Saturday with Daddy

Olivia figured out how to put the colored rings on the yellow cone/stick today. She was quite proud of herself and loved the attention she was getting from Aunt K, Uncle M, and Mommy. She spent a lot of quality time with Daddy today doing leg exercises, which seem to be paying off already, as she is already showing motivation to move around more. Collin's day was spent helping Daddy prune the flower bushes out front and riding his tricycle. :) http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/auth_dvd?work_id=15539700

Nine Months for Olivia!

My baby girl has been an outside person just as long as she was an inside person. That's another whole pregnancy gone by already! I tried not to blink, but it's hard not to when you need sleep. :) She's starting to wave (hello more than bye-bye), knows what a nose is (she grabs mine when I ask here where it is), and can identify Daddy and Collin by name (but not Mommy!). Still fascinated by the cat and obsessed with beach balls and water bottles, Olivia continues to be an observer but a communicative, smiley one. She loves her people! Even at the nine-month well check she wasn't the least bit afraid of anyone, including our dark-haired, dark-eyed, facial-hair-wearing male pediatrician. All smiles for every poke and prod....well, except for the shot part. She did cry when the needle went in as usual but stopped as soon as it was out. What a trooper! Olivia is not crawling yet, but the pedi says it's because she has low muscle tone in her legs and needs to be doing some exercises to strengthen them. She weighs 18lbs. 15oz., which puts her between the 25th and 50th percentile, a pretty significant drop from 95th at six months. She continues to be on the tall side at 29" (90th percentile) with a large head (90th percentile). A third tooth on the bottom is showing its head, and judging by the way she's been napping and the fingers constantly at her mouth, more are on the way. We love our sweet baby Olivia!!

Live Free or Die Vacation

July 24 - July 31

We packed the kiddos up and drove through the night (10 hours) to beautiful Enfield, NH, to visit my parents, grandpa, aunts, uncle, and cousin for a week. A picture is worth a thousand words, so they say, so I'm guessing a video is worth at least two thousand. Hmm, while I'd love to write a memoir about our vacation, I made a video instead. Too many pictures and video clips to choose from for the purpose of this blog, you know? Here's a link to the video! Enjoy. http://www.onetruemedia.com/otm_site/auth_dvd?work_id=15501468

Dad's First Haircut

Fields of Flowers

A partly sunny, 79-degree day in Northern Virginia during July is a rarity. Since the weather was nothing less than gorgeous and perfect out today, I just had to find something to do with the kids outside. But what? Go to a playground? Nah, been there done that about 983 times already. Go for a walk? Eh. Tired of the all the same ol' routes but keep forgetting to find new ones. Fields of Flowers in Purcellville has been on my to-do list for quite some time, but it seems like every time I think of going, it is either raining or scorching hot. Today was our lucky day!

We pulled up to a cute, New Englandesque-looking property around 1:15 and parked adjacent to a fence that said, "Beware of attack bird." Okay...

I got the kids out of the car, and walked in the direction of the fields, ready to grab everyone and jump in one of the bushes of flowers in case the bird made an appearance. There were handwritten signs everywhere explaining how things work since apparently we were on our own for the day: Fill a glass jar for $10 or a bucket for $20-30 (depending on the size of the container). Don't forget to take some clippers! Put your money in the red coffee container before you leave. Make your own change. Small town feel and honor system - I like it!

After gathering our supplies - I had Olivia in one arm, the wire basket with the jar and clippers in the other, and my camera dangling around my neck - we arrived in the fields of flower gardens. I wish I knew the names of flowers so that I could write them down here, but I know a sunflower when I see one. Collin took off running up and down the rows of flowers, eager to find the perfect ones to pick. Bless his heart, he kept going to the wimpy or dying ones. His favorite flower was a browning yellow head of crumpled petals with hardly a stem; he carried that thing around everywhere and exclaimed he couldn't wait to show Daddy.

I'm not really sure how I managed to hold a baby, cut flowers and put them in the jar, and take pictures all while instructing Collin which flowers to pick and not to pick as well as where to pick and how to pick a flower properly. Hey, I'm not paying for a handful of squished, broken, short flowers! If the attack bird had decided to eat us, I'm not sure I could have put up much of a defense, as my hands were full.



Here is our $10 vase of flowers, hand-picked by my Collin Monster and me (Olivia tried to help but her version of helping was eating the leaves, petals, stems, etc.). I tried to pretend I was a florist and make the prettiest arrangement possible. Ahh, I can smell those stargazer lilies now...mmmm....

Social Butterflies

Pool date with Jo, playdate with Adelyn, impromptu concert

7-11-11 = Free Slurpee!?

As promised to a little boy who ate all his salmon and carrots at dinner, I ventured out to the various 7-Elevens this evening with Collin to obtain his very first Slurpee because they were giving away free ones. Yes, I put a plural 's' at the end of 7-Eleven. I suppose I was a little naive to think we could just zip over to the one three minutes from our house after dinner, get the cup of sugary goodness, and go home. After waiting in line for what seemed like a day, the machine ran out of the icy stuff that differentiates a Slurpee from just a cup of syrupy juice. No problem, I think. We'll just go to the other location in Ashburn. Six-minute drive and still no Slurpee later (machine said 'out of order'...uh-huh...), I had a tired 2-year-old who was still optimistic. "We'll just try a fixed machine, Mommy," he said with reassurance. Easier said than done, son. Not wanting to disappoint my boy, I plugged in 7-Eleven into the GPS, praying the next closest one wouldn't be more than ten minutes away. It was 12. "Okay, Collin, we can try one more place." So I drove across two towns in search of the store. When we got there, people were walking out with Slurpees - good sign! So, to make a long story short, Collin got to have his coveted blue Slurpee, even though it was in a Styrofoam coffee cup because they ran out of regular Slurpee cups and even though I had to drive through a thunderstorm for 30 minutes to get home. Hope he liked it!

The kids played in the kiddie pool together for the first time today. It was cute. ;)

And Collin continues with his classic one-liners. After nap I asked him, "What would you like to have for snack?" to which he replied, "Just get me something from up there (pointing to the pantry cupboard), and I'll eat it," to which I replied, "May I have something out of the cupboard to eat, please?" to which he replied by repeating me. Good boy. We settled on cottage cheese with blueberries out of the fridge, though.