It's a FISH!

It's amazing how the past couple of weeks Luca is improving on his writing and drawing skills. Today he asked me to draw a fish on his doodle pro. I showed him to draw a circle, tail and eyes and mouth. Then a few minutes later he ran to me and made his own fish! This was his 2nd drawing, his 1st drawing the fish actually looked happy but he of course erased it by the time I got the camera. I asked him to attempt it again and here it is...

His 3rd attempt to his fish. Not so bad?

Random

Here are some random pics from our point and shoot which we don't use as much but I forgot that we took these pics...

Here's Luca writing the letter "L"

Jes and Ante were over a couple of weekends ago to visit the kids. Luca took most of these pics that I'm posting.

His new dinosaur collection ...he loves dinosaurs.

Corey's Uncle Pat was over to visit.  Luca is the best photographer ever, all I have to do is give him the camera and he just shoots away!

He brought Corey's grandma's rocking chair over for us to keep.  The kids loved it.

Luca also took this pic of O, I recently submitted her pictures to Sydney So Sweet model search.  It's the place where I buy all of her hair bows.  They are looking for models to put on their website to display their bows.  I really hope she gets chosen, then she'll get free bows!!!  I think she's a great candidate because, well, she always has a bow in her hair and she has the most beautiful curly hair, but I am pretty biased. 

Luca

I have to write this down b/c I always try to compare milestones between Luca and Olivia and then I think I will remember them in my head and then I always forget, so here it is.  Today, Luca drew a picture of a ghost and it actually looked like a ghost!  He drew it on his doodle pro and by the time I got my camera out to take a pic he erased it!  Ugh!  I know this sounds weird but it was a really good drawing, not just scribbles, it looked like a ghost shape, it had two eyes and a mouth and then he said "there's something missing....arms!"  He then drew some arms on the ghost.  He can also write the letter L, sometimes it's backwards but most of the time it's the right way.  He also can draw a U but then he'll stop at the top of the U and then make a circle into it.  He can draw a C, too so he's VERY close to writing his name.  A's are a little tough, although, he can draw a triangle so I think he will get it soon.  I'm so happy at how fast he's progressing.  He's one smart little guy.  I bought some pre-school activity books for him at the dollar store and he seems to enjoy it and he's really good at it, it's activities such as matching and drawing lines, coloring, identifying colors, he likes it but I can only let him do it for 15 minutes then we have to stop because he loses focus, which is normal.  He also got brainquest for his birthday and he loves it and is very good at it.  It also has different activities using pictures to increase his vocabulary, counting, matching, identifying things that are missing, he's very good at it, too.

I have to interject with a funny story about Olivia....today she was also drawing on the doodle pro and Corey told her to draw his face, well she took the doodle pro pen and proceeded to draw ON his face!  It was funny.

Luca's new favorite show is Dino Dan.  He loves that show and he's also into dinosaurs very much.  Ante and Jes bought him a T-Rex figurine for Valentines day and he watches Dino Dan with it everytime.  They just recently bought him 2 more figurines to add to his collection and he's on cloud 9!

Corey is on Spring break this week so we've been taking the kids out a lot, yesterday to the park and today to Cosi.  Luca looked everywhere for his little crush, Kayla.  He was very sad that she wasn't there but he still had fun without her.

 

Go Crazy!

She's definitely a Yo Gabba Gabba fan and that's where she got "Go Crazy!"

Happy 1st Birthday, Elle!

I can't believe little Elle is 1!

Her super cute cupcake-cake. They got it at Hilliard Creations, the same place we got our fish cake. I love that place, they make the most amazing cakes!

One of the presents we bought Elle was this Bday cake, it was geared for 12month old kids but the 2 and 3 year old seemed to love it!

The cake sings the Happy Birthday song and then you can blow the candles out!

The kids table.  Next year Elle will be sitting with them.

Pics taken by our photographer, Luca...

I love to look at the camera and be surprised at all the pics he took of everyone, this was the best shot!

He took a lot of pics, but a lot of them were pics of people taking pics, too funny!  This is Elle's Grandma.

"Say Cheese!" is what he'll say to everyone!

He went up to his 2nd cousin Cara and said "What's your name?" 

This is Elle's cousin, Joe. He was great and played with the kids the entire party.

Almost got my face...

The photographer asked us to take a pic of him, maybe we should've used his style, just get half of his face but it's too cute to do that.

Luna's 2nd Birthday Party!

Our neighbor, who lives 2 houses down the street and they are the only neighbors in our community with kids, invited us to her 2nd Bday party. Her name is Luna which means moon in Italian.   she was born on a full moon in her own house, her mom did a natural birth in the bathtub!  It was such a great bday party. They had a balloon guy that the kids just LOVED and he made some amazing stuff!


This is an alligator on Luca's head and he's wearing a space rocket.

He was so excited that he could ride his bike to the Birthday party. It was so nice to be able to do that! I am looking forward to living in a neighborhood with kids that we can do this more often.

I'm so mad I didn't bring my camera to show you all the other things the guy made but this party was really nice.  They are vegan so it was a nice change to go to a bday party and eat healthy foods.  They had hummus, bean/corn salad, greek salad, veggies, and rice rolled in a green leaf and some other great tasting, healthy food! 

He just loved this thing!

