It seems my posts are quickly becoming more interactive. By interactive I mean my stories are more frequently about Laura's and Hannah's interactions with each other.

Generally, their interactions are still so sweet! Hannah is a cuddly baby by nature. She has been from the beginning. And now her cuddliness has spread to her sister as well. One night I am sitting in the recliner, and Laura immediately wants in my lap. Side note: Laura is very aggressive about finding open laps. She has always been this way as well. When we would drop her off at daycare when she was little (9mos-2yrs), if the teacher was sitting on the floor with no child in her lap, Laura would beeline it to her lap and plop there. She is still very much this way. Back to my story, as soon as Hannah realizes that Laura is in my lap, she too wants up in the chair. So with both kids on my lap, they are continually snuggling, and Hannah gives Laura several kisses. Laura kept saying, "I love you more Hannah. I love you more Hannah." Hannah would just smile in her scrunchy nose smile and reciprocate with another kiss.

Their play is getting more physical too. One of their favorite games is "chase." Laura and Hannah will chase each other crawling. Hannah will head butt Laura and then sit up and screech with excitement. Then Laura crawls and tags Hannah and giggles. One night Laura escalated the game by getting up and running in circles around Hannah. Poor little Hannah crawled around in circles like a dog chasing its tail. As soon as Laura stopped, Hannah crawled and head butted her. She was a persistent little girl. I was rather impressed that she wasn't dizzy. I could sit and watch them for hours. They are pure entertainment.

I mentioned above that Hannah gives kisses. She is also sometimes very possessive of her pacifier. So once in a while when you ask her for a kiss, she will give you a paci-kiss. She will lean forward and bop you in the mouth with her paci in her mouth.

I think I have written in a previous post that Hannah has a favorite teacher at school, Ms. Laura. This teacher was her teacher when she was in the Infant I room. Hannah is now in the Infant II room, which is attached to Infant I, and there is a glass window on the lower part of the common wall where each room can see each other. Hannah will often stand at this window and yell for Ms. Laura. One day she was standing at the window waving and bouncing, seemingly waiting for Ms. Laura to be finished with the other kids in her room. When the last parent came to pick up her baby, Laura stood up and prepared to start cleaning up the room. Hannah immediately started screaming bloody murder. Laura had to come over and carry Hannah on her hip while she vacuumed the room. She is so attached to Ms. Laura; I don't know what we will do when she moves on to the next room, Toddler I. Actually last night, I picked her up and Laura was leaving at the same time. Hannah reached her arms out to go to Laura as we were leaving her room. Laura took her for a minute. Hannah wasn't sure if she wanted to go home with me or Laura....not sure how to feel about that. I guess I am thankful that she has someone at daycare that she loves so much.

One of the highlights of the past couple of weeks is that we broke and bought Laura a swing set. I wrote about Laura "begging" for one in a previous post. Matt and I are weak. Oh well. Already she is more active in the evenings. So I guess it is an investment in her health, right? :) Laura absolutely loves the swing set. She wants to play on it every night that it's not raining. Well, it only didn't rain two nights this week, Thursday and Friday. Thankfully, it didn't rain in the afternoon on Easter either.

Speaking of Easter, we hosted a gathering of Matt's family and some of my family. It was a great time. Laura and her second cousin, Tammra hunted plastic eggs outside, played on the swing set, and flew mini-kites that Aunt Wendy brought. They had a grand time. The party was full of good food and good company, what life is all about. We have eaten boat loads of candy this week. One night I'm pretty sure that chocolate is all the girls ate for dinner. Matt and I went through it this morning and disposed of most of it. The rest will go into work next week. One cute thing; Laura would try to sneak candy at night. After dinner, she would quietly sit in the recliner in the living room and go through eggs to eat chocolate while Matt and I cleaned up dinner. One night Hannah even joined in the conspiracy. She crawled in and stood next to the chair going through the bag of eggs, looking for M&M's, her favorite.

Enjoy the pictures.

I am thankful that Laura and Hannah get along so well, at least at this point in their lives. Laura cannot wait for Hannah to be more mobile, so that she can have a full-on playmate. And Hannah of course wants to be anywhere Laura is and do everything Laura does. At daycare Laura has a friend, Celia. Celia has a sister in Hannah's room named Charlie. Well, Charlie is now walking. Celia was telling Laura about it this week. So one day when I picked Laura up, she was very excited, and she said, "Guess who has a baby sister is walking?" She said, "Celia's baby sister, Charlie is walking! I can't wait for my baby sister to walk." It was said quickly and almost as an afterthought. It will be interesting to see how they interact when Hannah is fully able to reach all of Laura's toys. Each stage of their life is so fun to watch.

Laura was having a conversation with Matt one night, and she said, "Daddy, you're weird. I like you, but you're weird." I wonder where she heard that.

