Our family's American Idol audition tape

Snowbound

We are ready for Spring. We are getting stir crazy cooped up inside - everyone is sick and has contracted just about every illness possible. So far this week:
-ear infections x 2
-sinus infection x1
-24 hour stomach flu x1
-RSV x1

Here you can see Amelia's attempts to have fun inside:

Playing with flour in the living room. Actually one of my favorite activities for her because it is such easy clean-up - just vacuum and it's done. She loves to pour the flour from cup to bowl to spoon, etc...

Haha love this.

Yoda/Carl keeps a close watch.

The aftermath - it looks bad but it was clean in under 5 minutes.

Let's hope this week is healthier for this house...

Another week in February!

Our little Zoe bear is just so cute....

She wants to feed herself... she's progressed to crackers but can't handle the other stuff quite yet!

so I can't figure out how to get rid of one of these - so there are two - enjoy.

Amelia has been under the weather (again) this week and home with Daddy. She finally got a referral to go to an ENT so hopefully she will get tubes and stop getting ear infections every few weeks. With this round, she has done some regressing to baby-like behavior - and spent some time sitting in Zoe's car seat watching tv. It was kind of cute.

Today she felt better and built a "home" with her blocks - she said it was NOT house or anything else, but a home.

A future architect?

No words. Just cute.

Princess Wishes....

I took our princess to Disney's Princess Wishes on Ice this morning - it was a bit of a last minute idea and I got us the cheap seats - but in my mind they were the best ones. I don' t know who had more fun:

Amelia is enthralled watching the show...

After the intermission she got brave enough to sit in her own seat...

I bought her a spinning wand and we BOTH had fun with it..

A true princess insists on going down the stairs by herself...

Thanks for coming with us, Alli!!!! We had lots of fun together (and Amelia enjoyed that your boots matched hers).

the spinning toy was a big hit.

snowpocalypse 2011

First of all, I wanted to share this super cool baby plate. My grandmother gave it to me before Amelia was born - it belonged to her brother who died when she was 2. The cool thing about this plate is that it fits perfectly on top of a pot, so I can heat up something else (in this case, noodles) and warm up the baby's food. It is INGENIUS - why hasn't anyone replicated this? Nonetheless, I love this plate - it is useful, it is cute, and it reminds me of my grandmother.

Amelia did some crayon make-up application before she fell asleep...

The snow on our back deck....

Amelia helped cut up mushrooms for dinner last night - she did an awesome job and took her job very seriously! :)

Two cuties

Zoë channels our cats and drinks water from the faucet while bathing...

We keep Amelia occupied during Zoë's bathtime by having her shuttle wood from one room to another... We told her to yell "Special Delivery!" every time she came into the kitchen - which she did. Super cute.

Post-bathtime we kept Zoë contained and warm. She seemed pretty relaxed about it...

She gets all bundled up to go outside and shovel with Daddy. This is our favorite age - stick the kid in the backpack and walk around doing stuff and she is super happy and then falls asleep.

Amelia is a nut

The other day Amelia decided that she wanted me to take a series of pictures of her next to Zoë's car seat. It was very funny - she wanted a picture on all sides of Zoë...

Family resemblance anyone?

Here we have some family comparison pictures - Amelia looks shockingly similar to her Aunt Becky and Zoë looks shockingly similar to me. Or as Aunt Becky said, "You have one of me and one of you." :)

First we start with Zoë - Mommy comparison...

Mommy, Winter 1979

Zoë, September 2010

And now we have Amelia - Aunt Becky - Grandmother comparisons

Aunt Becky and her special pouty face...

Amelia and her special pouty face...

My grandmother - the day Amelia was born Tom said he thought she looked like my grandmother. I told him he was nuts. How annoying that he was right...although not annoying that when I look at Amelia I can be constantly reminded of my grandmother who I miss so much every single day!

Snow day number 3

We had another snow day today - fun, yes, but also a bit tough to be trapped in our house in the middle of nowhere AGAIN. We just had one on Tuesday, after a three day weekend. Soooooo Mommy was going a little stir crazy (I did get my 3 hour nap in, though...)

Last night after picking up Amelia I decided to stop at Michael's and get some fun craft supplies to keep us busy. I came up with this bag:

I put several craft projects in there - but we only let Amelia pick one for today. (Note to self, remember to re-stock the bag). We will keep this bag in the garage so that someone won't go through it when she isn't supposed to....

Amelia picked a tub of craft "surprises" that included all kinds of markers, crayons, make your own stickers, clay, scissors, etc... She enjoyed it for about a half hour (but did keep going back to it throughout the day, fortunately).


Then I decided to make my own play-doh. I research recipes online and found one - we didn't have cream of tartar but I did it anyway. It worked but was a little bit sticky. Fortunately Amelia loved it and kept saying, "Wow! It is so gooey!"

And Zoë? What did she do? She sat on the kitchen floor and played with this spoon for a half hour. Ohhhhh the easy baby...

Finally we have snow

We got almost 2 feet of snow last Wednesday - Amelia went outside for about 15 minutes. She couldn't take much more because she couldn't walk, it was windy, and cold. We had a fun family day at home together!

Amelia is a true New Englander and goes out into the snow with her trusty umbrella.

She then somehow convinced her father to bring her trampoline outside.

Yoda enjoys his first big snowstorm of the season.

Zoë is finally big and sturdy enough to ride around in the backpack with Daddy. She LOVED it - I think she liked looking down on all of us :)

We attempted to get a picture of Yoda sitting next to Zoë in the backpack - we have a few cute ones of these with Yoda and Amelia. We might have to try this picture again soon...