Happy Valentine's Day!!

 We had a busy week getting ready for Valentine's Day.  Sophie, of course, had been waiting for this day to come since mid-January.  She loves all things holiday, and was super excited for the next one to come.

Sophie making her Valentines.  Preschool has been a wonderful activity for Sophie this year.  It has given her some independence, maturity, and friends.  She could not wait to make her valentines for all of the kids in her class.

Sophie's valentines.  We filled the bags with Swedish Fish.

 I tried to do different Valentine activities with her everyday this week.  I got lots of great ideas from Pinterest- which I both love and hate.  (Really when do those moms ever sleep?  Who has time to do all those things?)  Anyway, the candy heart color sorting proved to be a favorite activity.

All of her sorted hearts.

We made Rice Crispy suckers.  Sophie helped with the entire process, so each pop was covered in chocolate and about 5 lbs of sprinkles.

Looking at all of her valentines from school.

Cade realized there was candy on the floor.  Sophie grabbed it away just in time.

Caught in the act.

First balloon.  This provided lots of fun!

Cade and Sophie both looking at the balloons.  What a great day!

Crawling Cade

Cade is officially a crawler!  He started off doing a couple of crawls at a time, before dropping back down to his belly, but he has now mastered the task!  He crawls all over.  We are officially in the clean floor phase, because if there is anything on the floor he will go after it!  Sophie has learned rather quickly that she needs to put her toys up high, or they're fair game.  He has also just started being able to sit up from a laying down position, and is trying very hard to pull up on things.  It's amazing that all these things are happening at once!  I am hoping that since he can now crawl and sit up, he will stop trying to master these skills in the wee hours of the morning.  I often find him crawling around his crib at 1:30 in the morning.  In typical Cade fashion, he always greets me with a smile, as if to say, "Hey, this is great, you're up too!"  It's a good thing he is so darn stinkin' cute!

Jan updates

 We have seen several changes with the kids in January.  Cade has gone through the biggest changes- he is now a champion sleeper!   He now takes an hour nap in the morning- I usually have to wake him up- and then 2- 21/2 in the afternoon!  It's incredible, he used to only sleep a total of 2 hours throughout the entire day.  Because he is now napping regularly, we can now get out of the house and do things- we didn't do much before because he would always nap in the car and that would ruin the little napping that he did at home.  I wish I could take credit for his napping, but honestly I did nothing different.  One day he just decided to sleep, and sleep.

 Sophie's imagination has really taken off. She plays all day in her own little world- although she is usually a kitty or a favorite character from a book- like Froggy.  In the picture above she was a mommy kangaroo and had her Joey tucked in her pouch all day. It was pretty cute to see her bouncing around the house with her stuffed animal tucked in her shirt all day.

 Sophie also just got her 1st haircut.  She was pretty scared, but it's amazing what a bribe of a lollipop will do.  She later informed me that getting her haircut was her favorite part of the day.  We will go back again, but I am sure I will have to bring another lollipop.

 Showing off her new haircut.  If you look really close you might be able to tell that it's trimmed.

 Cade is now an official army crawler.  He is now happily terrifying his sister by following her around and trying to take whatever she is playing with.  There have not been any major fights- yet- but I am sure they will come as he gets more mobile.

Sophie was quite pleased because we had strawberry shortcake for dessert.  I told her that it was a special dessert for the Super Bowl.  She looked down at the dessert and told me that,"it's not a super bowl, it's a super plate!"  She's a cutie!