Happy 1st Birthday, Gavin!

Gavin turns one year old today! Our little baby is not so little anymore. He is done with baby bottles (had his first sippy of regular milk today!), done with jars of food (only interested in the big kid stuff!), and can finally get that car seat turned around so he can watch movies with his big sister on long car trips. Hooray for our big boy! We can't wait to celebrate his birthday with our family tomorrow. We love you, Gavin!

Playtime with Cousins!

Last week, the kids and I made the rounds to see both of my sisters and their families in IN and KY. Erik was traveling for work all week, and then had plans to join his parents for a couple days of skiing in Colorado, so we decided to entertain ourselves while he was away. The drive went remarkably well! We did most of it during naptimes or bedtimes, which helped a lot. We had planned to spend a few days with our friends Jamie and Eric and their 2 boys in Louisville in addition to seeing my sisters, but when the flu struck their house we agreed it would be best to skip that part of our visit. Thankfully they are now on the mend after enduring so many days of the flu! And my sisters were so kind to host us in the middle of their busy weeks, as we took over bedrooms and lined their hallways with all of the stuff that accompanies a mom, toddler and baby. We had so much fun seeing everyone. Here are some pictures with all of our cousins:
To break up our drive, we also made a stop at the Indianapolis Children's Museum. What a fabulous place! It's huge and caters so wonderfully to kids and families. Cassidy couldn't stop staring at the "giant snake" sculpture that stands in the middle foyer. She kept asking if she could "please hold one of those snakes?" And both of the kids had so much fun in their 5 and under area, playing with sand and water tables, tunnels, blocks and even enjoying a little live music show with the hokey pokey dance. Anyway, I highly recommend it if you're ever in the area and need a kid-friendly activity. Here are some photos of the fun we had there:

Now we're back home and glad to see the spring weather has arrived. We took a stroller walk over to the park yesterday and it was packed with kids and moms who were so glad to be outside. I ended up taking off my jacket with the warm sunshine. Hooray for spring!

Our Busy Days

As winter rolls on, we continue to entertain ourselves indoors most days. Here are a few pictures of what the kids have been up to lately...

Lots of painting!

Many afternoons spent being a kitty (thanks again, Meg!)Furniture jumping and forts galore. This one required a swimsuit.Cassidy really must be ready for summer. She dressed all her animals in swim diapers and pretended the couch was a pool.

Gavin's lucky day, he got to play along! (That is, until he chewed on her animal's leg and made it all wet - then he got banned from her pool.)We also decided to be bold and get a cute chin-length haircut for Cassidy. With a kind apology from the haircut lady, chin-length accidentally turned into jaw-length. It's quite a bit shorter than I was envisioning. Luckily she's our cutie-pie and we love it! She is having fun getting compliments from all her teachers at school. Now, lots of her animals get pretend haircuts each day. Here are some photos...

Closing out the entry with a couple close-ups of my 2 favorite munchkins.

Next week, the kids and I head out on our next road trip. We're stopping by Lafayette, Louisville, and Lexington! We can't wait to see our friends and family. Erik is heading out as well, off to Colorado for a short ski trip with his parents. More pictures and stories when we all return!

A Night on the Town

Last weekend, Erik and I had a fun belated Valentine's Day celebration. Grammy and Grandpa Brown came to our house to stay with the kids while we drove a short 20 miles south to downtown Chicago for an overnight stay. It was wonderful! We found so much to do in the city. We checked out the new Sears Tower skydeck (It's technically the Willis Tower now but for some reason I can't get used to calling it that!). It's pretty incredible. They created glass step-outs in the side of the building so you can actually walk out and stand 110 stories above land and look through the glass floor at the street below. Once I was standing there, ready to step onto the glass, I suddenly had the creepy feeling that I was stepping off an enormous cliff. I made it onto the glass, but never looked down. Erik loved it and was taking pictures from all angles. It is a cool experience! After that, we pretended to be trendy for an evening and had some pre-dinner cocktails at a couple swanky lounges. Then we went to one of our favorite restaurants for dinner (MK, it's great!). The next day, we caught a matinee, did some shopping and then came home in time for a pizza dinner with the kids and Grammy and Grandpa. It was a really fun weekend and we came home refreshed.

