Molly and Ella

This may offend any dog lovers out there, but Ella is the only person in our family who is intrigued by Molly these days. She is getting older, and has lost her appeal in many ways. We still have her more out of duty than anything else at this point. However, like I said, Ella is fascinated with her. She has recently become brave enough to reach out and pet Molly and try to grab her wagging tail. This week she took things a bit farther as she made an attempt at tackling Molly. Brent was right there the whole time in case Molly decided she'd had enough, but she endured the whole wrestling session without fighting back. Good girl, Molly...this time!

A Weekend in St. Louis

We went to St. Louis on Saturday morning with my parents. Despite the horrible traffic, we made it to the zoo by 1 p.m.. My friend from high school met us at the zoo with her 2 kids, and we had a good time. She lives in St. Louis, so it was nice to be there with someone who knew her way around really well. Gracie opted to not ride an animal on the carousel...she has always felt safer on the benches or on the animals that don't go up and down. This carousel didn't have any animals that stood still, so I wasn't surprised when she suggested we ride the bench.
Ella was so good at the zoo. She didn't sleep at all, but enjoyed being outdoors.
Gracie would never say what her favorite animal was, but I think it was the penguins. She kept wanting to go back and see them again.
Gracie with two friendly penguins that allowed us a close-up look. They were so cute.

This is Gracie with Lydia. She is one of my friend's kids. They had a good time admiring the animals together. They played an unofficial game of "Come here. Look what I see." It kept them busy since there was so much to see.
Gracie thought the alligators were scary, but she wanted her picture with them anyway.
There was no fear present when Gracie stood by the monstrous boa constrictor. Grandpa wasn't anywhere nearby during this photo. He kept his eyes straight ahead while we were in the snake areas.

My favorite animal was a toss-up between the baby lion cubs (one of which is in this shot),
or these two monkeys who were hugging/snuggling. They never moved while we were watching them. One of the monkeys just sat there holding the other monkey. It looked like they were sad about something, but they were so sweet.

After the zoo we went to Uncle Dana's house. He took us to Fritz's for supper. It was a really neat place where you can watch them bottling root beer while you wait.

After dinner Brent and I left the girls in the capable hands of Uncle Dana and my parents, and we headed to the Fox Theatre. We were so looking forward to this night, and it was just as fun as we expected.
Jim Gaffigan is one of our favorite comedians, and he was doing a show at the Fox Theatre. His tour is called The Sexy Tour, but there was nothing crude about his jokes. He said he called it the sexy tour because he's a tall, very pale man with a big head...anything but sexy. Anyway, Brent laughed so hard in the first 10 minutes that he started to have an asthma attack and had to make himself calm down and quit laughing so much. Other than that, it was a great time. If you are familiar with Jim Gaffigan you will know his bacon and Hot Pocket routines, and he did both, so we had a good time laughing at those familiar jokes.

Sunday we got up and went to Dana's church. It was a very impressive church building and the music was really pretty. We had a small incident with Ella in the nursery which resulted in me taking her out of the nursery and keeping her with me, but other than that it was a nice morning. We went to lunch with my brother and then started the trek back to Macon. It was a fun weekend, but we were glad to get home. The mountain of laundry wasn't so much fun to come home to though!

Homecoming Parade

Today was Macon's homecoming parade. They always have a pretty nice parade. It was almost an hour long. Gracie was a little hesitant about being right down by the road to mooch for candy, but she finally caved and stayed in one spot. The kids around Gracie loved her, because if she didn't like the kind of candy being thrown, she would leave it on the ground. She left the parade with a bag full of Tootsie Rolls and suckers.
This was one of the Biegel twins (maybe Larissa) giving Gracie some candy from our church float.


Emma, our neighbor from across the street, got to ride in style since she was a little princess. Gracie was very impressed by Emma's tiara and her princess wave.
Gracie brought her backpack for the candy and she had dreams of it being full, but of course it wasn't. Maybe if she hadn't been so choosy about what candy she picked up...

Teeth

Ella successfully cut two teeth in the last 24 hours. I am so glad to have that behind us. I realize there are more teeth to come, but she has worked so hard to get the first ones in. Hopefully the rest won't be as bad. Gracie thinks the Tooth Fairy brought Ella the teeth. We obviously haven't discussed the Tooth Fairy in our house yet, so she has some twisted beliefs about the Tooth Fairy's job. We'll work on that in the next few years as Gracie begins losing her teeth. Won't that be fun? I used to despise losing teeth when I was little, so I don't know how I will feel when it happens to Gracie. Maybe that can be Brent's department. I change diapers...he pulls teeth.

Girls in Gingham

Ella had to have a turn wearing the "doo rag outfit." I have a picture of Gracie wearing it 4 years ago, so now I can compare the girls in the same outfit at the same age. Should be interesting...I just have to find the picture of Gracie now.
Brent walked in the room at this point and said, "Oh, Ella. What did Mommy do to you?"

It was actually a coincidence that both girls ended up in gingham today. I decided to take a fast picture before we had to leave for the day. God sure did bless us with some sweet little girls!

