My first mobile post.

Mobile Millie

Millie has discovered the love of Charlie's toy cars.

Matching Christmas jammies from Gigi.

She also loves standing up to play with everything.

While we were in Utah Millie learned how to cruise and walk while holding onto someone's hands. She would just grab your fingers and start walking and then get angry if you didn't follow along and keep her from falling. Pretty funny. 

Since we got home she's gotten even better at moving around. She cruises all over, uses the lion pushcart to walk, and has finally learned how to crawl. Now she's not even limited to the perimeter of the room! Unfortunately she doesn't like crawling and the whole time she does it she's crying and wishing someone would save her. Oh my little drama queen. :)

Cousins

Lately I've been overwhelmed at the thought of a big blog post with lots of pictures and words so I'm trying something new. I'll just post a picture and a few words so that I actually get something posted. Then if I have time I'll do another post another day. Fair? Good. I'm glad we agree. :)

So here's a picture of Charlie and Millie with their cousins on our recent trip to Utah. I survived the plane ride both ways by myself with two kids and the kids had a great time playing with cousins and being spoiled by grandmas. Millie is now mobile (she cruises). More on that to come...

Look, Mom! It's Target!

Guess we do too much shopping...

tupperware hats

The kids played with my new "tupperware" all night. Who knew plastic storage made such great toys?

Recent events and Charlie turns 3

A trip to the local farm/pumpkin patch.

The awesome Playseum in Bethesda.

My sweet baby girl.

Charlie chose this scooter as his reward for learning to use the potty. I may or may not have decided to order one for myself because scooting around is so much more fun than I remembered.

Charlie turned three today! Where did the time go? He's such a sweet boy and has grown so much in the last year. Yes, he tries my patience at times (especially as he's become so willful in the past little while) but I love him to pieces and I wouldn't trade being his mom for the world!

We planned a little party with cake and ice cream that quickly got out of hand. There were so many people we wanted to include and even with this large and fun crowd we didn't get to invite everyone we like to hang out with.

Charlie and Joseph were born just a week and a half apart. We love these kids!

Today Millie was sitting in her chair near Charlie when I heard him yell "Mom! Millie's trying to get out of her chair!" Not knowing what to expect, I ran down the hall to see this. My little escape artist was quite proud of herself. Thank goodness I'd strapped her in!

Millie is 10 months old today. She doesn't crawl yet but she' getting close. She lunges forward onto her tummy (from the sitting position) and can do a bit of scooting/army crawling. She also likes to stand up if she has something to hold onto.

I have the best kids!!

We love to read!

Bedtime stories.

Anytime stories.

Well, Millie's just happy to have some water. :)

kissing lotion

Charlie likes to look at my magazines. Today while he was eating lunch he was perusing my "Parenting" magazine. Then he saw this add. "Look, Mom," he exclaimed, "it's kissing lotion!" Hard to disagree with that logic, eh? So we took turns putting "lotion" on our cheeks and kissing each other. I'll take Charlie kisses any way I can. :)

Millie doesn't love prunes so much. She'll eat them, but she clearly doesn't like them. I think she much preferred rubbing her hands together to feel the texture of the food. I can't really blame her. The prunes smelled pretty gross. But, she's been constipated so I thought it might help. Today was ROUGH. Let's just say I had to help her take care of business. We may be foregoing the solids for a while longer. We didn't start Charlie on solids until he was 11 months so we may need to wait a couple more months with Miss Millie too. Poor little girl.

Charlie, on the other hand, has taken really well to potty training. I'm so impressed! Today I let him watch a show while I showered and I told him to go potty by himself if he needed to totally not expecting him to do so. When I got out of the shower he had done it! He took himself to the potty all by himself without being told to do it!!! I am so impressed with this little guy. We've even ventured out for a couple short stints and he hasn't had an accident. If I'd known potty training would be this easy we'd have done it long ago. Haha. Now I've probably just jinxed myself...

It's been a busy weekend!

Friday night I got to go shopping and out to dinner with my fun friend Elise. No pictures of that - just good memories. :)

Then Saturday things got crazy. This weekend was our Church's General Conference. This means instead of going to the meetinghouse for our regular meetings we watch 4 sessions on tv instead. Here's the kids and me watching Conference.

