Bring On The Chocolate

Well we got a wonderful Easter package from my parents aka Nana and Papa. By now you can tell Lorelei knows that packages are very exciting and of course, that she gets stuff in them. :) Thought this video was pretty funny. It actually worked out really well because she had just gotten upset and I was trying to distract her when the doorbell rang. Great timing from the mailman!

We were very excited to get Easter goodies and Lorelei is now a BIG chocolate fan. I limit her to one item per day but she definitely puts up a fight about that. Yesterday she was eating grapes AND chocolate and I said "Are you going to be one of those girls who has a chocolate fountain at her wedding?" Of course she said yes. :) Guess that will make Grandma Stahl very happy as well! :)



Here we have her enjoying her chocolate bunny, as well as a stuffed bunny that was mine when I was little. :) Thanks Bohlmanns!

Dying Easter Eggs

We had a chilly Sunday this weekend but still broke out the first spring dress...lets face it I live for this stuff. :) Anyway, she looked so cute I had to take a few pictures. When I told her to look in the mirror she started making the "bleehhh" sound because she saw that there was a bug on her dress!

This bug obsession is getting pretty crazy. The other day Brad happened to be talking about work and mentioned that he would have to be working on any "bugs" that would come up in the programs. All of a sudden Lorelei started going crazy and grabbing Brad pointing to the floor and looking down for a bug for him to smash for us (that is his job after all)...so we definitely have to work on the bug thing a bit. :)



After nap we had a family egg dying...which really just turned into Brad and I doing everything, but at least we tried. I hadn't really thought about the fact that Lorelei would probably think she could drink the egg dye. :) We did let her color the eggs, then did one on her high chair and decided it was too risky, but at least she got the idea. Then in her impatience she was banging an egg on her tray and cracked it...so of course she just got to eat that one. :) It was fun to keep up the tradition at least.


Just wanted to update on the latest with the doc: ear infection is gone! Yay! Guess now we have nothing to blame the fits on except early terrible twos. :)

Also update on the chatterbox...a lot more words and actually put two words together for the first time last week...of course the combination always starts with the word "no" but at least its good she puts two together. So far it has been "do you want to do puzzles?" "No, Mo." and "oh you want to go inside?" "No. Sit." Even though "no" is becoming popular, we are still loving how much she is able to communicate!

Happy Birthday Lily!

One of our favorite little girls had her birthday party this weekend! Miss Lily is turning 2 April 3rd so we had to celebrate Sesame Street style. :) Sara and Mike had an amazing set up for their party and all of these kids are big SS fans so it was a hit. They had everything - balloons, streamers, Big Bird's Nest, Oscar's Trash Can, and even the toy car was Grover's Taxi! They had fun games for the kids such as finding Cookie Monster's cookies (which they put in his mouth, which means Sara made a HUGE Cookie Monster face...yes she is the crafty one!), throwing bean bags (eh hem, home-made I might add) into Dorthy's Bowl (Dorthy is Elmo's goldfish for those of you who are not SS literate these days), as well as an egg hunt "Journey To Ernie" where they found eggs with stickers in them. We also got to chow down on yummy pizza and cake, and the kids just enjoyed playing. As you can tell, Lily had plenty of help opening presents as well. It was a fun filled Saturday and they all had a great time. Oh and I can't forget to mention the amazing goodie bags (decorated as Elmo's face) that the kids got to enjoy after getting home! Boy do we have a lot to live up to for Lorelei's party! Big thanks to the Checks for such a fun day!

First Easter Package

We are pretty lucky around this house because we get wonderful packages when the holiday's come around! This package is from my Grandma, Lorelei's Great Grandma and Grandpa Heinz (GiGi and Pops are the chosen names but we haven't really broken them in yet) who we usually see at Easter. Last year Grandma got to meet Lorelei for the first time when we went to Oklahoma last March. We will miss seeing her so much and can't wait until we can finally go for a visit.

Tillamook Cheese!

We were amazed to get a package of Tillamook cheese in the mail! Now some of you are wondering what in the world Tillamook cheese is and why its so exciting...it was mailed to us all the way from Tillamook, Oregon from my friend Amanda's Uncle Don and Aunt Karen. I was lucky enough to get to enjoy a trip with Amanda's family to Oregon in High School and will never forget it and hope to go back someday! They have very, very good cheese and ice cream there and we always rant and rave anytime they visit and bring some to share. SOME places even get it in the grocery store, but not here on the East coast. Big thanks to the Oregon Gragerts who probably don't read this but we thank them here anyway! We love that cheese!

