Easter and too many pictures!

I didn't get any good pictures of us having Easter brunch with James's parents, and still I have an abnormally large number of pictures to post from Easter time. I blame the excessive charm of our recent visitors.




Here is baby Lilly and her mommy Kim! James and I were super excited to meet Lilly for the first time. Look at her strong little legs! She's only four months old. We definitely been missing Kim and Stacey since we've moved up to nothern VA from Blacksburg.

Here's Lilly with her daddy Stacey. Lilly has such gorgeous blue eyes.

Elizabeth was a little shy, but she can sense another mommy, I think!

Vanessa shows off her big sister skills. She knows just how gently to hug a baby!

Our grown-up friend Vanessa and her daughter Samantha visited us for a little Easter egg hunt and a night on the town. We've been admiring Samantha on her blog for months, but this was the first time we got to meet her. If possible, she's even cuter in person! I think this picture is funny because everyone is looking in different directions! But I think it's cool because it has James and his daughter, as well as grown-up Vanessa and her daughter. I can't quite put into words how grateful I am to grown-up Vanessa and our friend Dean to give us a great excuse to get out of the house AT NIGHT WITHOUT CHILDREN. James and I haven't done that in more than a year! And now seems a great time to mention that I have the best in-laws I could ever have wished for -- because of course they watched Vanessa and Elizabeth for us.

All Vanessa could say while we were taking this picture was, "Dean, Dean, Dean."

Our Vanessa's not so sure about sharing her friend Dean with Samantha. Soon Samantha will be wanting Dean to read books to her too... I'm not sure what will happen the next time we get together!

Vanessa was excited about her Easter basket and her egg hunt. Daddy had put 5 different types of Vanessa's favorite snacks in them. She talked about her yummy snacks for days!

The little ones enjoyed their egg hunt too -- although instead of looking for them throughout the room, they just looked through their baskets. Elizabeth ate all of her own yummy snacks and then moved on to Samantha's.

Ooh, shiny egg.

Shiny, and full of yummy snacks. I can't blame them, that does make for interesting eggs!

And another picture of Vanessa cuddling with Dean!

"No, Mr. Owl, look this way!" Elizabeth's new obsession is our garden owl. It does, after all, have a spinny head. I'd say she spent upwards of 20 minutes playing with it the other day.

Daddy and his little sweethearts!

My cousin Mollie visited us recently for a fun few days. I very much enjoyed going shopping with her, which is saying something, because shopping and I usually don't mix too well! I'm glad Kalena came along, not just because she's great company, but because of her shopping expertise!

Mollie was just awesome with the girls. I think she did a better job of putting Vanessa to bed than I usually do. And by the end of her visit, both girls were completely enamoured with her.

Mollie and Aunt Heather taught Vanessa a fun game -- throwing tissue paper and hiding Vanessa under it!

My Dad and sister Hannah came to visit. Hannah was so sweet with both girls, gentle with Elizabeth and wacky and playful with Vanessa.

Hannah indulged the girls in some time on the swing.

My Dad spent some time showing Elizabeth all of the wonders in her backyard.

What could be more fun than bouncing on the bed with the help of Aunt Heather?

How about, bouncing on the bed with the help of Aunt Heather AND Aunt Hannah, dressed in a tunnel.

Vanessa enjoyed Heather's and Hannah's Mexican hat dance. Vanessa is tipping Heather a plastic muffin.

My girls love their Uncle Terry. And I love that he entertains them so well and gives me so much of a break! Elizabeth has become fascinated with all the sticks and leaves and flowers in the back yard, and Uncle Terry spent lots of time helping her explore them.