Strong Ella

This is a really terrible picture as far as the lighting goes, but I thought it was funny. I sat Ella on her bedroom floor to play, and when I came back in the room she was pulling on one end of her playmat which lifted the other end up in the air. It was a great game for a while as she studied cause and effect.

Corbin Returns

We watched cousin Corbin again today. A lot has changed since the last time he was here. For instance, last time neither baby was standing. They had a good time playing together.

The babies were both much more active this time. They both slept less and played more, which made it more entertaining, but I didn't get much done. Oh, well.

Corbin was introduced to Mum Mum's at our house. They are Ella's favorite snack, but Corbin wasn't a fan. He's not turned on to food yet. It was a struggle to get him to eat, but he finished one jar of baby food while I had him. I'm sure he'll get used to it and then there won't be any stopping him.

This photo was funny because both babies had a soccer ball, but every time Ella looked away Corbin would swipe her ball. He was very fast! She would look confused like, "Hey, what happened?"

Gracie was a big help, as usual, so she ran to her room and got out 5 balls for each baby to play with and decided that should settle the problem. She was right. After that, there was no more ball swiping! What a little problem-solver.

Wild Locks

Gracie and Ella bathe together almost every night. It is really cute to watch them interact. Gracie loves to spike up Ella's hair and make it look wild. Fortunately, Ella doesn't seem to mind.
She is a pretty accommodating baby, and lets Gracie get away with a lot. It works both ways though, as Gracie has had to learn to share a lot of things she wasn't used to sharing. Mostly our time and attention.

Moberly Homecoming

Tonight was Homecoming at Moberly, and my cousins were both candidates for Homecoming Queen. (My camera didn't get any good pictures) Brent and I made it for most of the game and had a good time watching Moberly win. The girls looked beautiful, but another girl was chosen as queen. It was still fun to be there for a game. Brent was especially happy to be back in his element!

Trying to Pull Up

I won't lie...Ella needed a little help getting all the way up, but she did most of the work! She does something new everyday, so it's hard to keep everything documented. She is actually saying, "da da da da da da," now. Of course Brent is proud of her, but at this point it's just a sound, not an official beckoning of her "Dada."

Almost On The Go

One minute Ella will be sitting like a big girl, just playing away and the next minute...

she gets a mischievous look in her eyes. She has a strong desire to move around like big sis.

She will get down and start to be in position, but one foot is usually in her way.
Finally, it looked so promising, but the next picture I could have taken was Ella's face smashing into the ground as she realized she's not strong enough to crawl yet. I rescued her instead of taking a picture of her whimpering. It won't be long until she has mastered all of the fundamentals necessary to crawl. Then, watch out world...her she comes.

More Fun With Kalyn

Cousin Kalyn got to come back today for more fun with Gracie. Luckily it wasn't raining this time, so we got to play outdoors some of the time. They had a good time riding their bikes.
Kalyn had a good time riding on one of Gracie's bikes. It was just her size!
Gracie tried to ride her Dora Hot Wheel car, but informed me it was too small for her. Notice that the safety fair we went to really did help though, because she wanted to wear her helmet...in our driveway! I guess you can never be too careful.

The bathing beauties had a good time in the bathtub. Practically every bath toy we own went in the water for a bathtime adventure.
As is common in most homes with small children, around 8 p.m. they get a little loopy! I told the girls they could take one picture making silly faces, and this is what they came up with.

More Gracie Quotes

I think I have posted before about Gracie telling me that she loves to look at Ella's face, because it's "so cute." Well, she took it a step farther today and said, "Mommy, when I look at Ella's face I just want to cry because (long pause) it's just so cute. It just makes me so happy that she is so cute." What a doll. Some day they will be slamming doors in each others faces and screaming about how much they dislike each other, but for now, my girls are buds!

A Saturday Good For Splashing

About all this Saturday has been good for is splashing in puddles. Gracie was playing on the computer this morning when I got home from walking Molly. I told Gracie to get her boots on because there were tons of puddles. The rain water was just gushing down our hills, so she was thrilled.
I promise I don't tell her to pose...she just does it on her own. If she sees the camera aimed at her, she quickly strikes whatever pose she feels like.

This afternoon Grandpa and Nana called and asked if they could come over, so that was a nice surprise. Gracie loved to play with them and told them everything she had been up to lately. She's quite the talker these days and has stories that practically never end. We enjoy those stories though.

Hurricane Talk

Gracie has been very depressed by all of the rain we have been getting. She wakes up, looks out her window and then comes out to report what the weather is like. This morning she asked in a very whiny voice why it has to rain everyday. I tried to explain that we were lucky because some people in Texas were having bad storms called hurricanes, and those storms were pushing rain up our way in Missouri. She said, "Well, if it keeps raining in Texas I am going to be sad. I am going to get mad if it keeps raining." This afternoon we got out Gracie's Noah's Ark toy that she has had for a long time, and had practically forgotten about. We had a little talk about floods. She had a good time preparing her ark for the numerous pretend floods we had in our basement this afternoon, but it still made her sad to look outside and see the rain.

Ella the One-Man Band

Like mother like daughter. Ella likes the keyboard that she swiped from Gracie's room!

Ella got a big kick out of making the drum light up when she hit it. It was good for quite a few grins. Now she just needs a cowbell! Right, Bruce?