Red & pink for the paparazzi

On Saturday we snapped our second annual Valentine’s portrait series. How can I not love holiday traditions that allow for extra quantities of pink apparel?  Luke napped in the stroller for a while so Eleanor had a rare stretch of solo camera time. What a little cutie-star she is!

Now that she’s walking she’s even more fun to photograph. We don’t have to worry about whether the ground is clean enough to crawl on. And she lights up with the delight of exploration and accomplishment!

Then Luke awoke, energy restored.

Did I really miss out on playtime at the Botanic Gardens?

We laughed when Luke imitated Eleanor’s Franken-walk inside the aquarium.

And then we finished the day with dinner at the Owl Café in celebration of Luke’s thrilling accomplishment – potty-training! We’ve been accident free this past week and just use pull-ups at night now. What better Valentine’s present could a Mommy ask for? I was also proud of him for signing his friends’ valentines with a yellow 'L’ and sealing them up himself.

Here are some pics from last V-day when the Ellabel was just a tiny babe. A world of difference between those and this year’s pics! They’re looking more and more like a pair of kids rather than a little boy and a baby!

Luke loves you SEW much!

Luke has been my V-day decorating sidekick this year. He ‘sewed’ the hearts for our light fixture with just a little help from me.

We’re planning to make a few more sewn hearts to tie onto Valentine gifts for his preschool teachers. And I can’t resist adding a cheesy note: Luke loves you SEW much!

Luke’s adorable robot valentines march along a garland that Eleanor is yearning to grab. We’ll see if she manages to snatch it down before its season passes!

This year’s V-day décor is shaping up to be decidedly less elegant than last year’s, but it’s been so much fun to decorate with Luke. He’s growing up so fast and becoming a sweet friend for me. The other night he told me: “Luke and Mommy best friends. Mommy is Tigger and Luke is Pooh!” What a heart-melter!

Valentine’s paint & prints

Luke and Eleanor have both been busy little cherubs, painting and printing V-Day art galore.

Luke’s project: WHALE YOU BE MY VALENTINE? {from here}

I made this whale stencil by drawing a whale shape, taping over the page to make it more Luke-proof, and then cutting out the whale. I also cut a few notches on the sides to make it easier to tape the stencil down. Here are some of our supplies:

Then we just taped the stencil on Luke’s page and let him paint! I love these watercolors that color beautifully with minimal mess. I bought ours at Michael’s about a year ago but I’ve had trouble finding them in stores since then. I hope Crayola isn’t phasing out this product. But anyway, after Luke finished painting I outlined the whale, removed the stencil, added a few embellishments, and ta-da!

By the end of the afternoon, Luke had experimented with stripes, dots, and colors and made a lovely little whale pod.

Eleanor’s art: THUMB-BODY LOVES YOU! {from here}

I love how this project is suitable for Valentine crafters of all ages, from newborn to adult.

I just taped together some decorative paper circles, but you could do this on a card of any shape or size. Then I printed the little princess thumb on the page and drew on the rest with a pen. We’re planning to make these in Luke’s Sunday School class this week, and I’m curious to see how it scales up to a roomful of two-year-olds!

We also tried a footprint variant. I printed Ella-belle’s toes on the page and then wrote: “Eleanor loves you from the tips of her toes!” But our girlie wasn’t very patient with the toe-printing so we mostly stuck with her thumb.

Then, we let both kiddos get their thumbs dirty for a sibling printing variant. I expected a cute little Ella thumb and a bigger Luke one, but this is what we got. Somehow Ella’s print outsizes Luke’s!

Happy Valentine’s Day from two terrific little thumb-kins!

Snow bunnies

Winter-long snow a half-hour’s drive away tops the list of Albuquerque’s unexpected amenities. I love being able to access deep drifts and dreamily dusted forests without the everyday hassle of shoveling and slush. So this weekend we bundled up our snow bunnies and drove them up the mountain for some winter adventure.

Luke took to sledding immediately.

Erik didn’t mind it either.

Eleanor seemed entertained for her first few runs.

But then Bumble invaded her sledding space.

And on her next run, Daddy may have been less than respectful when the princess took a spill.

Thankfully, she pardoned Bumble for his misdemeanor and Erik’s mockery was nothing that stroller time with a bottle couldn’t fix. We just might have a little sledding team in the making!

