Sunny Days

We've had wonderfully warm and sunny weather lately so the kids have gotten to play outside a ton. Sarah and I took Isabel and Rowan to a playground on Tuesday and they had a blast. Isabel especially loves the slides. We've also had lots of fun playing in the sandbox and digging in the dirt again. I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that my kid loves to cover herself head to toe in dirt and that she will need a bath every single night from now till fall. Jason and I joined our churches softball team and our games start next week. I used to play on the team about 10 years ago. I was a little rusty at first, but I'm having a blast and getting some of my skills back. It's fun to meet some new people and reconnect with others and just be part of a team. I'm really loving it. It's been a pretty busy time around here. I'm watching Rowan 3 days a week this month because my parents, who usually watch him one of the days, are off on a cross-country road trip celebrating their retirement. I get a little stir-crazy when I spend a whole day at home with Isabel, so it's nice to be busy. So here's a bunch of pics from our busy week.

Isabel, Rowan and Auntie at the playground.

Life looks different through the bubble!

Whee! Notice Auntie's pregnant belly in the edge of the frame!
"I don't think this is how I'm supposed to ride this thing Mommy!"

Here's a sad pic:
Rowan broke his wrist this past week when he fell climbing out of his crib. Poor little guy has to wear a cast for the next 3 weeks. At least it's not for longer than that! This is the pose he kept giving me and the sad face when I asked him to show me his cast for the photo.
Here's the kids enjoying Rowan's sandbox. Rowan's a trooper wearing a sock over his cast to keep the sand out. It's definitely not slowing him down at all. He's a tornado of energy. Isabel is very carefully dumping sand on Rowan's leg and shorts; at least she's sharing!
Rowan's cute squinty smile face. What a sweet boy!

Rowan's birthday party and 2 very dirty kids

We had Rowan's 2nd birthday party to attend on this past Sunday. We've had gorgeous weather most of the past week so it was outside and very warm. I took a few pics, but mostly on my sister's camera, so I've only got one from that day to post on here. It was such a nice day and so much fun. My little nephew is such a big boy now! Isabel enjoyed playing with her cousins in dirt and got quite messy. This first pic is from that day. These next pics are from Monday. We thought Isabel was dirty on Sunday; we were very wrong.
Isabel and Rowan dug a nice hole in the backyard with all his new sandbox toys. He doesn't have a sandbox yet so they were improvising.
Then Isabel starting smearing the dirt all over her face and Rowan found this hilarious. So of course that spurred her on even more.

This is the end result, one very dirty kid. I guess I'm glad that she likes to play in the dirt and isn't afraid of getting messy, but this seems a little excessive! She left a pretty good ring around the tub last night! Poor kid also has no shorts and only a couple of t-shirts so far. I haven't gotten around to buying her summer clothes yet, so she was wearing a pair of Rowan's old shorts yesterday. They looked pretty goofy on her. It was almost 90 degrees here yesterday and it's still only April! It's only in the low 70's here today, absolutely perfect weather. I'm getting my garden ready to plant and getting as much sun as I can. I love springtime!

Easter eggs and snuggles

We had a very mellow Easter here this year. We had just moved in, we're really still getting settled. We were headed to my Grandma's house for lunch, so we didn't make it to church because we wouldn't have gotten to Grandma's on time if we went. So we enjoyed our morning at home together. We "hid" Easter eggs for Isabel in plain sight down the stairs and across the living room leading to her basket in the kitchen. It was pretty cold out and we really didn't want to do the outside hunt. Isabel squealed with delight as she found each egg and loved the matchbook cars that I hid inside some of them. She also got a Curious George coloring book and some washable markers and a tiny purse with a couple more cars inside. She loves to parade around carrying her purse and wearing one of daddy's hats. We did have an outside hunt at Grandma's house. My cousin Scott scattered chocolate eggs on the lawn for the little ones to "find". They didn't really know what to do and it was still really cold, but they were awfully cute and seemed to have a good time. Here's Isabel and Austin gathering the loot.
Ooh, look at all the shiny chocolate!
These pics I just took today. I watched Rowan at my house today. These were taken just after the kids took their naps. I brought Isabel downstairs first then went to get Rowan. Isabel reached out her arms to him and asked for him to join her on the couch. I sat him down next to her and he snuggled closer as they watched Curious George and ate fishy crackers and grapes.
Sometimes they can be so sweet with each other!

