The Children's Museum

We remembered to bring cameras to the children's museum today, so here's a glimpse into the fun that Clara and Elena get up to when we take a trip there.

The theme of the museum at the moment appears to be water - water evaporation, water flow, etc. At one of the little fountains, Clara gave Grandma a lesson in the way water separates to move past a stationary object (a foot!).

Clara is exhibiting her new crawl here - she has mostly a foot-propelled army-crawl kind of thing going on, but as you can see here she's starting to get her knees into it. Now what does this pretty ball do?

Oh, aha! Grandmas know everything.

Grandma shows Clara her reflection, and Clara claps at the mirror doing such a good job reflecting such a lovely face.

Elena decided to see if the stairs at the museum work like the stairs at home.


They do! She can climb these, too.


Not only can she climb them, she just about wants to climb the rails, too! Look at those tippy toes!


Who's that beautiful girl who also made it to the top of the stairs?


Elena patiently waits to see if Clara can master these stairs.


It was some tough going, so Grandma helped Clara just a little bit.

Here's a picture of a happy trio at the museum (Christina was happy behind the camera, too).


When we got home, Elena still had stair-fever, so Grandma helped her learn how to go down them safely (on her bottom).


What a fun day! But we were all worn out, so early bedtimes for all.

Grandma's Here!

Grandma (Christina's mom) is in town for two weeks, and we are all having a fantastic time. The girls adore having Grandma to play with and read with and to help feed them, and Grandma is getting her share of smiles, hugs, and love. Clara especially has a bond with her Grandma - when she sees her she breaks out in a huge grin and waves her arms and legs.

We've been doing lots in town together (going to the Farmer's Market, having picnic lunches, shopping, playing in the park) but often we aren't bringing the camera out. We'll do better - but here are some shots from our trip to the carousel.

The girls are loving the carousel more every time we go. They stretch out their arms, say "Oh, oh, oh!" and smile huge smiles as soon as the ponies are in sight. They know just how to keep us going back again and again!

Raspberries!

Clara's and Elena's appetites are really growing - they eat much more food with us than they ever have before and we're having a great time introducing them to new tastes. Today, Steve introduced raspberries, and that was a real winner with the girls. Here are some shots (you may also notice peas, cornbread, and fig newton on the trays; other elements of their Sunday dinner!).


Elena gives the raspberry a try:

And wow! Does life get more delicious?

Clara gives it a go as well:

Smart girl that she is, she uses one hand to put the berries in her mouth, and the other to hold her "reserve" berries, in case we decide to stop supplying her with this new delicacy.

We've been signing some basic words at home for a few months now. Sometimes the girls do the traditional sign for "more," but Clara has come up with what we believe is her own sign - she lifts her hand in the air, lets her wrist really act like a hinge, and waves her fingers back and forth. It's like she's in the water and is pulling something toward her. It's hard to get a good shot of that, but she was sure doing that to try to get more raspberries!

Two bonus shots of fun mealtimes in our home:

Wisconsin Wedding Part Two (or Our New Favorite Photos)

A very talented photographer named Matt was taking pictures at the wedding we went to in Wisconsin, and he captured on film a moment we were sharing with the girls out on the hillside. We adore these pictures - that happiness is what we feel almost all of the time, and even though this was just an average moment of playing with the girls, these pictures elevate it to a memory we won't forget, even when Elena and Clara get to be "big girls."





Photos soon to come of the TEETH that have entered our family! Clara started about a week ago, and has her two middle bottom teeth and is just about done getting another tooth on the bottom. Elena just started this week getting one of her middle bottom teeth, and another bottom tooth to the side. They are having a hard time getting these teeth, but we know they are handling it the best they can. In fact, all that teething covered up the fact that little Elena actually also has an ear infection (just like her cousin Grace out in Virginia!) that we only discovered today. Poor girls - growing up is hard!

Happy Fourth of July, everyone! Elena and Clara don't stay up late enough to see fireworks, but we did take them to have a picnic at the park today. Their outfits today are from Grandma Leanne, and they got lots of compliments on them.

It's hard to get good pictures with these girls - whenver Christina or Steve tries to pose with them, they turn TOWARDS the one of us trying to get our picture taken. Not ideal! This is the best we got today from our posed attempt.

And here's the best one from our non-posed attempts. So much fun!

Friends passed on some sunglasses to the girls this week - Clara just pulls them off, but Elena seems to love posing, taking them off, and then putting them on again.

At the end of our picnic, we took some time out for swinging. They have SO much fun, but it's too sunny to stay out for long so we've got to find ourselves a park with some shade.


We hope you had a wonderful Independence Day.

Farm Days

A new addition to our lives this week made the farm lots more fun - a big package arrived from Grandpa and Grandma Mary, and inside was a new red wagon!

Both girls are in love with this wagon - they sit so sturdily in it (and there are safety belts that help assure that this is the case even over bumps) and when it is stationary they have so much fun climbing and exploring in it. This was a really wonderful gift.

So at the farm this week, it enabled the girls to get a great view of the pigs that live at the farm where we get our CSA share. Last year there were three big pigs, this year there is one big pig and eight piglets. We're glad we don't have to explain that one yet to the girls.

You can also see from these pictures that the girls have new bonnets. These are the best hats yet for staying on their heads, and they complete their prairie-girl looks. Christina made some but they were WAY too big, so we bought these at the People's Market downtown.

But don't get the wrong idea - they don't like these on their heads more than any others that we've found - they still work hard to have free heads.

This week the girls were able to try the carrots we got at the farm, and tomorrow we're going to give them the peas from the farm, too. It's fun to share this as a family this year - last year when we were going to the farm these girls were far to young for food. It's hard to believe it, but this is Clara and Elena at the farm last year!

New Living Room Fun

Now that the girls (especially Elena) are a lot more mobile than they used to be, they seem to have different interests during playtime in the living room. A new favorite activity is pulling books from various locations (exhibit A):

Did you notice which book the girls had picked up in the previous picture? A knitting book! And budding knitters they both are - we call them our little kittens because they like to play with Christina's yarn all the time. Kittens or knitters, time will tell.

Because of the increased mobility, certain safety measures have been put in place. Here we have the new and improved baby fun zone - Elena likes using the sides as places to experiment with standing, and even Clara has started getting in on that. Mostly, they crawl around inside and we have a minute to get them food, get ourselves dressed, etc.

Don't feel bad for them - they love it in here!