Growing Girls

It's hard to believe how big my girls are now.

Lillian is sleeping away peacefully, easy as usual.  I just put Audrey back to bed after she wandered into the living room half-asleep.  Carrying her back to her room and looking at her sleeping face, it was hard to believe that just a few years ago she was significantly smaller than Lillian is now.  The first photos are Audrey modeling her new outfit from Nana - thanks Nana :)   

Lillian had her 2 month check-up yesterday, and we took the opportunity during our wait for the doctor to get Audrey's measurements as well.  Lillian was quite a big bigger than I had estimated - she was 12.5 pounds and 22.5 inches long.  Audrey was just under 29 pounds, and 36.5 inches in shoes - she's getting so tall!  Even though Audrey is growing a lot, she is actually still between 10th to 25th percentile for height. 

We found out today that Audrey made her way off the wait-list for ballet at a local Arts center.  The first class is tomorrow morning, so we had a bit of a mad dash this afternoon trying to get her outfit together.  Audrey is very excited and wore her ballet outfit for most of the evening.  I was worried she wouldn't want to take it off for bed, but she was actually pretty reasonable about it.  I will definitely get a photo in the morning...it's not an official ballet outfit because of our time constraints, but I promised her we would get a skirt if she was good in class.  Speaking of Audrey being small - the bodysuit I got for her is supposed to be for 1 to 1.5 year-olds, but is actually big on her!  I'm very curious to see how she will do at the class, I hope she enjoys it.  One of her little friends is in the class already, so that may help.

We've had a good week so far.  We all walked up to Audrey's favorite playground yesterday evening.  It was perfect late-Spring weather.  Audrey had a great time running around, but we had to head home after she had a little accident on the swings...she was on the big kid swings and was lost focus and fell off.  I have an image in my brain of her in midair and both Michael and I trying to catch her (me wearing Lillian in the Baby Bjorn).  She face-planted in the mulch.  Luckily she wasn't going very quickly or very high on the swing.  But she was very tough and handled it well, I was proud of her.  Apart from licking Michael's sweater to get the mulch out of her mouth, she was fine :)

 Here are a couple photos of Lillian in her bath this evening:

I'm glad it's the weekend.  I will try to get some good photos of our adventures!

More visitors & Mommy's Birthday

I seem to have taken no photos with my camera recently, just with my scratched-up camera phone. But we have had some fun!

Audrey had a play-date with one of her new friends, Jenna. We went to the Smith Playhouse and they had a little picnic:

Then Auntie Ashlea arrived from England for a little visit. The girls were very happy to see her & she had a fun little photo shoot of her own with them:

We also made another visit to Atlantic City. This was supposed to be a photo of a shop called Irene's for Baba, but it didn't quite turn out :)

Then Papa arrived from Kentucky. Audrey was quite happy to give her room over to our visitors as she got to sleep on a mattress in our room.

Walking by the Schuylkill River in Philly with Papa:

We took a quick trip up to Hoboken with Papa on my birthday and picked up Uncle Dave. Hoboken was a surprisingly very cool place and we had a nice walk on the Hudson River with an amazing view of Manhattan in the NINETY degree weather. Then we hurried back to Philly for dinner with Michael.

Yesterday we went for a tour of a nearby preschool. Audrey loved it! She really wants to go to school and was so excited to interact with the other kids and the teachers. We are going to two more schools next week and Audrey is excited to see some more classrooms. Lillian was unimpressed and slept through everything :)

Lillian is just getting easier! She is settling into a little more of a routine and has one long nap in the middle of the day is going to bed earlier in the evening and getting a long block of sleep - last night she went to sleep at 8:30 and didn't wake up until 3:30! If I hadn't stayed up until midnight filing our taxes I would have really been able to enjoy that.

Tomorrow is Lillian's two-month check-up and I'm looking forward to hearing how big she is now. Not so much to the shots, but at least Audrey was glad to hear that she would not need any shots.

Speaking of shots, it's funny, Audrey seems to think it's possible that she will at some point become a baby again. She has made the comment more than once about things happening in the future when she is little like Lillian. I keep telling her that she only grows bigger. Her memory keeps amazing me though...today we were watching a little video from last June when I had to go to a conference, after watching the video she talked about things totally unconnected to the video that had happened later that day and I know I haven't spoken of them since. I was very surprised.

And here are a couple of extra photos & videos:

Lillian enjoying her special blanket from Aunt Martine & Uncle Ted (Thank you!!)

My first attempt at a braid for Audrey:

And Lillian "talking"

And Lillian enjoying her new toy from Auntie Chrystal's family:

More video

Just a couple of videos if you want to see some more of Audrey and Lillian :)

Audrey dancing - with Lillian watching intently:

Happy Easter

We hope you all had a nice Easter weekend. We really had a great time! (Although as you can see, Lillian was a little unsure about the bunny ears). In our week with Baba, the girls went to Manhattan and Atlantic City for the first time (my first time also!), and to many other fun places!

Lillian is two months old today - I thought it would be a good time to post the photos from her one-month photo shoot :) She is growing and doing well. I'm looking forward to seeing her weight next week. She has also become more interactive and is "talking" more. If I say "ohhhh" or "ahhh" she is very interested and will try to talk back. Lillian is also smiling more and seems to be a happy baby.

Audrey had a big day for Easter. She enjoyed a big Easter egg hunt at the park on Saturday, and then was very excited about the Easter Bunny visiting our apartment. I'm still a little unsure if we will keep up the Easter Bunny tradition, but it was pretty funny. She was actually a little scared at first, but quickly warmed to the idea of someone who brought candy and chocolate.

Lillian & Audrey a month ago:

And some more recent photos from Uncle Dave's visit and Easter:

I wish this photo wasn't blurry, I still like it. Audrey really is very sweet with Lillian.

Audrey decided she was going to take pictures of me with her imaginary camera:

Audrey's Birthday Videos

Audrey's Baba is visiting us at the moment! We are having a great time and doing lots of neat stuff & trying to take lots of pictures (including Audrey & Lillian's & my first trip to NYC!).

Until I get a chance to upload all that, here are two videos from Audrey's birthday for you to enjoy:

We are all doing well. Lillian just keeps on growing and developing, she is starting to smile more and is very interested in the world. She will be eight weeks old in two days, it's hard to believe!