Elizabeth is showing signs that she is starting to enter toddlerhood rather than babyhood. For example, she's walks most of the time now. She can crawl up the stairs, and, much to my surprise, she can climb up on child-sized chairs and stand on them. Today she brought me her socks and shoes and then begged at the door to go out and play. She also really likes to put socks inside various shoes that she finds around the house. Her word recognition is rapidly increasing, and she can say a few words, including "mama," "dada," "uh-oh," "echo," and I'm pretty sure she also says "shoe." When I gave her a plastic O today and said "O," she looked at the writing on her pajama shirt and pointed out the "O" on it.

Vanessa, meanwhile, is rapidly leaving toddlerhood. She has been making me laugh so much lately, even though sometimes I shouldn't! Here is a recent conversation I had with her:

me: "Vanessa, Mommy's going to eat your French toast." (this so Vanessa would stop playing and recognize lunch time)

Vanessa: "Mommy, if you eat my French toast, I'm going to eat you up."

Here's another one with Daddy that she had while visiting Daddy at his school, George Mason University. They were passing the student life center that had an interesting drawing that looked a bit like a banana but was geared more towards family planning. :)

Vanessa: "Daddy, I see something!"

Daddy: "You see something all right."

Vanessa: "Daddy, I SEE something!"

This conversation was a bit of a stalemate, and only became more complicated when Vanessa later saw graffiti (adult pictures and words) in the men's room. I knew that reading would get her in trouble one of these days...

A walk to lake Accotink and other adventures

My sister Heather and I walked the girls down to Lake Accotink a week and a half ago. It was one of those extremely marvelous trips that really deserved a blog entry all to itself, but, as always I'm running behind on my posts so I have some newer pictures to post today too.

Daddy has been trying very hard to get to work early so he can get home earlier. I'm loving the extra help while I prepare dinner (on those days I manage to plan dinner). The girls are loving it too, of course! Elizabeth and Vanessa LOVE playing piano with their Daddy. They leap up on his lap as soon as he sits down. Vanessa has been working on playing a real sheet music piece with a repeating sequence of three notes in it. Elizabeth likes to push all the buttons that play rhythms or change the sound of the notes. Elizabeth has started signing "music" (she prefers the arm-wavy kinds of signs like "music," "cold," "all done," "potty," and "where.")

Everybody tackle Daddy! I think this must be a favorite game dating back to caveman times.

Elizabeth's favorite occupation at the moment is going around the house and emptying all the drawers and cabinets. Here she is emptying all of Vanessa's pants out of her pants drawer. I think part of the reason she does this is that she sees Vanessa doing it first! The nice thing about Vanessa right now is that she usually will put the clothes back in the drawer after tossing them all out to choose one to wear. Elizabeth is at the stage where she is able to put things places, but not necessarily in useful places. For example, she has put her rattle in the kitchen trash and likes to drop toys through the gate to watch them bounce downstairs. But she also does help when we're cleaning up the legos or putting the plastic food back in the toy shopping cart. And although she makes a mess, emptying all the drawers does keep her content when I am busy!

The girls do have a cold, I think, although Vanessa seems to be just about over hers. I don't know, it's so tricky to tell. The girls have been pretty much sick with colds since November, so I'm not sure I remember exactly how they behave when they're healthy. :) But in any case, I feel like cold season is over and I'm feeling more up for visiting friends. Here's Vanessa being reunited with her friend Abigail. Awww...

And Abigail and Vanessa playing the way they most like to play together, jumping!

Abigail's little sister Isabelle is just a couple of months older than Elizabeth. I think Elizabeth is going to really enjoy having playgroups with someone her own age!

I've decided that perhaps one of the reasons that Elizabeth keeps emptying the drawer with all the markers in it is that she really wants to draw just like her big sister. So I decided that's just what washable markers are for! Elizabeth is getting the hang of it, sort of!

Other than occasionally trying to tackle Elizabeth on the hard kitchen floor (tackling is how Vanessa shows her love), Vanessa really is being such a sweet and helpful big sister. She's even sort of grasping that mysterious concept of taking turns.

And she really does look out for Elizabeth. Here she's "feeding her" some water.

