A creative little girl and a proud mommy

I love to watch Cailen make new friends (since she was so attached to me for so long). She really loves meeting new children and she has finally started to say "hi" and wave to her peers instead of reserving the greeting for only her baby sister. She even tried to read a book to her new friend Haley this weekend!

I love that when Haley visited us this weekend, Cailen squealed and ran to the toy room hoping she would follow her and when she did, Cailen took a toy off of the shelf and handed it to the girl as if to say "welcome to my toy room, please play with my toys, I would love to share them with you!" As you can see in the picture, she even was okay with Haley carrying around her baby doll for her (the baby doll is VERY important to Cailen).

I love how she pretends with her baby doll. She reads her books, lays her down and rubs her back while singing a soft song to her, she diapers her (and even wants diaper cream!), feeds her, sits her up in a chair at her table, talks to her, etc...

I love that if she can't find her baby doll she will call around the house for her "Baby!...Baaaby?...Baby!?" and if she realizes we left her upstairs she will sit at the bottom of the stairs calling her "Baby!" I don't know if she thinks baby will walk down by herself or if she just hopes we will come and take her to get the baby...I've never bought a gate for my stairs and she doesn't abuse the fact that the stairs are open for the walking!

I love to see her learn to talk in conjunction with learning letters and colors...She'll pick up her letter Y and say "Why!" or the letter B and exclaim "BEE!" She knows almost all the letters now, and can say/identify simultaneously probably 8-10 of them. She also knows shapes and can say "heart" and "stars" when identifying them. Today she picked up something white and said "white!" the other day she picked up something "orange" and said "ARNGE!" She also can identify the number eight and nine and say them...and she's picking up on most of the numbers too. I am so excited about all this and I feel like maybe I'm doing okay as a stay at home mom :)

I also love the fact that she's still blowing on her finger and toe nails three days after she had them polished! It's so cute.

I love how she's so into her routine of having daddy put her to bed that she's finally okay and independently saying "Dye!" ("bye") and offering me a kiss goodnight as she gets her baby and drinkie and follows daddy up the stairs...night time was very hard for us once Riley and Cailen both needed ME at the bed time hour.

I love that Cailen was watching a prince and princess cartoon ball room dance and she turned to me and took my hand and had me stand up to dance with her.

I love how we will march around the house together, and when I say "jump!" she will bend her knees-pop up- and flap her arms like a baby bird attempting to leave the nest long before it is able, when I say "kick your feet!" she'll give it a try and then either hold my hand or grab onto something as she wants to keep kicking her feet but is all too aware that she is going to tip over any second.

I love the fact that she diligently sings her alphabet all day long even though she's still got a lot of polishing to do. Generally it sounds like this "Eh, Bee, Ee, Dee, EEe, Ef, Gee, Nowaknowmah EEe-Ef-Gee!" or "Eh, Bee, EE, Dee, EEe, Ef, Gee! Do wah, doo wah, eee, ef, gee." When she's bored of the song or inspired by her love of her family the song will turn turn into the same tune but contain a string of mommy, daddy, baby, duckie, etc..

I love the fact that when I take her to the park and let her run around, if I think she's getting too far from me, I love the fact that she listens to me and comes right back to me.

I love the fact that she excessively uses her sign for "please" even if she doesn't say it yet, though I think she said it once appropriately. I can't wait to see if all the signing of "please" will translate to frequent use of it when she can talk. Let's hope so.

I love the fact that she knows her colors because I taught her things like "Look this is RED, it's the same color as elmo!" or "Hey this is blue like Cookie Monster." Now her name for Elmo is "E" so when she sees something red she says "E!" and bobs her head like she does to his Elmo's world theme song...or if she sees something blue she says "Cookie!" She has tried to say red though, it's something like "Retdch!"

I love the fact that the other night I said "Do you know that you are mommy's beauty?" and she confidently said "uh huh."

Finally, I love the fact that I just proof read this to her and she had to go get her baby, blow on her nails, and she sang the "EFG's" with me while I was reading this to her! :) Silly girl.

I never thought I would love being a mom as much as I do. Now, obviously we all have our moments and some days there are many "moments" but it's all so worth it in the end. It's just so amazing to watch their personalities, brains, faces, hearts, etc develop. I can't tell you all how much I love my babies...I am SO blessed! For anyone with a child of their own...You probably understand. A love for your child, and the love they have for you is really insanely profound.

Mommy and her little ladies.

Our membership at the picture people was about to expire, so we hurried out and had a photo shoot. cailen wasn't into posing a whole lot and pics of the two girls together just did not work out so i had to hop in the photo. It was amazing that this one of the 3 of us came out as good as it did because, you can kind of see their cheerful moods were quickly fading after a long appointment..(Kris didn't dress for the occasion so he sat on the sidelines...) The bottom one of riley is similar to the one we got printed of her, but the one we actually got was a full body shot that we had cropped because the angle and the chubby legs looked bigger than her head almost :) ... otherwise, these are what we ended up with. there were other cute ones, but we only had so much cash-a-roo so we had to say goodbye to those little moments of life.... we have these sweet ones captured and framed, so it's good enough for me. :) actually, the first one I don't have yet, I have a free one to order online and i think that's the one i want, just because i like riley's relaxed facial expression....

Growing so fast...

With Cailen the first 3 months seemed so long and tiring, Ri is only 2 months old and it is flying by! I feel like she's growing up so fast; not just in size, but in abilities, strength, alertness and personality....I need to savor every moment of both of these girls lives or before I know it, they will be all grown up blogging about their kids...Gosh, I can't wait to see who she will become, but isn't there any way to slow down the clock?

A walk to the park...

Things I love about.....

RILEY:

• Her twinkly little glassy brown eyes
• Her goofy smile
• Her favorite thing to talk to me about is "ah-goo!"
• Her doughiness
• Her dimply cheekies
• Her ability to put her head way up and use her arms during tummy time
• Her swirly cowlick on her forhead
• The potential she has to be an amazing person and to do great things
• Her snuggliness
• Even her cry
  

CAILEN:

• Her songs about the "EFG's" and mommy, daddy and baby
• The way she dances, exercises, claps, with or runs to find her letter to go with the letter of the day during sesame street
• The way she's trying to say everything all of the sudden, even sentences!
• The way she still needs me even though I feel like she's grown up
• When she sees me cry she always comes to wipe away my tears while sitting on my lap, as close to my face as she can get with a concerned look, then she'll independently get a tissue to really wipe my tears away...turn her head to the side and smile to make me feel happy...I've never felt so much love than that from a child. She's so compassionate :)
• Her hugs, snuggles, and kisses
• The way she says hi to Riley, and makes Riley kiss her
• The way she loves her daddy
• The way her hair and eyes sparkle in the sun like a rare jewel
• Her fangy smile
• Her sense of humor and "hamminess"
• She is already growing into a wonderful, creative, smart and funny person
  

The thing i love about them both is that they are mine!