Double the birthday fun! On Saturday we had our first annual double birthday party for the girls. Rachel's mom, brother and sister-in-law and niece and nephew came from Mass. for the weekend. We also had some nieghbors and church friends celebrate with us.

My sweet Rose is three today! I can't believe how fast she has grown. Here are some pics. of her Birth Day and 1st and 2nd birthdays.

Rose celebrated her third Birthday today. Mike took the day off of work and we spent the day with her Auntie-Grandma and Uncle-Papa who drove here from Michigan. This morning she woke up to find that her bedroom and doorway was decorated with streamers and balloons. We took her to Build a Bear where she made a stuffed dog. After lunch she got to go to Chuck E Cheese to play a few games. This evening we had cupcakes. She is looking forward to her (and Pearl's) party on Sat.
PS I just had to include the photo of Miss Pearl shoving the cupcake down as she does with all of her food.

A hot day for a hay ride! Last Thursday the girls and I went to Linvilla orchard with my Mops group. Rose was a little leery of the Hay ride after her roller coaster fiasco the week before. (See previous post.) She ended up enjoying it. In her words "I was scared for the first two pages, but I liked the last four pages." I guess that it was like a story to her. Pearl as usual was just enjoying it all. She played hide and seek half of the hayride, putting my sling over her head, making it difficult to get a good picture of the girls together.

Pearl Walking. Sorry it is sideways, can't figure out how to rotate it so you have to turn your head.

The not so fun day at the Fair!

It all started well, Rose enjoyed getting her face painted. I did not enjoy paying $6 for something that rubbed off an hour later.

Rose's neighbor friend's wanted to start with a "Kiddie" roller coaster. I said to Mike I am not sure she should go on that first as she is usually a little timid and needs to warm up to new things... but her friends wanted to go and Rose thought it looked like fun! By default I had to go on the ride with her daddy is to tall to fit. I HATE roller coasters myself, but thought it's a kiddie coaster how bad can it be?

As soon as the ride started Rose was so upset hanging on for dear life but to scared to really cry. I didn't like it to much either and tried reassuring us both that it was almost over... but the roller coaster operator must have been feeling very generous because it was the longest ride EVER! By the end I was singing "Jesus loves me" to calm her down and praying that she would not try to jump off or that we would not fly off as I was imagining.

After that Rose would not go on any of the other rides even the slow ones. As you can see her baby sister enjoyed using up the rest of her unused tickets.

Rose attempted to go on the Flintstone Train ride but spooked before the ride started and got off. Since then she can't stop talking about her traumatizing experience on the roller coaster. Poor Baby!

Rose is really into drawing and pretend "writing" lately. Her favorite medium is her Magna-Doodle so she usually erases her pictures before I get to even see it. The other day I took a photo of her drawing and she described the picture to me. It is a lady, I can't remember her name as she makes up quite interesting names lately. Anyway she said that at the top left she wrote the name and the lady is holding her purse on the right side and all the way to the right is a little Cuckoo bird. It really did look like a little bird.

Rose is very creative, she recently changed her doll Sophie's name to Corna. She also has an imaginary friend named Gweesa and her husband's name is Geesa. She often createslittle story lines to go along with her friends and dolls with the very interesting (and often difficult to pronounce) names. The other day she packed her pillowcase for her sleepover trip to Gweesa's house. She had some PJ's a stuffed animal a book and a rock. Why does she bring a rock to a sleepover, well because she sleeps with a rock under her pillow lately. We are not sure how it started but it does not seem to bother her when she is sleeping. I have several really pretty (ok, maybe she gets her love of rocks from me) beach rocks and so a few nights ago Mike and I were getting ready to go to bed and he found a rock under his pillow. He thought I put it there as a joke and I was trying to convince him otherwise when I came across a lovely rock under my pillow also. The next morning we asked Rose and she said they were our surprise presents she also had one for Pearl but had put it under her own pillow with her other rock, luckily not in Pearl's crib.

Pearl girl turned 11 months today and started running (not walking) all over the house!
She has been practicing walking for a few weeks now and the past few days she was walking half the time and crawling the other half but now as of today she is up and running. I was trying to video her tonight and I would set her down and try to back up with the video camera to tape her walking but by the time I backed up she was already there. Now I need to figure out how to post the videos on YOU TUBE!

Rose and Pearl love to play together, I usually use that time to run around picking up the messes they created earlier in the day. Rose is having more fun with her sister all the time, however she is starting to show a little bit of jealousy for the first time as Pearl has been getting lots of attention for learning to walk and saying lots of new words. So we have been really trying to focus on Rose getting attention for all of her new skills.

Cinderella and Tinkerbell
Rose loves dressing up and I just found these cute costumes at Ross on clearance. She was so excited to have Pearl dress up too. As you can sse from the pictures Cinderella was much more into the photo shoot then Tinkerbell, who kept leaping off of the couch. We thought perhaps she thought she could fly since she was wearing wings.

Pearl finally went in for her nine month check-up. She is 19 1/2lbs and 30" tall. Her weight is in the 70% and her height is 96% for her age she is 3 1/2" taller then Rose was at nine months. She is actually already taller and heavier then Rose was at one year old. She just cut her fourth tooth on the top and now has six teeth. She continues to crawl as fast as lightening. She can stand alone but will sit when she realizes that she is not holding onto something. She loves, loves, loves, all animals and will just break out in the sweetest giggle when she sees or even talks about animals. I took the girls to the pet store today and Pearl was so excited she was Squealing so loud she woke up the sleeping hamsters and gerbils in the cages.

As you can see Rose loves all things Princesses. She has two little friends down the street, Olivia (almost 4) and Adriana (almost 3), that she loves playing with. They have a swimming pool and she has become quite the little fish. She will swim around the whole pool with just her arm swimmies on. Our neighbors right next door to us also have an in-ground pool, practically in our back yard. Last week we went swimming with them and when we left the husband told Mike anytime you see us out here you can come swimming. Rose doesn't miss anything so she heard him and the next day she told me "everytime they are swimming we get to go swimming too." Mike says we will have to sneak her out of the house so she doesn't see them in the pool when we are trying to go somewhere. She has always been very good with her langugae skills and now that she is creating some of her own words. Her new name for me is MooMoo and she calls Mike, Dabs. She is very creative and has a great imagination.