Couldn't decide which was cuter.

First Beach Trip Of The Spring

It finally warmed up enough to head out to the beach on Saturday! My rule is that it has to be over 60 since its colder on the ocean, so when Saturday was supposed to get in the low 70s, we were excited we could finally go enjoy the beach again.

We brought all our sand toys and hoped we could stay out of the water...well we did for the most part. Lorelei headed over to the water a couple of times and towards the end got her jeans soaked. She didn't seem to mind but Brad said it was FREEZING. I got out of going by wearing jeans. ;)

She was mostly just content to play in the sand, so we enjoyed almost 2 hrs just being outside.







Picture captions...1) Enjoying her new sand truck, which she thought she should ride on instead of use in the sand. 2) Very proud to be sitting on her sand bucket. If you remember she thinks everything in the world is meant for her to sit on. :) 3) This little boy made her want to go in the water even more...as you can tell her jeans are already wet but got even more soaked after wanting to copy this kido and get back out in the water.

Just cuddling with Dad.

Side notes:
We are so thankful for a wonderful Saturday because unfortunately it was followed by a lousy couple of days when ALL three of us had the flu. We are all doing much better but hope we don't have to go through that again anytime soon.

This poor girl is a real trooper. Not only has she been dealing with her first flu, but she also had her doc checkup and STILL has a double ear infection, so is on her second dose of antibiotics, which she is now basically refusing to take so we have to pin her down to do this. It smells nasty so I don't blame her. Hopefully at her next check up the ears will be all cleared up.

More fun note...her cough has finally seemed to go away thankfully! Thats all we need is a cough on top of everything else right? ;) Anyway during the cough spell she had, we taught her to "catch her cough" which is the new form of "cover your mouth" where you catch coughs and sneezes in your elbow/crook of your arm. She has actually gotten very good at this (so proud) and the cutest thing was when she saw me cough, she stuck out her arm for me to cough into it. :) What a sweetie!

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Hope you all had a fun St. Patrick's Day! We were able to enjoy ours by spending a beautiful morning at the park. I did attempt to get another picture with Lorelei's headband, but unlike last year, she was not willing to leave it on all morning. :) It was more like "Mom, I'm trying to watch Elmo and your camera is in the way so hurry up and take the picture. " :) Then on the way to the park we stopped by Krispe Kreme to get some festive donuts. There they gave her a hat and green necklace! She had not yet realized what a donut was because she had only had one until this day...when we finally got out the donuts we found out she LOVES them and we have had a few fits wanting more when seeing the box.

We had the playground to ourselves for about 30 minutes before our friends from MOMS group arrived and Lorelei had fun going all over with no one around. I was amazed just watching her walk with her hair up and just kept thinking how old she looked! She had a great time with her friends when they came, including Isabelle (pictured bottom right) who is about 2 1/2 and always enjoys Lorelei...probably because they have similar personalities...they did some climbing around and screaming together. :)


Then we headed for a walk with Lily and Sara. This park has a great little nature trail with a type of board walk we can go on and both girls enjoyed that and also climbing up on the benches when we got to the end to look at the pond. Then they topped off the morning (actually I think it was 12:30 about this time) with one more donut to get them through the car ride home. :) Such cute girls in green. :)

Just Like Daddy

Each time we eat together we are amused at Lorelei copying whatever Brad does. He does a few things out of habit like crossing his arms or putting his hands together, and is always reminded by his little shadow at the table. :) We weren't sure if she would end up doing it for the camera or not, but she cooperated pretty well.

The Singing Bunny Is Back

And she loves it as much as last year! If you recall, we would use this bunny in order to get her to army crawl across the room. :) How time flies. Now we just have to keep her from trying to tear the egg apart to get to the little singing chickie. :) She loves to give it hugs and wants us to play it over and over again.

How Lorelei Plays The Violin

Rainboots and Puddles

Saturday morning started quite early when Lorelei woke up before 5 AM. Thankfully she played in her crib for about an hour, but we were still awake off and on, plus this made for a bit of a cranky toddler until nap time. :) We quickly came up with some things to do to keep us busy and hopefully avoid meltdowns. Brad and Lorelei took a walk to the grocery store for muffin mix so that she could splash through as many puddles as possible.

