Cuteness, independence, and handmades

We often have a hard time coming up with a "theme" for posts - so this is one of those times where we have recent pictures to share that are relatively disjointed - but so cute.

Most of you who know Elena know of her love for Soft Dog - he was given to her by her Grandma Leann, and he has to come EVERYWHERE with us now. He used to be just a necessary sleeping companion, but now he is an everywhere, all-the-time companion who gets fed Cheerios, who participates in storytime and songs, and who even gets diapered. He is with Elena when she is both happy...

...and sad (but she is only pretending here, really!).

We don't know what we'd do without Soft Dog. We got two back-up soft dogs, in case anything should happen to this one, but they just don't hold the same appeal to Elena.

Both girls remain relatively uninterested in TV, but we have started a little tradition of watching the "Murray has a little lamb" segment on Sesame Street, which seems to come on at 9:27 on the dot, every weekday. It's about four minutes long, and Murray and his lamb go to a different kind of school each day. One day last week they went to drum school, and the girls and Christina got out their "drums" to join in. Clara exhibits two ways to drum:

And then Elena gets in on the action:

One other day they went to cooking school and made stuffed corn tortillas with black beans and cheese - we can't find a recipe, but would love to make it if anyone knows how!

Elena and Clara are each finding new things they can do on their own, all the time. Tonight at dinner Clara was able to eat ice cream out of a bowl by herself (ice cream is tricky unless it's really soft, we've found!). Elena has really been working on dressing/undressing herself. This morning she put on her pants all by herself, and chose her entire outfit (VERY convincingly). She didn't want any of the dresses Christina tried to dress her in, but chose her comfy black pants and her favorite sweater, made for her by her Grandma (Christina's mom). She would not take that sweater off, and as usual, she got lots of compliments on it - it has a heart knit in to the back.

Above, she is trying to get her shoes off on her own - both girls can do that if they have velcro, but these were buckles. Below, we have Elena posed at the stairwell, where she was playing with the ladybug buttons on this sweater - her favorite part!

Clara was sweet enough today to wear a mama-made dress. Christina sewed this as part of their summer wardrobe, but we really wanted it to be summer today so we wore it anyway, even though it had to be paired with tights and a turtleneck.

Clara helps Dad get out the ingredients for pasta lunch ("pa-pa", as they call it):

Then she takes some time to play with the gear magnets from Nana Rose and G-Daddy.

Doesn't she just look like a ray of sunshine? Such sweet girls - this age is just such a delight.