Little Body, HUGE Personality!

Oh the little things!!

I'm really enjoying the small things in life lately. I love sitting back with a cup of coffee and just watching my babies be themselves. They are amazing... Here are some of the little things I've enjoyed recently:

1. Annie is an actress, reciting and acting out movie lines for play almost every day. This is a picture of her acting out the scene in 'Beezus and Ramona' in which Ramona takes her school picture with raw eggs dripping down her hair. Hilarious to watch her do the whole scene, but this picture is pretty spot-on, on its' own!

2. Ezra thinks he's awesome because he can put his paci in all by himself. The funny thing is that he often puts it in sideways or upside down. I love the look on his face in this picture- he's like, "What's so funny, Mom?!"

3. Ezra can scoot now. But, he can only go backwards. I had set him on the green blanket to play while I cleaned off my desk in the kitchen and was talking to him until I left the room to toss the garbage from my desk. When I came back he was gone!! I said, "Ezra!?" pretty loudly and then immediately heard his fusses from behind the ottoman. He had scooted back there and couldn't move forward to get back out!! Poor buddy! I smiled at him and promised to be right back, because I had to run and get the camera to document his adorable face peeking around the ottoman..."A little help here?!" So stinkin' cute, this one!!

Snuggly-Furry-Friends

Can you find Annie in this picture? Ha ha ha! You can see the top of her head snuggled down for her nap with all of her snuggly-furry-friends. She heads upstairs for her nap on her own now, and usually takes at least 20 minutes to arrange her stuffed animals around her on the bed.

This is how I found Annie after her nap that same day-- playing with all of her 'snuggly-furry-friends' on her bed... wearing a pair of undies on her head. Weird science... What a goofball!

The Project Girl

Annie still loves doing 'projects' at her little art table. I have set out a little container to hold some general art supplies such as markers, crayons, scissors, glue, stickers, paper, etc. She really likes making a little project and then putting it in an envelope to send to someone. Now I just need to really make good on it and send them to you all!! The neat thing is that she even 'addresses' the envelope to the person by writing the first letter of their name on it. We have several envelopes with the letter 'P' on them, for Mama Pauli, since Grandma Pauli is so good about always sending Annie and Ezra things in the mail! We love heading to the real mailbox to see if there is anything for Annie. She can find the mail with her name on it and then 'read' the corner to see who sent it!

She is 'reading' lots of things lately. She recognizes and reads environmental print like store signs and logos (Starbucks, McDonalds, Target, etc.) and pretty much anything around the house with letters on it. Last night she really wanted ice cream after dinner and when Ben handed her a little container of yogurt that Mama Pauli had left in the freezer she said, "No Daddy! That's not ice cream-- the letters spell 'yogurt.' See?" She pointed to the words on the container and gave Ben a "I told you so" look. Ha ha- this girl is so smart, it's getting tough to keep one step ahead of her already!

Father's Day 2011

It was fun to celebrate our favorite, best-in-the-whole-wide-world Daddy this year. Ben really wanted a set of custom Vikings cornhole boards for our neighborhood happy hours- so we found a guy on Etsy to make them for Father's Day. We knew the boards wouldn't be here in time, so we surprised Benny with a small gift from each baby. Annie gave Daddy an electric pancake skillet and said, "now you can make me LOTS of pancakes!!" when he opened it. Ezra gave Ben a "Baby Barbells" book which shows how to get fit using your baby as your weights. They are having lots of fun with that!

Ben made some awesome banana-peanut butter-dark chocolate chip pancakes for us and then we spent the afternoon and evening hanging out with our neighbors. Ben's day was made when Annie tried bbq ribs for the first time and exclaimed, "I LOVE ribs!!" Ha ha ha!

We are excited for the cornhole boards to arrive and to continue celebrating our 'Dad.' He really is the best father. So patience and doting and fun. Annie and Ezra are madly in love with their Daddy. I am, too. ;o) Happy Father's Day, my Benny!

Ezra's first art project...

Ezra got some cute little 'baby's first' markers in his Easter basket this year, so I thought I would let him try them out. The first thing he did was put them in his mouth. Over and over again. So, I put his pacifier in his mouth to see if that would prevent the markers from going in. He sort of just fumbled around with the markers because his little hands were too small to get a good grip on them-- the package said the markers are for 18 months and up-- until Annie decided he was too little for markers.
When Annie took the markers from Ezra he cried a pitiful little squeal. Poor buddy!
We decided to give Ezra paper to play with while Annie colored with his markers. She had fun coloring with the little animal markers and he enjoyed folding and crumpling the paper. So, after all was said and done, Ezra's first art project was origami!

Ezra is 7 months young!!