Fun, Family, and Friends...

I guess these photos all fall under the category of what any holiday is really about - fun, family, and friends. What could be more fun than the girls in bunny ears?And spending time with the family?

And spending time with friends that are just like family?

Thanks to everyone for visiting (Debbie, Ava, Chrissy, Kalie, Claire, Suzie & Makayla) and big thanks from Josie (who is still working on "thank you") for the great Easter baskets and goodies. As dad said, "This looks more like Christmas than Easter!" Josie loves all her new toys and we've had quite a blast with the bubbles, playdoh, and zoo train so far this week. Oh - quick story - when Carissa got here on Tuesday (after 5 days off), Josie greeted her at the elevator with every single new stuffed animal she got for Easter. I'm not kidding, I told her Carissa was here and she bolted over to her toybox and grabbed all of them then waddled over to Carissa and laid them at her feet. It was so cute! :)

Here comes "DD" Cottontail...

Hello loyal readers - sorry for the delay - you'll just have to trust me that "working part-time" rarely means "working part-time" and on top of being a "full-time mom" - well, you get the picture. Anyway, this is the first installment of the Easter photos. There were over 200 of them, so I had to break this down into several smaller posts to prevent a nervous breakdown (it's been one of those weeks). So, here are the photos of Josephine's First Easter Egg Hunt.

Grandma had everything ready and Josie was ready to dive right in. We were all surprised by how "into it" she was, because we weren't quite sure she'd "get it" yet. Well, she definitely got it...

Next was on to the actual Egg Hunt with "DD" (that's Josie-speak for Granddaddy and will likely stick forever). He made the perfect Easter Bunny, as you can see. We were amazed how good she was at finding them. (When did she turn into such a big girl??) The whole time, she dragged "DD" around by his hand, saying "Nother One" and pointing to the egg. It was so sweet to watch! We all spent the next hour hiding and seeking and hiding and seeking and hiding and seeking...

1 to 20...(almost)

Translation: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20! :)

I love you goat!

Last weekend we made our first trip to "Parky's Farm" at Winton Woods Park for the "Easter Extravaganza." The bad news was that the Easter-themed events were for much older kids, but the good news was that we discovered one heckuva great place to hang out any day of the year. Josie loves animals as you can tell by this video of her getting up-close and personal with what we later found out to be a 14 year old goat. Yep, that's her saying "I love you goat" at the end...



Here she is in the shadow of the guys on stilts... And sneaking into the stable to see this police horse taking a break...or the "Bunny Horse" as Josie appropriately named it...
And finally mustering up the courage to go see "Parky the Raccoon" (which she talked about the rest of the day)...Here's Josie embracing her Xenia roots on a John Deere...And, taking a break from the Easter madness to play on the slide...This is when she discovered a slide is for more than sliding... I kid you not, she is part monkey...

Finally, I'll leave you with this random shot from Lunken Park last week. Here is Josie blowing her first bubbles and looking adorable in her Elmo shirt from Grandma. (Mama Tip: We bought these non-spill bubbles to take with Josie to distract her during her 18 month doctors appt. And, it worked for at least half of the time, so maybe considering picking some up for your kiddo in prep for their next appt.)

Oh - one other funny thing about the bubbles. I think I joked here months ago that Josie's first word was "Yeti". When we had that long flight to Hawaii, we caved and let her watch like 6 hours of the kids programming on the TV in her seat. That led to watching a show called "The Backyardigans" about a Yeti at least 10 times. By the end of the flight, she was saying "Yeti, Yeti, Yeti". That was November. Fast forward to April, I'm at Target looking for the spill-proof bubbles (of course you can't buy anything without some licensed character plastered all over it) and there they are, "Backyardigans" bubbles. Josie looks at them at goes "Yeti, Yeti, Yeti!" She's never seen the show besides the airplane, so this is insane that this resurfaced 4 months later. Even funnier, although they actually have names on each bubble wand, Josie refers to them as "Orange Yeti, Blue Yeti, and Pink Yeti". (Mental Note: Be careful! Who knows what Josie has heard over the last several months that might come popping out of her mouth any day now?!)

Holy Toledo, It's Flying...

Josie showed a lot of interest in a kite at Ault Park last week, so we decided to walk down to The Freedom Center one afternoon for a little family kite flying by the river. Here is the sequence of events -

Who knew the kite would be so much fun just getting set up?Here it goes - The answer to the question, "Do you think Josie can fly it?" Yes!