Jackson Trip

Isabel and I had a great trip out to Jackson, Wyoming. We were there for 12 days, but it went by too fast. I got to see most of the people that I wanted to, but I really felt like I didn't have enough time. I doubt it will ever seem like enough, unless we move back there. Isabel was such a trooper! She went out to dinner and lunch more times in those 12 days than she had in the past year. She was great on the flights out there; a portable DVD player with a couple of Sesame dvd's really helped. We stayed most of the time with Anthony and EB and for a few nights with Steve and Christy. At Anthony and EB's house Isabel's favorite thing to do was to chase the cat and dog, luckily they are very patient animals and Isabel was really gentle with them. Hopefully we'll be able to get her a cat of her own soon. We had a horrific time getting back to Massachusetts. Our flight left Jackson about 15 minutes late and headed to Dallas which was socked in by storms. They almost sent up to Shreveport while they closed Dallas for a little bit, but then they re-opened and we were able to land. Unfortunately we then sat on the tarmac for about 20 minutes while waiting for a gate. We also were in the air for about an extra 45 minutes. All this meant that we missed our connecting flight by 7 minutes! Then next flight out to Hartford was at 7pm, 6 hours later. Okay, so we dealt with that and Isabel was awesome. Then that flight was delayed! First because our head flight attendant hadn't arrived yet, then lightning closed the airport. All in all it was a horrible experience. We finally boarded at 10pm and took off at 10:30. Isabel didn't sleep all day, and she got up at 5:45am. She finally fell asleep on the plane at 11pm. The last hour at the airport before boarding was horrible, she was a cranky screaming mess. We got in to Hartford at about 2:35am and then had to wait till 3:15 for Jason to arrive to pick us up. By the time we got home it was 4:15am. Yuck! I will never fly through Dallas again, I hate that airport! We were supposed to move into our new apartment on Saturday, the same day as we ended up arriving home,but we postponed that till Sunday. We were a bit more rested then and the move went pretty smoothly. We're fairly settled into our new place and happy to be closer to family. I miss all my friends back in Jackson and had so much fun spending time with everyone. Thanks for making it such a great trip everybody!

This is Isabel in her favorite chair at Steve and Christy's, watching Elmo on the tv.

Suzanne, Abby, Isabel and I at the Cadillac.
Playing with Anthony and Russell(Russell is the dog).

Clumping around in Anthony's huge hiking boots.

Playing with Steve and Cusco.
Aaaw! Snuggling with Steve.

Busy time around here...

It's been a pretty busy week for us. I've been getting ready for Isabel and I to travel to Wyoming on Sunday, starting to pack and trying to find things to entertain Isabel on the flights. To add to the craziness I've also been working on packing up our apartment as we are moving to a new apartment on the 31st, the day after I get back from Wyoming! Yikes! I know that was probably a crazy decision given the timing, but I'm thrilled to be moving. Our new place will be closer to my family and friends and it has a nice yard with plenty of room for a garden and for Isabel to run around. So I've been packing my kitchen and pantry and some closets and the rest will be taken care of by Jason while I'm gone. I know he'll get it all done, I just have to trust that everything won't get broken in the process. But I'll be on vacation, so I don't get to worry about it. YAY! I can't wait to see my friends in Jackson. It's going to be weird being there with Isabel and without Jason, but it'll be a lot of fun too. My main worry is keeping Isabel happy on the flights, but hopefully it won't be too bad. I've posted some pics here that I found on my camera from an afternoon outside and Grampa and Grandma's with Rowan and a couple from yesterday when Rowan was here and the two kids were watching Sesame Street on the couch. They ask for Elmo all day long and would watch it constantly if allowed. Many days Isabel greets me with a "Hi Mommy" and then her second word is "Elmo?".
This was a gorgeous day, the kids were roasting in their snowsuits. They chased this ball around for a while, mostly spending their time face down like Isabel above. Or like Rowan below, looking up at Grampa after falling over the ball. It was a fun day outside in the sun.

Here's the kids playing around in Sarah and Mark's boots. This is one of their favorite things to do when I first arrive at Sarah's house in the morning. Actually, wearing big shoes is one of Isabel's favorite things any time. The two of them clumped around in the boots for a while that morning, falling all over the place and acting goofy. I love how much fun they have together.

Both looking very sleepy watching Sesame Street yesterday afternoon. My parents had Rowan for the day and came over to help me pack my kitchen. Rowan was so excited to come over and play that I got no greeting as he ran in shouting "There you are Aba! Hi Aba!" (Aba is his name for Isabel.) They were very tired out by the time I took this pic as they spent the whole morning running around getting into everything that I was trying to pack. I just thought they looked sweet sitting on the couch together.

