Walking Emme

For our distant friends and family. Emme is getting better at walking every day. This video is from last week. This week, she even ran some...she looked pretty unstable doing it, but she was speedy. She also can make it to the stairs and get up at least 3 of them before we make it to her-we now have a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs.

Lowcountry Strawberry Festival

We started the day with ballet. The story was A Midsummer's Night Dream. I am not sure how they made it into a children's story, but the girls were sure cute.

Next, we all headed over to the Strawberry Festival at one of the local plantations. They had lots of games, rides and bounce houses.

Celia was too busy taking in all the sights to actually face the camera.After the rides, we headed to the strawberry fields and picked our own strawberries. Celia did a great job of finding ripe and healthy strawberries.

After we filled the bucket, we went and had them weighed-we picked 6 lbs of strawberries. We ate some with our lunch and they were delicious. I might have to find a strawberry pie recipe or something to make sure we use them all before any go bad.

It was a beautiful day and a wonderful family outing.

Easter Day

Emme in her Easter dress.

Celia's Easter dress.

Celia made a butterfly with Ms. Dee Bee.

This is Celia with her good friend Abigale.

The cross at church was covered in flowers from people's home gardens. Celia added an azalea from our yard. After church, we all came home and spent a quiet day as a family. Life is good.

Easter Eve

Since David is already at church when we wake up on Sundays, the Easter bunny came during nap time on Saturday. Celia was so excited.

This is mostly a shot of Celia's new short hair cut.

Emme turned one on Good Friday. With all of the Holy Week activities, we decided not to have a big birthday party, so I made cakes for the Easter Egg hunt at church in honor of Emme's birthday. Don't worry, she had her own, less fancy, cake at home with party hats and noise makers. Unfortunately, our camera was broken, so we had to take pictures with our phones-I'll have to figure out how to get those to the computer to post.

There were Easter Egg hunts for each age group. Celia's group was made up of 2-3 year olds.
The eggs had some candy, but mostly treasurers-like balloons, bubbles and rings.There was even an egg pool for the babies.

The church had a bounce house set up.Ms. Dee Bee had a craft table where Celia made an Easter Egg.

Celia taking a rest and watching all the festivities.

We tried to get a few pictures of the girls in the matching dresses Nana sent them for Easter.

They also had hats, but Emme was not interested in wearing hers. Celia tried to help, but Emme successfully dodged all attempts to get a hat on her head.

Celia played with her new toys from her Easter basket: bubbles

and sidewalk chalk.


David and I are so blessed to have such wonderful daughters. Life is good.

Thursday Night

The other night, Celia wanted to see if she could fit in her oven. Her petite little self fit in there just fine. David took pictures while I told her how she was not to ever try that trick with out Mommy and Daddy around-just a little different parenting styles =)
Tonight, Emme had pasta.
Sorry for the open mouth picture, but it is really hard to catch the girls for a picture with their full faces, eyes open....I have to take what I can get.
After dinner, Emme had to change shirts--she often has to take a bath right after dinner these days as she practices feeding herself.
After dinner, we moved into the den to play.
Celia has gotten so big. I think her feet grow every night.
Emme played in the kitchen.
And with a puppy.
David and Celia played with play-doh. They got out one of her birthday presents-a bunch of play-doh shaper toys. She was thrilled.

Disney Playhouse Live

Tonight, I took Celia to her first show. David stayed with Emme so that Celia and I could go on a date to Disney Playhouse Live.
Celia was so excited she couldn't sleep at nap time, so she fell asleep in the car on the way. I was a bit worried that she wasn't going to rebound for the evening, but she got a new burst of energy when we arrived.
She just kept saying, "I am so excited."
The had pre-show entertainment. The actual show had Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Tiger (all in costumes) and people dressed as Darby, Handy Manny and the Little Einstein characters. They requested no pictures during the show, so I don't have any to share-although I might be the only one.
I told Celia she could have one thing-a drink, food or toy. She chose cotton candy. The cotton candy comes with the hat-I guess it helps justify the price. Celia was so well behaved. After she chose the cotton candy, she didn't once ask for anything else.

It was a wonderful evening. I might have spent more time watching Celia's face than I did the show. She is just wonderful.

Kitchen Bath

Emme now eats all table food (as opposed to baby food). Part of that transition means she feeds herself most meals and pretty much needs a bath after dinner every night.

One of those baths last week was in the kitchen sink. It is her first kitchen sink bath ever.

She really seemed to enjoy it and did lots of splashing.

Celia asked if she could take a bath in the sink, too. She was disappointed when I told her she was too big.

Valentine's Dresses

My dear friend, Misty sends the girls wonderful care packages for each holiday. The Valentine's present had matching dresses.
I got the girls dressed up for church the Sunday after Valentine's Day. I took a few pictures of each girl. I then told Celia that I wanted a picture of them together to send Misty. Boy, did Celia try to stay with Emme , who apparently had very important things to do.

Emme has started giving kisses, but they usually turn out to be licks. I guess Celia was "kissing" Emme back. I didn't even notice until I started posting pictures (click on the picture if you can't see Celia's kiss).