Since we were were planning to be home all weekend we decided to be ambitious...

Charlie is potty-trained! Sort of. He's been in his super-hero underpants all day yesterday and today (except for naps and bed) and he's only had one accident. He even pooped on the potty (I thought about taking and posting a picture of that but I refrained haha) and earned his Iron Man toy. We're so proud of him! Granted, he usually says, "I don't need to go pee pee" rather than telling us he needs to go, but still. We'll take what we can get.

Millie had her first solids. Bananas. She loved them! We had to practically force Charlie to eat the first few times he tried them. Not so with Millie. Just another way these two are opposites.

My kids are getting so big!

Two Teeth and a visit from Grandpa Rich

My dad came to visit for a few days and we had a lot of fun. He cooked us a great meal and we saw a few sights. His trip was short and sweet and we hope he'll visit again.

Grandpa time

Millie now has two teeth. :)

Millie's maneuvers

Since I couldn't describe it well here is a video of how Millie scoots along on her head.

And a Charlie-ism:

After calling me a jerk Charlie explained, "Mom, everybody's a jerk sometimes and I don't like it when you are. That's all I was trying to say." Who is this kid?

What a big girl!

Millie's personality has been becoming more and more evident over the past few weeks. She is such a happy girl most of the time. She's been a good sleeper and LOVES Charlie. She just looks at him with such adoration in her eyes. Even after he's thrown a toy at her.

Millie twiddles her thumbs. I think she must get this from Grandma Nona.

Millie is great a sitting up now and will happily sit and watch Charlie play. She'll reach for specific toys she wants and loves cramming them into her mouth. In the first picture you can see how she's put the entire foot of that stuffed elephant in her mouth. She intentionally does that all the time.

She refuses to be rushed through milestones and instead chooses to take things at her own pace. Even though she doesn't crawl (or even roll over) like many babies her age that doesn't mean she doesn't want to see what's going on. Instead, Millie will lie down and arch her back so she can look behind her with her head upside down. She'll even scoot herself along that way. At this rate I fear the back of her head may never grow hair. I wish I could find a good picture so you could see what I mean. I don't think I explained it very well...

Today Millie got her first tooth. I have yet to capture it on film but I'll post a picture when we do.

Here's a picture of Millie in the Ergo when we went hiking last weekend.

Another big milestone is signing "milk" as you can see here in this video. She's been able to recognize the sign and word "milk" for a while but this past week she learned how to ask for it too.

And last but not least, Millie saying "mama." This video isn't as clear as it sometimes is since she's pretty upset but you get the gist.

Families are forever.

Lately it seems a lot of Church literature has been focused on teaching kids about the gospel in the home - about taking the opportunity to tell them what I believe and why I know it's true. So the other day when Charlie somehow got on the topic of death I was excited to share my testimony about how families can be together forever.

There we were sitting at lunch and I was telling him that even when we lose someone we love it doesn't have to be the end. We know that if we're sealed together in the temple we can live as a family forever. We're still sad when we miss someone but we know we get to see them again so it doesn't have to be AS sad. He was looking at me so seriously and I was giving myself a mental high-five for doing such a good job as a mom. Then all of the sudden he gave his plate a big shove and dumped it's contents into my lap. Nice. So much for my awesome teaching moment. Rather than listening intently I'm pretty sure he was just waiting for the perfect time to cover me with food. Sigh. Better luck next time.

Here's Charlie the Pirate. Argh!

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Ferguson family and iPhone fun

Adam's family just spent the last week here visiting us. We had a blast running around all week. So much fun that we didn't come home to sleep enough and now we're a bit under the weather. But we have a weekend to recover so we'll be fine and it was definitely worth it to spend time with family. The only picture we got of us all together was at the Zoo. We also went to 6 Flags and a bunch of tourist stops in DC. Carolyn helped me make her famous brownies and caramels and watched the kids so the rest of us could attend the Washington DC Temple. We also ate at a lot of yummy restaurants. Charlie and Millie loved spending time with their aunt, uncle, grandma, and grandpa who gave them lots of one-on-one time. What a great week!

We got a Bob Duallie stroller just before the Fergusons arrived. We put it to good use and it is a DREAM to push. We're pretty much in love with it.