Isabel's first sleep-over

I don't have any new pics to post, but I had to share about Isabel's first sleep-over. this was a pretty busy weekend for us. Jason's birthday was on friday, 36! He's taking it rather hard, I think he feels a bit old. Then our anniversary was on monday, but we celebrated on sunday. We received a gift certificate from my sister and her hubby for Christmas for a night out to dinner and a movie, complete with babysitting. So we went to church in the morning, then to my parents' house for birthday lunch for Jason. Yummy ribs, mmm! then Mark and Sarah took Isabel home with them and we went to an afternoon showing of Ghost Rider. Not a great movie by any standard, but still fun to go. Then off to dinner for some seafood and good wine. Sarah had offered to keep Isabel all night since I was taking care of Rowan there on monday anyway, so we took them up on it. Unfortunately Isabel didn't sleep perfectly all night, but she did okay. She didn't even seem to have missed me that much when i showed up them next morning. She had a great time hanging out with her cousin Rowan the whole time and she snuggled up to her Uncle Mark, who she absolutely adores, a whole lot. It was really strange not having her here for a night, but amazing to be out without her for an actual date. My little girl is growing up!

Quick post with some cute and funny new pics

One of Isabel's favorite things to do lately is to play dress-up. She loves to steal my sweatshirts and ask me to put them on her. These pics were from last night. She wore this sweatshirt around the house for about an hour. Here she's talking on the remote as a phone and snuggling on the couch all bundled up in my sweatshirt. I just thought this was hilarious and so cute.
Rowan and Auntie came over yesterday and hung out for half the day. They hadn't been to our house in quite a while, usually we're at Auntie's house. Isabel loved having them here and they had such a blast together. They both love to color pictures and here they are coloring together. Rowan draws lovely swirly pictures and gets really close to the paper, while Isabel hovers above the paper and draws lots of long straight lines with very intense concentration. It's so fun to see how they differ so much. Two cousins couldn't be more different in every way really!
Isabel also loves to wear her cowboy boots so much that here she is wearing them with her little track suit. She really loves to accessorize already. She loves her shoes!

Finally some snow to play in

We finally got some decent snow last week, the Valentine's Day Blizzard hit New England pretty hard. I was able to find Isabel a snow suit at the outlet store for only $5.00, lucky for me since I'd waited till most places had switched over entirely to spring clothes. Today was really nice out, about 40 degrees and sunny, so I bundled Isabel all up and we played out in the front yard for a while. She loved making and throwing snowballs and sliding down the tiny snowbank on her bottom and on her tummy face-first. What a little daredevil! We had a blast and I managed to get a couple decent pictures. I'm also going to post a couple of pics of Isabel's Valentine's outfit that her daddy dressed her in one day last week. He loves to get to dress up his little girl occasionally and the results are usually very interesting. This outfit is pretty cute, although very girly and extremely colorful, with lots of pink. I bought Isabel's little cowboy boots at Target, I saw them and just couldn't resist. She loves to wear them, actually she loves all kids of shoes right now. Usually she wears about 4 different pairs each day. She likes to play dress-up and brings me different shoes to put on her and tries on my shoes too. I need to get a pic of her trying to shuffle around the house in my sneakers. Another big milestone, I finally got to turn her carseat to face forward! She's finally 20 lbs! (At 17 1/2 months) Still a tiny little peanut, but she doesn't seem to realize that. She thinks she a big girl! All bundled up!
Goofy $5 snowsuit
Yay, snow!!!
Girly-girl in her cute new boots.
Peek-a-boo!

Cutest Kid in the Universe

Cutest kid in the Universe, and it's finally been acknowledged by people other than us. Our little cutie was chosen as a daily winner on http://www.parents.com/ as their cutest kid on February 2nd. If you're reading this on the 3rd or 4th check it out, she's still up there on the page. In other news, my parents retired from teaching on December 22nd and we attended the big party for my dad on January 20th. He'd been teaching at Sunderland Elementary School for 32 years! It was a fun night with lots of great food and a great slide show of pics of my dad throughout the years. Isabel was a little intimidated by all the people and wouldn't leave my hip for most of the evening. Two days later my parents headed down to Florida to visit friends and family and enjoy a little sunshine. They just arrived back yesterday so we dropped in today so Isabel could see her Grandpa and Grandma who she missed quite a bit. While they were gone we got to use their tickets to the Umass vs BU hockey game. Isabel wore her Umass sweatshirt and had a blast cheering and dancing and making eyes at the little boy down the row. She's a natural flirt! I think we're in trouble when she gets older! I'm happy that we finally got some decent snow here, so hopefully Isabel can get out and play in it. She loves to look at it and has learned to say "pretty snow". She seems to learn new words every day lately. Tomorrow we'll work on having her say "Go Bears" and she'll get to wear her Bears jersey one more time as we watch the SuperBowl. Since the Patriots didn't make it I'll be cheering for the Bears as well. Go Bears!

