Emma had her preschool graduation ceremony last night, which included receiving a diploma and singing a darling song about summer helping to recharge her batteries and getting a little "R and R". When my brother asked her what R and R meant, she said it means "when you go to sleep, in the night time". Personally, I am looking forward to sleeping in somewhat during the next few months. Hopefully my children will cooperate.

We've been staying home a lot lately, mostly because I've been trying (somewhat successfully - finally!) to get Noah to be a little more reasonable about nap time. I've also realized that staying home more has helped us settle into a comfortable routine and I think those relaxed, pleasant days at home are more enjoyable for everyone than rushing around to a bunch of activities. Anyway, now that Emma is going to be home every day, we will probably have to start getting out more again so she isn't bored silly this summer. When I asked her what she wants to do this summer, she said, "play school and learn gymnastics". I think we can handle that!

Today I realized that I haven't written anything about Allie in awhile, which doesn't seem quite right because she has actually been very busy learning new things. She has been sprouting teeth, crawling all over the house, and - as of yesterday - pulling herself up.
She isn't eating any solid food yet. I've offered her a few things in the past month - banana, pear, sweet potato, and kiwi - but every time she has thrown her head back and grimaced as though she thinks I'm trying to poison her. She will gag and spit until the food comes back out, and since she seems to dislike it so much, I'm not going to force the issue. I'll keep offering occasionally and eventually she'll probably be a little more into it. For now, I'm certainly not complaining because nursing is so much simpler than dealing with solid food anyway.My mom was here two weeks ago and at one point she watched the kids while I went to Target by myself for an hour or so. That was my first time away from Allie since her birth so kind of a big deal, but she handled it like a champ. Then the very next weekend Steve watched the kids (meaning he drove around with them) for two hours while I got a much needed haircut. So, that means that I had three hours all to myself in one week, which sort of makes me feel like I'm moving out of the stage of being needed by babies all the time and into a stage of having a small amount of personal freedom. Woo!

This stuff is taking over my brain. I've had Nutella before, but I never actually bought it until last week. Oh. My. It is so amazingly delicious and creamy and fabulous and I can't stop eating it. At first I was trying to eat it a bunch of different ways - on bagels, on toast, on pancakes, on pretzels, on any kind of fruit - but then I said to heck with that and I just started eating spoonfuls right out of the jar. When our little regular sized jar was gone, I decided to stop messing around and go for the giant Costco-sized two-pack.
The other night we were walking out the door to go to Cinzetti's and I actually debated stuffing the Nutella in my purse because there was bound to be something there that was just begging to be smeared with it's chocolate-y, hazelnut-y goodness. In the end I decided I needed to get a grip and left the Nutella at home.This morning it became apparent that the kids have picked up on my obsession. Emma woke up, immediately walked into the kitchen, and said, "So do you think we should just have Nutella for breakfast?" Upon hearing her suggestion, Noah actually pumped his fist in the air and shouted, "'Tella!" Hey, at least they have good taste. (As evinced by Noah's trying to steal it before I could take a picture.)

Yesterday I turned 30 years old. My family - mainly Steve and Emma - made sure that it was a really great day. We did fun stuff all day and I also got flowers and many lovely presents.Thirty seems like kind of an important birthday, and I sort of feel like I'm leaving my youth behind and entering a new period of greater wisdom and maturity. I guess we'll see if that part actually comes true, but for now it's making me look around and evaluate my life a little bit. If someone had asked me when I was twenty what I expected to accomplish in the next ten years, I know my answer would have included getting my degree, getting married, having some kids, and staying home to raise those kids. So now, looking back, I can say with absolute certainly that I'm doing exactly what I always wanted to do. And seriously, I couldn't be happier.

I actually sewed something! Woo! I have actually been working on a couple bigger projects here and there, so I guess my excitement should be over actually finishing something. Really though, I shouldn't be so quick to pat myself on the back because this shirt could probably be completed in a total of 45 minutes, but it ended up taking me almost two weeks. Ah well, I'll take what I can get.
She likes it and has already worn it to school twice, out of five days. I guess that means it's a success. Now I'm feeling motivated to carve out some more sewing time for myself and actually finish a few more things.

The weather this week is amazing and we are loving it. There are so many flowers coming up in our yard that the kids are able to go out and each pick a new bouquet every day. We have a crazy amount of vases placed around our house, all stuffed with flowers in various stages of vibrancy. I didn't think "vibrancy" would be a word, but my spell checker isn't flagging it so I'm going with it. I love how Noah's "bouquets" are really just fistfuls of crumpled petals.Moments after I took this picture, but unfortunately after I had already brought my camera back inside, Noah managed to somehow shove one of these dandelions in his mouth. He grimaced, then opened his mouth and blew out, sending dozens of the little fluffy seeds shooting out into the air. Too bad for him, the rest stayed and it took him a good ten minutes to get them all out of his mouth. Is it wrong to, every once in awhile, laugh at your kids and not necessarily with them?Today we went to the arboretum and Noah was pretty good about only picking the dandelions and nothing else. He had a handful of them at all times, with a constant stream of little fluffy particles billowing out behind him as he walked. When we were getting ready to leave, he proudly handed me a large bundle of mostly naked dandelion stems - all of which are currently displayed in a vase on our kitchen table. What a sweet, sweet boy.

