toothy

We now have a 5-toothed girl (who knows how to ham it up!)

Then and now

At church today my mom remembered that she was wearing the same shirt she wore on mother's day in Utah last year, so we got a picture to compare. What a difference!!!

Going on a pretzel hunt

Success!

The latest...

I haven't posted much lately because I don't feel like we do too much, but the truth is we're up and out of the house just about every day, and when I stop to think about it, we're a lot busier than I think we are! We live in a great place where there are tons of libraries within driving distance. On Mondays, we can either go to Novi or Commerce (Vivi has friends at both) Wednesdays we go to Southfield, Thursdays are Farmington Hills, and Friday is Novi again. Some Saturdays at the Farmington Library they have a musical movement class, including this week.

Then there are the playgroups. This week we have one tomorrow afternoon, one Thursday morning (we're skipping the library), and one Friday morning (again, skipping the library, but Vivi's friends from the library will be at the playgroup). We're also babysitting on Friday afternoon for a 4 year old girl and a 2 year old girl that both like to play with Vivi.

It is a little bit hard to get her up since she likes to stay up late and all the baby library times start between 10 and 10:30, but once she's up and we get there she has a blast, and has started to recognize her friends. On Monday we were sitting on the floor while everyone was coming in, and Vivi was facing the door when suddenly she let out a happy squeal. I looked and her buddy David had just come in. It's funny because David is kind of shy and they don't actually spend a lot of time with each other, but he goes to both Novi and Farmington with us, and he's in the Novi mom's group so she's seen a lot of him.

Other than that, we have family things, church, and the never ending errands, which always take twice as long since Vivi because everyone wants to stop us and talk to and admire her. When we're at home, she likes to read books, loves her wood animals and instruments, and enjoys helping me with chores. When I fold clothes, she goes through the piles and throws things over her shoulder one by one, and when I unload the dishes, she pulls herself up on the open dishwasher door and pulls out the silverware.

And speaking of silverware, this kid has become an eating machine! She will eat absolutely anything and everything. Her current favorites are shredded cheese, broccoli, peas, and blueberries (Trader Joes has wild blueberries, which are smaller, in the freezer section so I can just take out a small handful). She pretty much eats just what we eat, but cut up smaller. I've been using up the frozen pureed cubes in her oatmeal or in her net feeder when her teeth are bugging her.


























Tooth number 4 popped through this past weekend, so now she has 2 top and 2 bottom showing, and the next teeth on either side on top are bulging out her gums (we're going through a lot of teething tablets!). After dinner today her gums were really bothering her so I put a pumpkin cube in her food net, and she went crazy chomping on it. 5 minutes later she had slurped out the last of it and started shrieking because the cold was gone. So I put in a cube of quince and she ate through that too. After teething tablets, a bottle, and lots of cuddles, she finally took a nap. I think it's going to be a Tylenol night...

I also have started doing real braids in Vivi's hair. They're a little tricky to do since she moves around so much but they can stay in for days without looking messy, which is a real plus! Her first ones last week were just random sections of hair that I tied up and then braided out, but this week we went for something a little more organized and did what I call a flower part, that I then tied up and braided out.


























So that's what's been going on with us, what about all of you?

Pictures from Dayton

While I wait for Jenavieve to decide to be tired after our adventure this weekend, I got the pictures up since I know some of you are dying to see them (AC!) We had a really good time visiting Eric's sister and her family in Dayton. The babies were so cute together, and Vivi loves playing with all of her cousins.

We spent most of the time playing at the house, but we did make a trip out to a local ice cream shop that was giving out free Italian ices for the 1st day of spring. They had lots of flavors, I got s'mores flavor, which actually tasted a lot like s'mores, similar to the toasted marshmallow Jelly Belly. It was very sweet though, Eric had to help me finish it. We also sampled the limited time Peeps flavored ice (the chicken shaped marshmallow treat). It was bright yellow and super sweet, so we decided that a taste of it was plenty.

Here is the link to the pictures, I put captions on a lot of them to explain the pictures :)

March visit to Dayton

Toothy grin

I got this cute picture of Vivi playing with some shiny wrapping paper which is too cute not to share, and then I noticed it's a good shot of all 3 of her teeth! The right top one is very close to coming through too; we're going through a lot of teething tablets, but she's a really good sport most of the time :)

Just what the doctor ordered!

Jungle Java date

We went to Jungle Java, which is a coffe shop with a huge indoor playscape, to meet a friend from playgroup, Julie and her son Nicholas. Kids under a year get in free so we thought we'd take advantage of that, and they have a nice toddler area. Eric came with us, and Nick's dad was there too, so it was a fun family outing. Nicholas is 11 months old, so just a few weeks older than Jenavieve. They had fun crawling around and poking each other. Vivi liked the slide-the picture came out a little blurry but I love the look on her face!

Grandma's birthday party

Last night we went out to celebrate Eric's grandma's birthday. We went to 2booli, which used to be LaShish. Yummy Middle Eastern food! Then we went back to Eric's mom's for dessert, which hadn't been planned until we were texting back and forth with Brandon under the table at the restaurant. We said we would pick up a pie, and while we were there we grabbed some Meijer brand vanilla ice cream. When we got back, Brandon and Allison weren't there, so we called them, afraid we had miscommunicated and would end up with 2 pies, but they were getting ice cream at Cold Stone. We left the pie in the entry way and snuck the ice cream in the freezer to take home for later, figuring nobody would want that when there was Cold Stone. When Brandon and Allison got there, we found a candle and sang and started serving dessert. Grandma was excited about the Cold Stone and someone said something about it being 'the good stuff' for her birthday. Grandma said "yeah if you had shown up here with that off brand junk, you'd have been out the door!" which left the rest of us cracking up because she was the only one who didn't notice us sneaking the 'off brand junk' into the freezer. When we explained she of course felt bad, but she's not going to live that one down for awhile :)

Jenavieve had been shy at the restaurant but warmed up when it was just the family, especially when she discovered that if she went to them, they would give her pie!

Goodbye for now Linus :(

On Friday night our June Bugs play group had a going away party for a family in the group that is moving to Washington (Wallawalla, Washington to be exact, that's fun to say!) It was a surprise party but because of an accident on 696 and a woman who stalled out and wouldn't let Eric help her off the road. She didn't speak much English but insisted that it happened all the time and she just had to sit for 5 or 10 minutes and it would work again...meanwhile the already slow traffic is practically stopped while people try to get around her on the narrow shoulder...anyway...we ended up 45 minutes late to the party, but Tara, Steve, and Linus had been successfully surprised. We're going to miss them but hopefully we'll see them around Christmas.

We had pizza and cake and the kids played. Here is Vivi with her friends Isabelle, Madysen, and Linus. She and Madysen were taking turns poking each other and smiling, and then Vivi and Linus ended up in a tug of war over that little red and blue Cars wallet that ended in tears when Madysen rolled over on top of it and it disappeared from view. It was pretty funny.

10 months

And getting increasingly harder to get a good picture!

On the move!