One of the few videos you actually see me
in :) Eve likes our little plastic dinosaur toy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VObk0-MKuB4]

It’s quiet in my house right now. It’s a
beautiful day and we spent much of it outside. I brought out a
picnic lunch and Lex helped our neighbor weed her garden while
her son Parrish helped Lex eat his lunch :) Then everyone
played in the sandbox and now Eve is sleeping happily and Alan
and Lex are over playing at Parrish’s house. I am enjoying the
quiet. I was going to read the newspaper, but I can’t resist
the computer’s devilish lure.

I’ve been meaning to post for a few
days about Lex’s newfound attention to emotions. It’s an
interesting development. He will frequently check in to find
out how I’m doing. “Hi mommy. Are you ok? Are you happy?” or
sad or angry or tired or whatever. He does his best to guess
the appropriate emotion. Then he asks if you need a hug.
Regardless of how you’re feeling (“Yes Lex, I’m very happy.”)
he’ll end by saying “Do you need a hug?” then a kiss :) He has
become very lovey lately. The other night I was not happy,
tired mostly, and hungry. He wanted me to lay down with him at
bedtime and it quickly became a snuggle fest. He would roll
over and ask if I was happy, I’d say I’m
tired/hungry/cranky/whatever and he’d say “do you want a hug?”
so he’d hug me. And the kiss, then cuddle, and laugh and by the
end he was not asleep but I was MUCH happier. He’s gotten so
empathetic lately. It’s a pretty cool development.

He’s also starting to recognize and verbalize
his own emotions. Most days he wears PJs all day (yup, I’m that
kind of mom), but on Friday I wanted him to get dressed. He
threw a fit and I put him upstairs with the gate closed. He
screamed. Then settled himself down and asked me to come talk
to him and I did and he started crying again about pajamas, so
I left. This went on for about 15 minutes before he finally
settled himself down enough and picked out some clothes. When
we came down he sat on my lap and said “I was angry mommy. I
needed to get the tears out of my eyes. I am all better now.” I
said “Do you need a hug?” and he said “yes!” I was impressed
that he was able to name his feelings and realize that
sometimes you just need to “get the tears out” so you can feel
better again. He’s a very mature boy (for someone still in
diapers!)

Eve has hit her own little mischievous
milestone. She’s a very playful girl and has started learning
ways to get little digs in at her big brother. Her current
favorite is to sit in his chair and eat his food. It always
makes him yell “Eve, that’s MY chair!” She giggles and jumps up
and runs back to her seat. So silly. He made them both a snack
on Friday, put them both on the little table in the living
room, but decided that he wanted to save his for the WW
meeting. Every time he turned around she was in his seat eating
his snack! She ate almost all of both of their snacks! I told
him if he didn’t want her to eat his snack then he needed to
put it out of her reach, but he didn’t so I stayed out of it.
It was their own little sibling game. I suspect we’ll see a lot
more of that in the years to come. :)

Happy
siblings

Kisses
for daddy

I don’t seem to be very good at blogging
these days. Maybe because there is always a lot going on, yet
nothing terribly exciting or noteworthy. Right now I should be
preparing for a Pampered Chef party tonight (one tonight and
one tomorrow! look at me go!!) but I’ll take a quick minute to
say hi :) Life is going on. Lex is upstairs having some quiet
time. For some reason he decided he wanted his quiet time to be
in my room instead of the living room. I should probably check
on him… Eve is napping. She didn’t get a morning nap and was
thrilled when I put her to bed. Actually, I think she’s awake
now… I hear little talking over the monitor. She’s been
choosing her pack-n-play for sleeping lately. I guess the
excitement of the toddler bed has warn off. I don’t usually
object because if I put her in the bed when she asks for the
pnp then I know I’ll just be up there again a few minutes later
when she starts walking around the room. Silly girl. Lex has
taken to napping every other day or so. He seems to do ok until
bedtime, and he’s pretty good at quiet time, so we’re ok with
the arrangement. I was actually realizing the other day that
it’s been awhile since we’ve had bedtime battles. I think maybe
it’s just because I relaxed about it. So much to know with this
parenting thing!!! I went to a WW meeting today and was
frustrated. I’m 3lbs from the default 10% goal they set and
I’ve been pretty much holding steady for the past few weeks.
Today I was exactly the same as last week, not even .1lb more
or less. :/ I’m going to try switching plans (from core to
flex) for a week or two to see if that helps. I’ve hit the
weight that my body seems to like (where I seem to naturally be
most of the time) and so I don’t know if my body just really
likes this weight or my subconscious thinks this is where we
belong or what. So much to know with this weight loss thing!!
;)

Anyway, his quiet time
is up and she seems to be awake and I did not get any prep done
for tonight’s party…. so I guess I’m out of here. Like I
said, just a quick hello :) More later (someday!)