While we were away, Grammy and Grandpa were master entertainers at our house. They baked miniature cakes, played in the snow, read books, played play-doh, and just enjoyed the time together. Days later, I am still hearing new stories from Cassidy. (Today I learned that Grandpa was throwing funny snowballs at trees! Hopefully these are all true stories, who knows!) We are lucky that Grammy and Grandpa have lots of energy. They keep the kids both busy and happy! Here are some photos from their time together.

Having Fun on the Homefront

Since returning from our trip a couple weeks ago, we have kept ourselves busy with all sorts of wintertime activities...

Cassidy had a fun Valentine's Day party at school, where she traded little paper valentines with her classmates and ate frosted heart cookies. And she talks every day about the special red rose that she got from Daddy! She has had fun playing in the snow with Daddy too - they made a snow fort to hide behind and a sledding hill for her toddler sled. She warmed up afterwards with warm cocoa and marshmallows.

Cassidy has gotten through the challenging transition of giving up her pacifier. For the first week or so, she continued to ask to have it back (endured lots of tears), but now she has forgotten all about it. She still has moments (usually at 3 in the morning, unfortunately) when she needs extra comforting, and she can't verbalize why, but I'm sure it's all part of this transition. She's even been a little teary when I drop her off at school, which is unlike her - I guess it just goes to show how much comfort that little paci brought to her life. We hated taking it away, but it was really time to do so since she was chewing through them (eeek, choking hazard in her sleep) and since we have a few other big transitions on the way - potty training and the big girl bed. So, all in all, it was manageable, but I am glad that Gavin is already done with the pacifier so we don't have to go through this again next year!

Cassidy also joined me on my trip to the dentist for my routine cleaning. The dentist recommended doing this (just having her sit next to me during my cleaning) so when her time comes, it hopefully won't seem too scary. We help her brush her teeth everyday, but she has never been inside a dentist's office before. The whole drive there, she asked me questions about the "bentist." Where is the bentist? Why is the bentist going to clean your teeth? Why will you sit in a special chair? But what is a bentist? She sat very patiently throughout the appointment and was really intrigued with their educational plastic teeth (basically like those plastic chattering teeth that she could open and close). On our drive home, she muttered something from the back seat that sounded like "Mommy got her teeth cleaned. But Cassidy does not want to have a bentist clean her teeth." Oh well, we tried!

Gavin is only a few weeks away from his 1st birthday! How the time flies! He is crawling at lightning speed these days. He loves to play chase, peek-a-boo, and to press all the buttons on the TV to mess with someone's show (he cracks up laughing the second it changes to a snow screen). He also likes to dance to music, and has just started waving "hi" when someone greets him (video below!). He continues to be very sensitive - loves to snuggle, loves to have mommy hold him for a bit after naps, and really despises diaper changes and getting any article of clothing put on. I'm sure his first steps are not far away - he's quite the mover!

Cassidy and Gavin are becoming little pals. They love to make each other laugh, especially at mealtimes. Today, Cassie's red juice sprayed out of her mouth and all across the table - just fits of laughter taking place. It makes me happy to see them happy!

Drive, Drive down Interstate 65!

The kids and I returned this week from our first 2010 road trip! We journeyed down I-65, making stops in Lafayette, IN, Louisville, KY, and Nashville, TN. What fun we had! We missed Daddy, who was busy with work back at home. But he was able to join us for the final stop in Lafayette, and it was nice to end the trip all together.