Look at these two!

And look at these two too. We finally bit the bullet and got iPhones. Yep, mine's the fancy one. :) We're so excited!

Let's throw in an embarrassing parenting moment for good measure:

While at the AT&T store getting our new phones, Charlie came running up to us. "Hey guys! Look at that little guy! What's he doing?" he shouted. We looked around and saw a, uh, vertically challenged man (is that pc?) standing at the counter. "He's probably just buying a phone, Charlie," Adam replied. "But what's he doing? What's the little guy doing?" Charlie kept asking over and over while running over to stare at the poor man. We tried to quiet him without drawing more attention to the matter but we were definitely in over our heads. And this isn't the first time this has happened. Charlie pointed out another "little guy" when out for a walk one day (mind you these aren't even little people or midgets - just short people) and he's also been known to stare at individuals with disabilities. I know he's just a kid but how do we teach him this stuff? Any tips would be appreciated...

The Hoodie Dance

Here's the long-awaited, much anticipated, much-hyped Hoodie Dance. Charlie came up with this dance spontaneously after Natalie put a hoodie on him a while back. The face he is pulling is an essential element of the dance. It looks even better when he is actually wearing a hoodie while dancing...

We miss you Grandma Nona!

My mom was here visiting for the past couple weeks. We had so much fun! Charlie got stories galore, Millie was held to her heart's content, and I had an adult to talk to, an in-house babysitter, and an all around helper-outer. We went to Williamsburg, the zoo, Harper's Ferry, and ran errands. I went to the dentist a total of four times, the doctor once, the hospital twice (just for lab work don't worry), and went shopping without the kids. Adam and I went out to dinner one night and to a movie another. Mom and I made strawberry jam, bake bread, and saw "Eclipse" (Adam was grateful to get out of that one). All-in-all we just had a blast. Thanks for everything, Mom. You're the best!

And we miss you already as evidenced by Charlie's conversation with Millie on our way home from the airport: "It's okay, Millie. Grandma Nona had to go far way on the airplane. We won't see her for awhile but it's okay. We can skype. Don't be sad, Millie, we'll see her soon." Oh, my heart.

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And a Charlie-ism for good measure. This happened today:

Charlie's reading a book on the couch and Adam sits down next to him with some cheesecake. He offers Charlie some but he doesn't want any. A couple minutes later Adam rubs Charlie's head. Charlie yells, "Don't Dad! Stop it!"

"What?" Adam asks, surprised.

"Stop rubbing cheesecake in my hair!" is Charlie's reply.

Because we typically rub food in our kids' hair. I have no idea why he thought Adam would do that but it made us laugh.

I knew she could do it!

Hold her head up that is. :)

I must be making an impression

What an imagination this kid has. Who'd have thought to use his sunglasses as knitting needles?

Pictures

Millie is adorable but lazy. Here she is with her friend, Abby, who is a couple weeks younger. Abby has been rolling over for weeks now and our little Millie just lies there like a slug. She won't even lift her head up. Something tells me this one won't be walking at ten months.

***Edit: Adam tells me that this is rude to say. I don't mean it in a rude way, it's just the truth. Millie and Charlie have completely opposite personalities. Charlie is adventurous and crazy and fun. Millie is calm and sweet and happy. Totally different but both totally loved for who they are. It's just a fact that Millie isn't interested in moving all over. She'd rather relax and let Charlie entertain her. She probably got it from me. :)***

See, she knows how to hold her head up she just doesn't like to exert herself. But look at that face. Isn't she cute?

Charlie has started swimming lessons.

On Independence Day we got to see fireworks at our nation's capital for the last time in a while. A few of our friends joined us for a picnic near the Iwo Jima monument where we had this great view. Of course I didn't bring my dslr so we don't have any great pictures. Figures. At least we had fun.

Recently...

We spent some time at the beach.

Charlie enjoyed the sand much more than the water this time. He said he was scared of the "big water."

Charlie loves dancing. Especially to Adam Lambert's 'Whataya Want From Me,' which, he tells me, is his favorite song. He asks for it by name every day at least once.

Millie turned 5 months old. She's getting to be such a big girl. And we expect a couple teeth to make their debut soon.

Adam turned 31. Happy birthday!