Correction...Maybe Not!


And here is our beloved kite flying itself over the Banks Project where it got tangled in some bushes.
So, on one final note, I'll be totally surprised if anyone knows the obscure movie quote in the subject line, but I couldn't resist the urge. "Holy Toledo, It's Flying..." always pops into my head when I see a kite, probably because I watched the movie "Electric Grandmother" at least 50 times growing up. (Does anyone else remember that? Manda?)

18 month Appt

Today was Josephine's (one month late) 18 month appt. Here are her stats:

Height: 34.5 inches (99th percentile)
Weight: 26 pounds (60th percentile)
Weight-for-Height: 25% (which means she's lean for her height)

Just for Fun: Supposedly, whatever a girl's height is at 18 months is exactly half of what her adult height will be (the same is true for a boy at 2 years). So, if this is the case, we're looking at a 5'8" or 5'9" full-grown Josie. :)

Splish, splash (but not in the bath)...

So the playdough was a little bit messy and we were looking for another rainy day activity, so we decided to have a bubble party in the kitchen. Josie was very impressed with Louie's antics, as you can see from these photos and video. Sometimes there's nothing like having some good clean fun...

And, since the three of us were already covered in soap from the kitchen, we decided it was time for Josie's first shower. Every morning she watches either Louie or I from the outside of the glass, but on Saturday she got to step inside to the magical world of the shower herself. Here she is from the inside looking out...

And finally getting brave enough to stick her face in the water...

And, just being adorable in her birthday suit...

Who would've known you could have so much fun playing inside?

Rain, rain, go away...or not

Saturday was one of those days where we started off whining that we were stuck inside, but ended up having so much fun just hanging out together that we decided to just keep on playing once we realized the sun had come out. We decided to watch all of the Josie home movies from birth to her first birthday. So, with that as the backdrop, we kicked off the rainy day festivities with our first experience making homemade playdough (recipe here, super easy & fun). We made a pretty fantastic octopus, had fun making our handprints and footprints, and wrapped things up by making our own playdough slide for little balls to roll down because Josie insisted we make a park. Here are a couple of photos and a quick video of Josie saying "playdough" in the cute little way that only she can...

On the park circuit

Now that the weather is warming up, we're totally on the local park circuit. Big props to Katrina and Stella to introducing us to the joys of Lunken Airport's "Land of Make Believe" where the little ones (and big ones as seen in this first photo) can play on a ton of great equipment while planes and helicopters take off and land nearby. Wow! Josie insisted on doing this zipline - over and over and over - she is truly part monkey...

Here we are enjoying the park at Shawnee Park on a recent trip to Grandma & Granddaddy's house in Xenia. The playground is completely different (and safer) than the one I grew up playing on, but Josie doesn't seem to mind. In typical Josie fashion, here she is pushing the limit, going down the slide with no hands...

And walking like a duck...

And, um, getting ready to take a ride with her "D-D" down a slide that ended up being way too big and way too scary...

Cha,Cha,Cha Changes...

Just for fun I went back to March of '08 for comparison purposes and this time last year, Josie was just starting to eat solid foods, sit up on her own, etc. Remember when she carried around the bag of green beans all day? That was a year ago this month! Anyway, considering it's only been a year since she got her first tooth...it's pretty amazing that these are all the things she can do now. Really, she blows our minds everyday. I can honestly say that I don't know how she learned all of these things, except for to say that her memory is unbelievable and it seems she only has to hear something once to file it away. Here are some of the cognitive developments in the last month:


Josie...
* Recognizes all her capital letters and some lowercase letters
* Says all the letters in order A-Z
* Counts to 10 on her own (although she thinks she can count to 20 but she skips from 12 to 18)
* Knows her shapes - rectangle, square, circle, triangle, star, heart, moon
* Knows all her colors
* Does the hand motions to all the classics - Itsy, Bitsy Spider / Pat-a-cake / Etc
* Sing along with her favorite songs from music class & on CD
* Talks non-stop (especially pointing and naming things - "Blue Bus, Brown Dog, Green Shirt...")
* Strings words together to make sentences ("Josie Do It", "Swing Mama", "Eat Berries")
* Loves drawing/coloring/writing and gets totally occupied with all of her books
* Can identify tons of animals and knows who lives where - i.e. if you ask her what to draw in the fish tank she'll tell you octopus, sea star, fish, crab, and many of the characters from the books she reads like "Pout Pout Fish" for example)
* Calls people she knows by name, including friends, family, etc
* Loves to play games with us like "Hide the bear" and wait for us to find it

Okay, that's all I can think of off the top of my head. In other "developmental news" - check this out - for those of you who have ever been to our condo - get ready to let out a huge "UH-OH!"