{More pics here.}

Birthday blast-off

Last weekend Luke was thrilled to attend a birthday party for his sweet friend, M. Luke’s been to a couple other birthday parties, but this was the first time he really understood the concept of a party and couldn’t wait to participate in the festivities. The party was Toy Story themed, so that morning we watched some clips on YouTube with our movie-deprived child. Honestly, he’s so easily spooked by evil characters that I think it will be a long time until I want him to watch it for fear of never getting to sleep in my own bed again! But anyway, back to the party… look at these cutie-pie hats and favors!

Here’s M chasing Luke. Our boy LOVES a good game of chase!

Then there was pin the badge on Buzz,

a little piñata candy chaos {video here},

and lunch from “Pizza Planet” plus adorable Martian cupcakes! The fabulous time has me inspired to throw a party for Luke’s third bday, which is coming up fast. Regretfully, I have yet to host a single birthday bash for Luke or Eleanor. We’ve always been busy on their birthdays and I’ve never quite gotten my party act together in time. We have plans for Luke’s actual birthday this year too, but I’m thinking we’ll just have his party a few weeks later. I love the idea of a book theme and quickly gravitated to Luke’s long-standing favorite, Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go. It’s sweet that this book was a childhood favorite of Erik’s too. A quick web search yielded a wealth of party inspiration. Like this pic from here:

We’ll see what Lukebug and I manage to put together!

East Coast road trip, Part 2

I’m finally finishing our Christmas travel recap! I wrote here about Christmas in NC, here about Eleanor’s bday in NC, and here about our first road trip stop in NJ. On New Year’s Eve, after a fond farewell to my NJ relatives, we headed south for an afternoon at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden with Andrea and Erik and their precious little boys.

In this pic, Luke and I are silhouetted against a big tank. Faintly, you can make out the hulking mass of….

A hippo!! They were so agile and huge, just exhilarating to watch.

But most amazing were the numerous touch tanks. So exciting! (Especially when I had to moderate Luke’s not-always-gentle-enough touching) When we visited our aquarium last week, I enjoyed reminding Luke that we’d touched many of the animals before.

Below, Luke and C happily munch apples with an obliging turtle statue. What a great time we all had. If only we could join them for aquarium trips more often!

Then we drove up to Princeton, headed to a lovely New Year’s party. We usually spend New Year’s with family, and so I don’t think I’ve gone out to a New Year’s party since college! I’m not sure this officially counts, since we did leave with our sleepy pair before 10 pm, but seeing old friends, meeting little Miss Eliana, and Aime and Greg’s warm hospitality made it a perfect evening even with our early departure.

We were blessed to be back at Westerly Road Church the next morning. How things have changed since the Sunday mornings when I would run out of my dorm to catch the vans from the U-Store! Now there are baby bags to carry and two little people to drop off! It was wonderful to worship there once again and hear a terrific message from Pastor John about God’s calling for parents to raise children for the Lord, not just for ourselves (Luke 2:41-52).

Then we spent a relaxing afternoon with John, Lucy, and little Miss Anna. It was so much fun to catch up with them, see all the work they’ve done on their lovely home, and have other dear friends stop by!

We finished Sunday with a fabulous dinner with Hilary and Steven and little Mr. Philip. The spread easily topped every other breakfast-dinner I have ever been served, and the conversation was wonderful as always. Plus (when Luke finally fell asleep) we played a few rounds of Dominion, a board game we’ve all come to enjoy recently. Luke appreciated his and Phil’s shared toy preferences – anything with wheels! (:

We were so warmly welcomed – despite our last-minute plans and over-tired, vacation-worn children! What a blessing to get to catch up with so many wonderful friends in one place.

You might think that we’d be wise enough to stop there and fly home after so much schedule-disruption for Luke and Ellabelle. We considered it, but we couldn’t miss out on another visit with Auntie C! So Monday morning we drove down for a little more Auntie bonding, this time at the Air and Space Museum. Colleen surprised us by bringing her nice friend Ryan along, who was a hit with Luke and Eleanor. Luke also loved being surrounded by air and space craft

and was especially thrilled by the ones you can walk onto.

But the even bigger thrill was the vehicle you can walk onto that also moves fast – the metro of course! Luke was awestruck by the gust of wind as it zoomed by, the automatic doors, and the jolting ride. Here’s our crew, waiting on the platform (minus Erik, the cameraman).

After dinner and a sad farewell (“Luke want stay at Auntie C’s place!”  was the refrain for our car ride’s first hour) we drove back down to my parents’ house. What a wonderful whirlwind of visits to start off 2012!

One-year wonder!

