Updates

Welcome back! We've been moving right along with life. 

Milo is all registered for kindergarten, we go for orientation on May 16th! He's had his physical and blood work done and he was a champ! At the physical he got three shots along with a TB test and he didn't cry at all! Then three days later we went and had blood drawn (per the paperwork) and he didn't cry there, either! Jesse and I are SO proud of him! 

Lena is still slowly saying words. Her favorite is "up" but she also says: bubble, ouch, out, pup, PawPaw, hi-yo (hello), off, and ope (open). I'm sure there are more but I can't think of them right now.

We are now a pacifier-free family! I'd been thinking of "breaking" Lena's for awhile and finally did it Saturday night. She hasn't been as dependent on it as Milo was, and she's 7 months younger than he was when his "broke". She cried for 30 minutes the first night, she sounded so sad, but then she slept until 7:30 the next morning without a peep. 

Milo, being the smart person that he is, in the car yesterday asked me if I'd cut Lena's pacifier to break it. Jesse and I just looked at each other and smiled, that kid is smart. He hadn't seen the pacifier since it broke. I asked him how he knew I'd cut it and he said he heard the scissors! He was in the other room when I did it! 

Milo is also signed up for t-ball!! He starts in early June and he's very excited! Every time we go out back to play he wants us to pitch to him. He hits better when pitched to than off the T. 

Milo's new favorite game is UNO, we taught him to play over the weekend. He and I played 5 games this morning and he won 3 of them!

Onto the pictures!!!

We went to the Cleveland Zoo while we were there for Passover. Milo on the wolf. 

Jesse making his miraculous catch of Lena falling off the wolf.

Me and Milo on the horse-drawn wagon ride during the Easter Egg-stravaganza downtown South Bend.

Lena in her sack for the race!

Milo standing on a ledge at my parent's house, where he's not supposed to stand...

Lena during an Easter egg hunt!

Milo during the egg hunt-giving Jessica some eggs he found.

My mom's parents, GG and Grandad.

We didn't know how much our kids loved hard-boiled eggs until this year. This is both of them cracking and opening their own eggs.

Knight Lena slaying the Daddy Dragon!!

Milo got a new bed!! Our friends told us a few months ago that we could have this lofted bed with a slide on the side. It took us a few hours to make it work, but here's the finished product! I made the curtain to hide things under his bed (his train table is hidden under there!!).

Milo building a jet out of a diaper box. He worked on it for a long time and colored it! 

Lena "driving" on the way to the playground. She loves to ride in this thing!

Milo hanging from the monkey bars-I love his smile!!!

Until the next post, have a great week!

Crazy March Weather

Happy Spring! Wow, was our winter the mildest I can remember. We would get a lot of snow and then it would be gone quickly with decent temperatures. We've had fun playing outside in sweatshirts or even shorts, depending on the day! This last week we've had 7 days of record-breaking highs and I love having the house open!

Milo started playing basketball at the Y. It's learning skills rather than playing the game, but he has fun.

Lena has finally mastered running and then figured out running on her toes, which is very cute! Her hair is also long enough to put in a ponytail! Cutest.thing.ever!!!

Lena's vocabulary is s.l.o.w.l.y coming along. She'll say a word one day and then not say it again for a few days. Oh well, soon enough she'll start speaking and not stop (much like her brother).

Onto the pictures!

Lena on the bounce house slide at Maizie and Joey's birthday party. She loved it!

Milo climbing at the bounce house!

While I was working on cakes for the party Lena grabbed an apple and went to town! She ate the WHOLE thing, even the seeds! She makes it look so good...

We've had a virus running through the house and on this day Milo was extremely run down and not happy. I finally gave him some medicine and after half an hour he jumped up, grabbed his cape, and became a super hero!

Guess who's going to kindergarten next year!?!?!

For some bizarre reason both kids woke up at 6:00 one morning. Lena fell asleep in her high chair at 9:00 that morning in the middle of eating a waffle and even Milo took a nap that afternoon!

Playing outside in early March in shorts. :)

Goof ball playing with her shirt at dinner one night.

Someone figured out how to get on the back of the couch...

Milo's first basketball practice, doing the warm-up!

Milo at swimming lessons. This was at the beginning of class and they were in the deep end, without any floaties!

Lena climbing onto the table at my parent's house.

Lena's first time having cereal with milk, all by herself.

Have a great week!

This is what happens when you don't blog for a month

Happy New Year! I hope the new year year will be good to us and you, so many adventures await!

We had a great Christmas where the kids got a lot of toys, but they love playing with them, and that's what matters.

Milo should start school this fall (depending on which school district makes their cut-off September 1) and Jesse's half-way through his first week of being Chief at work. I haven't killed him yet, so the stress must not be too bad (ha!).

Lena is still happy, most of the time, until Milo does something she doesn't like, then she screams. yeah. She has 13 teeth (As I'm trying to count them in my head) and is still so much better at that than her brother!) and sleeps anywhere from 11.5-13 hours a night! Woo hoo! And still takes a nap or two, depending on when she wakes up and her attitude.

