Cooking and Carseats

Alison loves hopping up on her stool in the kitchen and helping cook or bake. She even gets excited about helping make "Daddy Coffee" with me in the morning. This past weekend she helped her daddy make gazpacho. What a good little helper!

We also ventured out this past weekend to buy a new carseat for the world's longest 5-month-old. Yes, Christopher has already outgrown "the bucket" carseat (mommy sigh...the bucket stage is so nice and easy...) and we had to get him the convertible carseat. We set it up in the dining room for a test run. How cute is he?

Two years old!

Alison turned two years old yesterday. It was perhaps the quickest two years of my life! We celebrated her birthday in the morning with a little birthday party with her friends Emma, Rosemary, Wilson and their moms Cheryl, Katie and Rachael. The girls had a great time!


It's party time!


Who needs lunch and cake when you have a popcorn and M&M appetizer?



Ali's excited about the cupcake and ice cream:

Time for presents! (Wilson enjoyed trying to eat the tissue paper):

Alison, Emma and Rosemary:


Chris napped through most of the party (what a good lil' boy!) but woke up a very happy lil' Gopher:

First Solid Food

Chris enjoyed his first time eating solid food (rice cereal) today. We figured it was time to start giving him some solid food when, while out to eat on Friday night, he kept grabbing pieces of my salad and trying to shove them in his mouth.

Chris looked so handsome his first time in the highchair.

He handled the cereal very well and ate quite a bit of it.

Compare Chris' first time eating solids to Ali's first time:

Alison didn't think too much of her little brother sitting in her old highchair:

A farmgirl at heart?

We traveled to my hometown of Luverne this past weekend to celebrate my grandma's 90th birthday. We stayed at my mom and dad's place (Ali has since learned to call it "Nana and Papa Farm") for three wonderful, relaxing nights. Ali loved spending time outside and it was fun to let her run around the open area and explore.

Who needs toys when you have corn to play with?

Farmgirl Ali helped her Papa Harley:

Alison also spent much of the weekend flying a kite with her daddy.

We also had an early birthday celebration for Ali last weekend at the farm, complete with a Barney cake and festive hats. (A mom is never too cool to wear a Barney birthday hat, right?) Ali enjoyed playing with her cousins Mitch and Kurt.

We are always sad to leave the quiet of the farm. I love watching Ali explore and letting her "run free" a bit - something we certainly don't do in St. Paul. I look forward to next Spring when her little brother will be chasing after her, corn cobs in hand.

Ahhh, feel the love.

Although two weeks shy of her second birthday, my dearest Alison has officially embarked on the "terrible twos." She is still a dear little girl, but a fair majority of many days is spent crying, whining, demanding, and crying some more.

But today was different. Alison was in a pretty good mood all day long. She ate most of her lunch and dinner, actually slept an hour during naptime, played nicely with her brother and actually shared toys with him, didn't throw a tantrum when it was time to pack up and leave the library and gym, and was happy to play games and read books instead of demanding to watch Barney or, God forbid, the Teletubbies.

After nap, Alison was cuddly. She took my head in her hands and began studying my face closely. She took her soft, chubby little hands and stroked my cheeks. It was enough to make a mom get teary-eyed, it was that sweet. Then, while looking deeply into my eyes, my darling little daughter crinkled her nose and said:

"Ewww, Mommy icky."

Feel the love.

5 months old

Christopher turned five months old yesterday. I can't believe how fast the last few months have gone. He is such a happy, smiley BIG boy.

Ali's early birthday adventure.

Bryant was able to leave work early last Tuesday so we took advantage of his time away from work and decided to give Alison and early birthday celebration.

We headed to the MOA (yes, our favorite place!) and gave Underwater Adventures a try. I thought Ali would freak out since she is scared of the sharks at the MN Zoo, but to my surprise, she was a trooper and really seemed to be taking it all in.

Wow, look at this!

Mommy pointing out the cute little seahorses:

Now that's one big ol' turtle:

Then it was off to LegoLand to play some Legos with Daddy:

Then we ate at the Rainforest Cafe where Ali enjoyed her two favorite things: mac 'n' cheese and ice cream!

On the way out, we ran into Blue from Blue's Clues. Ali thought he was interesting from a distance but decided this was as close as she wanted to get:

Finally, home...and a bath...and hanging out with lil' brother: