Chloe

Chloe really wasn't feeling well yesterday. She wanted to be held or snuggled all day, with the exception of about an hour when she perked up and decided she needed her picture taken too.



It tired her out, though, and she soon crashed. She slept from 4 - 11 pm and then was wide awake and feeling much better.

She's still not herself but he's better already.

Christmas Camille

Who is this cute little girl in the Christmas dress?

Here's a little clue...

It's Camille!

Being sassy!

She wore her Christmas dress to school for their holiday concert.

She has discovered one of the joys of living in New England - sitting on the vent when the air is on so the hot air fills your dress. I think I'm going to use this pattern to make her some flannel nightgowns.

Ear Trouble

Everyone in my house has been sharing colds back and forth over the last few weeks. Aside from being all snotty and gross, Chloe woke up this morning a little extra whiny. When I asked her what the matter was, she replied with the following:

"My ear hurt. Someone poke it with a stick."

She hadn't been out of my line of sight so far that morning, plus she was clingier than usual, so I figured it was probably a genuine problem.

Fortunately the doctor was able to fit us in early and Chloe was right. Her ear did hurt. Both of her ears are infected. We got her medicine from the pharmacy and have spent the day at home snuggling on the couch.

Hopefully she'll feel better soon!

Chloe's Baby

Lately Chloe is very into playing baby. She's also into playing pretend friend - so far there have been Sarah (who is our most frequent visitor), two little teeny, tiny boys, and Moe from the Doodlebops. It's pretty entertaining to watch her interact with these friends.

Here is Chloe after Camille's party with the little doll that she commandeered from her sister. You can tell she's using her to play baby!


(She is also sporting "mermaid eyes" courtesy of Auntie Su.)

Birthday Fun

Camille celebrated her fifth birthday a couple of weeks early with a tea party with her friends from kindergarten.

Here are the girls all dressed up in their party finery.

Camille is wearing a dress I made for her. I was going to make a pinafore to go over the top, but she decided she'd rather have the sash instead.

Her friends brought her some makeup, books, toys and really great art kits.


We had star shaped cupcakes with shiny silver sprinkles on them.


The girls also ate a tea party lunch (with finger sandwiches, fruit, vegetable sticks, pretzels and two kinds of juice), decorated canvas tote bags with fabric markers and played numerous games of musical chairs. Camille had a great time!

After the party, Auntie Su pulled out her makeup and gave the girls pretty eyes. Here Camille is sporting "mermaid eyes."


Where did she learn about vanity?

More pictures coming

We have had the busiest fall ever. Between the kids going back to school, me doing an internship at the local high school library, Rob working and the miscellaneous craziness that comes near the end of the year, we've been swamped. That's my excuse for not posting pictures and I'm sticking to it!

I have a couple of big projects left to do for school so I can graduate and once those are done I'll be back to posting with some semblance of regularity.

Cute New 'Do

Camille has been growing her hair out for the longest time and today we finally decided it was time to do something new. We went to the hairdresser where she got most of her hair cut off into this cute new 'do! She's going to send the hair we got cut off to Locks of Love so some little girl can have her pretty hair. She was really excited about it and I'm really excited about how cute her hair looks now!

Back to School

We went on vacation the last couple of weeks in August and got back the day before school started. Things have been extra-crazy at our house since then - Rob is back to work, I started my internship a couple of days a week at the local high school library and the big kids are in school. Chloe is enjoying having a little alone with mom or dad time, or at least she would if we didn't insist that she take a nap!

Here's a few snaps of the kids on the first days of school.

Caleb wasn't too keen on getting his picture taken that morning and made a game out of being as grumpy as possible for me. I did catch him laughing in his attempt to thwart the camera.

We did have a good chuckle over Chloe who decided "Me go school too. Me ride bus." She put on her shoes (on the wrong feet) and grabbed her backpack and jacket (over her jammies) and she was ready to go!


Camille, on the other hand, was happy to oblige the photographer. I was at my internship that day so I missed her big send-off, though I was there to greet her when she got off the bus. (She goes to school from 12-3:30.)

Chloe apparently tried to catch the bus on Camille's first day too!

Here is Camille with her neighborhood friends. All four of them catch the kindergarten bus together.

A cute picture of the girls and their daddy.

Makeup Artist for Hire

She has lots of experience and her rates are very reasonable. Really.

What?
Not interested?
She'll be so disappointed when she hears the news.

(Note to me: the bedroom shelf is not high enough apparently. From now on, makeup goes in the closet with the door latched. Heaven help us all when she learns to turn the doorknob.)

Eating a Popsicle is Serious Business

But don't take my word for it...take his!

Chloe at the Park

The last time we went to the little splash park, Chloe did not want to spend any time under the sprinklers. We got lost getting there (though technically we weren't lost, we just didn't know how to get where we were supposed to be. I knew where I was the entire time, just not quite where it was that we wanted to go.) so by the time we got there and changed her into her swim suit, it wasn't really worth the trip to spend 20 seconds under the sprinklers.

Today, however, she did not let me down. It was all I could do to get her OUT of the water! How cute is she?

Caleb at the Park

Caleb was really fun to take pictures of today. Usually he sees the camera and runs the other direction (I have a lot pictures of the back of his head) but today he was so busy I snapped some fun shots. He makes the greatest faces. I love his freckled face!

Camille at the Park

This morning we went to a park that had a little splash pad. The kids had a blast! Here's Camille:

The Other Big Mess

Today seemed to be one big mess to clean up after another. This was today's final mess (knock on wood). I ran upstairs to brush my teeth after dinner and came back to find this:



Chloe had decided to "cook" with this bag of cornmeal she managed to weasel out of the pantry. Nice. Not pictured is the pile of crackers on the dining room floor. Apparently she thought they were animal crackers (she says them "amiels. cackers.") and when she realized she grabbed the wrong box it was a much better solution to dump the whole box on the floor than to simply put them back in the pantry or on the counter.

Is it rude to say I was a happy mother when bedtime rolled around tonight?

Just Like Mom??

Chloe, for the little tomboy that she seems to be, is pretty crazy about makeup. If she happens to be in the room when I'm putting makeup on, she begs and pleads to have some too. I usually give in and (pretend) give her some too. This morning she was using some pretty advanced two-year old logic to try to convince me to let her use my eyelash curler.

C: What dat?
M: This? It's called an eyelash curler.
C: Me. Eyeash cuwler?
M: No, sorry. It's just for mommies.
C: Me, mommy.
M: Are you a mommy?
C: Yeah, me mommy. Mommy baby. Eyeash cuwler pease?

I made the mistake this afternoon of leaving both my makeup bag out on the counter and my bedroom door unlatched. The kids were playing upstairs while I was industriously cleaning the house (mmmm hmmmm). After a while I realized I hadn't heard Chloe for a few minutes, so I went up to take a peek. It took me a minute to find her - I think she was thinking invisible, making it tough to see her. When I did find her, though, this is what I saw.


You can't see it all here, but she helped herself to face powder, some moisturizer and lipstick. While I'm grateful she did not manage to open my new eye shadow, I am now in the market for a new tube of lipstick.

Needless to say, she was very proud of herself.

Public Service Announcement

If you ever get the great idea to throw some bacon on the grill while you're making chicken for dinner, don't neglect to put it in a pan.

And be sure to have a fire extinguisher handy to put out the fire that will certainly occur if you don't.

Also be sure you clean the grease and extinguisher gunk off the grill while your husband is still at work so that he'll never know. If you're feeling really ambitious, you can clean the house really well so if he does notice that the grill is awfully clean he'll think that you did it because you ran out of things to do inside the house.

Not that I would know anything about this, of course!

Bump what?

My kids' fascination with infomercials continues.

The other night I was getting the kids all showered, Camille was combing her hair in front of the mirror. "Mom," she said. "I think you need to get some bump its."

M: "What are bump its?"
C: "They're these things that you stick underneath your hair so your hair sticks all poofy and not flat to your head. Then you'd be so beautiful."

Maybe I should look into them...



They have a great commercial here: https://www.bumpits.com/

You know, Christmas is right around the corner. I need to start getting serious about Christmas shopping, especially if I'm going to do all my shopping from infomericals...

Summer Fun

A quick picture update.

Playing in the pool.





Eating chives from the herb garden.

Someone's sassy.

Don't you just love these freckles?

Chloe gets ready to mow the lawn.

Playing bubbles


Caleb's pet moth


What is Chloe looking at here?

An extra friend to play with in the pool. The kids found this frog and thought he'd like a swim.

He was much more interested in making a lily pad out of Caleb's swim trunks.

A silly little girl.