there's a new name...

in Buddy's vocabulary
and it's ella's, yes it's ella.

(sometimes la-la.)

He giggles and grins with pride as he looks at his 4 month old cousin and calls her name.

Precious.

Pics

swimming with "angel" cousin Juliana
(Juliana sang "Angels We Have Heard On High", giving us Christmas in July at the pool! Or was it "Hark the Herald")

a classic moment

"Mommy, take a picture of me with the flowers!"

another classic "Hannah" moment

"Here's a flower for you!"

Blast from the past

Steph's question about when Hannah 1st enjoyed to the zoo got me thinking... so I searched the archives on Em & Mad's blog, and look what I found:

Indy Zoo: July 2006

em, hannah & mad looking at the chickens

petting a goat- hannah has longer hair now, mommy's is shorter :)

Hannah was about 9 months old, I think, and she got into the things that she could see up close.... the petting zoo and the dolphin show were the things I remember her enjoying the most.

Nashville Zoo

We used our new zoo membership for the first time today. Cousin Juliana, Aunt Becca and some of their friends drove all the way over to see the animals, and since the zoo is so close, we met them. Somehow we managed to be the last to arrive, though.

The Nashville Zoo definitely has a little more of an undeveloped/natural feel than the Memphis Zoo. At the Memphis Zoo, the main exhibits all seem to have big entrances with gift shops specializing in those featured animals. For example. the entrance to the Panda bears and other Asian animals is a big Pagoda section. The Northwest Territory exhibit which holds the Polar Bears and Sea Lions has Totem Poles. The Nashville exhibits have nice signs welcoming you to them. Both zoos are very nice and worth visiting in their own right.

Anyway, the kids seemed to have fun, and we Moms survived! (I enjoyed it, but I know why we got the membership... so we can see a little at a time without getting too exhausted.)

Two Toddlers

Since Juliana lives over an hour away, the girls don't see each other often enough. Becca and Juliana came over tonight while Joel and I went to a "very portan meetin." It was a last minute arrangement, and Hannah was thrilled to spend time with them!

then and now...

October 11, 2006

sharing because the mommies said to


March 23, 2008

sharing willingly

while mommy and daddy were away....

hannah went to cousin juliana's to play





I stole the video from Aunt Becca's blog.

I almost forgot....

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YA, MADDIE!"

wearing each other out!

after waking up bright-eyed and bushy headed before 7 a.m., the girls both hit full-fledged "crabby pants" mode by 9:45 this morning. hannah went so far as to say "night-night" as she leaned on her daddy. juliana was rubbing her eyes and clinging to me. so we put both of them down for a mid-late morning nap. as soon as they hit their beds, they both went into fuss-play-chatter mode. we could hear hannah chant "el-e-phant" & "night-night" in her sing-songy barney voice. juliana chattered in toddlerese, grew a little fussy, but then settled down.
by the time i got out of my shower, silence had hit both baby monitors. ahhh..

now, both girls usually take an afternoon nap sometime after lunch. i suspect that won't happen today, due to their late-morning nap and the afternoon family gathering could include 2 tired toddlers.

over all, they have played very well together. they greet one another with hugs and kisses when they wake up in the morning. (quite the opposite from what hannah was used to with herslow-rising older cousins). juliana has asked for her mama and dada today, so i bet her face will light up when she sees them this afternoon.

hannah thinks the idea of potty time is cool- until she sits on the potty. she will even say "yay!" when we tell juliana, "it's potty time!" then she wants off in 3 seconds. apparently potty time is for her cousin. we don't push it. juliana told us she needed to go "poo" (which translated to "pee", she uses the word universally), and has been such a big girl. oh, she had a couple of accidents last night after dinner, but nothing major. i think she was having so much fun playing with her cousin, she was not paying attention to her bladder.

hannah proudly showed her cousin the cherry toe-toe plants, then picked some green tomatoes of the vine. juliana was happy to pick one, too, but had the sense not to taste the green one. hannah, on the other hand, spit hers out after mauling it for a bit. and clung to the remaining toe-toe's in her hand as though they were treasures.

juliana's visit

richard simmons & cousin it came over for breakfast:




oops, i forgot to straighten this pic. you get the idea. juliana is getting lots of practice going up and down stairs, with hannah cheering her on:


okay, so with their distinct personalities, opposite hair textures, and obviously different parents, they are not twins. they are cousins. but i could not resist "matching" hannah with her cousin this morning. getting them both to look at the camera at the same time is not so easy:

gulf shores memories

the dolphin-watch boat ride:

cousin maddie, uncle nate, aunt cheryl

we ran into ally and her parents (friends of daddy and mommy) earlier in the week,
and they came on the dolphin-boat, too!

em, ally & i look for dolphins in our hot, stinky vests

other random photos:

getting braver

daddy & his brother

no trip to the beach is complete without burying someone in the sand!

my "boat", gramma & me

these jellyfish got buried in the sand

aunt sara & uncle grant

stealthy aunt cheryl sets her battle line behind the "pink monster", aka my raft

the water wars continue... papa developed his own helmet/sun protection

pool time fun... a little less violent (note the raft is being put to its proper use)

incredimaddie proudly models her new "pj's/playclothes"

aaaah

"pool? pool?" (i was ready to hit the pool after an hour on the beach)

this is the life

cousin emmy loved practicing her swimming!

1st beach vacation

gulf shores

1st steps on the beach

1st splash in the ocean

scooping the sand

hannah's yacht- under the waterfall

devouring a cupcake - yummy frosting!