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'.

Grace Crawled Today

Just wanted to add a quick entry to document that today Grace truly crawled. She has been quite mobile for awhile, rolling wherever she wants to go. But today she crawled and wasn't thinking about it. She was thinking about what she was going after which was the remote control. Where does the get that from? Of course I tried to get it on video but she stopped crawling and started rolling as soon as the camera came out. I'll try to get some video posted as soon as Grace decides she wants to perform.

Grace is 8 months old.

I just wanted to let the world know I am 8 months old today! I'm a pretty busy baby. Ilike to jump in my jumper. I even make it swing back and forth. I love to roll around. Mommy calls me a roly poly olie. I can roll clear across the room and right down the hall. Sometimes I get up on my hands and knees. Mommy gets excited when I do this and tells me to "Go! Go! Go!" I just look at her, smile, and roll over. I'm also getting very good at sitting up on my own. Today I sat up on my own for a long time and listened to my own voice. I like to say "Ahh!" Sometimes I surprise even myself when I'm talking like that. Mommy is feeding me lots of different foods now too. Yesterday I had ham. That was interesting. Today I had peas and rice. I can also feed myeself Cheerios and baby puffs. I mostly use my fingers to rake the Cheerios in but sometimes I get my fingers to be pincers. I'm also learning to drink from my own sippy cup. My sister, Sylvie likes to hang around. She fed me baby cereal this morning. She's teaching me how to crawl and use baby signs. Sometimes she tackles me and smothers me with hugs and kisses and Daddy says it's Wrestle Mania. Today Mommy took my picture with this sign. It was tricky because I wanted to eat the sign and Sylvie wanted to hold it too. She got pretty upset when I finally got it in my mouth and she couldn't have it. Well, I'm off to my second nap of the day. I've got a pretty good life. Sleep, eat, play and learn, repeat.

House Work

One day after I returned from National Conference (Jeremy was at Youth Conference in Utah) my parents came to help me with the girls and help me work on the house. We worked from the time we got up in the morning until we went to bed at night. Of course we took some time out for Chi Tung, Nonna's pizza, and Jalapeno's. Dad ripped out our back bathroom, and put it all back together with a nice paint job and new vanity. Mom deep cleaned the kitchen...it's gorgeous. I went back and forth saying "What can I do?" and we all enjoyed the girls. Here are some pics from our working week.

Here is Dad doing some "prep work." He took what felt like a very tiny, crowded bathroom and turned it into something that is very enjoyable to use as well as very usefull.

Here's Mom on Gracie duty.

Sylvie zonked out in the boppy. She would play so hard then she would find a spot on the floor and go to sleep without us knowing.

Sylvie helped me clean the shower. It was a lot of scrubbing. I tore out the caulking and Dad put some new in. The shower looks so nice now.

Grace supervised and kept track of all our working hours on her abacus. She was actually quite busy that week. She started sitting up much more confidently and she poked some teeth in too. For a total of 4 currently. She is quite the little roller. She loves to roll all over the place. Sometimes I think she's going to sit up but she just keeps on twisting until she's rolling again.

St. Louis, MO

We went to St. Louis in June. It was the national conference for the Free church. Jeremy's mom came with us and we had a great time. Our lives have been nonstop ever since this trip. National Conference in St. Louis, Youth Conference in Salt Lake City, VBS in Oak Lawn, now we're on vacation in NYC. It's very good to have some time with nothing scheduled but spending time with family. And of course we're getting lots of great pictures but you will have to wait for those. I'm just trying to get caught up. So here are June's pictures from our trip to the Gateway Arch. it was so much fun. The sun was setting so the light was reflecting off the arch making the lighting beautiful for taking pictures. Jeremy took many.

One of the girls in the youth group gave Sylvie a little Chewbacca doll for her trip so we took him to the arch.
Here we are at the base of the arch. Just having a good time before going up in the little pod. Boy, we did not know what we were in for. Poor Sylvie got so scared when those doors opened and we entered that little white room.
Here is Sylvie with her Mom Mom in the magic hour lighting provided by the arch.

