Holiday Explosions!

Before:
During:

After:

Exploding target, almost empty bottle of ether, bag of flour, and a turkey sandwich...

Off to Champaign--updated with video

our good girl spent about 11 hrs in this position today! She did SOOOO good as we knew she would... DVD player and youtube helped too We are chilling with the characters in our sister blog Chris, Gabby and Maggie!

Evie loved playing with Maggie and tried not to be too possessive of her awesome toys..

Here she is in repose, doing one of Maggie's puzzles...see last video in this post...

cute videos of the kids running around in pajamas can be seen here! Enjoy!

More X-mas Evie pics

No one likes boxes more than cats and kids... Here are a few of Evie's new fav things... Spongebob (she mostly likes the theme song) and dressing up in coat, hat, and gloves, for no particular reason..

She would only wear the hat for like 2 seconds... luckily I snapped these pics during that time.

"Hmmm... What Christmas mischief can I make?

Lastly, here is Evie sitting in her princess chair... I love this pic sooo much, she is so beautiful.

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Second Christmas - First Impressions

we celebrated our Christmas morning today. Last night we excitedly put together her rocking motorcycle/tricycle...it converts into a push along tricycle, then a tricycle when she's old enough. Anyway, she was really excited about it in the store, so we thought she'd see it and be overjoyed.....



Well, I think instead of being overjoyed, she was a little overwhelmed. here's the first impression video:










So, instead we had breakfast and took a little break from the whole thing. Afterward, jack and I exchanged gifts in order to see if she'd get curious and join us. Not really surprisingly enough. Eventually we coaxed her over to open some of her gifts....




here she is opening her books. She really liked the Dear Zoo book and Baby Danced the Polka. She also really enjoyed her ZuZu pet while it was just squeaking and making noise...but as soon as we put it on the table to roll around she got scared of it.

So, we tried to introduce her to the rocking motocycle again. This time she seemed to like it......

as you can see, if we show her the ZuZu pet again she gets scared. woops.

At the end of the video she is requesting her broom. She must have her broom most of the time. Reminds me of a picture my mom took of me when I was 3 or so, watching Mickey Mouse Club with my hat on and broom in my hand. Like mother like daughter. Funny.

In other news - Jack got me a nice 14-piece Rachel Ray ORANGE pots and pans set. I've been wanting one of these for a long time now so very excited to get it.

So, "how we feeling about this 14-piece set?" Pretty good, Uncle Rico, pretty good.

Winter clothes

check out these new duds!

baby its cold outside!

Dont worry about Ev freezing though!

Thanksgiving!

We had a fun thanksgiving this year!!! Great food, great friends

Occoquan

had a fun sunday in Occoquon VA on the Occoquon river. It is a nice little tourist town with great pies! Evie had fun seeing seagulls on the dock

Fun at the playground!!

evie's hand turkeys

ever since we taught her this she wants more more more

meow!

bunny!!

Early Christmas Gift from Gma and Gpa

these are the petits fours I got for Louie's birthday. There's a cute little doggy bakery on 8th street SE where I walk to go to work, so I stopped on my way home. He enjoyed them thoroughly.




We got a surprise package from Amazon - Evie's Christmas gift from Grandma and Grandpa Pollari...... So, this post is for them to see how she reacted when she got it and started playing with it.



It's a music, learning, and video interactive station. She was very excited to begin playing on it.
She had very little patience for waiting while the batteries were installed....

But once they were, she got to playing and dancing right away....

She also likes to imitate the dog on the game..it's funny

thank you Grandma and Grandpa!

Oh, also, Priscilla enjoyed the box it came in....

birthday boy

happy 10th old boy . we love u mucho

slide!

evie is a fully fubnctional slider now. 60 degrees and sunny today. mom got to play hookie from work, do some shopping, and hit the playground w/E. it doesn't get much better :-)

Empathy is not a dirty word.

We in this household think empathy is a very important trait to have. If everyone in the world had a healthy dose of empathy, the world would be a much better place. We are very proud to say that Evelyn is learning to be empathetic already!

It is unfortunate than an ignorant demagogue (who will remain nameless) claims empathy is somehow synonymous with hitler ... and leads to very bad decisions... like the holocaust...

As usual, this demagogue is wrong... Empathy is great to learn and great to learn early:
"Children who are empathic tend to do better in school, in social situations, and in their adult careers. Children and teenagers who have the greatest amount of skill at empathy are viewed as leaders by their peers."

Below is a video of Evie looking at a burn Roxanne got on the stove. I was so surprised the first time she saw it... I have never seen the look on her face before.. it looked like she was going to cry and she said.. "Owww-a" in the sadest voice I have ever heard. She was sad that her mommy had an owie. For a kid under 2, we think that is pretty special.

Countdown to Louie's 10th Birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nov. 9th!!

Louie got his first birthday card ever!!! Thanks Nick Jessamyn and Elena for the card!

someone is an excellent artist!!

A better louie representation I have not seen!!
I am guessing on Louie's 10th Birthday he is gonna party so much he will puke!! (those of you who know Louie well also know this wont be much of a deviation from his normal daily activity).

pics from Missouri Halloween weekend

went to Missoura for a long weekend. We got to do lots of visiting and halloween fun having. Evie loved seeing all of her Missouri relatives especially her Grandma and Grandpa!

Rx and I got to go to a halloween party while Gpa and gma babysat...

we really dont have a short description as to what either of us were.. I was sort of a pumpkin /racoon in a trash bag and Rx was dangermouse/powerpuff girl/ zorro...

Evie had sooooooooooooo much fun this visit. She had her first trick or treating and it was great!

quack quack!

lots of candy too! she had so much fun with her missouri cousins who were a scary sucker eating lion, and a very enthusiastic Mario

Roar!!