Isabel hanging out with all her pals in her big chair.

Bubble bath time, check out all that hair!

Some random recent pictures

So these are just a bunch of pictures that I've taken recently. The first is one of Isabel doing one of her favorite activities, Swiffering the kitchen! She loves to help me out and push the Swiffer around. It's great for keeping her occupied for a while. Then there's a pic of her building towers with Daddy with her new blocks from Grandma and Grandpa. She still gets more excited about knocking down the towers than building them up, but she is able to stack about 3 or 4 now. She loves building towers with her Megablocks also, those are a lot easier to stack together. Some more of her favorite things to do lately are: climbing on everything, she's quite a little daredevil sometimes; climbing into Rowan's Tonka truck and asking him to push her around; watching Sesame Street and trying to sing the song. She also loves Elmo and as soon as he comes on the tv she jumps up and down and dances around and claps her hands. I don't know what it is about Elmo that the little ones love so much, but they sure do love him. Sesame Street is on everyday at 9am; I think I've seen the same 6 episodes about 5 times each this past month! As I write this it actually just came on tv and Isabel is ecstatic.
Not too much else is going on around here. It's been ridiculously warm for January, we actually took Isabel to the park on Saturday as it was in the 60's all afternoon. We've also had a whole bunch of illness in the family lately. Isabel had a horrible cold the week before Christmas, I had a migraine most of last week and just felt miserable, and my sister and her husband and Rowan all had a horrible stomach bug last week. Hopefully we're out of danger of catching that now. I really hope this isn't what the rest of the winter is going to be like. Isabel also had her 15 month Drs. appointment last week. My little girl is still very little. She is 29 inches tall now, but only 18 1/2 pounds. Her height is fine, but her weight isn't even on the charts and I still have to wait till she is 20 lbs to turn her car seat forward. Poor little girl is going to be facing backwards till she's a year and a half! She eats plenty, she just runs it all off I guess. But she's very healthy and the doctor wasn't really worried about her, i just have to work on getting a little more weight on her. Lucky girl gets cream on her cereal and butter on everything!

Helping mommy clean the really dirty floor.

Ooh, block towers.

I finally took a pic of our tree right before we took it down. Isn't it so pretty?!

Pretty little girl in her new dress and shirt from Kate, I love this dress!

I love these two pics of Isabel and Jason, what a good looking family I have!

Christmas

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We had a great time, although very busy. We attended Christmas Eve service at my parents' church in Hadley. Then we headed back home where Jason and I exchanged our gifts to each other that night. Then in the morning we had the chaos and joy of watching Isabel open all her presents and then we headed back to my parents' house to open more gifts and have brunch. My sister and her husband and Rowan joined us there and the kids had a blast checking out their new toys and clothes. I've posted a bunch of pics of Isabel with her favorite new stuff. We got her the huge Pooh chair which she loves to snuggle and pounce on. My parents gave Rowan the Tonka truck that Isabel is perched in, but she couldn't keep her hands off it, I guess we'll have to get her one of her own sometime. My mom made sticky buns that morning and I got very few pictures of Isabel that didn't include her stuffing her face with a bun. They were very very yummy. After spending time at my parents' house we all headed out to my Grandma's to join the whole extended family where the little ones proceeded to get even more loot. It was a very nice and very exhausting day. It was so much fun buying things for Isabel and Rowan this year, knowing that they'd have fun opening their gifts and playing with their new toys. They were definitely a bit overwhelmed, but they had a good time. I hope everyone else had a wonderful day also and has a Happy New Years also.

Finally allowed to pull everything out of her stocking.

She loves her Pooh Bear chair.

This is her special Christmas outfit picked out by Daddy. She just couldn't leave the Tonka truck alone. See how perfectly she fits in it!

Evidence of yummy sticky buns all over her face as she checks out her new farm toy.

This is Rowan's funny new grin with his eyes all scrunched up. Isabel is busy pulling all the ornaments of the tree.

This is Rowan and my cousin's son, Austin, playing the organ at Great-Gramma's house. Austin is 8 months older, but Rowan actually weighs more and is the same height, what a tall boy he is!