That's right loyal readers, Josie can officially push our elevator button on her own. OH NO! (Note for those of you who have never been here, it is in our dining room.) This is - ummm- not good to put it lightly. If ever we needed any more reason to sell this place and get a house, this is it. It's not like Josie is ever unsupervised long enough that she'd get very far before we realized she was missing, but the thought of the elevator door opening and closing on her (because her little body often doesn't trip the trigger to stay open) is terribly frightening! So, everyone send your collective condo-selling-vibes our way.

Giggle, Giggle

Is there anything cuter than a baby's giggle? Actually yes - it's watching your daughter make your niece giggle... Enjoy!

Three Austins + Three Schneiders

I love my sister...a lot. And, over the years I've certainly come to love Michael like a brother. But, come on people, let's be honest here. The reason for this particular trip to Chicago is right here.... Little Lyla Bird is unbelievably sweet, and we found it hard to believe how much she has grown up and changed since Christmas. We had lots of great moments laughing and smiling at our girls over the weekend, and some special moments like this one when I realize that Lyla isn't the only one that has grown up before my eyes...

Like I said in the St. Patty's post, it's always fun to get out and do things together, but when we don't get to see each other very often, the best times are spent just hanging out together and catching up. Here are some photos from Saturday afternoon & Sunday morning.

Josie doing her best pose for the camera (from Lyla's way-too-small-for-her exersaucer, which she was obsessed with and got into and out of herself)...

Louie doing his best pose for the camera...

Manda keeping both Josie and Lyla simultaneously entertained with "Old McDonald" -

Lyla's "huh" face -

Josie's "Huh" face (we see this one a lot these days, she hides things and then goes "huh?" over and over until you find it) -

I love this photo. Josie and Lyla were both on Manda's legs and she was bouncing both of them. I love how Josie is looking so lovingly at Manda while Lyla is looking so lovingly at Josie.

And - man - I just realized there aren't any pictures from the weekend of me and Lyla together. Luckily this one of Lyla with her Uncle Louie is cute enough for the both of us.

Another great weekend in Chicago...luckily there's already another visit with The Austins on the calendar for next month so we don't have to wait too much longer for our next fix.

St. Patty's

It was just a coincidence that we were in Chicago for the annual St. Patrick's Day festivities, but we decided to take full advantage of the opportunity to get the girls out into the city. We started the morning with a brunch at Michelle & Ed's house, whose daughter Savannah was unbelievably sweet when it came to sharing all of her toys, food, etc. What a little sweetie! Here are the kids playing together. So cute! Then, we walked a couple of blocks to the parade. Just check out our crew -

I'll spare you all the details of the total breakdown that occurred between the previous picture and this one. Suffice it to say, it was 2pm our time when we got to the parade, Josie hates her stroller, and Josie hadn't had a nap. Lots of tears later - she finally passed out and here is what Lyla and Josie saw of the St. Patrick's Day parade. (Lyla was in our UppaBaby testing it out & that's Josie's little Uggs poking out from under the MSU blanket.)It wasn't quite as warm as we thought it was, but there were certainly some memorable moments. And, it's always fun to hang out in a different city. And I always enjoy spending time with my sister & Michael's friends. It makes me feel better about them living so far away. I miss my sissy... Here are Louie &I pretending that we weren't about to kill each other over the no-napping-Josie, no-go-with the Moby wrap fiasco. ;)

All in all, it was a great way to spend a sunny Chicago day but boy were we pooped and ready to hang around Chez Austin the rest of the day.

Job Update

Just a quick job update, my hours were reinstated so I am back to 20 hours/week. I still don't have much job security, but I'm definitely thankful. My contract is up at the end of June, so if anyone hears of anything let me know. :)
Also, big congrats to Louie who tried his first case from beginning to end all by himself this week! I'm super proud of him! This is a pretty big deal.