Waiting for Eggs

Ladies and gentlemen...I submit to you...for your viewing pleasure...Miss Josephine Marie Schneider...starring in "Waiting for Eggs".
Wow, I love this little girl! (That first one, in B&W is my favorite. It's just "so Josie".)

Random August Round-up

With Josie's birthday and starting school and the beginning of potty training and vacation and everything else, I have lots of things to still share from this month before August completely passes. Here are some of them.
First - here's Josie with her "rainbow ribbon" from her buddy Ronan. Love the smile in this photo and love the dancing in the video that follows. (Thanks Ronan! Your gift has inspired lots of fun for Josie - and some great Will Ferrell-inspired "Old School" moments from Louie.)



And here is another fun moment caught on film. Josie started this little project all by herself. Dress up the bear, puppy, etc...take each to the potty...flush...tell each "good job"...and then give someone else a turn. We're happy to report that she has used her "comfy red potty" (the BabyBjorn Potty Chair) twice now and even woke up yesterday morning with a totally dry diaper.

Josie's Birthday BASH

Maybe it's taken so long for me to post about Josie's birthday because I haven't been ready to admit yet that it's over. It was really so much fun! And there were these "standout" moments throughout the day that just made me feel so grateful, loved, blessed, honored, etc. Here are some photos from Josie's party at the Winton Place Community Pool. We had it at 10am - which ended up being the perfect time for toddlers to 'throw-down'! :)
Here's Josie in her birthday best:
And here's the outfit she spent the rest of the party wearing:
And here is Josie's cake. On the way home from Florida, we started talking to Josie about her birthday and asked her what she wanted on her cake. She said "Two Yellow Bunnies" - so matter-of-factly. We kind of laughed it off, but for the next two weeks, she kept telling us and everyone else that she was going to have a birthday cake with two yellow bunnies. She was amazed that her wish actually came true!
Here she is marveling at her cake:
Standing on the cooler...best seat in the house:
This photo marks one of those "standout" moments I mentioned above. There's Josie standing on the cooler, leaning over her birthday cake, and about 50 of her favorite people all singing "Happy Birthday" to her and here's the look on her face:
I just remember standing behind her looking at the whole scene and thinking, "Wow, what a lucky little girl Josie is to have so many people who love her." Really, it was such an overwhelming feeling of gratitude and I want to thank all of you who made it happen! Clearly, Josie enjoyed the moment, too. Here she is blowing out her birthday candles:


And almost immediately diving into one of those yellow bunnies:
Time for cake:
Yum!
Actually, the little dear spit most of it out (what can I say, she doesn't eat a lot of sweets):
All told, her birthday was really incredible. I'll post the link to the full photo album as soon as I get it uploaded. There are lots of great photos there of all her little friends and all the families who came to help us celebrate (but I didn't want to post them on the blog without your permission considering everyone's in their swimsuits). Thanks again everyone!!!

"The After Party"

Thanks to Carissa, Josie had her regular nap post-party and the whole family returned after naptime for the "after party" to open presents. She had a HEAP of gifts (thank you everyone) and we had about as much fun watching her open them as she had ripping off the paper and playing with each new gift. Here are some photos from the afternoon.

Josie modeling her new charm bracelet from Carissa (SOOO sweet of her "sis-sis"):
Her new workbench to balance out all that 'girly' stuff:
Her latest obsession - SHOES:

Enjoying some delicious tea:
Reading a new book with her Granddaddy:
Feeding her new "Baby Stella" doll in the great antique highchair that Grandma found:
Trying out the new "doll" bathtub:
Special guests Lyla & Makayla get a ride in the red wagon:
"Who Dey" Josie playing with her new musical puzzle:
YAY - Josie *finally* plants one on Lyla:
And off to bed that night in her new jammies, with both new dolls, and look closely - her cinderella shoes.
The next morning modeling one of her new outfits, back in the dolltub. ;)
Thank you to everyone for your generosity! We've all had so much fun playing with the new toys, books, games, etc!

Josie's Birthday Part One

Sweet Baby Josie turned two last week, and I'm hoping that posting the photos from a full week of celebrating will finally make it sink in that my baby girl is TWO! The celebrating started on Tuesday morning with Josie's (it-was-even-bigger-on-her-head-last-year) birthday crown, breakfast, and presents! Here are a few photos from that morning.
Opening presents in her jammies...
Must try on new outfit immediately...
Being a kids is so much fun...
Must try new puzzle...
Must unwrap with the most utmost care...
Must read new books...
After a long morning of opening and exploring and trying on...we went about our day which included (brace yourself) taking Josie to visit her NEW SCHOOL (much more on this later) and coming home to rest up for more fun in the afternoon and evening with mama & daddy. That evening, we gave Josie her "big present" which is this cool Plan Toys dollhouse (special shout out to Amazon) complete with all the fix-ins. This dollhouse has already been the subject of many funny moments but before I get to that...here is Josie setting it up.
And here is just one of the funny moments. Yep - that's Louie at the desk. And - while that's actually the flatscreen TV that came with the furniture - Josie insisted we put it on the desk because the desk needed a computer.
In other funny dollhouse-inspired moments, Josie put the mom, dad and little girl all in the same bed "to go night-night". Is she trying to tell us something? And, she also cried real tears when the little boy got out of the bathtub and didn't have a little towel to dry off. (Yes, I went to the craft store yesterday to buy felt so the dolls will never have to drip-dry again.) All told, it was a great birthday! And this was just the first day of the celebration. The "real party" was Saturday and there are lots of photos of that coming soon. (In the meantime, if any of you out there took some blogworthy photos at the party, please send them my way! Thanks.)

Josie's Birthday Part Two

We'll skip the part about how we spent the better part of 3 hours trying to convince Josie to take a nap on her birthday and skip right to the part where we finally gave up and decided to drive her up and down 71 so she'd pass out and her birthday would be saved. Here are the photos from that evening - our dinner at our favorite restaurant (Riverside Korean) and Josie's first meal there. This is actually pretty hard to believe and was a total accident, but I had to share - check out Josie using the chopsticks!
And - as a big surprise to all of us - our favorite waitress sent out a piece of really yummy green tea cake and a candle for Josie. I had been a little bummed that she wasn't going to blow out candles on her actual birthday since her party wasn't until the weekend, so this was such a wonderful surprise. And we all enjoyed the cake!
Here are a couple of photos from the aquarium. We didn't take very many since we hang out there so often, but we did actually fork over the ten bucks for the print of the family photo in the jaws of the giant shark to commemorate Josie's birthday. This was a funny moment I had to share. Josie is obsessed with knowing the names of anything and everything - all the characters in her books, every picture on billboards and in magazines, animals at the zoo, trees, cars - you name it. Literally. Chances are, if I've ever met you, I've used your name at some point in the last couple of weeks for a rhino, pig, puppy, jellyfish, etc. It's a bit exhausting actually. And I've had to get creative (characters in movies, TV shows, etc) so imagine our surprise when all the sudden Josie decided to name the penguins herself. She was pointing to them going "that one's Dodo, that one's Haha, that one's DiDi". It was too cute. Here they are all lined up (Lou told her they were singing happy birthday)...
Nothing like a good cuddle in front of the penguin display...
Here's another one of our little cuddle machine earlier in the day...
Lots more birthday photos to come...