Helen Update

Helen is growing like a weed. She's now wearing 12-18 month clothes (she can still fit her 6-12 month clothes but just right). She's pulling up everywhere and has started to cruise a little. She and Carys were actually wrestling on the floor the other day and giggling. She's eating more table food and actually is sleeping through the night from 8:30PM to roughly 3:30AM. That's a BIG step for her and I'm most grateful.

Here she was just settling in for a snack of ribbon from big sisters gifts. It's not her favorite though. Her favorite snack lately is paper!

Dress Up Girl

Carys got lots of dress-up clothes and shoes from Mommy and Ya Ya. She was so cute when she opened some of them, she actually gasped. I wish I had a microphone and of course none of us had the camera ready. She still enjoys these and I'm sure there will come a time when a little princess wants to accompany me to the target for my weekly shopping.

Craft Table

I'm not really an entertainer so I thought this craft table would be great. It was for about 20 minutes. I was happy to see that the community center had a childs kitchen set for them to play with and some play mats. The mats were a hit too and they insisted on doing 3 year old stunts so the parents were forced to pay attention. Luckily they did come back to the craft table after some time and the party was only two hours long, whew!

Happy Birthday Carys!

Carys had a birthday party with friends on Saturday. They had a blast. She did get a fever during her party but she's holding up well here. Sorry for the long break. We'll have more birthday party pics tomorrow.



Special thanks to all friends and family who helped throw this party together in the final minutes (final 9 minutes to be exact) and who helped clean up. You know who you are (David, Nicole, Poppy, Mom, Tamra and everyone else). Thanks for helping Carys have a great party!

Behind Bars

Helen is happy that Poppy has come into her room to "release" her.

Foam Stickers

Carys has always loved stickers. You know they have been a primary source of entertainment for at least a year or year and a half. But we discovered new foam stickers thanks to Dani's Mom. They had their first playdate and they did sticker crafts with these foam stickers. They come in buckets with themes. We got a few buckets for craft time at home. Carys really loves them.

Hanging out with Poppy

Very rarely Poppy gets to sit on the couch with Helen while I finish getting Carys ready in the morning before work. It's truly a moment I hope they will repeat often and enjoy every second of it. From the looks of it, they are well on their way.

Morning Breakfast

Breakfast time during the week is tricky. Sometimes we have eggs, sometimes a yogurt and lately most times are cereal. Carys loves the yogurt cheerios. She gets a breakfast at daycare but we really want to be sure she's off on the right foot. Most days we will encourage her to have eggs for protein if she's up early enough.

Helen, being the baby, is happy with the rice cereal they serve at daycare.

We are now addicted to coffee. Ten years and two kids later, we actually use our coffee pot more for ourselves than our guests.

Chatting with Pinky

Carys loves to talk, sing songs and use her imagination (more on that later). Lately Pinky has been willing to hear her out. He doesn't always stay for the entire story but he finds her amusing and interesting most times.

Teddy Bears

Helen got a couple of bears for Christmas and she's not really attached to any of them. However, I would like her to have some comfort when she wakes up at night so one of these is in her crib with her. I'm not actively trying to attach her to the bear but I do hope she can find something to help soothe herself back to sleep since she's not sleeping through the night yet and I'm about to go psycho from lack of sleep. I've even been crazy enough to push Poppy out of the bed to take care of the babies if I've been up too long in an evening. That speaks volumes.

Cinnamon Rolls

Carys is learning to the benefits of baking things that require frosting. She gets to lick the spoon. When Helen realizes this benefit, I guess we'll need two spoons or two pans of cinnamon rolls. Darn.

Be My Valentine

So today started the tradition of giving valentines for Carys. Of course, I bought her valentine cards but forgot to get the list of kids from the daycare so we brought cupcakes instead. Carys came home with another candy haul. Not that I mind giving her candy but it would be nice to come up with a cheap valentine treat other than candy. Like maybe cupcakes:)

Seriously, like stickers or valentine crayons or little coloring books or something besides sweets. Hmmm.

Yummy

Sometimes you just need to chew on some cardboard. Don't worry she did not eat this. We took it away when both ends were nice and moist. Helen does have other toys but there's an allure from the cardboard tubes for babies.

Feelin' Fine

I know ya'll probably thought I had quit the blog. But thanks to you guys who still checked in. We had a lot of sickness around this house and that made Momma very tired and eventually the last to get sick. We've taken our antibiotics and are back on track to feelin' fine!

Resemblance

Hmmm. Do I see some resemblance? Possibly in the right eye.

Cupcakes

This week-end Carys reminded me that she was a good listener at daycare and I promised we would make cupcakes. It turned into a two day project but we had a lot of fun decorating. The sprinkles did not make it though since they were dropped in the middle of the icing. These don't look the greatest but they were very tasty and Carys loved eating sprinkles and icing the most.

Stealth Stander

Helen started pulling up on anything chest height to her. Of course whenever I would point the camera in her direction, she would stop and sit down. I had to cobble this series together from a bunch of false starts. Carys and I were doing a project and Helen was happy as a clam trying to stand. After some discussion with friends on Saturday, we determined the whole bowlegged thing from early standing smells more like an old wives tale than sound medical advice. However, I'm not knocking my doctor, she's been right many, many times before. I'll just say that I'm following her advice not to encourage Helen to stand but I'm not going to discourage it either at this point.

Lil ' Henry

Meet Henry. He's Helen's first playdate before she even knows what a date is. His Mom and Dad, Tamra and JT, are some of our closest friends here. I love knowing that they will grow up together. It will be such fun!

Peek A Boo

Carys started playing peek a boo with Helen. It's interesting to watch Helen and Carys interact. Carys loves Helen (except when she has one of her toys) and Helen loves to watch Carys run and play.

Pulling Up

Sorry no pics yet. Just a post b/c until now, Helen has not paid any attention to anything above her head when she's crawling. Today at daycare, she pulled up in her crib to stand and she was definitely eyeing the contents on top of the coffee table. This makes me a little concerned b/c the pedi said not to encourage standing so early b/c it might cause bowleggedness (is that a word?). Anyway, I hate to discourage her too. It's a quandry. I'm going to try to capture any stealth standing with my night vision setting tonight when she wakes up for her midnight snack, hee hee.