Saying goodbye to Grammy

One year ago today

aka it's been a really busy day, it's 10:30pm and we've got no pictures to post! Actually, that's not totally true. We took Sylvie outside before bed and took some wannabe artsy nighttime moon pics. It's just that I decided this picture (of Sylvie at 8.5 months) would be much, much cuter.

I took Brandon and Nicole to see Game Plan tonight while John stayed home with Syl. It was actually so funny and so much better than I thought, The Rock totally won me over. And do you see the bulldog in a tutu? Comic genius I tell ya! Anyway, I got home and found my two favorite people curled up in bed reading books. I love my life.

Storytime

We got to the library 5 minutes late this morning, only to find out that today's storytime had been moved up and shortened. We caught about 3 minutes of the Itsy Bitsy spider before it was time to sing the goodbye song. Sylvie didn't seem to mind though, and immediately found a suitable listener for her own book reading.

She would wear this everyday if we let her.

Grammy's here!

Hopefully this video will make up for the frustratingly dark and blurry picture. I particularly like how Sylvie re-arranges the driver and passenger of her little green sanitation truck at the beginning.

Kid-Tested, Mother-Approved

I think my impatience is rubbing off on her.

Not content to wait her turn like all the other patient little children, Sylvie tried to take matters into her own hands at today's library storytime. Each week the librarian stamps the children's hands with various rubber stamps, and it's truly the highlight of the whole morning. It's probably too difficult to see in this picture, but that's Sylvie grabbing the Hello Kitty stamp while the librarian wasn't looking.

I didn't really get a lot of pictures today, there's just something weird about photographing your child playing with other totally random kids. I can just feel the uneasy glances from the other moms, that this complete stranger is photographing their kid and might, oh I don't know, post their picture to a website or something.

We did, however, take this super cute video today.

Sometimes he makes her recite the Pledge of Allegiance for fun too.

Never one to miss an opportunity to make learning fun, John has come up with a new game for bath time. Sylvie is really into letters and numbers right now, which kinda happened out of nowhere. It blows me away when she brings me a book or a magazine or anything and points out letters to me. She particularly loves the letter Q. It's gotta be the tail. So anyway, what you see above are the letters and numbers that Sylvie was able to correctly identify tonight. If she picks up a letter and can tell John what it is, up on the wall it goes! She's almost got a whole alphabet up there!

A perfect day.

Photo Credits: Gina & John

Today we visited our good friends Gina, John and Chloe. We started the afternoon with a trip to the Turtle Back Zoo, with Chloe anxiously chattering about the black bears as soon as she got out of the car. The girls loved seeing the animals and running around, and despite the intense humidity we all had a great time. We don't get to see the Mondis nearly enough and it was so good to spend the day with them. The guys cooked us all a delicious dinner and then watched the babies while Gina and I did a little shopping. Heavenly! 2 pairs of insanely cute shoes and some overpriced but adorable clothes later, we went home and gave the girls a joint bath. Almost too much sweetness for one day.

She takes her dental hygiene seriously.

Sylvie reminds us every night when it's time to brush her teeth. Usually while John gives her a bath she'll get a certain look on her face, point towards the sink and say "uh oh, teeth," as in "you moron, you almost forgot, AGAIN". We think she just likes to suck the berry flavored paste off the brush, but I gotta admit she's a pretty thorough brusher! So yeah, I wasn't entirely surprised that she played with this doll for almost an hour today while we tagged along with Nicole and Brandon to their dentist appointments. Good thing too, since Sylvie is 8 months overdue for her first appointment. Whoops!

And this other picture from earlier today is just too sweet not to include. I think it might be one of my all time favorite Sylvie pics.

Superhero

Sylvie's new cape arrived today (and now I know what I'm getting all the kids for Christmas this year). She has no idea why it is as awesome as it is. Babies.

Yes, another playground pic.

This scary tunnel slide was much more enticing with Sylvie's beloved Nicole waiting for her at the bottom. Sylvie genuinely adores Nicole and is, finally after a year, warming up to her brother Brandon. The feeling is not completely mutual though: today on the way to the park the kids informed me that Sylvie is "totally annoying". Of course I stood up for my little baby, by immediately assuring both Nicole and Brandon that they are too, totally.

Static

And accompanying video. Normally her counting goes something like this: "4...6...3...7...10" so catching this on video today was pure luck! :)

Success!

Welcome

Crawling through the jungle gym tunnel. 20 months 1 day.