They've been doing Easter themed activities at school this week. She has been singing, "Little Bunny Fru Fru...." I forgot about all these songs until Laura starts singing them. She has learned over the past couple of years a few other songs that I have never heard. One of my favorites was a Halloween song. "Three little pumpkins sitting on the fence..." I have never heard this song until now, but maybe it's not a new one.

We have a wedding shower this weekend, and we are up at my parents house. We told Laura Thursday that we were coming to PaPa's house. Not surprisingly, she was so excited. Well when Matt picked her and Hannah up from daycare, they pulled into the garage, and Matt started to unload Laura and Hannah. Laura was furious. She wanted to stay in the van while we loaded it because she was wanted to go to PaPa's now. We were going to eat dinner before we left. She was giddy with excitement. So cute. As we traveled up to Bucyrus, she just could not wait. She kept asking us if were there yet, and she would say, "I very need to be at PaPa's house," as if it was urgent. So sweet. She has been full of energy this whole weekend so far too. She has dragged around their cat, Bailey, colored eggs with Grammy, played ping pong and read books.

One funny story from last night. We celebrated my parents' and Ellen's birthdays after dinner last night. Laura was passing out the presents, and of course she was giving PaPa his gifts. She was almost scolding my mom, saying "Grammy you can't yell at PaPa. If you made good choices, you can have a present." It was as if she was Santa. Absolutely hilarious.

Hannah is getting close to walking. She can now walk pretty good while only holding one of our hands. I know I posted last week about her talking. She talks all the time, when she doesn't have her passy in her mouth. She says, dada, mama, papa, this. She also does this guttural laugh that is so cute. Right now she is letting Matt tickle her chin and just cracking up laughing. Hannah is getting quite the awnry streak too. Last night in church, she kept yelling, and she launched her pacifier twice. I had to take her to the back of the church twice because she was being so loud. She is just going to have to stay home with Daddy for a while on Sundays.

Check out Hannah in her pigtails. Her teacher put them in at school one day. She looks so cute, but she screamed when I took them out at bath time that night.

Ups and Downs

Running late on this week's post. It was a busy weekend with its Up's and Down's. We ended on an up note, so I will start there.

We spent Sunday in Logan, attending Rosamund Wilson's 90th birthday party. Rosamund is Wendy's mother-in-law and an amazingly sweet lady. Matt took pictures at the event and then made a slide show to music for the family. It was a fun day. There was a playground at this party, which was the hit of the weekend for Laura. She absolutely loves playground sets. Every time we pass one in car, she yells to me, "Mom! There is a play set. Avery has a play set at her house. I very need one." (Avery is one of her friends.) She literally played on this set in Logan all afternoon. It did not even have swings, which is usually her favorite part. She climbed up this little mountain on the side of it and went down the slide about a thousand times. I was thankful it was so nice outside. So of course, Matt and I are now considering getting a play set for our yard. (sigh...) If anybody has any suggestions, please share!

Now, I skip back to Friday, which is where the down note occurred. Friday started out really fun. I hosted a Lia Sophia party for my friend, Amy, which was a blast. I got to see many of my old work friends and few others too, and it was a relaxed and fun evening. However, about halfway through the party, which was in our basement, Matt yells down that he needs my help. I come upstairs to a husband trying to deal with a sick little baby. Poor little Hannah vomited all over her bed. I rocked her in her room while Matt cleaned up her bed. He reported to me later that evening that she puked two more times before she settled down to sleep. She is such a little trooper. After that she slept all night long. My husband is awesome too for dealing with all of that without complaint while I had fun with my friends downstairs. I am so thankful! Saturday Hannah seemed about 80 percent. She didn't eat too much, but by Sunday she was back to normal. She loved Aunt Wendy's green beans! We later learned that a little boy in her class at daycare had vomited everywhere Friday afternoon. Oh, the joys of daycare! That is all I am going to say about it now. Maybe I will write a post sometime about my feelings on childcare.

Hannah's personality is developing in leaps and bounds. She is talking all the time. Her teacher, Miss Kim, tells us that she will just jabber to them all day. She is also very responsive when we ask her questions. For instance, this morning she was yelling, "Da! Da!" Matt turned around and gave her another piece of her breakfast bar, and she promptly said what sounded like Thank You. She's such a cuddly little cutie pie.


I will leave you this week with one funny quote from Laura. (I didn't do a good job this week of writing them down.) We were on the way to the grocery store, and I couldn't decide whether to go straight or get in the turn lane. I started to go to the turn lane and then saw the light change, so I jerked back to the straight lane. Laura stops her story mid-sentence and says, "What was that all about?" Hilarious! She really is picking up on our phrases and ones on TV, which means we need to be even more careful around her.

Toot toot!!