We spent the bulk of the week at the Vlach's house in Nashville. During our days, Meg and I supervised (and took part in!) puppet shows, jungle safaris, cookie bakes, dress-up time, craft upon craft and even nightly toddler dance parties. Our kids had SO much fun playing together. It was like a never-ending playdate - toddler heaven! And mommy heaven too, since Meg and I got to enjoy chit-chat just as if we were getting together over coffee, but in our case we were chatting as we cleaned lunch plates and changed diapers. Glamorous, I know! Ha! But we both love our jobs at home, and it made it that much more fun to spend the week doing that job together. Cassidy particularly had fun playing with Madeline, who is adorable and just a few months older. Cassie still talks about reading Fancy Nancy books (her first intro to those!), dressing up as a kitty (in a costume she wore so much that Meg very sweetly tucked it into our bags as we packed up to leave!) and playing with Maple, the very patient family dog. Gavin and Charlie are only 3 weeks apart and loved crawling and exploring together! They both appear to be climbers, watching like hawks to gain entry to the stairs and playing on top of the open dishwasher door whenever they had the chance. Charlie would feed Gavin little bits of food whenever they had snacks together, it was really sweet! How fun to have our boys so close in age. Rob was so kind to welcome our chaos into his home during a work week, and even stayed home with the sleeping kids one evening so Meg and I could have a night out with wine and southern BBQ! The restaurant, Puckett's, was the perfect setting for an evening in Franklin (such a great little town that borders Nashville). Live music, rustic decor, and a huge smoker preparing all the BBQ we could possibly hope for. We loved our time in Nashville and hope to return again. Hopefully Erik can join us next time! I owe a huge thank you to Meg for hosting us for the whole week, turning her home into ours and making everything so fantastic. She is amazing!
We also spent 2 nights (1 night on the drive down, and another on the drive back) at the Haru's house in Louisville, KY. We got to meet their newest little addition, Makaio Michael Haru (8 weeks old). He has the cutest little baby cheeks I have ever seen! We arrived at 11:30pm both times, and Jamie and Eric had everything set up so I was able to just carry sleeping kids into the house and tuck them in without a peep. How wonderful. In the morning, we had breakfast together and Cassidy and Kainoa played with play-doh, trains, and every other available toy. Gavin stumbled upon Makaio relaxing in a bouncy chair and didn't know what to make of him! Luckily, we'll get to see Jamie, Erik and the boys again very soon as our next road trip takes us back to Louisville in the first week of March. Yay!

And another stop on our road trip was to the Harding house in Lafayette, IN. It's always nice to spend time with family! Cassidy talks endlessly about her cousins and that gecko that lives in cousin Ethan's room! They hosted us for dinner on the way down, and for the whole weekend on the way back. We always enjoy our time here, getting to watch Kelsey and Ethan in action with soccer/basketball and enjoying the great meals that Steve and Tracy cook up (tried some homemade jambalaya this time around!). We relaxed in the evenings with some good TV, wine and desserts. Since they are only 2.5 hours away, we always know we'll get to visit with the Hardings again soon. In fact, they'll be part of our next road trip adventure in March! We are grateful to them for the wonderful hospitality.

Now that we're home, we've settled back into our normal routine. The only exception is that we had a visit from the Pacifier Fairy! She came to our house and took all the pacis (they're just for little babies, after all, as we explained to "big girl" Cassidy) and in their place, she left presents! Cassie was thrilled to find a new Fancy Nancy book and 2 new puppets (a hippo and a lion, by request) in her room that morning. All was wonderful until naptime arrived, and she decided that, well, she'd really just like to have her paci back. We had to get through some hefty crying, but she eventually did fall asleep without her paci - the first time ever, since she has had it with her since her first days in the hospital and every day since. Every bedtime since then has included a few sad tears about missing paci, but overall it has been a really smooth transition. Coming soon - big girl bed, potty training, and saying goodbye to sippy cups! Eeeeeeek...

Is it Spring Yet?!?

The first few weeks of 2010 were a little rough in our house! We started the new year with a round of bad colds and spent the last 10 days taking turns with a pretty severe stomach flu. The temperatures outside have been bitter cold, too cold to step out for even a few minutes of fresh air. To top things off, for the first 3 weeks of January, Erik was traveling to NY each week for work. Eeeeeekkk! Talk about cabin fever! But we muddled through and are now feeling healthy and excited about the next few weeks. Erik is done with work travel for a while (hooray!) and the weather has warmed to the 30s (we'll take it!). Also, I am taking a road trip this week with the kids to visit our great friends, the Vlachs, in Nashville! We planned this visit a while back and are SO looking forward to it! Meg and I have kids the exact same age, and we are both spending our days at home with the little ones, so it just made sense to join up for a week and do our jobs together! Everything is easier with a second set of hands, and when the kids are busy playing and sleeping, we get to catch up in person! I really can't wait. To make the drive a little easier, we have planned a dinnertime stop in Lafayette with the Hardings and and overnight stop in Louisville with the Harus. We are so excited to see everyone!

Speaking of things being easier with an extra set of hands - I am SO grateful to have had some great help last week from Grammy and Grandpa Brown! Last Wednesday they drove in and spent the whole day tending to Cassidy and Gavin so I could get out and run some errands. It was a nice change of pace, and so appreciated! Grandpa made salmon patties for dinner, with Cassie's help. Here are some photos of their visit. And I'm sure I'll have more photos to post once I return from our exciting road trip!