July?! When did July happen?

OK, OK! I got an email from my aunt scolding me for not keeping this updated enough. Here are some pictures from Kansas. I have A LOT of pics from KS, but these are the ones I could pick out tonight before I go to bed. I love this one. Sylvie is coloring with sidewalk chalk on the floor of my parent's kitchen. They were in the process of rehabbing the room and the new floor had not been put in yet, so why not color on the old floor?
Sylvie and cousin Adam. They really did have a lot of fun together. All these pics are from Mother's day. We had everyone over to my parents for dinner. It was quite a good time even though it was pretty chilly. Sylvie loved being outside so much she didn't care.
Aunt Carmen with her three neices.
Granny and Great Grandpa with all their great grandkids. These were interesting to go pick out which one to show. There were many pictures taken of this and many were quite funny. I could even see the progression of distraction as the shoot goes on. I'm glad we have these. As I said before, these are just what I could get up now before I go to bed. A lot has happened since Mother's day. It's July already! We've gone to St. Louis...Sylvie and Grace had their first stay in a hotel, Grace had her first swim in a pool, and we all went to the Gateway arch. I'll get pics of that up soon enough. And now, Papa and Gigi are HERE. It's been so much fun and a lot of work. I'll get those pics up soon enough too...I hope.

Memorial Day 5K Ridge Run ...I did it!!

Today's the day I've been training for. The Ridge Run in Chicago's Beverly neighborhood. Here's a picture of me at the start of the race. This was a wonderful experience. Not only did the run take me through one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in Chicago but everyone was so positive and encouraging. People lined their yards cheering the runners and walkers on. Some handed out water while others had the sprinklers hooked up for a cooling mist. There were homes that had upbeat music blasting. I loved this and sometimes felt more like dancing than running! Having been a bit of a slacker the last few weeks I was concerned at how well I'd be able to run. But there is something about the race environment that I did not expect. Having strangers cheer me on, and having so many others running with me kept my mind occupied and I was able to run for greater intervals than I had ever done during training. But there was someone who wasn't a stranger cheering me on. Suzanne, my friend and mentor mom from my MOPS group was outside her home, camera in hand. It was real encouraging to see a familiar face and hear my name. This came right when I needed it most. Here I am at the end of the race. You can't see it in this picture but "Go Mommy!" is written in sidewalk chalk on the street and that's right where Jeremy and the girls were waiting for me.
After the race there was a parade. We got to catch the end of it sitting on the curb.
Grace rode in the swing and she loved it. I thought her head was gonna bobble around so much that she wouldn't like it but she kept smiling, so we kept pushing.

There you have it. My race day. It was a very good experience and I'm very glad I did it.

A Series of Firsts

We spent 9 wonderful days in Kansas. It was so great to be with my family. All three girls were able to be there for Mother's Day for our mom, plus all her grandkids too. It was very special. Sylvie had a ball playing with her cousin Adam. They played outside in Papa and Gigi's yard nearly all day, every day.

First #1: Before we left for KS we noticed Gracie eyeing my peanutbutter and jelly sandwich. So, while at my parents we started her on cereal and she loves it. She often reaches out for the spoon to feed herself.

First #2: The day after we returned home Grace rolled over for the first time and we all missed it! I laid her on a blanket on the floor then went to check on Jeremy and Sylvie who were taking their Sunday afternoon nap. When I came back there she was on her tummy. She soon rolled back to her back. Mobile baby stage is on the way!

First #3: For 5 months we've been trying to figure out how to get the girls to sleep in the same room. This didn't initially seem like it was going to be a problem because Sylvie's always been pretty good at going to bed. She'd cry a little but would soon be asleep. However, adding a new sister is a big deal for a two year old and she has had trouble going and staying asleep since then. Last night Jeremy and I teamed up. He put Sylvie to bed, I put Grace to bed. Sylvie's usual crying began and we worried she's wake up her roommate but she didn't. When she came out of her room Sergeant Mommy took her right back. A few more minutes of crying and she was asleep. The best part is they BOTH slept the WHOLE night. I didn't hear a peep out of either of them until after 7 am. Let's hope we can keep this up and not make this first a last too.