I will start this week by telling you about last night. Matt and I went to our friend, Cracker's, wedding. Ellen watched the kids for us. It was a great time. We got to hang with Dom and Danielle and Scott and Katie, which is a rarity for us. So it was awesome! We kept the night alive and went to Planks on Parsons. I haven't been there since law school. Yummy food!! Ok, enough about Matt and me. We're boring.

Laura was in the bath tub when Ellen got here yesterday. She heard Matt talking to someone, and she said, "Who's Daddy talking to? Is Aunt Ellen here?" She was so excited. I got her out of the tub and told her to go get dressed. I started to get ready, and a few minutes later Laura pranced in fully dressed in one of her princess dresses. She was pumped!! I told her that Aunt Ellen had never seen Rapunzel and asked her if she wants to watch it with Aunt Ellen. Laura's eyes got big and she said, "Yes, let's watch it right now!" So funny. As soon as we got downstairs, Laura instructed Matt to put on "let down your hair". I was trying to tell my sister what to feed the kids for dinner, and Laura yelled from the living room, "Aunt Ellen hurry up!" She was just so excited to spend her evening with Aunt Ellen. Later that evening (or early that morning, rather), Matt brought Laura upstairs to bed, and she woke briefly and fussed for a minute. She wanted to sleep with Aunt Ellen. Fast forward to this morning. She was eating breakfast telling me about her evening. And then she said in a very sad voice, "But Aunt Ellen didn't want her nails painted." I have to laugh a little about that, since had Ellen let Laura paint her nails, I'm sure they would have been bright pink and sparkly!!

OK. Everyone knows my husband, always a jokester and sometimes a slightly inappropriate. So what did he buy Laura? Anyone? Any guesses? A whoopie cushion, of course. Just lovely. That's what we need to be teaching our daughters, that their flatulence is funny. We don't use the word "fart" with them. They say "toot". (As if it's any better.) Anyway, Laura absolutely loves it. She thinks it's the funniest thing on Earth. Hannah is not really a big fan of it. It scares her a little. Ah, well...I suppose it was a matter of time.

Just a couple of minutes ago, Laura says she wants to watch something from the movie pile. I don't remember if I've written about the movie pile. The movie pile is the on-demand movies on Netflix. They are the creme d'la creme for Laura. She loves the movie pile. She takes after her old man in that regard. So this morning we are looking though them, and she says, "I want to watch dancing kids." So I'm thinking, what have we watched lately? Thankfully, I remember that Matt said he watched High School Musical 2 with her recently. Yep, that's what she was trying to tell me. She's engrossed in it right now.

Our little Hannah has had a great week. She went from having a rough week of sleeping the week before last to sleeping like a rock star this past week. She slept at daycare one day this week for a whopping 4 hours!! Then she came home that night and slept all night. She is really starting to say single words. She has been saying "da" for awhile. In fact, I'm pretty sure that was her first word. She also says, "that", "hi", "ma", and "uh oh". I have one little funny story about her from this week. Her teacher, Kim, told me one night that all the kids were moving towards the kitchen area of their room for lunch time, and Hannah was sitting on the other side of a bookshelf, playing with toys contentedly. Kim said, "Where's Hannah?" Hannah replied with, "what?" So cute. Oh heaven forbid, they forget her for a meal. That is the highlight of Hannah's morning when we drop her off at daycare - what they are serving for breakfast! She loves to eat.

Hannah has also started a less attractive habit this week. When she gets angry or frustrated, she has started hitting and scratching. It is kind of cute and funny, but of course, we can't laugh at her. Her teachers said that she is picking it up from some of the other kids at school. Shocker. A better habit, she is starting to use tissues and pretend she cleaning. She wipes the floor or her feet with them. So cute. I remember Laura doing that when she was Hannah's age too. As Laura got older, she loved to help me clean. She would always want her own wipe (I was using a Clorox wipe). I would give her a baby wipe, and she would clean her little potty or wipe the table or floor. She doesn't do it as often anymore. Go figure.

You may have read on facebook that Matt taught Laura Left and Right this week. So now she tells him which way to turn on the way to school in the morning. At first he thought she was just guessing, but he quizzed her several times. And she seems to know the difference. I'm pretty sure I confused those till I was about in third grade. Kids just know so much more these days.

Hannah has also progressed to reaching another level of drawers in our kitchen. She now pulls out all of the towels and bibs and sometimes even makes it to the utensil drawer, which is one above that. She was crawling around this weekend with wooden spoons. She is really starting to attempt to stand on her own. She will pull herself up and then let go and smile and "plop" down on her butt. Soon enough she will start to take off. Any bets as to the date?

One other cute thing. So Hannah watches Laura get on the big potty a lot, and she recognizes that the little potty that sits on the floor (Laura just uses it as a stool now) is a potty. So she loves it when I sit her on it. She just kicks and smiles. She thinks she is big stuff sitting on the little potty.

Here are some pictures from the week.