Curious??

Today our local Barnes & Noble had a storytime with Curious George.

Now, Jamie and I took Calli and Koji to see Elmo at B&N over a year ago. It was crazy! Pushy, demanding parents, a ton of people and kids that were scared of Elmo.

Well, this time there were only a handful of people, the parents were well behaved, but the kids were not so sure about it. My girls especially, were a little curious, but not enough to hug George, or even give him a high-five.

Mari takes a look at Curious George from the safety of Dadda's arms.

Calli can't pose for the picture because she has to keep an eye on Curious George.

Both girls did enjoy coloring pictures of Curious George.

Calli was so cute, she had to go and get a yellow crayon to color the hat - obviously, the man with the yellow hat had a YELLOW hat :)

Mari and I :)

Lets go to the Pool

Today a bunch of us finally coordinated to meet at the pool. It was a little cool but we had a lot of fun. Besides us there were: Dillon, Ashleigh, Koji, Izumi, Brennan, and Kellan.


Izumi, Calli, Dillon and Mari stop for a snack break.

For the birds

This afternoon, Calli played with our neighbor Jake. They played with Play-Dough, the made things out of popsicle sticks, and then they went out to feed the birds. Jake has this little itty bitty toy bird food bowl, and they took turns filling it with birdseed and then dumping it on the ground.

Then they moved on to chasing birds and trying to get the birds to eat the birdseed. Needless to say, that did not work very well. This picture was taken exactly 2 seconds after they were walking down the sidewalk holding hands - it was so precious, and so fleeting.

Library Fun

While not the best picture ever, I wanted to say that we have re-discovered the Skokie Library. It is a great place to spend time because they have a train table, puppets, a huge fish tank, and computers with a Dora game. Stay tuned for more . . .

Happy Birthday Jamie

For Jamie's birthday, I organized a small get-together at Pinstripes. We played bocce, ate yummy food, bowled, and generally just enjoyed some fun and good conversation without kids!

Sailing the Sea of Imagination

Today, Calli wanted to make a boat. So we laid out blankets, founds seats, made a mast (complete with flag) and wore our (life)jackets.

I was amazed I was able to such good pictures of Calli and I using the timer on the camera. Here we are, eating our doughnuts on the boat.

We even added these blocks, for the water.

So we can be safe

Today, we pulled out the "pretending box" which has a few dress-up clothes and props: a stethoscope, a firefighter's hat, etc. Calli found these knee and elbow pads and wanted to try them out.


Once she had them on, she wanted to roller skate. She had to settle for Dadda pulling her over the hardwood floors in her socks.

**And then,
a couple days later, we read a Dora book where Dora wore her knee and elbow pads along with her helmet to ride her bike "so we can be safe". So Calli insisted on wearing the whole getup next time she road her trike. I'm all for safety, but I really think for the speeds Calli reaches, a helmet should suffice. The pads would be more useful when she is running full speed down the sidewalk.

The End of Naps

And there was much weeping throughout the kingdom!!

It seems they teamed up on this one, and Mari decided to drop her morning nap at the same time Calli dropped her afternoon nap. So sad. I haven't quite admited defeat. For the last week or so, I've still tried to put Calli down for a nap each afternoon - even though she hasn't been sleeping.
So today, Rich heard some noice in her room and found this. She had gotten a bunch of toys off the shelf and brought them all on the bed. (We have a no toy policy for naps.)



And I just love this picture. Isn't is so cute when they cross their legs when they are asleep??