The rain boots are a huge hit and a great purchase from a consignment sale. They were the only boots there and just happened to be Lorelei's size! She has used them quite a bit already and we have at least another month and a half of puddles coming our way. It keeps her busy for at least 30 minutes or longer, so a great outdoor activity we can do even if it rains! Yesterday she started running for a puddle and I had to say "Wait! You don't have your rain boots on!" She stopped and looked down at her feet like "What good are you, tennis shoes?"

Side note - the pic of Brad helping Lorelei up the stairs shows her favorite way to get up those stairs...and even tries two at a time sometimes. :) It also reminded me of the picture of Brad carrying her up the first day we brought her home.

She was fascinated with the water running down the drain. Obviously "wa" is her word for water. It doubles for the word "walk" as well.

We actually let Lorelei help make the muffins...she was just more excited to get into everything on the counter she usually can't get. I don't ever do this when Brad isn't home, but glad we at least let her try this time...still have quite a ways to go before she can help much with this though. :)








We took yet another walk through puddles that afternoon. Mirinda, Jon and Isabelle came for a visit and we decided to head out to Mt. Trashmore to enjoy the day. Boy did we find out how many puddles they have to stomp through there! Plus it introduced her to a new thing...MUD!!! She enjoyed these huge puddles and even got a foot stuck in the mud at one point. We would have video taped it because it was hilarious but she was already getting unhappy and wanting us to help her out. Between the puddles and the dogs walking along it took quite some time to make it to the playground. Thankfully she was happy to ride in her stroller on the way home. So glad we can enjoy the simple things with this girl. :)

Peas Please

Since it is an odd habit I picked up on, I thought I would share how we now eat peas...well, Lorelei anyway, Brad and I just tend to avoid them alltogether. ;) Anyway, we stole the idea from the Bonfiglio's and now Lorelei enjoys munching on frozen peas. This works great because I can give them to her to tide her over until I'm done cooking whatever else she will be having. She seems to really like them this way, so we are glad about that! Her other fav veggies would be carrots (cooked/canned) and green beans. She likes them straight out of the can or frig, NOT heated up. Whatever works!

A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood

Gorgeous 70s weather today and we couldn't be more thrilled! Lorelei and I took a walk to Food Lion just before our friends Sara and Lily came by to walk over to Mt. Trashmore for playgroup. They even brought their wagon, which Lorelei was very excited about. How different it was from the last time with their wagon on July 4th! These girls were jabbering all the way pointing out water and dogs and whatever else was interesting. Lorelei mostly copied what Lily was saying so there were lots of "ma mas!" and we couldn't usually tell which one was demanding our attention. We were just thankful that it was words instead of just whining or screaming like the old days right? :) I should also mention we had to take our stroller along just to carry our bags of snacks and drinks. :) Toddlers are bottomless pits!

Then all the kids had a good time playing at the playground. I'm sooo thankful now that Lorelei is coordinated enough to walk around on the playground herself and all I have to do is get to the bottom of a slide to catch her. :) She does a great job stopping and sitting at the top of slides and also getting up stairs and even did a new type of climbing stairway yesterday. What a big girl we have! Soon I'll just be one of those moms on the bench (eh hem, but not texting) watching from afar while she does it all on her own. Crazy thought!

Then we took the wagon home part of the way before the girls decided walking would be more fun, which naturally took at least twice as long, but hey wear them out right? :)



After returning Lorelei already looked ready for a nap but we then had lunch and then played out on the balcony topped off with a little walk in our complex to try out her new flip flops for the first time! She isn't quite sure what she thinks of them. :)

She finally went down for a late nap at 2 and slept about 2 1/2 hrs, and I'm usually thrilled with 2 because usually 1 1/2 is what she would prefer. Thinking this Spring and Summer will be wonderful for naps! Then Brad even got to come home a bit early and we went out to enjoy some smoothies.