So this balloon guy had a mustache that curled and he was wearing a hat. Luca said "Hey cowboy, make me a T-rex!" OMG I wanted to bust out laughing but I held it in told Luca he wasn't a cowboy and to ask nicely! 

Good thing the guy really liked him, he made Luca 3 things!  I really liked the balloon guy and got his card, I think it would be great for O's bday party this summer.

So I went to change O's diaper again before her nap and her diaper was semi-dry after drinking lots of milk and water, I figured she needed to go and attempted the potty again. She sat on it for about a minute and nothing happened, even when I turned on the water. So she walked around without a diaper on while I was getting Luca ready to go potty and she came running back saying "I went potty!" Yep, she went on the carpet and even showed me where she went! I was still happy that she was able to tell me that she went and she is showing some signs of readiness, I'm just not ready for it!

Happy St. Patty's Day!

I took the kids to the Moms N Munchkins St. Patty's day party today. I took a few pics before we left for the party.

I liked how this turned out in black and white.

This one, too!

What a handsome little guy!

I won this shirt for her!  Isn't cute?  I haven't won anything in a long time, I was so excited!  By the way, Olivia is cutting two more teeth up top and she has cut another top tooth in the back right.  Her hands are always in her mouth!  I was surprised I could get some shots w/o her hand in her mouth.

 Looking for 4 leaf clovers.

 Luca is obsessed with fishing and it was such a nice day out today he asked Corey if he could go fishing.  He was finally able to open up his fishing pole he got for Xmas and practice fishing.  He seemed to love it.  I have no idea what started this obsession.

I was attempting to get a good picture of both of them together smiling but after taking over 50 pics I gave up.  It used to be so much easier when they weren't mobile and they would just sit and smile.

Hope you all have a great St. Patty's day! :)

Olivia went on the potty!

/>I'm so excited that I have to write this down!  I changed O's diaper this morning and when I went to put her down for her nap at 1pm I normally will change her diaper and I noticed her diaper was dry!!!  I knew she had to go potty since she woke up at 8am and didn't go since then.  I told her let's go on the potty.  She said no at first but then as soon as she sat on the potty she said "turn water on" which sometimes I do that for Luca to get him going, otherwise I will be standing there all day.  But it was so funny that she said that so I turned the water on and she went immediately!  I was so happy and started to do the potty dance but she showed no excitement whatsoever, she looked at me like why are jumping around?  Luca said "She can wear her princess underwear now!"  I told him not yet!  She's not even close but this is a good start.  I am not going to really officially potty train her but I am going to occasionally do this if she has a dry diaper.  I pre-potty trained Luca for about 6 months before we went all out so I'm hoping by this summer she can be diaper - free! 

Speaking of diapers, I just got qualified for an in-home diaper study where they come to my house and look at all the baby products we have and then I have to take them to the store where I buy O's diapers.  I LOVE market studies!

My moms group does a sale 2x a year where we can sell baby clothes, toys, equipment and normally I participate, but I am very sad because I am going to sell A LOT of baby items...baby car seat, stroller, bathtub, all of their outgrown clothes and anything they no longer use anymore which is a lot of stuff.  Why is this making me so sad?  I think it just confirms that we are only having two kids, which I'm ok with it but just knowing that we won't ever have any more babies does make me a little sad and well, Olivia just isn't a baby anymore, she's a toddler.  Whenever I look at her long lean legs I miss her big fat baby legs. :(  Good bye baby stuff! :(

I have a picture of Luca laying exactly like this when he was a baby.  I will try to find it so you can see the difference, he's so big now.  Makes me want to cry.

I seriously got teary eyed when they were playing with this.  They are just growing so fast and it brought back so many memories of them like their first roll was on this mat for both of them, and I remembered how excited I was when they could see the animals and would swat at it, they had a lot of milestones on this thing.  I also remember Corey coming home from work when Luca was a baby and Luca would fall asleep on this mat and I told Corey (which it doesn't make sense but Corey understood what I was talking about) "If you want to wake up the baby, then you wake up the baby!"  I think I didn't want him to wake him up but Corey wanted to give him a kiss/hug and I knew it was going to wake him up and that's what came out of my mouth. 

I was surprised at how much fun they were having with this thing until Olivia grabbed it and started to run with it and then they Luca grabbed it and they had a tug of war fight.

What a big boy!  I remember how nervous I was to give him a bath while trying to hold his fragile little head.

And this little girl amazes me everyday.  She can count to 11 already!  I remember her loving to splash the water in this little bath tub.  I'm so not a hoarder, but after today, I can relate to how hoarders feel.  It's like letting go of those memories.  Sniff, Sniff, but good bye bathtub and baby stuff!

My Montage 3/11/11 at OneTrueMedia.com

Here's Olivia helping me read a book. Disregard me telling Luca not to touch the camera! :)

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

1st Crush

So I took Luca and Olivia to Cosi again today. There are little teenage volunteers that play with the kids.

This little volunteer, Kayla, was 13 years old and she was homeschooled. She volunteers 2x a month. She played with Luca and he LOVED LOVED LOVED her!

Everytime Luca couldn't find her he would say "Where's Kayla?" And when he would find her he'd say to her "I couldn't find you?" She said "I was in the office." Then everytime he couldn't find her he'd look for her in the office. He even asked me after his nap if we could go to Cosi to see Kayla! It was cute!

Here's Luca playing with his buddy Ethan.