Milestones!

Oh poor Aurelia!!  I have been so lax about recording her milestones!  But she hit a couple of them recently so I'm going to record them RIGHT NOW so I don't forget later!

Within the past week, Aurelia has gone from assisted sitting to independent sitting!  She probably could have done it earlier but she's constantly sitting in her high chair, jumpie, or on our laps, or rolling around on the floor.  We hadn't helped her practice sitting independently as much as we did for Dashiell.  Yup, we're those parents.

I tried to get a good picture of her sitting all by herself and she kept on giving me a pirate wink.  4 times this morning, plus once the other day.  She sees the camera and winks, regardless of whether or not we have the flash on.

I can't wait to see how that plays out at Auntie Elizabeth's wedding next weekend!  Will every picture that she's in be enhanced by a wink?

I did get a fuzzy (but still cute!) shot of her sitting at Nana and Grandpa's house this past weekend, though.

Her little pompadour kills me!

Anyway, now that she's sitting independently and long ago mastered rolling from place to place, she's trying - trying so hard - to crawl!  She's almost got the combat crawl down.  She's not terrible efficient at it but she can pull herself along for a couple of arm's lengths if she needs to get at something close by.  Plus she's been rocking on her knees the past couple of days.  However when she tried to move forward on her knees she ends up moving backward and getting kind of mad about it.  I wonder if she'll take on the "Dashiell-scootch" or if she'll be more of a straight-on crawler?

Another milestone, as of this morning:  She waved at me!  She's been doing this little hand wave for a couple of months (I think of it as belly dancer hands - she kind of rolls her wrists) but today was the first time she really seemed to associate her hand movement with waving!  It was so flippin' cute!

She's doing so well eating solids - much better than Dashiell did at her age.  Dash unfortunately has a low gag-reflex, so feeding him anything that wasn't finely pureed made him gag up until he was about 11 months old (note - he still gags when presented with strange textures, including one bite of his scrambled eggs this morning. Sigh).  As of right now it seems like Aurelia doesn't have that issues, or at least it's not as prevalent.  We've been introducing slightly lumpier food and while it takes her a couple of bites to get used to it, she's never gagged once and usually seems to like it!  Yay!

Okay more pictures.  She loves loves loves going on swings!  Look at this expression of pure joy!

I could stare at that smile all day!  Now we just need to add a couple of teeth to it!




Oh, and I mentioned Auntie E's wedding - here's a sneak peak at her lovely flower girl dress:

I got her a headband to wear with it, which is totally cute, but I have no idea how to put it in those curls properly!

The curls are just everywhere!  Ha!

And finally, the other downside of being a second child (along with mommy-forgetting-to-record-special-events) is that it took FOREVER for us to finally finish her room.  But this past weekend we did!!  Yay us!  Here's what it looks like all adorned:

The varsity banner (made from vintage fabric) and the print above the crib were from a cute little store in Bemidji, MN called Yellow Umbrella.  If you find yourself in northern MN you should check it out!   I think I need two smaller paintings to hang next to the print, though.  So maybe I'm not completely done decorating. :) The "A" on her door was picked out and hung by Dashiell.  He has a corresponding "D" on his door.

That glider?  $15.75 at a consignment sale!  It's an ugly denim and I considered getting it reupholstered, but then I realized that while this glider is super comfy and I love having it right now, it's not a piece of furniture that will be in our lives forever.  So my mom made a blanket to throw over the back, and one of my mother-in-law's friends knitted the lovely blanket that currently covers the ottoman.  Problem solved! 

One of my co-workers created the two paintings above the pink and purple toy bin shelf.  And though you can barely see it, above the other shelf in the corner is a dragonfly picture that I cross-stitched probably 5 or 6 years ago.  It's been waiting for someplace to live all that time!

My mom also made all the curtains in the room.  The yellow curtain on the french door out to the sunroom is my favorite!  So pretty!  Rick's dad made the radiator cover next to the changing table (the changing table was also a steal, btw!).  There's a lovely painting of Aurelia's name done by a friend of ours above the changing table.  Oh and the round things around the mirror are embroidery hoops with cute fabric mounted in them.  I think I need to find one or two more to even out the design, but in general I'm pretty happy with it.

I can't tell you how happy it makes me to go into Aurelia's room now!  :)

Alright, I think I'm all caught up on Aurelia stuff.  As for Dash, he is still an awesome older brother.  He's been calling Aurelia "princess" for the past couple of days, which is super cute.  His latest milestone involved giving up his nap completely, which leads to a lot of this at the end of the day:

Okay, that was after a day at the grandparents' house - he fell asleep in the car and I carried him to the couch to hang out until I got Aurelia put to bed.

