Big Girl Fia

The past few weeks, Fia has really been feeling like a big girl.  For the longest time, she wasn't able to climb up on the kitchen chairs and therefore didn't pay them much attention.  Now she climbs on them constantly just so she can sit like everyone else.  The same goes for the couch.

Unfortunately, these new climbing skills have allowed her to traverse the gate we had at the bottom of the stairs.  Until we were able to improvise a new barrier, she climbed up them constantly! Whenever I would catch her, she would pretend to sleep on the stair, complete with a snoring sound for effect.  (Now that I think about it, I should get this on video.)  Anyway, hopefully we'll be able to get rid of the gate altogether soon enough, but this kid is Trouble with a capital T and I don't trust her upstairs alone.

She pretty much follows and does anything and everything that Madeline does now.  The other night at dinner, we were making letters out of french fries and having Madeline guess what letter it was.  Well, Fia had to chime in and give her take to.  Her answer was a bunch of gibberish, of course, but we all thought it was funny and cute that she wanted to play the game too.


With her physical abilities markedly improving, I figured it was finally time to give the poor kid a pillow to sleep on at night.  I mean, heck, she is 2 years old!  And when she plays on Madeline's bed, she is always laying on it.  So I was surprised when she was a little weirded out by having one of her own.  I guess sleeping for 2 years without one will do that.  When I went to check on her during the first night, I found her sleeping on the opposite side of the bed from her new pillow.  In the morning, it was thrown out of her crib onto the floor.  We have some progress to make on this front.


Some other Fia cuteness to make note of:
-  she LOVES dip!  If we have ketchup or something else out, she HAS to dip her food in it.  The other night for dinner she had a few bites of hotdog and handfuls of ketchup.
-  her new favorite show is Bubble Guppies, also known as "Buppies"

Family Night

Being stuck inside was really starting to get to us recently (before this crazy warm weather), so we decided to take the kids out one night recently to Jump n Jacks.  It's a new kids indoor play area and they also have food.  We had pizza and let the kids play for a few hours, all for $22.  We'll definitely be back!  

We started in the "3 and under" area.  It's a special enclosed area for the little ones and was perfect for little Fia.  As you can imagine, Madeline got a bit bored after awhile.  Luckily that's when our pizza arrived.

I took this next picture from our dinner table after I couldn't keep the kids contained any longer.  Who wants to sit and eat dinner when there is a crazy flashing floor right next to you?  The image changed to all sorts of things...interactive puzzles, a pond with jumping frogs, and other craziness.  They LOVED this and pretty much wanted to stay here for most of the time.  This is also where we lost Fia.  Yes...lost her.  She was there one minute and gone the next.  Andy and I were sitting right there talking and we both missed her running away.  Luckily this place has many workers standing around making sure the kids are kept in line, so I enlisted several of them to help me find her.  She was found in the big playground area that was right next to the floor screen, so she thankfully didn't go far.  Sure gave us a scare though!  That ended all small talk between Andy and I and we took turns watching over each kid from then on to make sure we didn't lose another one after that.

This is the big playground area and it's awesome!  It's big enough so even the adults can go through.  I should have gotten a wide picture from the outside so you could see it's size, but I didn't think of it.  We were having too much fun.  That and making sure we didn't lose a kid again.

Taking off on a jet plane....

....headed to the beach!  I even got out the sunscreen and beach towels.  They had a blast.

Crafting

The kids made self-portraits last week.  Madeline has become quite the perfectionist...notice she is still coloring her eyes and Alexis is pretty much done with her whole face.  

Their faces came out pretty good (Alexis is on top and Madeline's is on the bottom).  Madeline literally took about 20 minutes to color her eyes, so when it was time for the nose and the mouth, she kinda gave up.  They loved doing this craft though and making sure it looked just like them!

A Day in the Life....

Back when Madeline was just a wee thing, I documented a day in her life.  Since I kinda use this as our family photo album, I thought it would be fun to do again.  No two days are ever the same, but here is a snapshot of a recent day.

Fia usually greets me with a big smile in the mornings! Then she gets to watch Dora while we wait for Madeline to get up.

Breakfast time!  Of course I had to give them pop-tarts on the day I was taking pictures.  Ugh.  Usually it's a nice, healthy cereal or pancakes with fruit.  

The playroom starts the day relatively clean.

The first of many books we'll read for the day. 

Then it's off to bathtime.  This isn't typical, but there wasn't time the night before so morning bathtime it is.

Off to the basement to play and rock out!

Then it's time to drop Madeline off at preschool.  This day she gets to have lunch with her friends which means it's just me and The Fi at home.

I love this part of our day when Madeline isn't around and I can play with Fia without interruption.  We typically read LOTS of books and do puzzles.

After picking Madeline up, we head to "her office" for her to show off everything she made.

This day happened to have great weather so we went for a walk.

Let's play find The Fia.

Hmm, the playroom looks about right.....

DADDY'S HOME!

Then it's time for bed.

Name Writing

Madeline is starting to write her name!  She has trouble with the e's, but otherwise can do the letters by herself.  

Andrea's Daycare

The days I watch my nieces, it's pretty crazy around here.  I always have a craft for the big kids to do.  Sometimes the little ones get to do one too, but usually they get stuck just coloring.  As you can imagine, it's hard to do all this AND take pictures.  However, this one day I decided I was gonna take a few.  

This was the day after Valentine's Day and we had already done a V-Day craft the week before, but I saw this and just had to do it.  I made a heart stamp out of a toilet paper roll and some tape.   

Then got some paint and let the kids stamp away.

Later that day, we made a fort.

After awhile, Fia took a quiet break to read her new favorite book.

Zoo Trip with Daddy

Andy was off for President's Day so we wanted to have a Family Fun Day together.  We tried taking the kids to this new indoor jump house and playground place, but it was so packed they actually told us we couldn't come in.  Madeline was understandably extremely upset so we needed to figure something out fast. It was beginning to be a beautiful day so we decided to head to the zoo.  It started out a bit cold at 37 degrees, but with the sun, we hardly noticed and we had a wonderful time.  I'm so glad that other place turned us down.

The polar bears were loving the cool weather.  We stayed here for awhile and watched them since one was swimming around.

I captured Fia's face right as one of the polar bears jumped into the water.  She loved it!

We finally made it to an indoor exhibit so we could defrost a bit.  According to Fia, all the animals in this exhibit were polar bears too.  The manatees were sleeping so Madeline determined they were just big rocks in the water.  So she headed to the interactive video screens.

While Madeline did that, Daddy had some fun with Fia Bia.

Daddy tried to get Madeline to touch this walking stick.  She put her hand up, but she just couldn't do it.  I don't blame her, I wouldn't do it either.

Fia stopped to check out Monkey Island.

This picture cracks me up!  Fia saw me with the camera, turned around and posed and said, "CHEESE!" and then went back to watching the monkeys. 

Andy hadn't been to the zoo with us before so it was a blast having him there with us.  Even though our originals plans didn't pan out, we had an awesome day together.