Nature Walk

Christina got the bright idea today that it would be enjoyable to take the girls on a nature walk. She envisioned two little children scampering before her, picking up twigs and flowers, and stowing these in their pails. She envisioned coming home and making a nature collage with their found bits. She, clearly, had never taken a nature walk with 22 month old children before.

First, the girls thought the car ride to get there was too long. Christina kept saying: "Can you see any horses?? Look for them!" to distract the girls. They love horses. Sadly, there were no horses out today, even though Clara would answer "Uh huh, yeah!" every time Christina asked her if she saw one.

We got to the trailhead, and the girls got much more excited. Christina, slightly less so, realizing she had forgotten both pails and a back-up stroller.

It was fun to be out of the car, and fun to hunt for....rocks? Yep, the part of nature that is on every driveway and in front of our own house is the part of nature that most captured them.

Clara did veer off to find some pinecones, but they were too big to take home without the pails:

And Elena really minded when Clara went off trail. She'd keep going the (few paces) off the trail to haul her sister back. Clara loved it.

Elena looks like she's hunting pine cones here, but really she's playing with the bug spray. There were lots of mosquitoes, but as soon as Christina whipped this out it was the argued-over plaything for the rest of the "walk:"

Another moment of Elena guiding Clara back to the trail, after she had stumbled:

Clara loved that game so much that as soon as Elena hauled her up, Clara would plop down again, saying: "Oh, help!" Elena indulged her the first three times, then wandered off with the bug spray. Clara kept saying "Up, up, up" to Christina, who was hauling a diaper bag, soft dog, and the few sticks/flowers we'd found. Eventually, the sticks/flowers had to go in favor of getting Clara back to the truck.

One last look at two sweet sisters:

So, in the end we covered less than 1/4 mile in an hour, took home no lasting memories of the nature we walked through, smelled like bug spray, and had several scrapes from a few tumbles. Not exactly the vision, but it was a fun time. And bonus - the girls are both downstairs right now sleeping like the little rocks they found on the trail.

And a happy Fifth of July to you, too

Yesterday our friends invited us up to watch fireworks at their house, and we had to include some pictures here of that fun get-together. The girls stayed up late for them, until they were asking to go to bed, and we put them to sleep in portable cribs there and got to stay to see the show. We're hoping their ease with a lack of bedtime routine bodes well for camping in a few weeks!

Here, Clara shows her "olive fingers" Karen helped her make:

One of the girls' best friends, Chkai, eating one of the hamburger cupcakes (the girls ended up loving them too, but were much harder to get pictures of!):

One of the girls' other best friends, Charlie, showing off "surprise" for them:

Elena and Clara were both the youngest ones at the party, and the only girls (even when our other friends arrived later on). Here, Elena draws Charlie away from the wild play into some refined conversation:

And here's the early crew at the party, hanging together. Clara and Elena make nice bookends in any posed picture, don't you think?

Chkai and his girls:

When the girls awoke the next morning, they discovered Chkai's motorized car. They were amazed! As you can expect, the rest of the morning was spent driving around. Luckily, they didn't figure out how Chkai was making it go on his turn, and just pushed each other around on their turns. Every time Clara got in and the car didn't move, though, she would throw up her hands and say: "Oh, man!"

Happy Fourth of July!

We celebrate with food, naturally. Here is a cake the girls helped bake (but not decorate) that is a tradition in Christina's family:

And here's a new addition to the Fourth food celebration, a la Bakerella. It's a hamburger cupcake! The girls are going to be so excited to try these out once they catch sight of them later today. Right now they are napping to try to rest up for all the festivities to come.

We are also posting a video below that we hope you can see, from this morning. The girls are dressed in their festive outfits (which no one else in town seems to be!!) and they were waiting on the couch for a snack. They have got "wait nicely" down very well, as you'll see with their little hands folded in thier laps! And you'll see Clara is pretty good at thank you (Elena has her own very distinct variation you can hear at the end of the video). But, oddly, when I ask them how they should ask for the snack, instead of the "please" that they almost always say, Clara yells out "Peaches!" and Elena implores "Please help!" At least there was a please there somewhere.



Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

July, or January?

With their increased verbal talents come some bizarre new revelations about the girls' preferences. This morning, on a lovely July day (which got up to about 90 degrees) the girls asked to play outside. It was 9am. Elena asked for a coat. Christina tried explaining that she didn't really need a coat, that she would be hot, but Elena was insistent.

So Christina then offered several light summer coats for her perusal. A jean jacket? A linen coat? Perhaps a sweater? No, no, no. After repetition of the word "coat" several times, Elena finally took Christina by the hand, led her outside, and pointed to her snowsuit. Yep - in her world, July=snowsuit weather.

She was just as pleased as could be, and Clara wasn't about to miss out on that kind of fun. Soon she, too, was insisting on the same "coat." She ditched it much earlier than Lena, though, who kept it on through tricycling, running, and examining the flowers. She only ditched it when Steve came out and led them over to our strawberry patch for their morning picking.

So funny!