As I write this it is already raining and will rain the rest of the week, but at least we got a glimpse of what is to come and can't wait to enjoy many more days outside! :)

A True Cornhusker at Heart ;)

Well the Nebraska grandparents will be very proud. This is her favorite play food and only one that she names other than "eee" for egg. Thought you would enjoy that. :)

Nooooo

I think it was maybe one or two posts ago I said that the word "no" was not really used by Lorelei yet...naturally right after that it started becoming quite popular. Thankfully it is not said defiantly yet, but simply to answer a question (see now that I type that we may end up with our hands full) so we find it pretty humorous and cute. We were trying to give you an idea how often she is saying this by putting a few clips together. I would have held out for more since these are a bit lengthy, but figured it is probably not the best idea to video and laugh every time she says it... or we will really end up with it being her favorite word. :) So this is as good as it gets.

Monday Zoo Trip

Brad had Monday off and the weather is finally getting a bit warmer here (not even close to you in Oklahoma with your 70s!) so we took a family trip to the zoo. It was still cooler than I would have liked, so was glad we brought sweatshirts to layer. Lorelei walked most of the zoo, so took a great nap that afternoon. So excited to be able to get outside more and more!

To describe the pictures...starting top left and going clockwise...Lorelei walking way ahead of us, giving a hug to the elephants (she did this and a kiss to many of the animals), doing her butterfly wings in the butterfly chair (she loves "The Butterfly Song"), walking with Dad, checking out the flowers, eating her peanut butter and jelly sandwich while we enjoyed a picnic lunch.

Potty Time!

That's right, to celebrate being 18 months old Lorelei gets a potty! :) This is the earliest we could really start potty training, but do not have high expectations at this point. It's basically just to get her used to having it around and to have it as an option when she is interested in trying to go. She is pretty excited about it so far and was ready to try it out right away. We did let her actually try without all her clothes on, but figured she would prefer we not share those pictures. :) This girl could stay in a poopy wet diaper all day long, so I am worried this could be a very long road, however she also HATES laying on the changing table for even two seconds for a diaper change, so maybe that will be a motivating factor. :) Guess we'll keep our fingers crossed!

Our First Week With An 18 Month Old

Lorelei a year ago...6 months old! And now, posing with Elmo of course. :)

Its amazing to me to know we now have an 18 month old! It just sounds so old! :) I cannot believe how much has changed in a year.

We have had a busy week, but sadly I have not taken any pictures! Just a quick week update for you...
Monday - MOMS Club meeting where Lorelei did her usual run around the room like she owns the place, but thankfully many other children do this as well so she is fine. Then we made a quick Sam's run after.

Tuesday - Trip to the Lynnhaven mall where she got to ride the carousel and she loved it of course. This was her official 18 month birthday...woo hoo! She also showed me her toddler woes by walking down the mall away from the stroller and when I told her to stay with me and the stroller she shook her head "no" and walked off...immediately being put in the stroller of course. Thankfully "no" is not overused at our house...yet. :)

Wednesday - My doc appt to check the baby's heartbeat. Easy appointment compared to last time thankfully. Lorelei did well although a little bit nervous for me. She sat on my lap while they listened to the heart beat. Took her a while to find it (making me nervous of course) but she found it and it sounded great. Lorelei even made her "surprised face" when she heard it. :) The doc later said that it was hard to find the heartbeat because the baby was moving around so much - oh dear...another lively one I'm afraid! Maybe the gummy bear will mellow out when out of the womb? :) We can always hope.

Thursday - Lorelei's 18 month check up. She is now 33 and 5/8 inches long, which puts her in the 95% for her age. :) There was a two year old there for his 2 yr appt and she was the same height as he was. She did great with this appt and no shots! Unfortunately we found out she has a double ear infection, which she was giving no indication of except for the fact of being very cranky lately...can't exactly bring a child in because she is cranky, so I guess we are glad that we had the appt so that we can get it all cleared up. Lorelei is great about taking meds so she is just on antibiotics for the next week and a half.

Then we headed over to Sara and Lily's house for our usual Thursday play date. The kids seemed to do a great job doing their own thing and we moms actually got to take it easy. Then we were already running late and it took 20 minutes in the Walgreens drive-thru, so Lorelei proceeded to fall asleep in the car for about 15 minutes and then wanted nothing to do with a nap the rest of the day!

