Ivy's Birthday Party

We had a birthday party for Ivy yesterday evening.  It was hard on Noelle to wait that long.  She wanted to skip right over dinner and get to business! 

Here's our party decor:

A star banner (don't worry the book I cut up already had a few chapters fall out).

We have a cake problem.  We love sprinkle cake, but the frosting isn't the most luxurious looking.

Noelle colored a birthday sign for Ivy.  I love seeing how her coloring is developing.  She's doing a great job coloring things.  She drew something at the bottom but I forgot to ask her what it was.

Ivy dug into the cake more than Noelle did on her birthday.  She still didn't eat much but had fun with the frosting.  Ta-DA!

This is tasty!

I love birthdays!

She's loved all her presents (and Noelle thanks you too, she has had fun playing too).

This book was a hit at library time.  I feel like half the kids wanted to look at this cute pig book instead of listen to what the librarian was reading (I brought it for Ivy to play with).

Also it there's finally a little color around town as the cacti are blooming.  A tiny cactus in our front yard had beautiful purple blossoms.  The only downside to cacti blossoms is they only last a day or two and then they are gone.

Happy Birthday Ivy!

Ivy is one!  Still trying to figure out where last year went.

Ivy Almost One

Ivy is almost a year old (on the 16th!).  We can hardly believe it.  Where did the year go?

Some notes about Ivy.  She's a smart little thing.  I can see her brain working and learning.  She likes imitating what we do.  She'll pick up her shoes and set them on her feet.  She picks up a crayon or pencil and sets it on paper.  She loves playing peak-a-boo with her bedroom door, she loves opening and closing the door peaking out and giggling at you.  She likes putting on necklaces.  She loves gram crackers.

Her favorite word is "da-da!", which she often exclaims when Corey opens the door in the morning.  She doesn't say much else (unless you count general screams for things), but is getting better communicating with her hands (opening them for "gimme!" and things like that).

She is just about the sweetest thing ever.  She loves nuzzling into you when shes really happy, giggling, or sad.  She loves being in the thick of things, but she also likes exploring the house on her own.  She has her moments (most oftenly caused by her big sis), but is usually quick to bounce back.

She has 4 teeth officially (at least two more on the way).  She has two on bottom and two on top--although the top teeth aren't the front ones.  We'll have a vampire for a bit :)

It's scary how fast she's growing.  She is now mastering crawling, and can even get onto the couch when Noelle's chair is next to it.  She loves walking around when you hold her little hands.  Also, just look at this I captured yesterday:

"Look mom, no hands!"  I think the record I've caught her standing is for 5 or so seconds.  She's on her way to walking any day now.

Easter Week

The girls have had a fun week.  This is the first year we dyed eggs with the girls.  Noelle loved it (knew she would).

I also found out that despite hating many forms of eggs (scrambled, egg salad, fried, etc) Noelle loves boiled eggs.  She's been eating them whole.  She's also had lots of fun peeling them herself.

We had fun trying different things on our eggs.

On Tuesday we had a little Easter egg hunt at the park.  Noelle loved it.

She ate candy as she went.

After all the eggs were found all the kids just sat down where they were and ate all their candy.  Ivy ate gram crackers.

Not related, but Noelle is getting better at drawing.  Here's a smiley face.

I sceam, We scream

This is a month or so old now.  I'm getting behind!

One of their favorite things to do together is scream.  The audio doesn't really capture quite the reach their screams did in person.  It was ear numbing.

Favorite Pictures

Here are two of my favorite pictures.  Ivy's is from November, Noelle's is from this morning.  She was so excited to have braids like Jessie (the cowgirl from Toy Story).  I have the cutest girls!

Photo dump!

I have been having a hard time keeping up blogging lately.  I'm so busy with the girls it's hard to peel away!  So in honor of my absence here is a large photo dump.  The first few are a day at the park (in January...we suffer a hard winter here!) a few weeks ago.

And here we brought out the jump house again.  It was Ivy's first real time (she has been on it once before, but couldn't do much).  She had a blast.  There's a movie at the bottom of her squealing.  I didn't edit any of the movies, so sorry if they are super long.

Also, the other day Noelle was making Ivy laugh.  I mean LAUGH.  Near a guffaw.  It was pretty funny.  Why they thought that was funny we'll never know.

 

Here's the jump house video: