Family Photos

 We had our family pictures taken along with Cora's one year photos.  Love this family of mine!

 All Cora wanted was Kreg. She kept walking to him or looking at him, she wouldn't even let me hold her which it totally typical of her any time of the day, if Kreg is around he is all she wants! I love their sweet relationship!

 Cora was spooked about laying on the floor with the photographer standing over her. she lasted 1 second with this.

 Oli was told to jump out and scare the photographer! He loved every second of this!

 This is his "go to" smile, when we said just smile nice this is what he does!

 My sweet big girl! Cecily is looking and acting so grown up these days! She was perfect through the whole shoot of course! She kept wiggling her front tooth, she said "I wish my tooth would come out before the pics, it would look better."  The tooth is a little snaggled, but I think a bloody hole would have been worse. Love that we could capture this stage in her life!

 
 Cecily's real smile!

 Oliver is a superhero

 Cecily is escaping into a magical world

 Cora is literally climbing the stairs to get to Kreg!

Love my little babies!!

Losing teeth

Little miss Cecily can't seem to keep her teeth in these days, like seriously. She said she can't help but wiggle them until they come out, ready or not! It will be interesting to see how long it takes for her top front teeth to come in since they were NOT ready to come out! I've had to warn her not to take anymore teeth out until they are ready!

Cora is ONE!

                              The table display of all the yummy sweets and photos of our sweet girl!

We had a fun "sweet" party planned for our sweet girl, but a couple of days before she got sick, she had a high fever that took a day and a half to break and she got 3 teeth all at once! To say she was miserable is an understatement. She cried and cried for 3 days straight, which is way out of character for our typically sweet, easy going baby. Even though we ended up cancelling the big family party, we still celebrated just our family. I had already planned/gotten everything for the party so I didn't want it to go to waste!

I wanted the theme to be sweet and dainty just like Cora!

I made oreo truffle balls

I hired my friend to make the cake, cup cakes, and yummy chocolate and coconut candies! The cake was turned out so cute with the ruffles and sweet flower details!

I made cup cake papers out of  doilies . I loved all the little Doilie details of the party. It paired wll with all the glass dishes.

Pearl candies, strawberry marshmellows, and various pink candies. We had little pink bags to fill with candies. CC and Oli had fun filling their bags, we filled bags to give away with the left over candy. SO sad we couldn't celebrate with our extended family!

These were the coconut and chocolate candies Etna made, she is Brazilian and these are a Brazilian treat!

I displayed photos of our girl throughout her life!

Cecily grabbed her camera and joined in on taking pics of the party and birthday girl!

We managed to get a couple of photos of Cora smiling, but for the most party she was totally crying and hating the celebration!

Her dress and little bed jacket are vintage, I got them a few years ago while antique shopping in MN with Sarah. I knew I would have another girl some day and I have been planning her 1st birthday since then! Cora looked like a doll in her outfit, I can't wait for her to get more use out of it this summer!

And this is how she looked most of the day and the past few days! Poor girl!!

She touched her smash cake and even put her mouth on it a bit, but for the most part was just confused about what to do with it. We decided to try a cupcake instead...

That went better, but she really didn't eat much. She hasn't felt like eating much since her mouth hurts so bad.

Oli loved the frosting and licked it of right away!

We got a smiley, messy, cake face picture!

CC had fun filling her bag with treats. She of course wanted to save them for later.

Cora and her favorite person in the world! I love to watch Cora and Kreg's relationship! If Kreg is around he is all Cora wants, she loves him so much! She pretty much has him smitten as well.

We are so happy to have our sweet Coco in our family, this past year has been a dream with her. She is so fun and so sweet! The kids are obsessed with her and have so much fun playing with / taking care of her!
Cora at 1
Can: Sign: milk, more, all done, waves bye, says: "hi", "uh-oh", "mama", "dada" 
Walks around lots but still prefers crawling
Loves:
~Milk, cuties, chicken, turkey, cheese, any fruits and veggies pureed, carrots, cheerios, pancakes, oats, PB sandwiches. We are still working on getting her to like foods with skins like grapes and beans.
~Singing, if it's a movie or the radio she loves "singing" along. She also loves when we sing action songs with her ie patty cake, 3 little fish, popcorn popping, itsy bitsy spider etc.
~Climbing she loves to climb on anything she can, I found her on top of Cecily's little table in her room the other day. She sure keeps us busy. She has mastered the stairs now too.
~Putting everything in her mouth! I don't remember the other two doing this as much as Cora, but then again our house was probably cleaner when CC and Oli were little since there weren't 2 older kids leaving messes everywhere they go.
~Baths

 Hates:
~Being trapped ie the car seat, oli pinning her etc
 ~ when you take things from her, she growls whenever she is mad and throws her hands behind her!
 ~Going to bed

She is for the most part a very easy going, happy baby. She is getting more and more personality and vocal each day! We love seeing her personality blossom, it will be fun to watch her this summer as she explores the outdoors!

