Photo Shoot

Charlotte and I had a photo shoot today. I am having a tough time narrowing down my favorites from the 50 photos I took. This is one of the best. More to come. Below is one of Stella's 10-week photos for comparison!

Alligator Fun

Renee, David, James and Adam came to visit this afternoon. The kids got to play on a new toy! I found this great alligator teeter totter on craigslist last week. It was for sale in Milan!! My mom was nice enough to go look at it and then bring it to us! The kids loved it.

Big Girl PJs

Stella looked like such a big girl tonight in her first official nightgown! She loved it because it was covered in strawberries - one of her favorite fruits.

Busy Day

"Cheese!" Happy Stella getting ready to go to daycare this morning to "play with my friends".Hard to believe we made close to $250 today at the Garage Sale when we still have all of this crap leftover for tomorrow! Busy evening with the sidewalk chalk. Concentrating hard and very focused...check out that tongue!

The Great Outdoors

Another beautiful afternoon outside!

Never Stops Smiling!

Lovely Lilac

This poor lilac bush has been through a LOT. It started at Andy's grandmother's in Owensboro. When she sold her house and moved to a condo, we took some of it and transplanted it to our yard in Birmingham. Then when we moved, we wanted to take it with us. So, Andy dug it up (second picture) and we drove it to my mom's farm in Indiana since we didn't have a house yet. It is still there because we didn't want to dig it up AGAIN when we moved into our house and we weren't sure where would be the best place for it in our new yard. It's been doing really well out there due to my mom's TLC. She knows how important this bush is to Andy especially now that his grandmother is no longer with us. We were out at my mom's this past weekend and she had a surprise for us - it bloomed (first picture)!! We hadn't seen it bloom since it was in Owensboro. Next spring we will be transplanting it one last time to West Chester. We already have the perfect spot picked out for it in our backyard.

Securing Our Site May 1

Andy and I have made the decision to secure our blog. I have a friend who did this two months ago because someone started making anonymous comments on her family's blog about her 2-year old and the comments were extremely inappropriate. Then this week I watched the Oprah episode about online predators and all the information they use from public family blogs to trick young children into trusting them and all the pictures they save.

We love our blog and enjoy the fact that our friends and family can keep up-to-date on the girls. We hope that those of you reading it enjoy it as well. That's why we hate to make it more inconvenient for some of you. However, we want to stay with Blogger and need to make it safe. Therefore, you will have to create an account (if you don't already have one) and will have to log-in after May 1st to view the site.

If you want to continue viewing the blog, please let me or Andy know. After May 1st you will then receive an email inviting you to join along. The invite will explain what you'll need to do. If anyone has any questions, please email me and I will create the account for you and send you the information you'll need.

Zoo Blooms

Friday it was beautiful all day. I convinced Andy to come home by 3:00 so we could take a quick trip to the zoo to see the tulips and other flowers. It was a quick trip since the zoo closed at 5:00, but a great trip nonetheless. That's the beauty of a season pass - you don't feel guilty about only going for an hour or so. Stella LOVES the zoo. She has so much fun seeing the animals, naming all of them, and making their sounds. But she does not stall or whine when we move on. Here is a typical few minutes at the zoo for the Wades: Stella sees the bear and says, "BEAR! Roar! Bye-bye bear! (she waves) More animals!!! More animals!!!" And so we move on to the next exhibit. That's why an hour is plenty for us.

Little Gardener

Yesterday morning was so pretty! Stella and I decided to weed our soon-to-be herb garden. Andy circled off this area of the yard last year after we lost a big fir tree in the same spot. I didn't take a "before" picture that would have shown all of the weeds that have grown in the past month (HENBIT!). The few plants that are showing are $2 end-of-season flowers (black-eyed susans, butterfly bush, etc.) from last year that are actually coming back! We plan to add some of our favorite herbs for the summer. Stella was all over the dirt. She loved helping. Charlotte took a nap on the deck in her cocoon sleeper!

Busted

So Stella has been in her "big girl bed" (aka twin mattress on the floor) for almost 4 months. Up until this week we saw no signs of her ever getting out of the bed when we are not in the room. Even when she wakes up, she yells for us and waits until we come in the door to get up off of the bed. This week she has started to "explore". In her room there is a bookshelf with a lot of stuffed animals on it. I thought I heard the pitter-patter of feet above me during her naptime yesterday. The above picture is how I found her when I checked on her a few moments later.None of these were in bed with her when I left the room after putting her down for the nap. Once she saw me, she began to show me all of her animals and naming them..."BEAR!" She apparently finally got the nerve to get up out of bed and go get them all.

When I asked her where all the animals came from, she gave a look like "I don't know!" and then buried her head (above). She realized that she was BUSTED!

Sleepy-head

Stella is just as active in her sleep as she is during the day! She constantly moves around, kicks the wall, changes positions, etc. We put an alligator and hippo from Ikea on the wall-side as a cushion. You can see that she doesn't leave those in place either. However, this is the first time I've caught her sleeping under the hippo! She's usually sprawled out on top of them.

Charlotte - 2 months old

Happy Baby

Charlotte is doing great! She's taking a 6 oz. bottle between 7-8 pm (2 oz. of it is formula) and she's sleeping 8-9 hours. It's a great feeling to have her "sleep through the night" even if I'm getting up at 4:00 sometimes! She's awake most of the day...but I'll take that for sleeping at night. She's smiling more and more. Here are some pictures from earlier this afternoon.

Cheap Thrill

I got this vibrating rocking chair at a Mommy Exchange sale a few weekends ago for $5. My mom needed a new baby seat for her house. Stella saw it when she got up from her nap and had to play in it for awhile. She insisted on being buckled in - looks like she has on a big pair of purple underwear!!

Below is a video of her laughing while daddy rocks her.