First Dance Class

Another first. Ava has been begging me for months to let her go to a dance class. Since September the requests happen daily. I finally called around and found a school with an opening. You can imagine her excitement when the day of her first class finally arrived. She was so excited, in fact, that she couldn't stand still long enough for me to take a picture before we left. She was "practicing". Because she's a ballerina, you know. I hoped the experience would live up to her expectations...and it did. She loved it! Even better yet, her friend Anna will be attending the class with her. She had such a good time demonstrating what she learned in class while I made dinner. She wouldn't take her leotard off.

Here she is before we left for dance class tonight.

First Snow

It started snowing here the week BEFORE Halloween and we've seen flurries off and on ever since. However, this is the first real snow of the year. The one that stuck. We were all excited to put on our snow gear and slide around. Yesterday after I picked up Ava from school, I put Emily down for a nap and took Ava out to play. We built a little snowman. Before we could give him a face, Miss Emily was paging me through the monitor. What to do? Leave him with such a blank expression? Nope, I put him on a cookie sheet and brought him in so that we could all share in the decorating fun. He got mini oreos for eyes, the traditional carrot nose, and a pepperoni smile. Emily had fun eating snow. She'd take a big bite and make a horrible face from the cold and then go back for more.
More snow fell overnight and so this morning we bundled up again and this time Emily got to share in the fun. The forecast predicts snow every day through the weekend, so there is no end to our fun in sight.

Here are the pictures from last night and this morning.

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First Word

Emily said her first word last Tuesday. She was in the bathtub, which is one of her favorite places, and she stood up and lovingly patted the faucet and said, "Bath, bath." It was so darn cute. The next morning she expanded her vocabulary to "Dada". This week, if you ask her to say grandpa she says, "Ga Pa" or "Papa". She's putting together lots of new sounds this week, so who knows what she'll say next. Can we get a mama?! Please? Here are a few pics of her last week being her cute lil' self.




And one of her this morning with some serious hat head after playing outdoors. See all of those teeth? #6 is on it's way through!

Emily's 10 Month Report

She's 10 months now! I know that I keep saying this, but I've forgotten how much fun babies are at this stage. One of my favorite developments that has really emerged in the last couple of weeks is that Emily knows what to do with "stuff". If she picks up a phone it goes to her ear and she babbles away. If she picks up a comb she puts it to her head and tries to give herself a little baby hairstyle. Yesterday she found Mike's belt laying on the floor and she carefully wrapped it around her mid-section. She knows where it goes! It's a nice change from just putting everything in her mouth. Oh and baby dolls....she loves baby dolls right now. She gives them kisses and says "Awwww." No other words to report yet, but she knows the sound to express affection. It's very sweet to watch.

She's still into everything. Tearing laundry out of baskets, Tupperware out of cupboards and books off of shelves, to name a few. She's cruising all around the furniture and starting to stand on her very own. She's a climber just like her big sister was at this age. She climbs onto the rocking chair, love seat, dishwasher....

Her favorite place to be right now is on the stairs. I know, not good. We have them barricaded, but as soon as she hears the gate move, she's off like a rocket toward the stairs with the hope that we might let her climb. She's pretty brave. Our stairs are scary. There are big spaces between them that she could fall through! Mom, if you're reading, I promise that she is never on the stairs unchaperoned. The video clip not only shows her climbing the stairs, but also her ability to stand. A little.

I do have to brag on Ava's problem solving skills for a moment here. Ava loves her High School Musical dance mat. The problem is, so does Emily. And why wouldn't she, it's got that crinkly texture babies love, not to mention lights and music. She's like a moth to a flame with that thing. Consequently, throughout the day I hear, "Mom! Emily is on my dance mat again. MOM! Get her!" and "Get off baby! This is not for babies. Get off!" followed by poor Emily wailing broken-heartedly. Finally, this morning I told Ava that if Emily was bothering her that she just needed to move the dance mat into another room and play with it there. Then it got quiet. Ahhh. Sweet silence. Then the music started again. I was just getting ready to remind Ava that I asked her to take the mat to another room when I looked up to see Emily bouncing to the music on the AquaDoodle water paint mat and Ava happily dancing away on her dance mat right next to her. Problem solved...at least momentarily. Go Ava. Good thinking!

If you can look past Ava's crazy dancing, you'll see Emily behind her and to the right, trying to get up off of the floor and dance along. Oh, and please pardon the mess. I promise that the house got cleaner as the day went on. Here are Ava and Emily from this morning:

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One Last Hurrah

This week has been absolutely beautiful, but I know these perfect Fall days are fleeting and winter is just around the corner for us. In fact, the forecast for the weekend predicts rain mixed with snow. As I type this I hear the rain that precedes the cold front pelting my window. Batten down the hatches!

At least we took advantage of the nice weather while it lasted, playing outside as much as possible this week. I wanted to squeeze in one more little adventure before the trails here become snow covered, so I took the girls on a little nature hike yesterday. The pictures don't do the beauty of the day justice.





The trail ran along the edge of a pretty deep ravine. I quickly had to ditch the stroller and Emily piggybacked as there were crossings like this one along the trail. I think this mini-ravine was just cut from water running down to the lake below. You could actually walk down and up to cross, but here Ava shows her balancing skills by crossing on a fallen tree.





What are we going to do all winter!?

Raking Leaves and Halloween

I combined two sets of pictures in the slide show below, leaf raking and then Halloween, so I'll post about both here. On Thursday, the girls and I spent two hours in the yard raking leaves. I have not had to rake leaves in SO long. I forgot what a workout it can be! Last year in Georgia, we only had two little trees. Not too bad. Before that, I hadn't raked since I moved out of my parents house, 13 years ago. Now ask me about my tortured youth, that's a different story. We lived in a woods. A woods! And we had to rake our giant expanse of a wooded yard. It took us days and days. Maybe I just imagine that it was such a humongous task, but it felt like we never stopped raking. Anyway...back to the present...the kids had a wonderful time playing in the leaves while I worked. If you look at the pictures you'll see Emily crying in the leaves. I swear she was having fun and then nap time hit her like a train and she was DONE. Anyway, it was good to have some outdoor time. We're taking advantage of the nice days here. We know they are numbered.

Yesterday was beautiful. After seeing a little bit of snow and ice here on 2 days last week, I fully anticipated that the girls would have to trick or treat in their winter coats. Not so. We welcomed Halloween with the sun...and almost 65 degrees. Of course, the evening was cooler, but still very nice. Ava was totally psyched for the holiday. She could not wait to go trick or treating with her good friend Anna. We met up with our friends, Dave and Staycie and their kids and then some of their friends joined us with their 4 children. We were like a Halloween parade as we trick or treated through the neighborhood.

Emily was totally content to cruise along in the stroller and watch everything that was going on. I wonder what she thought about what she was seeing. Everyone in costume, ringing the doorbells of strangers. Hmmm. In honor of her first Halloween, Emily did try to consume our jack-o-lantern yesterday. I took a phone call and after a few minutes of conversation, I noted that Emily was no longer at my feet. I tracked her down around the corner eating our pumpkin. I took a little video clip, it's in the show below. Sorry for the shaky filmography, I was trying to keep the pumpkin pieces out of her mouth and kept losing my subject in the lense.

Here you go...pictures of leaf raking and Sleeping Beauty and the Scarecrow on Halloween.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Just for fun, here is Ava wearing the scarecrow costume at 13 months and Emily yesterday at 10 months.