Raelynn and her many faces

Raelynn is a funny funny baby, she makes me smile and laugh all the time.  I took a bunch of pictures of her in her swing the other day take a look..

   

Water Beads

I have been seeing a lot of posts on pinterest with sensory bottles, trays and other fun things for toddlers.  I ran across one with something called water beads and they looked like a lot of fun.  I should put a disclaimer here, I’m pretty sure there are water beads made especially for toddlers, but I used the beads from the floral section at Wal-mart. Yes they are a choking hazard, but I told Lilly not to put them in her mouth and sat with her while she was playing with them. 

 

Lilly playing with the beads about an hour after we put them in the water

Little hands

There are 4 beads in this little green bowl, I kept them separate to remind Lilly how little they were when we started.

It looks like pink water in the bowl until you put your hand in and find beads

 

The next day, Lilly was comparing the size of the beads compared to the day before

Look at how big they are!

I didn’t take any water out of the bowl, those beads absorbed all of it (about 2 quarts).

 

This was a very fun experiment, Lilly thought it was really neat to see how big they grew in a day.  I even caught myself playing with the beads a little while Lilly was at school :)

Pumpkin Patch

Last Friday me, Mike, the girls and Mike’s parents took a trip to Hammond to visit Ms. Heather’s Pumpkin Patch.  The last two years I brought Lilly to a pumpkin patch in Metairie so I could take some festive pictures of her (2009 and 2010), This year they were only open in the afternoon, aka naptime, so we decided to try out the pumpkin patch that all of our friends rave about.  We also combined it with some quality Amaw and Apaw time.  And now…the photobomb!  These are only picture from my camera, my MIL took tons of pictures too that I can’t wait to see.

Lilly and her pumpkin

I absolutely love this profile shot of Lilly, it shows her beautiful hair color as well as her crazy curls!

“Nook, Tigger’s eating at the pumpkin!” I love this kid

Pumpkin = ottoman in Raelynn’s eyes

She’s in the “I love my feet” stage

Lilly chasing Daddy

 

I found him!

 

Daddy was much braver than me..that thing would make me sick!

Daddy and Apaw hanging out with Raelynn

This is what Raelynn did for the majority of the trip

Oh the zipline…this made m very nervous

But Daddy was never far behind

He let go for a second, but stayed within arms reach

This was the second time, can you see the smile on Lilly’s face?

I sear I have 3 kids sometimes!

Amaw helped Lilly bounce.

[Insert picture from Amaw’s camera here]

I’m leaving a space for the picture that Apaw took of Mike and I acting like fools and bouncing on those red balls and laughing so hard we almost died!

Lilly picked out two very cute pumpkins

Then ran around some more

My baby pumpkin

She is so cute!

A Half Birthday Cake?

Do you remember two years ago when we celebrated Lilly’s first half birthday?  Well keeping with tradition I decided to make another half birthday cake for all of the April birthdays (Lilly, Raelynn and myself) in our house.  Lilly choose chocolate cake and pink frosting..smart girl knows how much Mommy loves chocolate! 

 

The first steps, leveling the cake then putting the filling inside

Crumb coat then in the freezer

After the crumb coat set I iced it and decorated it, then back in the freezer..I wanted it to stay nice and moist until the next day.

At first it looks like a plain ole’ birthday cake

Then you look at it from another angle

It’s only half a cake! I put lots of sprinkles and some luster dust on it to make it sparkle.  All girls like sparkles!

Just an artsy shot I took

 

The cake only took up half of the batter so I also made 24 mini cupcakes and froze them.  We will be eating those soon with mint icing on top of them. Daddy got to choose the icing of the cupcakes since he had to eat the pink sparkly cake last time :)

Baby Pumpkin

Raelynn and I went to our first playdate last Wednesday while Lilly was at school.  Raelynn had a wonderful time being an only child for the day.   I am really enjoying spending alone time with my baby girl, and giving her my undivided attention one day a week. 

The playdate was a lot of fun it was just moms and babies under 15 months.  So it was nice to have an adult conversation without a toddler interrupting.  They had a pumpkin set up to take pictures with I took oh about 100 pictures..her a a few of my favorites.