ...

Peter Cottontail - What's they names?

An Elise story...
We were on the swings in the backyard on Tues and Elise saw a bunny hopping in the neighbors yard. She asked where "she going". I told her probably to her nest. She asked what a nest was and upon finding out it was for her babies, then she asked how many she had. Together we decided four and she did her question that she's obsessed with these days..."What's they names" about everything and everyone...it's sooo cute!
Here are the names, in order, Peter Cottontail, Josephina, Sally, and Mark. G and I just love that kid :)

Singin' in the rain

Elise got rain boots for Easter from Gamma and B-Bob and was just itching to use them - so she splashed in the puddles as Patrick and I watched from under the umbrella and Patrick shrieked and giggled watching her, while holding the umbrella with both hands :)
She keeps saying "Mama who gived this to me?" Then she says "Ohhhhhh I just love them!"




And her on Easter in her boots...

Bunnies

Our little Easter bunnies - Goofy Elise, Cruzer, Kylie, Patrick and Gamma

Make you melt?

Our friend Tami is starting her own photography gig and took these amazing pics of Patrick last Sat - these aren't even the final versions, just a sneak peek! I just want to look at them all the time - there's something about a little guy in only overalls - Greg thinks he looks like a farmer. :) (I'd be happy to pass on her info if anyone is interested in her awesome work)

Let's go fly a kite...

Elise's first kite flying experience.








Patrick is practicing how the cool kids drive cars (in England), he rode the whole way to the park like this :)



There are many things wrong with this picture!



Finally, he had had enough, let's go home OK?

Frog in your throat?

He can't even talk yet, but he's got a frog in his throat!