On one of my mornings when I escaped to go for a weekly run, I came back to find that Vanessa and Daddy had been busy constructing towers. Vanessa helped make the tower so high!

Later, the tower became a house just the right size for Vanessa.

Elizabeth is always trying to put on her sister's clothes. Here she is trying to wear one of Vanessa's socks.

Elizabeth now officially has four teeth. I think three of them are visible in this picture. I always think that teeth really make a kid look so much more grown up.

Have I mentioned how much I like warmer weather? Ahh. Here we are out on the swings. Elizabeth seems to like them almost as much as Vanessa does.

While James was cleaning up the yard, he found a little toad! Vanessa was pretty impressed. Now in our yard we've seen a toad, an oppossum, a fox, chipmunks, black squirrels and gray squirrels, and all kinds of birds, including a pileated woodpecker.

And Elizabeth was also impressed!

Have I mentioned that Vanessa uses tackling to show her love? Here she is getting her Aunt Heather, before we set off on our walk to the lake.

I tried to time our walk just right so that we would see the passenger train go under the bridge that is on the way to the lake. It comes under the bridge at 1:50 PM on weekdays, but you'd never find that in any train schedule! We got to the bridge a few minutes early, so we took the girls out of the stroller for a rest and a little snack.

When we started to hear the train coming in the distance, Vanessa noticed a bright red cardinal flying around inside the covered bridge, unable to find his way out. Vanessa's solution to this was to run as fast as she could toward the cardinal, with her quick footsteps clanging on the metal bridge. Remarkably, it worked, and the cardinal found an escape route just before Vanessa reached him! Then the train started thundering toward us. The whole bridge reverberated when the train came and the echoes bounced off the sides of the gap that the bridge spans. The noise was tremendous! When the train came close and blew its whistle, a bald eagle lifted off from his perch and soared a little further away. The man in the picture above confirmed that it was a bald eagle and snapped a picture of it. Elizabeth and Vanessa were in awe of the train as it disappeared into the distance. A lady with her dog was passing by and gave the girls an extra excitement to meet a friendly dog.

We saw three deer, a doe and two fawns a little farther along our path to the lake. We saw the bald eagle again, this time actually diving to the surface of the lake to catch something! And the girls saw a fisherman land a fish of some kind. Oh, and we walked through a flock of Canada geese. One of the geese was making a point of honking and hissing and chasing the other geese. We saw another train rumble over a different bridge, one that overlooks the lake. This time it was a freight train with 51 cars according to Aunt Heather's count.

Most times when I go to the lake, we head to the playground. I'm so glad that this time we opted to play in the sand on the little beach. Aunt Heather built sand castles and Vanessa added some windows and a door. Elizabeth found some very interesting sticks to explore. Vanessa used a long stick to tap the surface of the lake and make ripples. Elizabeth walked very fast all over the sand, holding onto Heather's or my finger. Vanessa enjoyed chasing Heather or being chased as fast as she could.

Elizabeth stayed awake during our entire journey. Vanessa on the other hand, fell fast asleep on the ride home.

Aunts and uncles and grandparents, oh my!

We've been so lucky to see so much of our family recently. I think we've seen all the aunts and uncles except Jake, and we're so excited to be expecting a visit from Jake and the girls this spring! We have pictures from our visits with Kalena and John and our visit with Hannah, but we're missing pictures with the rest of the crowd!

Vanessa has been talking all about her aunts and uncles lately. Today, she said, "Kyra coming soon? And Brian and Jo-nana?" James and I are are simply ecstatic about Joanna becoming an official aunt soon! Vanessa also said today, "Let's go to Texas. We can fly in an airplane like a bird." She has been looking at the pictures of uncle Jake and her cousins in Texas, and can't wait to see them soon! She has also been talking about having a great time playing baseball with her uncle Zak, playing with her aunt Kalena and uncle John, reading stories with her aunt Heather and uncle Terry, and going to the aquarium with her aunt Hannah.