I decided that if Milo's not going to pre-school then he needed to start on a workbook. My uncle did not know this and bought him one for Christmas! It's a K workbook, so we'll see how far Milo gets before I feel that it's too much for him. Each morning after breakfast we do a few pages. He seems to enjoy it, the only part he doesn't like is me making him write his name on each page. Hey, he'll have to do it once he gets to school...

Here are some pictures, sorry there are so many, it's my own fault for not updating sooner.

Lena playing with a curtain at Harley and Michelle's house on New Year's Eve.

I wanted a new project so I asked for a pasta roller for Christmas. This is Milo enjoying some of the first noodles to be made, he LOVED them!!! He also helped me to roll out the pasta.

Lena, in her necklaces, of course, enjoying the noodles, too! Maybe I should make another batch sometime soon.

Pasta drying on the rack.

Lena got two baby dolls and some accessories for Christmas. Apparently she thought she should get in the pack-n-play. This wasn't the only time she got in it. She also tries to get in the stroller...

Opening a present Christmas morning!!

Milo opening the gift he's been waiting for for MONTHS-his How Wheels wall track! He was with us when we bought it, so he knew he was getting it and every time he would ask about it we would say, "What are you talking about? We don't have anything like that." Luckily he knew we were playing with him.

This is how we spent a quiet Christmas Eve at home, the kids playing "train" while Jesse and I started packing for all of our traveling.

Grandma Bunny reading to Lena while we were in Cleveland for Hanukkah.

We try to combine seeing family with doing something new when we go to Cleveland. This time we went to their Children's Museum. This was an awesome climbing toy they had, it made a big arch.

Lena loved the water table! This girl will be a fish, she loves the bath, being in the hot tub, and playing in the cat water. She even gets excited watching Milo at swimming!

Milo loved the water table, too! This is him building on a spout. What cracked me up was that the spout was close enough to the edge that if he swung it around the water poured on the ground. I'm not sure they planned for that when they built it.

Milo talking to Santa downtown South Bend. He wouldn't sit on his lap, but at least he talked to him. This Santa wasn't very prepared, Milo asked him where his reindeer were and he didn't have an answer...really?

Same day at the Chocolate Company. Both kids (and Jesse) were okay with Rudolph.

My sweet Santa Baby!

Our first real snow (I say that before we had the storm that gave us about a foot) of the season. Milo couldn't wait to go out and play in it!!!

This is what happens when Daddy and Milo go shopping without us, Lena gets Milo's space shuttle and flies it around the room! Milo would've had a fit if she'd done it while he was home!

He was so proud of himself for making this "garage" for the space shuttle. He looks like a little boy in this picture, not the little man I see every day!

The kiddos sledding!!! Jesse pulled them around the house, even Lena liked it. Milo must've been outside for over an hour with Jesse shoveling, sledding, and playing out back! He slept very well that night!

I don't know if Lena was trying to take off her shirt or what, but it got stuck like this. I thought it was funny, grabbed camera, and Milo did it, too. Of course then Lena got mad that it was stuck and I had to put it back down. She looks like Butt-head doing Cornholio!

Titus, Our Elf on the Shelf, and other things

Happy December! We have been having fun, especially since our Elf on the Shelf, Titus, showed up! He's a funny little thing that will be getting more mischievous, or so my gut tells me. :) This morning he was found on a shelf in Milo's room, sitting on top of the Snoopy that Milo sleeps with every night...Milo LOVES to find him every morning and laughs when Titus is doing something funny.

Lena is such a girl! She loves to put on necklaces and shoes, she cracks us up! She is also developing a temper, if Milo is in her way or doing something she wants to do she yells and tries to move him out of her way.

Her hair is also getting long, when she gets out of the bathtub, it's actually past her shoulders! Well, the back of her hair is, the top is growing s.l.o.w.l.y.

Here are the pictures!

Lena this morning, wearing her necklace, and playing with Milo's pinwheel.

My Uncle Gary refinished this rocking chair from when he was small and gave it to Lena for her birthday! She loves it (probably even happier since Milo's too big for it!) and rocks away, sitting forward and backwards. This is also her new face whenever I pull out the camera...thanks, Target Portrait Studio.

Milo started his soccer lessons last week and this is an action shot of him kicking the ball. I love how the instructors have them play "Simon Says" once they show them a few techniques!

Milo is showing where Titus was on the 4th morning! He laughed so hard when he found him and kept asking how he got up there. We also have him tell Titus one good thing that he did during the day before he goes to bed.

Once again we went to Hensler's Tree Farm in Hamlet to get our "beautiful" tree. Milo being a big guy and pulling cart (it was raining this year, but it wasn't too cold).

Milo actually cutting down the tree!!! He's the one that keeps calling it our "beautiful tree". Milo and Lena also got to help decorate three trees this year-Grandma and Grandpa's, Grandma and PawPaw's, and ours!

Lena making funny faces while Daddy and Milo decorated a gingerbread house.

Decorating the gingerbread house! It takes a lot of concentration, apparently.

I'm sure that Hanukkah and Christmas will come a lot faster than I'm ready for, so bring it on, December!!!