The other thing he loves doing now is collecting.  Oh boy do we have collections like you wouldn't believe!  Feathers, acorns, sticks and rocks seem to be his favorites.  Here's a cool rock he found the other week:

It's completely egg shaped.  Pretty neat!

One last picture of one of D's favorite pastimes, making rivers:

He does that at least twice a day. Then he makes "Dash prints" with his hands and feet. Fun!

Whew - that was the longest blog update ever!  I think we're all caught up now.  Maybe. :)

I tried...

I tried.  I really did.  I tried to get a good picture of Dashiell and Aurelia together so I could send it to my parents for their anniversary and update the picture of them on this blog.  And this is what I got.

First, Aurelia looks adorable but Dashiell was about to tell me something (when isn't  he about to tell me something?):

Then, we have Dashiell making his "I'm smiling" face (you know, the fake smile all kids somehow master) plus you can clearly see he was having a no-pants day, and Aurelia looking once again like one of the three stooges (check about half-way down that past blog post for the reference):

Then, we got an okay picture but the lighting went all wonky (this is after I tried correcting it in Photoshop):

And here they're both just being silly:

So what I really wanted to do for mom and dad's anniversary was have the kiddos pose with a sign that said "Happy Anniversary Grandma and Grandpa", with a little picture drawn on it from Dashiell.  When I told him of this plan he decided it would be better to have two signs - one with the words, the other with his drawing.  So I agreed, and he got to his drawing.  First, he wanted to make a smiley face and a rainbow.  After 3 attempts at a face he gave up on that since it "wasn't round enough".  Then he tried about 4 attempts at a rainbow, but he kept getting the colors mixed up and didn't like how the arches were turning out, so he gave up on that.  Then he decided that one of the arches on one of his rainbows looked like a mountain, so he wanted to draw a mountain with a sun  Well the sun is yet another circle, so that took about 5 attempts.  Almost 6, but I convinced him that the squiggly line coming off his sun was awesome because it looked like fire.  So finally we had a (very small) drawing, and our message to Grandma and Grandpa.  And after all that, this is the best picture I could get of them holding their signs:

I tried.

Cicle of Love

Daddy loves Aurelia.

Aurelia loves Dashiell.

And Dashiell loves...trolleys.

May the circle be unbroken.  Or something.

Randomness

I couldn't think of a good theme for this post, but I do have pictures from the last week to share so I'm posting anyway!

We had a fun 4th of July!  Dashiell and I made red, white and blue strawberries for the annual 4th of July/cousin Nicholas's birthday party at Auntie Sue's house.  They were not only fun to make but tasty too!  Dashiell was clearly excited about them!

He did a great job with the dipping!

After the party Aurelia and I headed home while D stayed to watch the fireworks with his grandparents, followed by a sleepover at their house!  Fun for all!  And can I just mention how much easier it was to get ready for work the next morning with only one kid to take care of?  How quickly you forget!

A couple of days later Dash and Aurelia spent the day with Nana and Grandpa while I worked, and they clearly wore D out!

He fell asleep in the car on the way home, so I carried him into the kitchen.  He woke up for about 3 seconds, long enough to say "no thank you" when I asked him to come upstairs and get ready for bed.  Then he passed out on the kitchen floor.  And thankfully he did, since it took about an hour to convince Aurelia to go to sleep.  I was able to carry him upstairs without waking him, which was good though worrisome since he hadn't gone to the bathroom since about 3 pm that afternoon.  But my camel - I mean son - was fine until about 4 am when he woke up, did his business, and went promptly back to sleep.  Amazing!

The next day was Ms. Aurelia's 6 month birthday (covered in my previous post).  Here's our cute little half-year-old!

Look at that!  Almost sitting up all on her own! 

Yesterday was Dashiell's last day of swim lessons - they were only for 3 weeks, but man did those 3 weeks fly by!  He had a great time and while he still has work to do on some of his skills, he's much more confident in the water and definitely wants to swim more!  Last year he wanted little to do with swimming, so this is a big step for him. 

The pool we went to was really cool - outdoors, with slides and a mushroom fountain (which wasn't in operation during the lessons, but would start up as as soon as his lesson was over). 

Apologies to the others in the pictures with him - it was impossible to get a photo of just him in the pool.

And lastly, we've been introducing Aurelia to the world of eating solid food!  So far she's been completely uninterested in rice cereal (and who can blame her?), but loves oatmeal and is even pretty excited about multigrain cereal.  Next we're moving on to veggies and fruits!  Fun!  She's also been working on her sippy cup skills, and considering that she's only used it a handful of times is doing pretty well!  Dashiell decided to give her a hand this morning to make sure she was getting enough water.

Such a helpful brother!