Kentucky Surprise

For Veronica's 30th birthday in March, Kyle surprised her with a visit from Gwen and I for a few days. Lucky us! I admit I was pretty flattered to be someone's birthday surprise. Mostly we just lived our normal mom lives together (but with cars and a yard and cable tv, etc.) which is my favorite type of visit. Let's do this every birthday??

Making Hop a comfy spot to fly

Cora and Gwen had never met but they got right to work running with their bunnies.
The universal sign of bonding.Birthday pizza followed by Birthday cakeDouble stroller at the zoo
Not caring that there's a BEAR in the back of that truck
Not trusting the carousel (or letting me hold on to her while it went)
Just moms being moms
Buddies
Squished buddies
The best kind of traveler is a sleeping one

18 Months

Well, due to pregnancy blah, instagram, polar vortexes, etc. there are no longer cute monthly photoshoots/updates happening over here. But I do like keeping track of what Gwen's doing so here we go. She's talking more every day and it's hard not to want to tell every person about every new word. Some of the best:
"pastis"- pasta
"hop hop" - bunny
"appasauce" - applesauce
"uhpease" - help please
"ess eww" - bless you
"puh puh" - pillow
"ket ket" - blanket
"ne" - gwennie? me?
And of course "mama" and "daddy". Never mind the fact that every woman is mama and every man is daddy. Like, we were flipping through a magazine the other day and on one page, Abraham Lincoln was "daddy" and on the next page a young Asian kid was "daddy". But anyway. She treats Hop and her other buddies like she's their mom and rocks them, leans down and talks to them when they're in their stroller, introduces them to me, gives them bites of her snacks, washes them with wipes, takes her clothes off to put them on them. It's just precious. She likes to draw and Regan swears she's left-handed (like him). She prefers to have a pillow with her for reading, diaper changing, pretty much anything. Her favorite place in the house is wrestling on the bed. Followed closely by the basket of blankets behind the couch where she can stare out the window and see all the dogs and birdies go by. In the last week she has had some rough tumbles, a pukey sickness and she's started (fine, perfected) tricking us into stalling bedtime and other adorable/not adorable tactics. Basically, she switches between baby and big kid about 20 times a day. I can't wait to see her ignore love a baby brother.

Fake Christmas

And now the pictures we set up next to our fabric tree 2 weeks after Christmas. You know, for posterity. And because there was no way we were going to wait in line to get one of her screaming on Santa's lap when we can do basically the same thing right here in our own apartment.

NervousNow she's sad, maybe give her a doggie

 

Sorta okay with the distraction of her earsMad that we're trying to trick her into smiling

Then tons of fake cryingThis one's pretty good. We'll pretend it's the only one we have.

Christmas in Maryland

Not pictured: train delays, baby Rhoda!, Cafe Rio, BANG, our fancy date night to Medieval Times, delicious Christmas dinner, lots of cousin time, perfect baby Finn, Gwen finally saying mama!

Tellin Stories

Gwen does this a couple times a day and it's my current favorite thing. Sometimes she's talking to me, sometimes one of her buddies, but always with this much enthusiasm. What is she talking about?! Who cares! Also, this video has made it clear that it's time to cut off the wispy mullet. Baby's growing up.