Strawberry picking

 We took a strawberry-picking trip Tuesday to Underwood Family Farms, where we've been coming for years with our Mom2Mom/MOPS friends.

(To see Cora's trip when she was a month older than Violet is now, click here.)

Since Genia has a nice big car, she drove all of us.
Our tour included an educational talk about fruits and vegetables, the oh-so-fun wagon ride out to the patch, three bulging berry baskets and a picnic in the play area.

The children all had a great time, the weather was warm (but not overly hot) and the company was perfect.
This is one of those days I know I'll look back on fondly, especially when our daily routine means getting up and out early every day with all my little ones in school.

Mother's Day blessings 2012

I'm so blessed to be their mummy!


My Mother's Day started appropriately, with my coffee, bagel and girls in bed.
I received the perfect greeting - a Beauty and the Beast themed card that played "Be Our Guest" - and a lovely new handbag.

 From there, we went on to church, and then home to talk to Nan, Pop, Dean, Jenny, Euan and Big Nan.
Then, while the girls rested, Stace went out and purchased lighting for our back yard while I bought a giant patio umbrella and base online. We're gearing up for summer!

Then, after dinner we met my family for frozen yogurt and a gift/card exchange.

 Not only am I blessed to be a mother, I'm thankful for the fabulous mom I've learned so much from and who continues to guide and assist me. And, I'm thankful for my mothering role models in Sue and Aunt Patty. The examples they all have set mean so much to our family! (And, a happy birthday to Sue!)

Here are the assorted gifts and pictures the girls made me. Cora decorated the vase and painted my portrait in preschool, and Miss Lorrie and Miss Kayla organized a little mini concert the children performed for us moms.

Unfortunately, the vase cannot be left out on display, because the cats believe than any vessel of water must be emptied. Luckily, when they knocked over the vase after I set up this photo, it didn't break and the "keeper" artwork wasn't ruined.

Crazy for carrots

  

We've got carrots! 

Stace and his girls harvest some seven pounds of carrots on Saturday evening, and they are yummy. 

So far we've had steamed carrots with butter, to really enjoy the flavor, and a curried carrot-and-leek soup. 

We'll probably make more of that since we have so many to use. We really need to think more about staggering our crops!

 

Gibbons and picnics

We visited the Gibbon Conservation Center in Saugus on Saturday, when it offered a Mother's Day open house with moms getting in free.

 I had been to the center before as a child, but it had been many years, and Stace and the girls had never been.

The center has nearly 40 gibbons from five different species, and is the most successful gibbon breeding facility in the world.

When we visited, there were several babies, including this little guy. Known as the singing apes, the gibbons raced back and forth in their compounds, swinging and singing with all their might. I was glad Violet wasn't scared of the noise. Cora, meanwhile, was very scared of the red ants here and there in the dirt.

The open house was well organized, with lots of volunteers on hand and free healthful snacks and water.
On the video clip, you can hear the singing.

 

Then, we went on to Heritage Park for the annual church picnic. Here, Cora insisted she could do the monkey bars all by herself, until she got to them.











Cora and Violet both liked having their face and arm painted with butterflies and Hello Kitties.

Fairy Wonderland

Here she is, our little fairy lover.
For several weeks, Cora has been immersed in Fairy Land, the land where Tinker Bell and her friends fly and bring joy to children.

She talks about fairies a lot, and has us help her act out moments from the movie "The Great Fairy Rescue." She really hopes they are real and has asked me several times if they are. She wishes she were a fairy herself, so she could fly.




When Cora was good the other day, we gave her this mini Fawn, who puts to good use the Calico Critters bed. Fawn came along this afternoon to the grocery store, and kept bouncing on grocery items and hiding behind things. (All this made for a very enjoyable grocery trip! Cora was well-entertained by her tiny sidekick.)

In the movie, the little girl who loves fairies has fairy drawings and pictures all over her bedroom. Cora realized, with great concern, that no one could tell she loves fairies too, because she had no fairy pictures up in her room. Thus started a fairy-drawing fest, the results of which you can see here. In two of the pictures you can see an angry bird chasing the fairies, who are shouting, "AAAAAAAAAAA." Cora was particularly proud of the bird in the upper left drawing, with the careful rainbow coloration. Cora is the fairy on the left in that one.

In the movie, the little girl catches Tinker Bell in a little fairy house she has made and set outside. Here is Cora's fairy house, which used to be an ordinary plastic bag. The "Cora" leaf is a welcome mat, and the buttons show the fairies where to go.