There’s so much to report on our thriving Ellacub! She started walking a few weeks before she turned one, following a couple cautious months of standing from a sitting position and just looking around. Luke took his first steps at nine months, but they were from a standing position after pulling up on a piece of furniture. When Eleanor was ready to walk at almost twelve months, she just stood up in the middle of the floor and did it! For a few weeks she transitioned from crawling to walking and now she rarely crawls. I love the way she swings her legs out to the side as she steps and firmly plants them down.

Recent Milestones

Talking! In the right mood, she’ll repeat any simple word for you but she also has a whole list that she uses spontaneously. These include the typical mommy, daddy, hi, and uh-oh. Other common words include, yes, no, this, dog, up, out, and everybody’s favorite: please! ‘Please’ is actually her most used word! When she wants some of what I’m eating or a refill, she looks at me and sweetly says ‘pease?’ with a smile. Sometimes it’s ‘pease, dis?’ with her finger pointing. She also uses this phrase when she wants an out-of-reach item. I think our please and thank you prompts to the Luke-boy may have had better results on her than on their intended audience! (:

Ever the girly-girl, she quite favors accessories. She delights in finding hats and putting them on herself, trying to put on shoes, and donning rings and bracelets. I hope this bodes well for all the darling hair clips I’ve accumulated! Her hair is just long enough to start using the tiniest clips. She also has four teeth and four more poking through her gums.

Likes/Dislikes

She is so proud to be able to travel forward and backward on ride-on toys by pushing with her feet. She’s watched Luke race around this way for so long, she delights to be able to do it too. Thankfully, the new ride-on car from Nika and Papi has made this new skill much less contentious in our house!

She’s losing interest in having food fed to her, much preferring to finger-feed herself. Her current favorites include cheese, blueberries, carrots from beef stew, and pasta. Pasta happens to be at the tip-top of Luke and Erik’s food lists too, so it’s a frequent meal plan.

The play kitchen that she and Luke received from us for Christmas has been a big hit. How cute she is stirring food in pots and pretending to eat it. She also loves any toy she can push or pull around the house, pushing cars back and forth with darling ‘vroom’ noises. In the past month she’s become a zealous book reader, toddling up to me with a book several times a day and beaming with delight when I sit her on my lap to read.

Sibling Report

With all these delightful new stages has come a little more competition on the sibling front. Luke and Ella both struggle with grabbing each other’s toys and then throwing angry fits over having their toys taken. Of course Luke bears the bulk of the blame since he’s older, but there are times when Eleanor merits a reprimand and instruction too. I’m sad to say that they do their share of pushing and grabbing, but thankfully there’s never any real injuries from their squabbles. It mostly just produces the type of whining and wailing that stops immediately once a child gets his or her way. Teaching them to share and care for each other is ever a challenge and prayer request here!

Of course there are also times when they share and play together marvelously. It thrills my heart when Luke excitedly exclaims, “Eleanor ‘wake!!” as he hears Eleanor waking and joyfully rushes in to see her after her nap. He also negotiates for her when we announce her bedtime: “Eleanor go to bed in two more minutes.” They both love playing in boxes, baskets and tubs – climbing in together and giggling contagiously.

Routine

Eleanor’s single-nap routine doesn’t always thrill me. Some days I feel like she could really use another nap but she just can’t seem to nap a second time. And typically her nap is just barely an hour long! But I’ve recently decided to stop fighting it and just accommodate her with an earlier bedtime. Now we try to put her sleepy self to bed by 7 pm and then she sleeps (with 1-2 night feedings…) until ~7 am. Luke has dropped his nap altogether, so he’s been going to bed earlier too (by 8 pm) and sleeping until ~8 am. I love that this schedule puts them in range of their age-based sleep quotas, and sometimes they supplement with little snoozes in the car.

It’s too bad that these earlier bedtimes don’t allow for a lot of evening activities, but I’m excited to be closing a chapter on our naptime battles. For now, Ella’s happy to take just one and Luke has been going down at night so much better without an afternoon nap.  Hurray! But I realize that I’m now a person who can talk about child sleep habits FOREVER so just in case you don’t share my fixation on them, let’s get back to the topic at hand…. the Ella-Wonder!

Looking back

Want to look back on old Eleanor milestone posts like I do? Here are more notes on our Bella-babe.

• Nine months – crawling & cruising, first words, kissing & 9 states
• Seven months – sitting herself up & solid food
• Five months – self-swinging, bumbo-punting, & rolling both ways
• Three months – rolling over & scooching
• One month – heart-stealing smiles

We love you Ella-belle and it’s such a joy to watch you grow and flourish!