It's great to see Elizabeth responding and developing relationships with her aunts and uncles too!

Plus, we've had some great times with grandparents in the past couple of weeks. Have I mentioned that Vanessa and Elizabeth have some fantastic grandparents?


Elizabeth gets so excited now when she sees her daddy coming home from work. She also starts waving when she senses that anyone is preparing to leave. Here is Elizabeth playing with her daddy's lanyard and pretending to get ready for work just like her daddy.

Here is Elizabeth on the "blast-off" number mat, which she loves to rip apart at the moment. She is sitting on one of her favorite books. Elizabeth has really started to get into books, turning pages and pointing at pictures.

Elizabeth and her daddy love each other so much!

This picture, well... See, James has a garden, which is harrassed by chipmunks among other things, and he bought an owl with a bobble head to try to discourage garden pests. Vanessa immediately claimed it for her own. She carried it off to her room and put it in her bed to give it a nap. Here she is giving it some "coffee" for breakfast. The owl probably needed it, since it's well, a night owl. (I'm pretty sure she has no idea what coffee is, since neither James nor I drink it.)

Here is some of the garden with some lettuce, chives, and a few other seedlings already planted. The owl is for protecting the tomatoes and strawberries rather than these.

I think our garden looks quite pretty this year, especially with all the flowers planted between the broccoli to discourage cabbage moth.

James has been busy! Our garden has more than doubled in size this year. I can't wait to see what great things come out of more gardening space and more gardening experience!

Elizabeth LOVES Vanessa's jacket. She fusses and fusses if she can see the jacket but it's out of her reach. And once she gets it, she loves to try to put it on. Maybe she is pretending to be Vanessa? Or maybe she just loves the smooth texture and the rustling it makes. In any case, it drives Vanessa nuts. She can't stand letting Elizabeth play with her jacket! Ah, Elizabeth, I should probably get you a matching one of your own!

Although Vanessa doesn't want to share special things like her jacket, she has really been trying hard to be a good big sister lately. She practices being kind to Elizabeth every day. She shares food with her at every meal and brings Elizabeth toys that might interest her. Vanessa gives her little sister gentle hugs. She likes to protect her little sister, including putting her hands over Elizabeth's ears so she won't get water in them when I wash her hair. I love hearing Vanessa say, "I am taking care of her."

Here are the girls with their Grandma. Grandma and Vanessa are reading "Peter's Pockets," by Eve Rice. A great library find. Elizabeth is taking advantage of the distraction to get in some more playing with Vanessa's jacket!

When Grandma was here, we got some falafel from Moby Dick's. Vanessa loves their bread. Tasty and as big as the moon!

Other kids sleep with teddy bears... Vanessa likes to put garden owls and strollers in her bed! Vanessa has discovered that she fits inside her pillow case, which she says is a sleeping bag just the right size for Vanessa.

Elizabeth loves to play at Nana's house. Great people, great play food to chew on!

Vanessa is starting to get to know her aunt Kalena and uncle John! Kalena helped me keep Vanessa and Elizabeth in check while I tried on a couple of things at the store (thank you thank you!). The next time we see them, I bet the weather will be just right for playing a little soccer outside with them!

Vanessa and Elizabeth never cease to be amazed by the disc music box and Nana's and Grampa's house. Its music really does have a beautiful, sonorous quality.

Elizabeth is officially walking. She had been taking timid little steps between objects as she cruised about, but today she started standing up in the middle of the floor without anything to pull up on. When I was in the kitchen today, I saw her toddling past the doorway, and I thought it must be Vanessa at first, because she was going with quite some speed!

Elizabeth has also been working on feeding herself. She can return her spoon to her bowl and get more food. She still needs practice, but I find it to be a useful trick already! (Now I can focus on feeding myself at meal time!)