For the last several weeks, Cora often has run over to the house when we've come home from being out and about. Once she said forlornly, "I looked in that fairy house. No fairies. I guess fairies aren't real. I like fairies"

In this photo, on the right side you can see a tree that Cora made out of leaves and a little hunk of wood. Her creativity and drive amaze me.

The box that Cora's booster seat came in became a new (indoor) fairy house, for when Cora herself is the fairy, trapped inside. Notice the rainbow door with glued-on flower decoration; the inside is covered in more fairy pictures.

When Cora worried that Violet was going to mess up her house, she helped make Violet a fairy house of her own from a different box.
(Note to the general gift-buying public: toys not required; boxes will suffice.)

And, on an unrelated note, Cora has been making us snicker by using the word "Daggit" as an expression of displeasure. I don't know where she heard it, or perhaps she did make it up on her own. At any rate it's better than a lot of alternatives. Even funnier is hearing Violet repeat it.

Violet at 2

Here was Violet's first time in the 2-year-old class at church. She was more than ready to move up from the 1's. The week before was the first time we've heard a bad report from the workers - she spent the service following other toddlers around, saying "no" and "mine," and trying to take whatever they were playing with.

Stace found Violet acting similarly when he took her to My Gym this week.
And at home, after disagreeing about turning the bathroom light off, Violet bit Cora on the leg hard enough to leave imprints. Poor Cora had been a sitting duck, you might say, as she sat bare-bummed on the toilet. A bit later, Cora screamed again as Violet was pulling a handful of her hair.
Um, yep. We are TWO!

But of course, she's not naughty all the time. Often when I look for Violet around the house because it's too quiet, this is what I find - Violet reading a book, or tucked into something or other, playing the night-night game on her own.

In this instance, Violet pulled out the "cat care" book and was saying, "I love you, kitty."







Violet can be a very silly girl. Here, she found an old diaper cover of Cora's with bad elastic, called it "panties," and needed to wear it.

Violet loves singing. She wakes up singing - at the moment, "Happy Birthday" is her favorite. She also loves seeing her friends and trying to ride Cora's old scooter.

She makes us laugh by shouting out, "I see Magic Mountain!" when we're in the car, when we're either nowhere near Magic Mountain, or she's looking the wrong way out the car window. And, when we drive past Genia's house, she usually asks, "Is Ave Johnny awake?"




Violet's two-year well check went well. Very well in fact, being that she wasn't due for any shots. There was just one she could have had, but since Vi is old enough to remember things a bit, and the appointment was going so well, I figured we'd hold off so she remember a positive experience.

She remains a peanut: at 32 inches, she is in just the 14th percentile. Violet weighed 25 pounds, 5 ounces, which put her in the 32nd percentile. She's finally getting her last incisor, and I'm sure she'll be due for her two-year molars when we are on the plane to England next month.

Dr. Brockett noted the correlation between speech and high intelligence, and said that we're in trouble! The other day at the grocery store, I stepped briefly away to check the price on a product. When I got back to Violet in the cart, she asked, "What you looking for, Mummy?" She asked a sleepy Cora the other day, "Are you tired, Cora?"

Not all of Violet's talking is as cute, of course. We've been hearing a lot of "NO!" as a three-syllable word, with the "nnnnnnn" sound stretched out. Example: "NNNNNNNNNNNOOOO, Mummy! I NO go to bed!" or "NNNNNNNNOOO, I no want it dinner. I want yogurt!"

In this picture, Violet was proud because she had put on her own shoes! (This particular pair is especially easy to take on and off.)

Here, Violet is playing with her new Thomas bath toy from Uncle Bill and Aunt Patty. She loved it. Violet still prefers to sit in her bath seat, and asks for it if we don't automatically put her in.









Here she is showing Daddy some love at the end of her birthday party...

It hit me a few months ago that, this year, our family would consist of a 5-year-old and 2-year-old, and not the preschooler/baby combo I've been used to. It hit me like a ton of bricks, actually: "Wait! I just had a two-year-old! I don't know if I want another one!"

It's hard to believe Violet is two already; such a big girl and no longer our baby. But when she flashes us her big smile, her blue eyes sparkling away, we know how blessed we are to have her in our family

Happy Birthday, Violet Mae. Daddy, Cora and I love you bunches!

Violet's party, Part II

My last post got a little photo-heavy, so I'm splitting the party into two posts. Here are the bigger kids having fun!

 Our most favorite neighbors

 And here's David and beautiful baby Heather, at 10 months old. Melanie and David brought Violet a card with a big picture of a hamster's face, and when you pull the hamster's chin down, he talks in a funny voice. Violet loves this card! She laughs and laughs each and every time.