Happy Halloween!!

Last night we had Trunk-or-Treat at the church. We had a good time. Sylvie was Darth Vader and Grace was a bumble bee. And we were M&Ms. The girls did pretty well. Sylvie wasn't too afraid of very much. Except one mask. Pastor Ron had an old man mask that had long white hair. Her goal for the evening was to remain as far away from that mask as possible.

Conversations with the Ocean and Standing on Her Own Two Feet

Christianna and I were teaching Sylvie how to "listen to the ocean" in a seashell. Sylvie held the shell up to her ear and listened quite intently. Then with a gasp and a smile she took the shell from her ear and put it over her mouth and said "Hello ocean!"

Grace, brave one that she is, is now letting go quite often while she's standing up. She pushes her little walker cart all over the house. A good portion of my day is spent removing her from the side of the oven and taking her to another part of the house only to find that she's beat me back to the oven. It's all a great deal of fun for her.

We hit the pumkin farm again this year. This time Papa Alessi got to go with us. Here are a few pics.

Roll Call

Ever since Sylvie was a baby she has always taken roll call. She would wake up from a nap and do the parent check. She'd look around, see Mommy, see Daddy and go back to sleep. When we're leaving the house she makes sure we're all there. The other day we were at Burger King. When we gathered everyone and everything to leave Jeremy put Grace on his shoulders. When we stepped out the door Sylvie was asking for Grace and looking all over with a very concerned expression on her face. She hadn't seen Grace way up on Daddy's shoulders. Once we showed her that Grace was safe and sound with us all was well and we could go on our way. I love this quality about Sylvie that makes sure our family is all together.

11 September, 2008...Our Ninth Anniversary

To celebrate our 9th anniversary we revisited some of the places we went on the day we got engaged. Quite a lot has changed in the past nine and half years since we did these things and we had a blast.

We took the girls to Brookfield Zoo. When we got engaged it was March. March in Chicago is brutal. It was so cold we spent our visit running from one building to the next. But yesterday the weather was perfect for a trip to the zoo. Not too cold, not too hot. Not even too sunny, it was a bit overcast...just how we like it. Sylvie was so excited to go to the zoo. She's getting pretty good at recognizing her animals and then pretending to be them. She also loves to teach Grace the sign for the animals we know the signs for. Sylvie and Jeremy both liked the bears. We recited "Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see?". We all liked the elephant. Sylvie and I had an elephant march. And Grace really liked the rhino. She was really squealing and talking to a lot of the animals, but especially the rhino. One part that Jeremy and I thought was so cool was not such a hit with the girls. There is an exhibit called "Stingray Bay" where you can actually pet stingrays. It was pretty neat. They're pretty soft and slimy. Neither of the girls wanted to go near the water. At first I thought Grace was doing the squeal of delight she does when she gets excited about animals but then it grew to a "Get me away from here, Daddy!" scream.

Of course Sylvie wanted to ride the carousel. So we all hopped on. It was Grace's first time to sit on an animal and she really enjoyed it. She was doing the Squeal of Delight. We also took some time out for some ice cream. Sylvie enjoyed her Spongebob Squarepants ice cream to the max.

That was a full day at the zoo. Quite different than our first visit. We are so blessed to have our two littles. We took the girls home and our friends Chris and Jackie came over to watch them while Jeremy and I continued our date.

We got dressed up and headed to the Signature Room at the 95th Floor of the John Hancock building. This is where he proposed to me in March 1999. I don't typically like going to super fancy restaurants. Jeremy loves to do this. I always feel self concious and as if I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. However, God had a lot of this planned and I was at ease about going here from the beginning. The restaurant is on the 95th floor, as the name says. It is a most beautiful view of the city. The best tables are on the outside ring next to the floor to ceiling windows. This is where we sat when we got engaged. I was quite excited to return here and was hoping for another chance to sit by the windows. Both of our levels of excitement grew as the waiter walked us to our seat. He took us to the same table we sat at when Jeremy proposed!!! Neither of us could believe it. What a special night. To bring our day full circle we couldn't help but laugh at the menu. On the Chef's Specials page was Sauteed Skate Wing. The same creature we had been petting at Stingray Bay was on the menu!! Jeremy was shocked. I thought it was delicious. ;-)

Thanks for reading about our special day. I will try to add more pictures later. I'm still learning this new software we have so the pictures I rotated didn't show up rotated when I went to upload them.

Wanna buy a condo?

Here is the link to view the pictures of our home. It's nice having our home look like a magazine every once in awhile.

http://tours2.vht.com/BWI/T1174693

Bub...Bub

My children continue to amaze me. Grace loves her bugs. Whenever we change her diaper now she looks at her bug mobile and says "Bub. Bub." She then looks at her hands and tries desperately to make the same bug sign I am. It's very adorable and amazing at the same time. Sylvie is doing new things everyday too. Friday night we went to a high school football game. She liked the cheerleaders and loved yelling "Go! Go Dogs!" she even yelled "Go Momos!" The team we were watching was the Richards Bulldogs and Momo is her name for dog. She made friends with another little girl. They played on the bleachers and shared popcorn and yelled "Touchdown!" together. Saturday Sylvie woke up wanting pom poms. So, we made some pom poms for her out of construction paper, tape, and toddler forks. We put a little red, white, and blue leotard with skirt on her we found at a garage sale and threw her hair up in pigtails. She was my little cheerleader all day. Now she not only says "Go Dogs!" But she also cheers "Go Cubs! Go Sox! Go Kansas! Go Jayhawks! and Go Bears!"

So, while in her cheerleader outfit we went to Fall on the Green. An annual festival down by the library. They had a special firefighter area for kids to go through. Sylvie got to wear a firefighter coat just her size and they gave her a hat to take home. There were stations to do the things a firefighter does. They even had a pole to slide down! It all looked very exciting but Sylvie didn't want to do any of it. She wore her coat and walked to each station but didn't want to try any of them. We did get her in the dino jump though. It took some coercing and convincing that if she didn't like it she could come right out. Yeah, guess who was the last one out.

Well, I'd better get some dishes done and my chilli put away. Tomorrow is our 9 year anniversary! WOW!

Potty Training Here We Come!

Yesterday my house was the cleanest it's EVER been. We had everything cleaned and picked up and put away for the photographer. Our house is officially on the market and the pictures were taken yesterday to be posted on MLS. So, keep and eye out for them. They look really nice.

Now that we should just be in the 'maintaining the clean' mode and everyone is healthy I think we're going to focus some energy on getting Sylvie on the potty. She loves her special potty but doesn't seem to want to sit on it without her pants. She is showing all the other signs of being ready so Mom is just going to have to get over her own fears and be a little more agressive. I've printed out a reward chart and stickers. She loves stickers so hopefully this will provide greater motivation.

A note about Grace. She seems to be picking up a little sign language already. She's done 'finished' and 'bug'.