Birthday Dinner

Here we are celebrating Ellena's birthday at Fins. Check out the banana split!

Happy 1st Birthday, Ellena!

Today is Ellena's first birthday! Hard to imagine that a year has gone by already! Baby girl is growing up - she is crawling up on hands and knees, Tooth #9 is out, with #10-12 ready to cut through in the next couple weeks, and she loves to eat table food and drink milk from a cup! She is also starting to get more assertive with her brother. If she doesn't want him to take a toy away from her, she will fuss and push him away.

Here's a video clip of the Birthday Girl opening a present.

All Aboard!

Evan's Thomas the Train ride-on has been stored in the coat closet and he's been asking to bring it out. We finally relented and Ellena has taken a liking to it. I push her around and she also likes to climb on by herself. Got some great smiles out of her today.

Kids Day @ Issy Farmers Market

This morning we went to Kids Day at the Issy Farmers Market. Evan was really disappointed that there were no pony rides - we'll just have to try again at the end of August. But they had a place to chalk, and just this morning we were talking about chalking at the Bellevue ArtsFair. So that was a nice treat for the kids. El liked to scribble and Pops traced Evan - turns out Evan's outline looks like a gingerbread man. Go figure. The kids also had a blast at the Gymboree area.

Another One of Those Moments

Turn my back for one minute...

... And the kids are playing on the table. Naughty!

Lunch Date

Today we got to meet up with my good friend, Jen, who was in town from Chicago. It was great to spend some time with her, and she got to play with Evan and meet Ellena for the first time.

The above pics are pretty much the same, except for El's smirk and Ev's silly faces. Couldn't pick one over the other, so I just posted both.

Leave the Room for One Minute...

...And this is what I come back to:

Evan set up a triage unit on our couch and brought Rudy in cause he got hurt. Nurse Ellena was in the mix with the thermometer, which in this picture, she is in full wind-up mode. As soon as I took the picture, she threw it.

You Can Almost Hear the Wheels Turning...

This week, Evan and I had 2 conversations where you could almost hear the wheels in his head turning as he came up with his responses...

* Yesterday Pops was going to be coming home late from work. One of his co-workers was having a going away happy hour send-off. Evan wanted to know why Pops would be late. I told him, "Someone that Poppa works with won't be working there anymore. So they are going to go say bye-bye." Here it is: wheels turning, wheels turning... Evan's response, "But it doesn't take that long to say bye bye. See... bye bye. That doesn't take long."

* Evan, Grandma Madeline and I were talking about a wedding Pops and I will be attending next week. Grandma and Grandpa will be watching the kids and they were thinking of places to eat dinner. Evan then asked when HE was going to get married. We told him not for a long time and then asked if he knew who he was going to marry. He promptly responded, "Cousin Aaron." Nope, sorry. It has to be a girl and someone that you're not related to - which takes Cousin Aaron out of the running on both counts. So here it is again... wheels turning, wheels turning... "Is Uncle Stu a boy?" hee hee... again, a boy and related. Try again, dude.

Blueberry Picking

Yesterday the Mommies (and the kids) went to Mercer Slough to pick blueberries. We got a little over half a pound and Ellena just ate a bunch for breakfast - slow down, girl! It was fun for everyone, but I felt like it was a little "picked through". I'm wondering how different it will be at Remlinger - it's a little farther out in the "country" as compared to Bellevue Way. ;)

Here's Evan with a handful of berries.

Here's Ellena pointing to the blueberries.

Will was quite taken with Ellena... or maybe just the stroller.

Evan with Wendy and Isabel

Raspberry Picking

Today we went raspberry picking at Remlinger Farm. It has been a few years since we did this, but Evan remembered how to be gentle with the berries. He did a great job! And thank goodness for Grandma Madeline! Don't know if I would have been able to wrangle both monkeys in the field. :)

As you can see in the above picture, Evan is hard at work and Ellena is trying to mooch berries from my hand.

I am now attempting some raspberry tarts - we shall see...

Piggie

I felt Ellena was old enough to have a little snuggly friend in her crib, so I brought out a bag of stuffed animals and had her pick a friend. She chose a cute pink pig. I call it Piggie. Pops came up with a variety of pig-related names: Pork Chop, Pigenstein, Hammy, Bacon, etc.

Piggie stays in her crib and Ellena snuggles up to it at nap and bedtime. It's too cute. But she doesn't hold on to it while she sleeps (we go in and check at night). We'll see if she stays attached to Piggie or if I can rotate some other friends...

The Latest

Here's the latest on the kids:

Evan and Ellena have a little cold. Yuck. Evan's colds tend to be a little congestion, but a LOT of coughs. Ellena seems to just have a non-stop runny nose. Ironically, I was just thinking a few days ago, how healthy Ellena has been. Of course, she then gets a cold. But this is only her second cold in her 11+ months. Pretty good. Here she is lying on the ground - she never lies on the ground. She just rolled over on her back and was lying there. You know she must be sick. But she started getting silly for the camera.

Just yesterday Ellena started crawling up on her knees. Very cool to watch the progression. But if she wants to get somewhere FAST, she drops down to her belly crawl.

I am always amazed at what she can comprehend. The other day she took the door stopper off the wall. I asked her, "Ellena, are you supposed to be playing with that?" She gave me a cheesy smile and shook her head No. She's very clear about her No head shakes and Yes head nods. Makes life pretty easy.

Yesterday she heard a car start up across the street. She stopped playing and started waving bye bye. Wow, this girl is a smarty. Of course, I'm her mom, I have to say that. ;)

Evan is growing up so fast. In the above pictures, you can see his new haircut. For a while there he was getting a bit shaggy. He is loving going over to Grandma's house and yesterday when I dropped him off, he got all snippy at me, "Don't come with me!" He wanted to walk to the door by himself. That little dude is growing up! And the attitude! Geez! He was talking to Grandma about going shopping for rockets. I asked him if he meant the rockets that he played with at the pool. His response was so sassy: "No, you weren't there, Momma. I was with Grandma at Target."

Oh yeah, and as you can see from the pics, Ellena likes climbing the stairs. I've had to bring out the gate for times that I need her on the bottom floor. And I now need to keep the bathroom door closed so that she doesn't play in the toilet. Ick.

Boom Boom Boom

For the third year in a row, we spent 4th of July blowing fireworks at our friends, Ring's and Jane's house. Every year the show seems to get bigger and bigger, and this year was no exception. Our friend, Hoku, has been anxiously anticipating this and put together a really cool show. Here's the "before" picture of just the finale.

Pops took video of it and put it up on YouTube. It's pretty spectacular. Seriously, my neck got stiff from looking up for so long.

Happy 4th!

Our neighborhood had a little parade this morning to celebrate the 4th. El went down for a nap and I took Evan to take part in his first parade. Here he is in his gear, ready to scoot in the parade.

After riding past a few houses, he complained about ouchy knees, so we took the scooter home and decided to just walk in the parade. Here he is at the start of the parade.

It was a long walk for the little dude, but he made it! It ended at the park and we visited the ducks and played on the playground. "Bitchy Momma" had to come out and regulate on the kids that were climbing up the slide when Evan was waiting patiently to take his turn.

Here's El in her festive red, white and blue outfit. What a kolohe (rascal) face!