Elizabeth turns ONE!

Lizzy is officially a one-year-old! She is a bright, happy baby. She's a great sleeper, a great walker already, and loves to give hugs and kisses. Here are some of the highlights of her birthday and celebration...

On June 26th, AJ and I made her a strawberry-rhubarb pie to be served with vanilla ice cream, since I guessed with all the upcoming parties there would be cake-overload! :) After dinner, Liz was getting tired and was a little teary waiting for me to get her pie ready...but she was happy seconds later when dessert was served! Happy Birthday Elizabeth!

Mmmm! Pie and ice cream! Can I eat this with a fork?

Or should I just use my hands?

The pie was GOOD...we ate half of it in one sitting!

Then the weekend after her actual b-day, we held Lizzy's first birthday party with family and a few friends. The weather was great and it was so wonderful to have so many people who care about her be there with us at the party. What a blessing!

Here's Andy bringing in fresh mint for the grown-up's party-drink - Mojitos!

Grandpa John and Renee outside on the balcony while Lizzy ran around

in her little tutu. (You can just barely see her skirt in the bottom corner of this shot)

It was tough to get the baby to pose, but at least I'm looking at the camera!

Yum! Watermelon!

My mom and dad saved the cake by bringing in some extra white frosting since I ran out of the pink batch I made...and Renee brought some delicious raspberries from her yard that I added to the cake too. It was chocolate with buttercream frosting...

Lizzy's ready for her cake! Let's sing!

Her brother and cousins were also very excited to eat the cake...

hurry, let's get the show on the road!

My mom and dad had just returned from a vacation to Greece. We dressed the kids in the dresses and t-shirts they were given from the trip, and took this picture.

Liz had a great time opening her gifts and playing with all the fun tissue and ribbon!

Hooray!

Cheri got in some last snuggles as the party ended. Elizabeth was getting tired!

Happy Birthday Elizabeth. You are so special to us and we love you!!

Our Day at the Farms

Earlier this Summer we went out I-90 to go strawberry picking and visit our friends John and Jen Logli at their farm which is located a few miles southeast of Rockford. Andy and I traded off picking berries while keeping tabs on our mobile baby, while the other ran around with our non-stop preschooler. I wish I could learn to channel more of his energy into helpful activities like picking berries, but he is also "spirited" and a "free-thinker", so most of the berries made it to his stomach while he looked for a combine...

Next we headed over to the Logli's farm and we had such a nice time with them we ended up not only having lunch, but staying for dinner as well...and then finally heading home when it was bedtime for the kiddos! We need to pretend to be farmers more often. The Logli's produce is offered as part of the First Hand Harvest, a Rockford CSA. If you live in the Rockford area, check them out and sign up for a share!

The garlic patch. John started it with 8 heads of garlic or something and now has around 130, just by splitting them and replanting for 2 years! (any of these numbers may be off by 20% in either direction...I was not taking notes and as many of you know, I do NOT have a head for numbers!) In any event, we were impressed by his knowledge, patience and thrift.

Something tells me Andy is not a real farmer...is it the collared shirt? Maybe the backward visor. In the background are John's 2 mobile greenhouses. They are great at helping him precede or extend the seasons of certain crops, and he made them himself!!

Here's our little farmer with a freshly picked onion.

And posing with said onion.

Andy and I had a great time pulling onions. I volunteered to come out again and work for a day, but apparently our summer was just building in momentum and I never found a free Mon to head out. Next time, Gadget, next time.

Johns daughter Juliana by the huge pile of onions we all harvested. I think her smile had something to do with that we made fast work of her job for the day...

Andy and AJ are playing some "swing" game in the background as I took a shot of the freshly snipped baby arugula that John sent home with us. He also gave us radishes and baby carrots and everything was wonderful. Thanks, John and Jen!

Here are two videos of AJ getting in the tractor and riding around the farm with John and Juliana. He had the time of his life!

The Vacuum

When AJ was a baby, he was VERY sensitive to sounds. Some might say he was even oversensitive. He was scared of many toys that made noises while all the other kids seemed to flock to them. I think he was scarred early on by a particular incident, but regardless even before that he was nervous and freaked out around certain sounds.
He was not surprisingly totally terrified of the vacuum. It was big, loud, moved around and had a light. Whoa! We had to make sure we were both home whenever we used it so that one of us could distract and comfort him while the other cleaned, or one of us would just vacuum (usually Andy) while one of us would leave the house with AJ (usually me). This was not ideal, but since we're not neat freaks to begin with it's not like we had to deal with it daily or anything. Thank God we didn't have a cat or something!
As time went on, AJ became more and more accustomed to the sounds of the house, the neighborhood and the world. He stopped screaming every time Andy used the coffee grinder or I used the blender, and he would even play by himself with hid scary "noisy toys". After a while he didn't mind the vacuum as long as he couldn't see it, and finally he would be OK with it as long as we prepped him that it was coming out.

Knowing all of that back-story will make you appreciate this pic and video clips from last Fall even more. They were certainly amazing to us!

AJ took over from Daddy and started using the vacuum on his own!

What a helper! I love when he starts to vacuum the seatbelt

and then his own shirt...and he's so serious.

And then he realized the vacuum can also pick up rocks! :)

And as for something really recent, today he asked me if he could use the vacuum after spilling rice all over the floor, and he regularly hijacks the cleaning lady's vacuum too. :)

AJ Turned 3!

AJ had his 3rd birthday back in the beginning of April. Though that was a few months ago, I had to get this posted before Elizabeth turns one! We had a really fun birthday marathon for him...every year there seems to be multiple parties no matter how I plan. Here are some of the highlights from his actual day and his kid-party...