A Concert in our Living Room

Just thought I'd explain the new banner below Gracie's. That's Jon Troast We met Jon at Timber-lee Christian Center when we took the youth group to winter camp. Jon is an amazing musician with a unique sound. He has performed on "Prairie Home Companion" and is currently on a "living room tour." He is traveling around the country performing concerts in peoples homes. We had him in our home last Sunday and it was amazing. Jeremy and I just couldn't get over how cool it was to have one of our favorite musicians giving us our own concert in our living room. So, check out his website and book a concert in your living room. Check out Jeremy's blog for a picture and we're also on Jon's website. I'd post some now but they're on a different computer so I don't have them.

Hit The Pavement Again

Well, I finally made it back out on the streets for my running. I missed one workout last week and delayed yesterday's until today. I set out to run on Saturday with good intentions. I was feeling sick (not sick enough to not workout at all) and the wind was so strong. I simply gave up before running 3 minutes. But, with Jeremy's encouragement (and guilt tripping?) I went out today and it felt great. I am up to running for 5 minutes and walking for 3 minutes. I am thankful Jeremy was here to tell me to "Go run!" when I felt like I hit a plateau in my enthusiasm. And that he has been so helpful hanging out with the girls so I can run.
So, today I got a surprise call from Focuscope. This is a company that runs focus groups and pays cash for your time and opinion. It's totally legitimate and they NEVER try to sell me anything. Anyhow, they invited me to a focus group tonight to talk about...CEREAL!! How fun! I love cereal! Before the group they gave me homework. I was supposed to take a picture of Sylvie eating her favorite cereal. Here are the pics. For the past several weeks Sylvie has been asking for Kix. When I go to take her picture she sees the box of Life which she hasn't seen in over a month and says "Oooohh, cereal!" again and again. So, Life is the favorite today. And there was no coaching for her to be so cute, she just is.

Sylvie Plays Peek-A-Boo with Grace

I've completed one week of my "Couch to 5K" workout. Today was my third run and it felt pretty good. Just wanted to give a little update on the kiddos. Grace is really starting to smile and coo a lot. She loves softly cooing and blowing spit bubbles. Today she was belly laughing at Sylvie during dinner. It was the greatest. Sylvie loves to give her Gracie kisses and hugs. If she's crying she wants to give her the pacifier. And of course, Sylvie loves to play with Grace's belly button. As if hers and mine weren't enough entertainment. Grace is also nearly rolling over, her arm just gets in the way. But she loves going back and forth from side to back to side. When she does this for a long enough period of time she ends up kind of spinning in a circle. Her head usually stays in the same place but she's facing different ways. Sylvie's vocabulary is exploding. She loves to repeat what we've just said and this is really making us even more mindful of what comes out of our mouths. She can name many body parts, animals, and people. Some of her favorite activities include reading (we read to her and she 'reads' to herself) and wearing her pretty dress up shoes.

Running

I want to run a 5K on Memorial Day and I just finished my very first "Couch to 5K" workout. I'm not telling you this because I think that's special but because I need your help. I'm very good about getting excited about something like this and starting it and then not seeing it through. When it comes to exercising I'm even worse. So, please ask me how I'm doing. I've been thinking about running for about a year now but was pregnant and then it was stone cold winter up here...I could give you many more lame excuses. There's really probably only one valid one. Anyhow, I started today and it was pretty tough but it felt good. Please be praying for me as I work toward a personal goal of running in the Ridge Run on Memorial Day. And while you're praying please pray we find an inexpensive double jogging stroller so childcare will not become one of my lame excuses for not running.

Christianna's Soccer Game

A few weeks ago we went to see Sylvie's cousin Christianna. It was her last soccer game of the indoor season. Sylvie absolutely loves to go see "Nana".

The league had a food drive and Christianna's team won a pizza party for bringing in the most food. It was a very fun time.