Friday - What a fun morning we had! We went to My Little Gym for a free trial class with friends Carly and Silas. The teacher was WONDERFUL and even knew our children's names even though there were lots of visitors and probably at least 20 parents/children in the class. Lorelei LOVED it and made me pretty sure we will have to get her in some classes next winter. She was just beaming with joy with that look of "mommy this is so much fun!" :) She enjoyed just running around doing the activities the teacher was doing and also climbing on the different equipment they had. She walked across the balance beam several times and loved hanging on the rings. Big hit and great way to burn off some energy after all these long winter days.

The other great part about today was that Lorelei took nearly a 3 hr nap, which has only happened maybe two other times in her life!? Very excited about that. Then she had a great time coloring with her dad after supper. Looking forward to a warmer weekend and some great family time. :)

The Many Faces of Lorelei

We have a book where they have the different feelings/faces of different babies. She has always enjoyed this book and the "surprised face" has always been her favorite, and it is her favorite face to make now. Started taping her yesterday doing some different faces...my apologies for only getting half of her half the time. I had to have the screen turned so she could watch herself so I couldn't really see how well I was filming...or rather how badly I was filming! :) Will work on that for you. :)

My favorite part is towards the end when she is trying to do a fish face and goes through about four different faces trying to get to the fish face. :)

Pacies

Well for quite a while now Lorelei has been good about only having her paci while sleeping. She is still good about that, but we have a few new habits. The first one is that she now requires TWO pacies every time she has one. If we give her one she says "nah" (her word for paci, no clue why but thats what it is) demanding the second one to hold and sometimes sticking two in her mouth at once for fun. She also moves her hand around her crib looking for her extra paci to hold when one is in her mouth...guess its her comfort instead of a blanket or stuffed animal.

In order to keep the rule of paci only in the crib, sometimes she ends up in the crib just so she can have them. This ended up becoming a game one day when I suggested playing "hide the pacies"...big hit at this age! Can't wait for hiding Easter eggs soon! :)

As you will see in the video she enjoys hiding them herself and then acts as though she does not know where they are...including holding her arms out like "where are they?"

The Star In The Purple Pajamas

Had some fun taping Lorelei Sunday morning and she was eating it up. She is now grabbing the camera to watch herself before she will even let us get anything video taped, so Brad's great idea was to turn our handy little viewing screen out so that she could watch herself. This may have to be a regular practice because she can't get enough of it. :)


This was our attempt to get her to do the actions for Twinkle Twinkle. As you can see she has the "star" part and then makes her version of a diamond in the sky, although not at the right part of the song. This is her favorite song to do and is often used when attempting a diaper change and in the grocery store. :) As you can see we couldn't get her to do it for the whole song because she too distracted at being able to watch herself on the camera. :) We thought it was pretty fun.

This is what I ended up teaching her to do when "thinking" although it is usually more tapping on the mouth than the nose, but you get the idea. She does this anytime we ask her something such as "What should we wear today?" and that kind of thing.



Well this one is pretty long so it won't offend me if you get bored, but decided to post it anyway. :) She was just having fun reading some books to the camera and we did manage to get one more cute habit, which is her blowing out the candles on the book. This is the only place I can figure she learned this, but apparently she will do great at her next birthday! She even tries to blow out the candles at the front of the church from our seats in the back. :)



We are both finding ourselves exhausted with this wonderful almost-18-months daughter of ours. We will definitely have our hands full with the terrible twos, so I guess this is good practice leading up to it. :) One of the things Lorelei tends to throw fits about these days is when there is a game we are playing with her and she does not ever want it to end. This happened yesterday when Brad was lifting her up and down like weights. Then as she was throwing a tantrum he cracked me up by saying "You know what we should do? Rent her out to parents of teenagers to teach them not to have sex! Watching her for a day would be great birth control...she's exhausting!" :) I totally agree but since Baby #2 is on the way I guess she isn't that bad!

Helper

Lorelei has become more of a helper for us lately, which is a lot of fun. Yesterday I asked her to get a diaper for me to put in my purse to take to church and she came back carrying four. Brad found her with the entire diaper stacker on the ground trying to pick up as many as she could. So sweet! My purse is set for a few days at least. :)

Cleaning up the mess she made coloring the dishwasher.

Helping Dad (temporarily on vacuum duty) with her own vacuum.

What Do You Think About Bugs?

Apparently I have passed my LOVE for bugs onto Lorelei already...