Her little Fisher Price phone car is one of her favorite walking toys. She really can race with it quite fast up and down the hall. Turning around, on the other hand, she still needs my help with.

Look at me go, mommy!

When I was listing family members who have visited us, how could I forget Dean? Vanessa has adopted him as an honorary uncle. She even "made" some muffins for him.

Vanessa had great fun with her aunt Hannah and Grandma K. We had a fantastic time at the aquarium. After Vanessa sprinted around the main exhibits for a good 20 minutes, she was so exhausted that I wasn't sure she would make it all the way through, but she did, and really enjoyed it! So did Elizabeth, actually. Elizabeth had an excellent view of the fish and sharks from her position in the wrap Grandma K used to carry her around. Elizabeth is definitely responding to pictures of sharks and fish differently since the aquarium. And I had a great time too!

Aunt Hannah, Vanessa, and Grandma K. All in blue, Vanessa's favorite! We had such a nice time playing with these ladies! Grandma K and Hannah had brought a foam US map which Vanessa loved finding states on, and Elizabeth loved pulling apart... both Grandma K and Hannah did a marvelous job taking care of Elizabeth and entertaining Vanessa!

Vanessa and Elizabeth both loved having Kyra stay with us for a week. Elizabeth got fairly thoroughly licked, Kyra got fairly thoroughly read to, and Vanessa got fairly thoroughly exhausted from all that running around after a dog. So THAT's why parents don't mind having pets!

Vanessa has occasionally been asking to wear bows in her hair or to wear dresses. Usually this is because she sees a character in a book wearing a bow or a dress. She might wear a bow from time to time, but I'm afraid she doesn't have much chance of being a girly girl growing up in our house! There's only so much we can do to protect you from the geekiness of your parents, my dear!

Elizabeth starts signing!

I guess I could tell it was coming, after she started shaking her head every time she heard someone say "no," but Elizabeth has definitely started signing, maybe the day before yesterday. I'm pretty sure her first sign was "dog," thanks to Kyra staying with us this week. Later in the day she started signing "hat," and even waved "hello" to her daddy through the window today. So sweet! I think she's also signing "come here," maybe "eat," and "diaper," I think. I guess it's time to step up my signing!

A couple of firsts

Last night was the first time I knew Vanessa was definitely dreaming. She woke up at 5 in the morning very upset, exclaiming, "I want the OTHER strawberries!" Haha!

After a little hug, she went right back to sleep.

Vanessa also wrote her name (freehanding, not typing this time!) for the first time today. The E looked rather like a bottlebrush with all the horizontal lines she put on it, and the S's were backwards, but it was a pretty good first effort.

Elizabeth's nine month appointment

We had Elizabeth's nine-month check-up today. She didn't fuss at all, except oh so briefly for her vaccination. The doctor says she's growing just fine. She was 28.5 inches long (75% percentile) and weighed 18 pounds 12 ounces (50% percentile). I think her head circumference was closer to 90%, which explains why she has already outgrown most of her 12-month shirts!

Some of Elizabeth's recently acquired skills are
1) banging two objects together
2) clapping (sort of)
3) making a clicking sound with her tongue (This is the sound effect that I make when I point to clocks, which incidentally are Elizabeth's OBSESSION at the moment.)
4) looking down when she hears uh-oh, and looking at certain objects when she hears their names
5) removing all of the blocks from our block stacker toy that we got in Germany
6) making a jumping gesture when we count down from 9, in anticipation of "blasting off"

I think this is a good time to list some of Vanessa's newly acquired skills too (none of which I am sure I am happy about):
1) being able to unscrew the cap of my toothpaste and other containers
2) being able to blow bubbles with a bubble wand (see number 1 for why this is a concern)
3) being able to use a pencil-box type pencil sharpener
4) being able to pull the foil off the top of a cup of yogurt
5) being able to jump down off of something a foot high (as opposed to stepping or sliding off it)
6) being able to balance small objects on her head