Trip to Nashville

We took a trip to Nashville abut a week ago to visit Chris's family and celebrate some birthdays. First we stopped at Shelby Park, where both Chris and his parents had played as children. There is a railroad bridge there that goes over the river, and the girls were excited to get to see a train cross it!

on the boat ramp by the river

We visited Great granny, and she got out some old costume jewelry for the girls to play with!

How fancy!

Great Granny with Cecilia

The next day, we got to go swimming in Great Granny's neighborhood pool! It was such a nice morning, and being in the pool felt great to this pregnant lady! ;)

Gran and Cecilia

Caroline and her cousin

Caroline swimming underwater... she has gotten pretty good at this!

three cousins about to jump in together while Great Granny watches

one... two...

...three!

The funny thing was how they never could get their timing quite right... at least, not while I was taking a photo! This time, the girls jumped in ahead of their cousin...

...and here, he jumped in before Caroline! They were basically yanking each other into the water, whoever happened to jump first...

Cecilia had decided she was done with the jumping for now... she was very brave to jump in holding only her cousin's and sister's hands. Lately she would only jump to an adult while holding their hands. I think she's forgotten that she would jump into the pool alone, no hand-holding, when she was 18 months old!

They almost jumped at the same instant this time!

Caroline jumping in on her own

In the afternoon, we got to see more family... Chris's Uncle and Aunt along with Papa and Margaret came over for birthday cake! Caroline and Cecilia got them to play My Little Ponies!

Everybody played outside awhile...

Here is one of their favorite things to do outside: ride in the wagon behind the lawnmower. They pretend the lawnmower is a horse and they are riding in a carriage. They each got a turn to drive, too!

And believe it or not, this is not our last mini-vacation before the baby is born in three weeks... we'll be in Atlanta for one night in a few days, and then, we are done for awhile!!!

Two Year Olds and Water!

A great combination!

I took Cecilia with me to Huntsville to help my sister-in-law around the house and with my nephews for a few days last week. Baby John was born six and a half weeks premature, so even though his birthday was back in April, he was about the age of a one and a half week old baby at the time of my visit when you adjust for the prematurity factor. He is tiny and precious, newborn-baby sized! Unfortunately, I realize now that I uploaded my photos, that I didn't take any photos of him!! That'd be because, as a newborn baby, he was almost always nursing or sleeping! You will have to take my word for it that he's precious!

So, Caroline got to visit Gran and Grandad in Nashville for a few days so that I could actually try to be of useful help. All mothers of new babies, especially when they also have older children, deserve to have as much help around the house as they can get so that they can concentrate on resting, getting nursing figured out, and not worrying about much beyond the very basics.

So, the only pictures I took were of Cecilia and cousin Andrew in water-related situations (they also took a bath, but I took no photos of that). They enjoyed splashing in the backyard kiddie pool. Ahh, a fine example of parallel play in the above photo. ;) So very Two of them... and the interest in the pouring of water as well...

We took the kids to these fountains on my last day there. Cecilia was a bit shy at first... she is rarely scared of anything, but she is often intimidated for a few minutes before plunging (literally!) in headfirst! She is a bit cautious, but certainly not overly so. Andrew seemed to be the same way - sizing up the situation for a minute and then proceeding to get right in the middle of it and get completely soaked! Neither of these kids minds getting splashed in the face!

Water fountain, anyone?

a cute expression from Andrew

They had a great time!! We now have fountains in our very own downtown area... we will have to go sometime soon!!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Cecilia!

Cecilia turns 2 on January 26, and we celebrated her birthday this past Saturday with family! She had a snowman party, since she has a winter birthday. I came up with the idea to make a snowman cake, and the idea grew from there when I saw snowflake plates and cups at the store. We leave all our snowman decorations out well beyond the Christmas season - because snowmen are for winter, not just for Christmas! - so they added to the "theme."

We invited extended family to celebrate with us. Cecilia's grandparents all came as well as her Aunt Sara and cousin Andrew. Right after Cecilia's nap, we began the party with some snacks and drinks: artichoke dip with crackers, Mexican layered dip with tortilla chips, and some sesame sticks and bunny crackers for the littles.

Here's the hodgepodge assortment of paper products!

Cecilia with Gran

After we had some snacks, Cecilia opened her presents. We didn't have a whole bunch of them since we'd just gotten plenty for Christmas!

Grampa helps her open the first gift - a new water bottle! I am ditching the sippy cups and all their annoying straw pieces that get torn (uh, chewed) up - once and for all! That is, for Caroline and Cecilia. Future children would likely have to start with the straw sippy cups again, because the water bottles aren't easy to manage for very young toddlers.

Cecilia was very impressed with her new water bottle... I didn't think she'd care too much, honestly. She asked for water in it right away (I had already pre-washed it, so I filled it up for her). Then she kept drinking, and drinking, and drinking... and dribbling it all over herself as she practiced sipping with the stronger flow. I asked her a few times, "Would you like to open another present now?" to which she responded, "No. I'm drinking."

Cecilia opened her gift from Gran and Grandad (who had also bought her some new cloth diapers to replace the rags we'd been using, but we didn't wrap those!) - she got a new book and a shirt. In this picture she is holding up the shirt so Gramma can see it and saying, "It's a pants." Hee hee. Gramma and Grampa gave her some new board books.

And here she is tearing into her gift from... well, technically, it is from my grandparents. they sent it when she was born, and we put it away for her until she was old enough to enjoy it. We figured Caroline would just play with it herself if we got it out when Cecilia was a tiny baby, and we ddn't want her to get attached to Cecilia's toy!

It's her very own baby doll! This baby has a beautiful smocked dress and bonnet.

Grampa was given the camera to take photos of Cecilia blowing out her candles... and we found that he'd taken this funny shot! Does anyone have a preschool-aged child who actually likes being photographed??

Cecilia blew out her "2" candle with one big blow! Yay!!

Eating her cake

And here's the snowman after being partially eaten by everyone... kinda sad, huh? I made his eyes, mouth, and buttons with raisins (as you can probably tell from the first picture). For the carrot nose, I came up with the idea to use an apricot fruit leather and cut it into a triangle. Then I had the idea to also use fruit leather to cut out a scarf, so I used a red one for that - strawberry, I think. The arms of the snowman are extra cake... I baked the cake batter in two 9" round pans, and then for the one that became the head of the snowman, I trimmed it smaller. The scraps from that became the arms easily with a little more slicing.

Here are Cecilia and Caroline playing with their cousin. They were so excited that he was coming, and talked a lot about how he was going to hold a chicken, and go in their playhouse... they even set up a tea party for him before he arrived!

Caroline and Cecilia also made these marshmallow snowmen, with help from Gramma the preschool director and Grampa the engineer. Cecilia wanted hers to have a nose... I just used Elmer's glue to put them together, construction paper, and toothpicks. Oh, and their hats have those gross-looking "blackberry" candies on them, because I couldn't find black gumdrops... Caroline later took a bite out of the bottom of the middle one, which I had made as an example!

Kissin' Cousins

We went to Huntsville over the weekend for my nephew's baptism. We had a great time hanging out with family. We got to go swimming while we were there, too! After the baptism, we had lunch, and then Caroline posed with Andrew for some pictures. Surprisingly, she didn't mind being licked!

Congratulations on your baptism, Andrew! You are a child of God!