Big Kids and Big Bugs

We'll start with the cute stuff. You know, to draw you in.

(First off, check out Peter rocking in the background.)

I found this sweatshirt at a yard sale. I didn't realize it had ears until after I washed it. Ellie has pretty much been wearing it ever since.

And since she's wearing a kitty shirt, with kitty ears, of course she has to act like a kitty.

And this is how kitties eat pizza.

The attack.

And there's really no way to lead up to this, so here it is.

This is a kitty wearing 12 pairs of underwear... over her shorts and diaper. And one sock.

And this is a kitty not wanting to share books with her cousin.

Enough with the kitties. Here's a chunky baby.

3 months old and he thinks he's so big.

You can see that he's starting to grab things. He mostly grabs at cloth things, such as his clothing. But if he manages to get something loose, like a towel or burp cloth, it goes straight into his mouth.

My handsome boys!

Okay, now that you're feeling all warm and fuzzy, I have something important to discuss. And it's gross. Like, really gross.

This is a cicada. For those of you not living on the east coast, these things are EVERYWHERE. There are millions of them flying around all over. They are big, gross and have orange eyes. And they only swarm like this every 17 years. Unfortunately this is my second time experiencing them.

You might think I'm over-reacting. I'm not. Despite what my family says. These things are horrible.

They crawl out from hibernation and leave these holes in the ground, which are seriously big for bugs.

Then they climb on things and shed their skin. These husks are stuck everywhere.

This one died crawling out.

Then they fly around, mate and then die in piles everywhere.

They are nasty huge and erupt when you squish them.

This is one that hit our car. That's Will's thumb (which is like twice the size of mine), and that's just the smear left by the nasty thing.

Not only are they gross and huge, they are LOUD.

Ignore the camera going all over (I was trying to show how many were in that tree, but you can't see them in the video) and just listen. That is what they sound like ALL THE TIME. Seriously, 24/7 they are out there buzzing. Supposedly it can reach the decibel level of a rock concert. I choose to stay inside most of the time, where it's not nearly as loud. And where they can't get me.

As far as I know they don't hurt anything. But I hate them. Twice they have made me scream like a little girl (and Ellie has had to comfort me). Hopefully they will only be around for a few more weeks (fingers crossed!), but they've been out flying around for like a month now and I'm so sick of them.

Just thought I should let you non-east coasters know what you're missing.

And back on a happy note: WE GET OUR NEW HOUSE ON WEDNESDAY!

Lately

So I might have mentioned at one point that my parents were moving to Connecticut. And that we are currently living with them. Well, they are no longer moving. Long story short: no one wanted to live in Connecticut. And so Save the Children (my dad's new job) is moving an office to D.C. So my mom doesn't have to give up her house anymore (including the new floors she put in to help sell it). And to make it even more interested, only 2 people looked at the house the whole month it was up for sale. Mom and Dad were in Connecticut for about 2 weeks and no one called to see the house. Until they were on their way home after deciding to take the house off the market. Looks like it was meant to be. Or it was a really good ploy to get us to finally move out of their basement.

So these are random pictures of our adventures while house-sitting for my parents and all that jazz.

This is where I learned that babies don't care where they sleep (like on a table) and that it is possible to fold laundry one-handed. Even though it looks messy.

And this is how I cook dinner. Yum yum.

 

He's too cute to eat.

 

Even in 9 month pants. 9 MONTHS! The kid won't even be 3 months until tomorrow. 17 pounds and still eating constantly. 

While this one doesn't weigh 30 pounds dripping wet. They couldn't be built more differently.

But they're pretty cute together. She likes reading Malcolm books, like the Big Sister book.

And rescuing him (as a princess).

And snuggling/kissing/abusing him.

He's getting so big!

 

And Ellie's getting so silly. Those are sheep on her feet. Lamb Chop, to be exact.

Speaking of silly...

Slimer.

Anyway, that's the latest. And in just over a week we will be moving in to our new house and there will be plenty of posts coming out of that. Yay!

Playing pretend

Since Malcolm was born, (11 weeks ago) Ellie has been obsessed with all things baby.

When she isn't acting like a baby, she's taking care of babies.

 Feeding the "baby," who also happens to be wearing one of Malcolm's diapers.

Baby spit up during a burp.

Then the babies did tummy time.

Ellie has also taken to playing dress up.

Wearing some random fishy-swim-thing at the ward shop n swap

Her new "Cinder-bella" dress

And an upside-down Batman mask. I wish I'd gotten a good picture of her wearing it. It was absolutely terrifying.

And the other day I caught her dong this:

 

She kept excitingly telling me she was an "inductor'. Finally I realized she was pretending to conduct some music.