Janurary '14

 I had to include this photo sequence of my SILLY Oli! He came into my room dressed in his Sailor costume for Halloween this year and asked me to take a picture, He said he needed to have a serious face then he proceeded to ask for more pictures and told me how he would pose it went like this:

" Now I will smile and be happy,"

 "Now I will smile and turn to the side. DId you take it Mom? Can I see?"

 "OK, now I will be serious."

 "Now I will go by the door and be serious." "How was that? Can I see it?" He totally enjoyed his modeling shoot!

Oliver is so fun! He is always being silly and funny! He really is such a joy and breath of fresh air in our home! He is so happy to be 3 and 1/2, almost 4. He has been a bit whiny the last little while, so we have been working on going in our room and coming back out Happy. it works pretty well, especially in the morning, when I think he just doesn't give himself enough time to fully wake up. I know I need a few minuets to wake up before I want to start interacting with everyone.
   He loves going to school twice a week, the gym every morning and story time at the library once a week. He also has a play date twice a week with friends. This boy thrives on social time, I am the same way so I am happy to oblige! He is such a good helper around the house and with Cora. He is very good at his chores :emptying the Garbages, unloading the dishwasher, cleaning windows, dusting, helping sweep and mop the floors, cleaning his room, putting away clean clothes, and making his bed. He rarely complains about doing chores!
He is obsessed with all things super hero and ninja turtles! He loves to Read about them, pretend to be them, and watch movies about them! He even says he will be the Hulk when he grows up!
  Oli is our little lover too, he is always telling us he has a secret and then he will whisper he loves you in your ear, he is so sweet to always give kisses and hugs. Such a sweet, fun boy!

 The pictures above are Cecily's photography skills!

 Oliver was unloading the dishwasher and Cora came to help! So he kissed and hugged her until she had enough and left him to his work!

 Big helper doing morning chores.

 This sweet girl has been sick non stop this winter! (oli too) we have had every kind of flu bug, cold, ear and eye infections like in the photo above. She and Oli are both so good about it and are generally pretty happy through their sickness.

 Cecily and Oliver have had so much fun sledding in the backyard on the little mound of snow they built! Cora stands at the window and laughs while they do silly tricks!

Sundays are always my favorite day! We get to go to church and be spiritually fed and then we get to stay home and just be together! I love that the kids play games and make believe with each other all day. Most of my early childhood memories are of my siblings and I playing on sundays!

Oliver started sunbeams this month! He didn't love it his first few weeks, He said it was so boring, because all you do is sit!  But he enjoys it more now!

Cora mimics everything we do! Here she is singing the 3 little fish song with CC, she loves to put her hands up when we get to the "oh-no" part! She also says Mama, Dada, Hi, uh-oh, mimics the dog, cat, cow, and pig sounds. She signs milk, all done, eat, more, and bye bye. This is such a fun stage when she is learning and doing so much!

Cora also loves to talk on the phone, She does this with most anything she finds laying around, she will put it to her ear and say "hi" or h-lo"

CC and Oli love to watch silly you tube videos with Dad before bed!

This big girl made cursive queen! She worked so hard on her cursive to earn queen status! She is such a hard worker and does her best at all she does! She is doing great in school and awesome on the violin! We are so proud of her hard work, she is such a sweet girl and so responsible. I have a hard time remembering she is only 6 and to let her be a kid, I feel like that will be something we always struggle with because she is so mature and loves to have real life experiences more than she likes to play toys or pretend. She is always so willing to help out and take care of her siblings. She does love to have play dates when she can. We struggled at the beginning of the school year getting an after school routine down that worked for us, but we finally figured it out. She gets home from school between 3 and 4 pm has a small snack then does some HW with me, practices violin and reads to me while I make dinner, then after dinner she will do the rest of her HW with Kreg before she plays. Oli and Cora go down to sleep at 7 and then Cecily gets play time/ 1 on 1 time with us until she goes to bed at 8. We use the weekend for play dates and fun activities! She is so busy all the time we really cherish the time she has off of school! Cecily is such a great girl and such a sweetie, she is always so concerned with others around her and praying for those in need. We love our big sis!

 

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