Eve’s first trip to the ocean. She loves
the beach!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pnw-xjdYs0]

“Get it, get it” she says as she chases a
seagull across the beach. Not surprisingly, she didn’t get it!
:) Right at the end the bird spreads it’s wings and flew off,
leaving Eve a little confused. I think she was surprised at how
big the bird looked with it’s wings spread.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdrJxwH7ycQ]

Eve likes to “wipe” her face with a napkin.
She even requests napkins sometimes. The funny thing though is
that she rarely actually touches her face. :) She’s very
ineffective, but she does it with gusto!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy2KVW5fnNg]

Although she wasn’t too fond of the water, Eve
had a blast on the beach (what little of it there was during
high-tide). Here she’s saying “shovel” as she scoops sand into
the bucket. Towards the end you can see Lyndsey scooting over.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j4up2lhR5M]

Splashing in the pool. I’m happy that Eve
finally got in. It’s so much more fun for all of us when
they’re both playing together instead of him swimming and her
crying every time she got splashed.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvTK2Aerymg]

Our neighbor’s have a great little blueberry
patch that they very kindly share with us. Lex and Eve LOVE to
eat blueberries and I often find myself dragging them away
after eating many, many berries. Sometimes mommy even gets a
few blueberries too. :)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH8AYZdZ3L0]

After what seems like forever and a day, we
finally got outside to play! It was 85 degrees and sunny, so we
broke out the kiddie pool. It has definitely seen better days,
but the kids had fun anyway. Eve even ventured into the pool!
The first time we filled it up she just cried, the next few
times she checked it out and splashed her hands a bit, but this
time she climbed over the edge and slid right in. I was
expecting her to scream when she realized how cold the water
was, but nope, she just got right up and started playing. I
took dozens of pictures, mostly in an attempt to get a nice one
of them together, but no such luck. Oh well. It was fun anyway.
They even had dinner by the pool — Zone bars, Triscuts, grapes
and fresh picked blueberries. Then asleep by 7:15. Yay!

If only
she were smiling! So close.

With Aunt Rosy in town we took a little
drive to our local-ish county fair to celebrate her birthday.
It was fun. We ate funnel cake and french fries (Eve LOVED the
funnel cake!) and Lex went through the fun-house twice and then
rode a little ride. Then we were out of money so we went to
visit the animals. Lex very excitedly pet some cows and Eve got
to pet the horses. Both were pretty happy. When the light
drizzle turned into more of a downpour we decided it was a good
time to head home. Overall a good time was had by all :)

Rosy
reading morning stories to the kiddos. I think a 3 grownup to 2
kid ratio is handy at times :)

There
was a bubble machine filling the air with bubbles at the fair
and it entertained the kids for awhile. Here’s Lex chasing the
bubbles.

Lex’s
first kiddie ride. He liked it until the game booth next to the
ride started making a loud ringing noise. Poor Lex started
crying and I asked the guy to stop the ride so he could get
off.

Eve,
looking at the sheep.

Rosy
didn’t get a birthday cake at my house, instead I tried out a
Pampered Chef recipe on her. Chocolate-raspberry cookie trifle.
Tasty but VERY sugary. Not sure I’ll make it again.

Here’s how we found Eve sleeping the other
night. So cute. She must have fallen out of the bed.

I added all of the pictures from our trip
to the Atlantic. View them at photos.datdec.com.

What started out as a diaper rash, so we
thought, turned out to be a nice case of Coxsackievirus.
Bummer. Apparently its similar to Chicken Pox and highly
contagious. Eve has a spotty rash all over her bottom, around
her mouth, on the back of her neck, and it comes and goes on
the rest of her body. Lex has it on his cheeks and tongue (I
think, he’s been complaining of a sore tongue for days now but
refuses to open his mouth for me to see). The diaper rash
started Sunday evening and I took them in to the doctor on
Tuesday, after it spread to her face. I thought, “Hmm…. now
it’s on the face, probably not a diaper rash…” :) I’m a smart
mommy!! Lex had a high fever all day Monday too, and they are
both running low fevers now.

Fortunately
neither of them are too bothered by it (other than the sore
tongue issue). The bigger annoyance is that we finally have a
bit of sunshine and we can’t be social! I had to cancel a
blueberry outing with friends tomorrow and poor Eve spent much
of today at the front window, watching the neighbor kids
playing and saying “oside? oside?” She even went so far as to
try and put my shoes on for me so I could take her out. I had
to say no though, since I don’t want to be infecting the whole
neighborhood!

Hopefully it will clear
up soon and hopefully we won’t miss our sunshine
opportunities!

I’m waiting for stuff to print (Pampered
Chef is gonna cost me a lot in ink!) so I figured I’d post a
quick update. We had an exciting day at home today. After a
busy weekend we need a few days to catch up. Lex and Eve both
had fevers today, his worse than hers I think. He slept for
most of the day and cried a lot that his mouth hurts.
Unfortunately he wouldn’t open it enough to let me look. So I
spent the day cuddling the kids and cleaning the kitchen. Nice
and relaxing. They are both sleeping now, though not
peacefully. I think I’ll probably dose them up with the baby
tylenol so we all make it through the night. Hopefully tomorrow
will find them happy and healthy again.

Eve is doing surprisingly well in her toddler bed. I’d say
she sleeps in it probably 85% of the time. We still have the
pack-n-play out and will probably keep it out for awhile, as a
back up. But for the most part she’s happy in the toddler bed.
I can’t say I mind being able to snuggle her before I go to bed
too :) I like giving them both little cuddles last thing at
night and it’s tough to do that with her in a crib.

Off to put together Pampered Chef host packets
to send out tomorrow. Maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of the
Olympics on TV too!