On his real birthday, Andy and I gave him his gifts (like the Plan Parking Garage, pictured to the left) and he was most excited about his new bike! The bike is a Glide to Ride. It has no training wheels. Instead, it first has no pedals, so he can push and then glide along. This helps the child to get used to how it feels to balance on a moving bike. When they get really comfortable gliding, then you can install the pedals and the transition is supposed to be really easy. (We'll see!). So far, he really loves gliding along and has gotten pretty good at it!

Here's AJ right as Andy rolled the bike into the room.

Next, they got it ready to ride...

Then AJ got to try it on for size before heading outside...

...with all his safety gear! Except for his helmet, that he's apparently outgrown already.

Go, AJ, go!

AJ had a little celebration with his educational playgroup friends and my friend Laurie made cookies for all the kids to decorate, and then they sang the Birthday Song to him. Those kids are all so precious!

Next, we had a small kids' party for AJ at home, and the theme was Dinosaurs!

AJ's friend Violet shows off her Triceratops Tattoo.

Thanks Nancy for running the tattoo parlor station!

Izzy smiles sweetly in front of the T-Rex...

...and Jack gives us a "Raaahr!"

AJ wore his train costume with the pocket-watch so he could be the Dinosaur Train Conductor taking us through the "time tunnel". Here he is "Taping the Horn on the Triceratops".

Emilio got silly and decided he needed a horn on his own nose!

We had a somewhat anti-climactic volcano eruption too, but the kids still seemed to like it. (Hey Jeff, next year we'll use Mentos!)

The kids had lunch with AJ's fancy volcano as the centerpiece.

Here's their Dino-tastic lunch. Dino cookie-cutters courtesy of our friendly neighbor. :)

Here's the "before" picture of the Stegosaurus Cake.

Someone kept taking the cookie armor-plates out of his back. I think we all know who that was...

Maybe the birthday boy, who was not surprised in the least when presented with his cake, even though it was missing half of it's plates! Ha!

Still delicious!

And surprisingly, the mint chocolate chip ice cream was in high demand too.

Lizzy just hung out with the dads. Talking sport, having a brewski...

After the party was over and AJ had his nap, he was very excited to play with his cool presents. They were all a HIT!

We also had a family birthday celebrations, but for some reason I have no pictures of them!! As a mom of two, somehow I am pretty distracted and need to work on keeping the camera in hand. Sorry. :( But thanks to all our family and friends who helped us to celebrate and make AJ's third birthday so fun. We love you all!

Babies, Babies, Everywhere!

My friend Erin just moved last week and I brought the kids over to play and see their friends' new place so I could help her get a little organizing done. Since she has 5 kids under 5 year old, I can see why unpacking and moving furniture might be a bit challenging! We did manage to successfully re-arrange some furniture, make some space in the kitchen's eating area, and feed all seven kids lunch, so I'd say we did a good job! Erin's 2 oldest kids, Violet and Jack have been longtime friends of AJ's and they played nicely together. It's so nice how that happens now! They played in the kid's room and the living room, but mostly outside, which was good since that always means a good nap! But the babies...were all over the place! LOL Here are some of the pictures I got of Lizzy with the triplets.

Erin and I didn't plan to have Georgia and Lizzy match, great minds just think alike. ;)

Elizabeth with her potential future boyfriends looking on. Georgia was trying to escape.

And here's our usual view...the backs of heads.

And here are Dash, Georgia and Ben (from left to right) in their feeding table!

Elizabeth climbed onto Jack's seat at the kids table, and halfway through her yogurt took and unfortunate spill. She recovered fine though and kept trying to get onto the chair again! No, no, Elizabeth! We went home a little while later a yogurty mess of a family. lol

Elizabeth is still going through what I'm praying is a phase where she just cries and wants me to pick her up all day. Since I can't oblige, she crawls around after me sounding pitiful and I feel terrible, but I'm just not willing to carry around 20+ lbs all day and would rather her get used to her lower surroundings. Some days this works better than others and like I said, I'm hoping it will pass soon! My mom remembers me complaining that AJ did the same thing. How soon we forget, right?! And not much has changed. Both kids are generally happiest when they are clinging to me...here's a picture Andy took the other night which illustrates this phenomenon.

I was giving AJ airplane rides and Lizzy was excitedly waiting for her turn. Close to mommy on the floor = big smiles all around. If only I never had to make lunch,

talk on the phone or clean the dishes...

(as an aside: AJ has gotten great at balancing with me.

I can hold my feet straight up in the air with him on them,

and he can hold his lags out behind him and flap his arms in the air!)

And here's proof that my 2 "babies" can get along without me (sometimes). Here they are playing peek-a-boo behind their shower curtain. They were giggling hysterically. :)

"Nerd Alert!"

My dad has always had funny disguise glasses. When I was a little kid, he had a pair of black lens-less glasses with a nose attached and a mustache and he'd pretend to hardly be able to see while he walked around the house trying to "find" my sister and I. It was another hilarious "Dad's home from work" game, like a variation on Hide and Seek.

More recently, he acquired some funny nerdy google glasses and started busting them out on vacations. Once we were in Germany and a guy in a local band was wearing the same glasses! So my dad broke out his pair and jumped on stage with the band. Hahaha (I should see if my mom can dig that photo up to let me post!) Anyway, AJ found the glasses in my dad's kitchen drawer and ended up being allowed to take them home (grandparents have a hard time saying "no" to the grandkids!). Here are some of our best shots of our very bookish young lad...the last one is my favorite: