Corn on the Cob

Lauren tried corn on the cob for the first time.

She really enjoyed it!

Climber Girl

 Lauren is crawling!!!  She is also climbing to try to get up on things.  Today she discovered the wonderland that is her toybox.  Good stuff!

Summer Camp (week 2)

Hannah just finished up her second week of camp at the Rec Center.  This week's theme was "The Olympics."  Hannah said they played soccer and basketball in the gym (good thing, since it was almost 100 degrees here this week).  They also made crowns, medals, a flag, and a bunch of pictures.  Here's Hannah with her end-of-the-week newsletter....telling me not to take her picture!

Idlewild Trip

Since I used all of my vacation time this year to take my maternity leave, we weren't really able to do a big family vacation this summer.  Back in March, I decided that we'd spend our "vacation" in Pittsburgh with Josh & Danila.  We'd visit with them, go to Idlewild Park, and have a pool party at my Aunt Patty's house.  We randomly picked a weekend in July and I invited Susan, Karen, and Rachel to join us.  In the end, only Susan ended up coming.....and Josh ended up being out of town with some college friends, but we had a great weekend -- with perfect weather to visit an amusement park.

After working ALL DAY on the 4th of July, I was able to take Thursday as my "4th of July" and take the day off, so we left for Pittsburgh during nap time.  Apparently, as I went back in the house to check the back door to make sure it was locked, Hannah told Jon "let's leave her"....quite the way to start off the trip -- especially since I was stuck in the backseat between the two carseats.  We had so much stuff that Abby couldn't ride in the trunk (2 strollers will do that) and the girls wouldn't sleep if she was between them, so Abby rode up front with Jon while I was in the back with the girls.  Danila fixed us a great dinner when we got to their house and she even volunteered to sleep with Hannah the bed hog so we didn't have to sleep with either of our girls!

Friday morning Danila went with us to Idlewild and we met Susan and Aunt Patty and Jaidyn there (Gary had to work).  I highly recommend when taking little kids to a park like this that you bring MORE adults than children -- we had a great ratio going on!  Hannah had an absolute blast.  She kept asking to ride the roller coaster (like on TV - she's seen ads for Cedar Point), and after she rode a "kiddie" one and we asked her if she liked the roller coaster, she promptly told us that it wasn't a real roller coaster.  We had great weather and couldn't have asked for a nicer day.  Enjoy the pictures....there are a lot!

 Hannah

If you look closely to the right of Jon, you'll see Hannah, jumping in to the ball pit.  Isn't a giant ball pit every kid's dream?!

 

Hannah -- swimming in the ball pit

We spent the morning, before lunch, at Storybook Forest.  When we were kids, my mom and aunt used to bring us kids.....and to be honest, it hasn't changed much.  In fact, I'm not sure it had been painted since we were there last in the 1980's.  But, Hannah enjoyed it.  She knew some, but not all, of the nursery rhymes.

 This girl is so excited for school

 Hannah & Aunt Danila

 Hannah & Jaidyn

 She really worked on the sword!

 Lauren was SO GOOD all day!

 Jon & Hannah

 One of Lauren's favorite activities - chewing on Aunt Patty's water bottle

 Hannah was excited to ride the train

 Train ride!

(I think this was right before we rode over the river and Jon got excited about fishing...)

 Lauren & Mommy

 Hannah & Jaidyn

Hannah loved riding the rides.  Jaidyn loved the thought of riding the rides, but she didn't actually enjoy many of them.... The nice thing about the park is that there are a lot of things for little kids to do, and the park isn't huge, so we could get around pretty easily and we weren't walking miles upon miles to the different areas.

 Loves to drive.

Jaidyn & Hannah both liked the hand-push carts.  Hannah actually didn't want me to help her and she made it about 1/2 way around giving ME the ride before she agreed that I could help. It was actually a lot of work to make them go.
 Jaidyn & Susan

 Hannah & me

 Hannah on the dragon

 

Teacups!

(I didn't actually see them on this...I think I was off feeding Lauren)

Toward the end of the afternoon, we went to the waterpark part of Idlewild -- Soak Zone, but I didn't get any pictures over there.  We all went in the wave pool (where the water was MUCH colder than expected!) -- Hannah loved it.  When the waves stopped we went to this giant climbing area that had a giant bucket of water that would fill and tip.  It made a loud noise when the water would come crashing down.  Jaidyn would open her mouth and run screaming into the water, loving every minute of it, while Hannah would cover her ears and run screaming away from it.  Hannah and Aunt D ended up leaving that area and finding a smaller kiddie pool that Hannah really enjoyed until we shut the place down at 6pm.

We hit up Eat n' Park for dinner on the way home and Hannah ate more than we'd ever seen her eat.  She had 2 very big pancakes, tons of fruit and other stuff from the salad bar, and a few other things.  She must have burned a lot of calories because I think she ate more than Jon did!  We had so much fun  I'm glad Jon agreed to the trip.

On Saturday morning we got up and headed the 45 minutes to Aunt Patty's house for a pool party.  We had a great day there -- Josh ended up getting back from his trip in time to join us and we spent a relaxing day in the pool....and the best part for us is that there were plenty of other people to help watch the girls!  Jon & Josh got to dive for pennies in the pool and drink some girly wine coolers, so they had a good day together.  Hannah spent a lot of time in a floating ring in the water, as did Danila and me (although we had rafts, not little rings).  It was a great way to spend the day.....so relaxing that I totally lost track of time and had to pull a "we're outta' here" dash out the door to get the girls back to Josh & Danila's for dinner and bedtime!

It's nice that we can vacation by staying with family and have such a great time....I consider this year's vacation a success!

8 Months Old!

Lauren is already 8 months old.  She is getting so big and is becoming so much more interactive.  She loves to laugh at Hannah, watches Abby all of the time, and will mimic you when you make sounds.  She's in the "pre-crawling" stage right now.  She can move around on the floor a bit by spinning in circles (usually trying to move toward Abby), and she can sometimes get down in a crawling position but still gets one of her back legs stuck.  I don't think it will be long before she is zooming all over the floor.  We re-installed the gate downstairs this past weekend as a precaution!

Lauren loves to eat -- she likes Cheerios and any bits of food that we give her off of our plates.  She is still nursing and I just adore the "milk coma" look that I get when she is done and rolls away.  Her grin showing her two bottom teeth is just too cute.  Enjoy the pictures I took in the backyard for her photo shoot!

Lauren with Sophie the Giraffe

Loves her Sophie!

If you look closely, you can see her teeth!

Kind of a smile

All smiles!

These are two of my favorites.

I love having a baby with chunky legs and a belly....they are so much fun to gobble up!  It will be interesting to watch how she grows and changes over these next few months as she gets more mobile.  When Hannah was 8 months old, we were just starting her on solids (since that was her adjusted 6 month), and as Hannah got mobile, she started dropping off the growth chart since she never had the "chunky" reserves.  We're not anticipating the same problem with Lauren.  I'm not sure what she weighs, but I'm guessing about 18 pounds.