In a surprising turn of events, during the past few weeks Noah has really started to grasp the concept of using the potty. Some days he will tell me all day when he has to go and I start to (hopefully, joyfully) think that I will only need to be washing diapers for one baby from now on. Other days, he's not into it and he just wants to wear a diaper all day.We had a Parents as Teachers visit last week, and Noah peed in the potty in our living room just as our lady was pulling into our driveway. Since she was about to walk in the door, I just closed the lid to the potty and reminded myself to dump it out after she left. About halfway through our visit, we were sitting on the floor chatting. Her folder of papers was open on the floor behind her. Before I caught on to what he was doing, Noah picked up his potty, tilted it, and started to walk across the floor. I jumped up to grab it from him but not before the pee all dribbled out exactly all over the papers on the floor. Great. Because who doesn't love to go visit someone and have their stuff get peed on? When our visit was almost over and I was still trying to recover from the initial embarassment, I got up to go get my calendar to schedule our next visit. At that moment, Noah came racing down the hall and skidded into the living room. Determined to show off his lack of potty related social skills, he had apparently pooped and then removed his diaper. He plopped down on the floor next to our visitor, oblivious to the poop smeared all down his legs. Wonderful. Before we could attempt to schedule another appoinment, she grabbed up her stuff, quickly said, "I'll just call you," and escaped out the door. I'm sure she can't wait to come back!

Not much time to write these days, but I wanted to pop in to offer a recommendation for anyone local who doesn't already know about Door to Door Organics. You can choose all fruits, all veggies, or a mixture of both and what size box you need. It's all organic, and local whenever possible. You can sub up to three things every week, which is good news for me because I am sure that at some point onions will be on the list. Best of all, it's delivered to your house! Sweet! We received our first box last week, filled with beets, celery, avocado, red peppers, oranges, tangelos, romaine lettuce, zucchini, apples, chard, lemons, mango, and strawberries. Yum!

Today we are taking the kids to Opening Day. The sun is starting to peek through the clouds and it's going to be a beautiful afternoon. I am so happy that baseball season is here!

Have a wonderful Easter, everyone!

For awhile now, Emma has been asking to get pierced ears. I kept telling her she could do it when she was older, but she finally wore me down and convinced me that five years is old enough. Still, look at those sweet little un-mutilated earlobes. I'm going to miss them.We went to the mall on Sunday to get it done. I'd heard stories before about little girls who get them pierced one at a time, but freak out after the first one and don't want to get the second one done. I figured that would be the sort of thing Emma would be likely to do, so I said we were only going to do it if there were two people there to pierce both ears at the same time. Well, when we got there we tried every single place that does piercing and not a single one had more than one person working. Against my better judgment, we went ahead and did it anyway, and she completely wowed me with her bravery!She was smiling until the first earring punched through. After that she looked completely somber, but when Steve asked if she was ready for the next one, she just gave a silent, but determined, nod. I was completely amazed and impressed with her.

So far I think she likes them and I have to admit they do look pretty darn cute. Sniff, sniff...my little girl just keeps growing up!

There have been several events of late that I think are blog worthy, but I haven't found the time to actually sit down and write about them. Hopefully this week I can get all caught up. But first things first: Noah turned two years old today!Our whole day was unbelievably fun. We didn't start out planning to do a million fun things; it just ended up that way. One of the things we did was go sledding - just in time, because by the time we were ready to go back home, a lot of the snow had melted and we were sledding in half grass and half slush. We were all soaked, but it was warm enough that no one was cold. Even Noah managed to get completely drenched, even though Steve wrapped his legs in trash bags and his arms in freezer bags to avoid exactly that.I made Noah a birthday crown, which he loved so much that he wore it all evening, including at dinnertime. I guess next year when we get it out, we'll laugh about the cheese and ketchup that are smeared all over it. He also spent a lot of time messing with the train buttons on it so they are all hanging off precariously now. My plan was that these crowns would last throughout the kids' childhoods, but I'm suspecting Noah's may not make it that long.
We are planning to get him a train table to set up in the basement but we couldn't find a good one today so we just got him a little circle of track and two trains for now, which he absolutely loved. After he opened them, he sat on the floor pushing the train around and around and saying "Choo chooooo!" until it was time to go to bed.
Right now he is sound asleep in bed with Steve, still wearing his crown and clutching his trains in both hands. Happy birthday, my sweet boy.