Another new moment in the girls' lives is wearing two-piece pajamas. They (and we) have loved the cuddly fleece and the soft cotton one-piece zip-ups, but it's just gotten too hot lately. And, the girls are getting big. Somehow, we worried that they would try to take these off or mess with them in the night, but it hasn't happened. The only thing that has really changed is that they like to examine one another's "new" pajamas before bed. Here, Clara was REALLY interested in the ladybug on Elena's jammies:

And for one blessed moment, instead of the poking turning into "NO!" or "WAAAHH" or "Sistah, top (stop)!" it turned into this:

Love, love, love, love, love these little sweethearts.

Happy Father's Day!

We recognize how lucky we are to get to celebrate our second Father's Day all together, and we celebrated all day long. We started out with a french toast breakfast with coffee for the parents and juice for the girls.

Steve had a cappuccino, and the girls LOVED the foam at the top. So he very sweetly went down to the kitchen and frothed them each up a cup of milk for themselves. They adored the foam!

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We had planned a picnic, but had our doubts it would work out since there was an 80% chance of thunderstorms all day, and we woke up to rain for the first several hours of the morning. Still, we put the girls to bed for a nap, and when they awoke it was perfect weather for a picnic (or, as the girls say, pic-pic).

Christina packed turkey and avocado finger sandwiches, potato salad, (oven) fried chicken, melon, chocolate cupcakes, and lemonade and off we went. The girls got to try out their new camp chairs (we bought them in anticipation of our planned camping trip to Idaho in July).

The girls are so big - they sat on one side of the picnic table and Steve and Christina sat on the other side. A year ago, we couldn't have imagined they could sit, unsupported, and eat their own lunch!

We just loved celebrating this amazing dad all day long - we are so happy we get Steve in our lives and that we get a special day to thank him.

After lunch, we played in the woods a bit. Elena strapped Soft Dog into the wagon, Clara worked with her own buckle, and then...

...Elena pulled them through the woods. Elena is getting so strong!

We took a minute to call GDaddy and Nana Rose for some happy Father's Day wishes - the girls are getting a little more excited about talking on the phone, but they are not quite at a conversational level yet. :)

Then, Steve taught the girls how to collect things for their buckets. Clara picked pinecones:

And Elena picked up sticks:

Steve is so good with these little sweethearts - it's great to be behind the camera and get to watch them.

We topped off the day with Dairy Queen for an added treat - they had free treats for Dads! And free cones for kids, so it was a pretty cheap date.

Two making funny faces at each other:

Showing off a funny face:

And two just cracking up:

We had a truly lovely day today. Happy Father's Day to everyone!

Happy Adoption Day!

Today marks one year since Clara and Elena legally became our daughters.

We want to make their adoption day special for them every year, in many ways. In addition to lots of talk (about birth family, our family together, their thoughts on adoption and family, etc.) we also want to mark the euphoria we felt when we were amazingly able to call these girls our own.

So, today we went about that by taking the girls to the party store and letting them pick any balloon they wanted (Elena chose a Pooh mylar, Clara chose Curious George). We had doughnuts and bagels for breakfast, and played together, all four of us, all day long.

Christina wanted to make the girls something special. Ever since she bought a cupcake book nearly a year ago (Hello, Cupcake!) the girls have been obsessed with the penguins in the book. They point to them and pick them out of the whole book, every time. So, Christina took a stab at making them. They are certainly not the world's prettiest cupcakes, but it was fun to show the girls how something from the book could suddenly be in front of them, messy and fun.

Here is the penguin flock:

And here is a (very LOUD, and so sorry for that!) video of the girls seeing them:


And here are our darling girls today, big and strong and happy and beautiful:

And, to hopefully bring a little of our euphoria into your lives today, here is the video we meant to upload ages ago, of the girls dancing in the driveway to the "Little Ducks" song:



Happy, happy day.

Giddyup!

We mean that in two senses of the word this week. First, the girls were ready to find their horses and head off to the cattle drive as soon as they discovered their Dad's cowboy hat this week. They had so much fun playing with it, and we thought they were the cutest cowgirls ever.

But the girls were really ready to giddyup and go when they got their early birthday presents today from their Grandpa and Grandma Mary! Their first, red, Radio-Flyer tricycles!
Thank you, Grandpa and Grandma Mary!

Here is Elena, her first time on the trike:

She is clearly thrilled and awed. She was very proud that she could get on and off by herself, as evidenced here:

Generally, she was just over-the-top thrilled, even though she can only push a little bit since she hasn't got a lot of the coordination down yet.

Clara, being a bit tinier, is even less mobile on the trike at the moment, but that didn't lessen her love for it.

In fact, one of her first things to do with the trike was to kiss it:

Clara liked being pushed around on the bike, and that' s probably a good way for her to learn, for now. She likes pushing Elena, too, but Elena really wants to ride on her own. Here's Clara, with apparent great concentration, sitting still on her trike:

Funny side note - as we were out riding/sitting/pushing trikes in the driveway, a motorcycle roared past. The girls pointed at the motorcycle, saying "Bike!" and then with great pride, motioned back over to their little red trikes and shouted out "Bike!" Yep, in their minds, they are right on par with the choppers. And with the cool red color and the flashy streamers of thier trikes, who can blame them?