And I guess Elle's not the only one who plays pretend. Will got himself a new game, either for Christmas or for his birthday, and we've been playing it a lot lately...

Dungeons & Dragons. I'd never played before, but it's been fun. We're currently level 4s. And in case anyone is interested, I'm a Rogue Halfing, Michael's a Elf Wizard, and Will is our Dungeon Master and a Human Fighter. It's fun, but super time consuming. Just one encounter (fight) takes like 2 hours. And we're still figuring out how everything works, so that makes it take even longer. But you don't realize how long you've been playing until you check the time. Now we just need a couple more people to help fill out our party...

I guess it's good to know that old people have imaginations too.

(Also, I offer a formal apology for the crappiness of my pictures.)

Kiddos and more house stuff

I've been trying to be better about taking pictures (now that I don't have anything important to take pictures of). So here's what we've been up to lately.

We'll start with Ellie.

This was Ellie's favorite song for a while. This is the second verse, because for some reason I only caught the first half of the first verse and then the file was too big to upload. My favorite part is her face when she says "reverently". Also, how she tries to say words she doesn't know and does her best to make it sound like she thinks it should.

 She is getting so big. I don't know if it's actually because she's growing so quickly, or because I have Malcolm to compare her too, but she is one lanky little girl. She's all arms and legs and compared to Malcolm she's huge! She's a really good talker and says some pretty hilarious things. Also, I've been teaching her random Spanish whenever it comes up easily. She knows almost all of the colors, a couple animals, some numbers and other random words. She LOVES to sing, but doesn't like having an audience most of the time.

When she takes a nap, I either find her like this (curled up in the small space that doesn't have books and toys on it) or under the covers with her shirt and pants removed.

This beautiful anglerfish is one of her favorite toys. This is how she had tucked in all of her "friends" before falling asleep in the above picture.

She LOVES to be outside.

And in some ways she's fearless. (Except for ghosts, vacuums, blenders, bees and flying screaming monkeys. And vegetables.) And she's crazy about her Daddy.

 (Yes, that is a slinky around her neck. She called it her "whiskers".)

I can't believe she's going to be 3 in a few months!

And Malcolm... time really does seem to go faster with the second one.

Nerdy like Daddy.

He's almost 2 1/2 months old and I'd be surprised if he weighed less than 15 pounds. He has the cutest little smile and has started cooing. Actually it's more like gooing. He loves baths and thinks he has to stand all the time. He's also started sleeping through the night. Last night he slept from 10 pm to 6 am and then slept from 6:30 am to 9:30 am. Awesome!

Could he be any cuter?
Actually, he can.

And my personal favorite:

what a cutie!!

Anyway, here's our quick house update:

The house we are buying is wonderful and we are SO excited to live there! The home inspection went very well and Ellie was sad that we had to leave "our" house, but we went to a park down the street and she recovered. The appraisal for the house was $35,000 more than we are buying it for, so that's pretty awesome.

As for our West Virginia house, our first offer fell through, but we got another one pretty quickly and it's more than the first one. So far it seems to be going well. They are looking to close the end of June, so we'll have 2 houses for about a month. I love my little WV house, but it will be nice not to worry about it anymore.

And that is all our updating, I think. We're just playing the waiting game. Less than a month now until we can have our own space and get our stuff back, after almost 8 months living with my parents. Malcolm can finally go home!

My favorite things

So this is a list of random things that have made me happy recently.

Enjoy.

I got these eye cover things at my baby shower when I won a play dough baby contest. We've had a lot of fun with them since then. This is my dad. The best part? Michael in the background.

On the playground in my parents' backyard there is a nest. I was taking pictures when Ellie and I realized (very, very suddenly) that there was a bird in the nest. You can see its tail in this picture, but I really didn't realize until Ellie climbed up there and scared the poor thing. This is what I found afterwards.

Can I get an awwwww? I didn't realize robin eggs were actually blue. We left the playground alone so the momma bird could take care of her babies. (Random side note: aren't nests awesome? How do they do that without fingers?)

I went to the store recently to grab Ellie some summer clothes. And the cheapest clothes in her size were in the girls' section. Not the toddler section. The girls' section. She's getting so big!

Ellie drew me a rainbow :)

Beautiful flowers. And a bumblebee (see it?).

Can I get another awwwwwww?
Michael found this baby turtle out in the lake by the house.

Michael named him Rambo.

Every tree should have one of these.

Love this boy!!

Tummy time.

Believe it or not, he's not crying because of her. He actually stops crying because of her.

They really do love each other.

And lastly, Ellie decided to serenade us this evening with her favorite song.

These are a few of my favorite things :)