Brilliance

Yes, I'm biased. But my daughter is a brilliant artist! Check out these drawings Laina did. She drew a train, boat, and an airplane and Daddy cut them out and glued them to the card. Laina also cut out the cloud by herself. And of course signed her name.

July Fun

Some pictures from the past month:

Laina made this flying car out of lego-like blocks all by herself!

Holding hands while Lia "works out" in the bumbo seat (yep, it's a baby work out).



My little beach babe at the Aurora Reservoir. Jay fashioned this little baby tent for Lia hoping she might sleep in it. Well she loved it so much she just laid in there playing and decided not to nap until I held her.




This is the closest I have come to capturing a smile from Lia on camera. She smiles all the time but as soon as you bring the camera out she is mesmerized by it and just stares.


Laina wearing her goggles in preparation for swimming. And Lia's first swim.

Baby Babble & Booty Shaking

Only the hardcore fans will appreciate this... a vid of Lia 'talking' (i.e. making sounds other than crying)




And as a bonus for watching, here's a vid we never posted from a couple months ago of Laina dancing to "Move it Move it" from the Madagascar movie. She'll drop whatever she's doing and do this any time you play it.

Renaissance Festival

Saturday we and our friends the Heldts took all four of our girls to the Renaissance Festival. I have always wanted to go, even to the one in California when we lived there. But we never did, so this was my first experience. Lia was of course too young to care at all what was going on, and Laina was good for about an hour and then was ready to go. Maybe if we would have seen the little kids play area and petting zoo at the beginning it would have helped. They had a free butterfly ride which was probably the only free thing in the "realm". We also got to see the end of a pretty cool performance of drums and bagpipes. And of course, my favorite, jousting, but this was in the hot sun and I think is what did the kids in :(

The girls were adorable in their braids looking at the giant water wheel. Laina is on the left.

More cute pics of the girls...

Will They be Buddies?

Laina seems to like Lia

Lia's not 100% sure

"The answer is mowin' in the wind..."

Lia's close-up.

She's been giving a lot of social smiles for a couple weeks now but we haven't caught any of them on camera yet. Other things she's been doing are sleeping and napping in her crib (instead of our room or our arms) and taking a bottle of pumped milk!

I so boldly stated from the beginning that she was a great, easy baby and this was going to be so much better the second time around. Then after a few weeks Lia started getting more and more fussy and I thought oh no, she's proving me wrong! But now things are getting easy again. I think she is definitely more of the "typical" easy baby and not colicy like Laina was (I'm convinced now).

I have a feeling Lia is going to be mobile pretty quickly. She's already rolled from her side to her belly a coupe of times. (Maybe that doesn't really count?) She likes to put weight on her legs and feet which Laina never did. She inches around in her crib and will end up in completely different spots from how we laid her down. I really think she's going to be crawling before we know it. Which is kind of a scary thought.

As for Laina, she really is a great big sister. She loves to help out with getting pasifiers and diapers and mommy's water. She also likes to try and play with Lia which is really cute. Laina is getting good at playing board games which is really fun. I have to admit that I enjoy playing board or card games much more than I enjoy playing cars. Sorry Laina!

The weird thing about Laina is that she's all of a sudden gotten really clumsy. She is falling down a lot and banging herself up. Jay thinks part of it is that she is finally getting more daring with the physical stuff but I also think part of it is maybe for attention.

As for Jay and me - Jay has started up his own architecture business and looks like he will have some contract work with a firm here in the hopefully near future. And I started a very part time job working at a baby boutique and cloth diaper store in Denver. Hence the reason Lia had to learn to take a bottle. I can actually bring her with me if I need to but so far have left both girls home with Jay. He is an amazing dad and handles them both with ease :)

So will the girls be buddies? I hope the answer is going to be yes. I have a feeling they will be "most of the time" kind of buddies.

Hoskinson Visit

Grammy and Papa got to visit shortly after the Ali's were here in May.

Here's Jay with a sleepy Lia.

Grammy and Lia

Bubble fun in the backyard

Papa and Lia (do they have the same smile or is tt a cry?)

The happy grandparents