Growing vocabulary

As I have mentioned before, Celia often says things that catch us off guard. She will say very insightful things or use big words... Last Sunday, the girls and I were in the car and David was at church. Celia pretended to call David and said, "Hi Daddy, um Emme is crying, apparently she is still sick." I later asked David if he though she knew what "apparently" meant and he said "apparently so".

Yesterday, Celia brought home a project from school with lots of items from nature taped to a piece of paper (bark, grass, acorns and a pine cone). Celia showed us the little baby pine cone and said "its adorable."

Exercise

Emme still can't sit up on her own, but she has some tummy muscles.

The cool thing about ballet shoes

Celia discovered today what makes ballet shoes special...they slide. She would slide down, get up and do it again. It passed the time until class started.
Today's story was Ragged Ann. The girls got little pants, dresses and an apron.

More ballet class video

Celia's ballet class is a drop off class meaning we could just drop her off and come back 45 minutes later. Some parents really do leave right after the girls go in and only return minutes before they are done. And then there are about four girls who parents stay. Maybe I will be able to leave after a few more lessons (or maybe not). I am just amazed and overwhelmed watching Celia grow and learn. It is hard not to be captivated and lest you think that I am silly, I can only pass along what a friend of mine once said-"In a few years, the kids won't want us to read to them or cuddle with them, so we decided that until that day, we will just soak it up and love on them as much as we can." Today, David, Emme and I actually did go for a walk and returned about the time the girls were dressing up, so we have a balance. =)

Emme's new friend

The room was a bit dark, but I had to capture Emme giggling at her new friend. It is so much fun watching babies discover the world. This was especially nice because Emme has a bad cold. She hasn't acted too fussy, but you can just tell she feels awful, so I was glad for an extra giggly time.

Ballet Class

Celia has ballet on Saturdays. We drive across two rivers to get there, but she loves it. They line up before class like a train and head into class. There are like 12 girls in the class, but most of them come after they have already gone inside.

First they do some activities to get settled like have a pretend tea party.

Then they pretended to tickle the teacher's toes.

Then they stretch.

And finally, they start practicing ballet walking, toe tapping, turns and such. After they have gone over some dance moves, they read a book....

And the story was...

Curious George. The teacher read the story and every girl sat quietly and listened. Each girl got a monkey costume.They did some moves with a yellow hat (in honor of the man with a yellow hat).

And then with a fire hat (the story had George calling the fire department).

Ballet Video

I always seem to forget that I can't reorient video, so I apologize, but you will have to turn your head sideways. You don't need sound, it is just the other moms chatting.

Emme at 5 mths (almost)

Emme wants to crawl so badly. It is going to be awhile since she doesn't even sit up by herself yet, but boy does she try.

She is showing preferences for certain toys and is reaching for them. This ball is one of her favorites.
Emme has little Micheline baby legs which leads to a diapering question--whether it is more comfortable for that last little fold to be inside the diaper or to try to pull it out of the way. Celia didn't have as much baby fat, so it wasn't a problem.
This is another picture taken by Celia. She is getting really good at using the camera. She even knows how to get my cell phone to take a picture without any help. David has put a locking code on his phone so that she can't "accidentally" call China, but she will probably figure it out eventually.

Garage Tetris

If you drive around in our neighborhood, you will see that nobody parks in their garage in Charleston. I guess most people use them for storage. We still have many boxes of books
in our garage (until we get some bookshelves) and other stuff. Plus, David moved some stuff into the garage to get it out of the wind-like the smoker and rocking chairs from the porch. So, David worked very hard to get the boxes stacked to the sides so that we could get both cars in the garage and safe from the storm. It was a bit like watching tetris. Hanna ended up not hitting us very hard and we only got some rain, but at least we were ready and are a bit more prepared for next time.

Sunday School Project

Celia made this in Sunday School this past week. Can you guess the bible story?

Emme likes to Peek-A-Boo

While Daddy and Celia played in the fountain, Mommy and Emme played peek-a-boo. Emme is a very happy baby.

Waterfront Park

Today we went to Waterfront park... down on the peninsula, in Charleston. There are a couple of fountains there that kids can play in. We had a great time. Celia especially liked running around the fountain and coaxing her Daddy towards the middle.














The closer Daddy got to to the middle--the more wet he got... and the more Celia laughed. The wind kept blowing all of that water around... so there was definitely a dry side of the fountain and a wet side.




















After the big fountain, and some snacks, we went to the pineapple fountain! The pineapple fountain is one of Charleston's most photographed landmarks.




















Celia especially liked the pineapple fountain.
















There were some kids that were swimming under there. But not Celia... she was good. After wrapping up, we went out to eat at "Ye Olde Ice Cream Parlor"... it was a great day.