Daddy's Gone

I can get the kids ready for bed by myself. That's right...Erik left me tonight. He went to the Royals game - post season! Our family wore Royals shirts today, and we hope Daddy has a good time at the game with Uncle Chad.

Elijah loves reading his little books that he made at day care because they have his name on the front and he colored each page. He has one for orange and one for green.

Climbing, Blueberries, & Hug

Eva climbed onto her table...and she keeps trying to do it again. She also climbed onto my foot stool in her room that came with my rocking chair. And she's almost figured out how to move the slide over to the couch and climb up there. We did teach her 'down' and she usually obeys that command.

Yummy! Messy blueberries for lunch. Naked with a diaper and bib for this adventure.

I barely missed this little hug. Obviously, it wasn't planned. How we would love to have the siblings always get along...haha

Sitting

I cleaned out Elijah's room...and even had help from Elijah. We picked toys to give to Eva and toys to put in storage because he doesn't use them much. Maybe we'll bring them out in a few months... (some broken toys and old party favors were thrown away as well). I feel better now and Elijah likes his clean room.

I sweep our kitchen floor constantly, but Eva still finds crumbs to put in her mouth. This silly girl likes to sit on her knees. Every time she goes to the back door she says, "Woof! Woof!" in hopes of seeing one of our neighbors' dogs.

Home and Happy

Baby girl probably has hand foot and mouth disease according to our doctor. She's doing well... considering...she's just been very sleepy and spent all day with her pacifier (usually it's just for sleeping).

We all had a very cuddly day. We even enjoyed a short fall walk outside this morning while the weather was nice.

He was just running around in circles...maybe dancing...maybe being silly.

Playing Library

Elijah started grabbing books off the shelf, scanning them between his car ramps, then tossing them to Eva on her toy table. I guess that's how we play library.

Here's Eva on my lap reading That's Not My Penguin. She loved feeling the special parts on each page.

We haven't read this book in a while because it's a picture book of first words, but Elijah found it and 'read' almost everything.

Zoo Trip

Mommy and Elijah went to the zoo. Elijah loves these penguins. We were able to see them feeding the penguins when we first arrived. One penguin kept leaping up from a hole right in front of Elijah, then he'd dive back in the water. 

We also liked all the different kinds of monkeys. Elijah thought it was funny because they were grooming each other.

We saw four elephants and the two closest to us were reaching out of their fence to eat some grass.

Even though all 5 lions were laying down the entire time, Elijah loved roaring at them. A lot of the animals were like this...the rainy, cloudy day made them a little lazy.

Last time we came to the zoo, the chimps were inside hiding from the rain. Today we were able to see many chimps run around and groom themselves (still funny). "That one is grabbing that one's shoulder! Hahaha."

I want a hippopotamus for Christmas! We saw 2...one wiggled his ears and the other blew some water out of his nose. Silly hippos!

We didn't buy any feed for the deer, but a few of them came out to see if we would feed them. One even let Elijah pet him.

There's a special kid zone with a learning house at the zoo. It has a few frogs, birds, and monkeys inside. The top level is up the stairs and there's a slide for kids to come down. We need this for our house! Side note: A man and his son were the only other people in the learning house. The man put his phone/camera up to the glass by one of the monkeys. The monkey kept putting his hands "on" the phone like he was taking a selfie. They played like that for a good 5 minutes.

They just finished a new play area at the zoo in the kids zone. We saw it featured on the local news a couple weeks ago. Elijah had trouble climbing up a slanted ramp with thin footsteps that had a hanging rope to help climbers. He tried it, gave up, then used the stairs. Later, he saw his friend from the learning house climb up it. So, Elijah wanted to try again. He still couldn't do it and almost cried. Finally (after much time/effort), Elijah made it up the ramp! So proud of him.

It was way past time to leave and way past nap time, but we had to ride the train. It was not very awesome. It really didn't go by any animals except the camels (which we were unable to see because they weren't doing the camel rides) and kangaroos (which we were able to see right after we got off the train).

However, Elijah loved just riding the train. It even had a long,dark tunnel.

One last stop at the polar bears before leaving.

He sure is big! See you later.

Where's the bow? Dancing!

"I feel something up there..."

Caught ya playing with Daddy's phone.

Can Eva find her bow?

Dancing: Our God is an Awesome God - rap version

Tunnel Time

Both kids in the caterpillar tunnel.

Peek-a-boo chaos!

Climbing Friends

Most of Eva's pictures have been of her climbing on things. And that's only the safe things she's climbed on. I've saved her when she was climbing/standing on the dinosaur walker, the kitchen chair, and almost falling into the bathtub. Here she is riding Elijah's excavator. He didn't like that, but I took a picture before taking her off.

Baby girl even got all the way in the shelf. When Elijah was little, he would try to sit on these shelves but not climb into them. She even had to clear Noah's ark and some books before climbing up there.

Mommy's babysitting Elijah's friend Guillermo because our day care lady was not feeling well. Elijah loves having a playmate for the day. Yesterday, he was telling us how he missed his day care friend Sommer.

We even did a little bit of school gluing fall color circles on bags...maybe we'll do a nature walk later. Then we played with Play-Doh practicing the letter "I", "i". 

Bears, Trains, and Giraffe Outtakes

Author Donna Keith goes to our church and had a book signing for her new book, I Love You All the Same. It's a story about 3 different bears who are part of the same family. Great book for adoption, blended families, or any family with more than 1 child (as all children are different). Coming to a review website soon. 

We love Elijah's desk that rolls out from his bunk bed. He'll build train tracks across it, bridges, or drive his trains around on it. We rode the train at the zoo yesterday! (That will be posted later since I haven't uploaded those pictures yet).

11 months old pictures. Daddy wasn't here to help distract Eva. This is the first month that she noticed the blanket. The distraction that worked was singing If You're Happy and You Know It.

Eva enjoyed throwing the giraffe off the chair, and then leaning forward to watch it. That's a Mom scary situation on a tall rocking chair.

She also turned around and stood up on the chair. This one's a climber. Forget walking, she's too interested in climbing.

Knock It!

Eva had fun sitting with Elijah on the slide. We built a 10 block high tower on the slide and let the kids take turns knocking it down.

School Climber

Color matching plus fine motor skills.

Numbers plus handwriting.

Counting plus art.

Climbing on the slide to get on the couch.

Climbing on the dinosaur to get in the shelves.

Climbing on the ark and table to reach toys.

We Play

Eva's cruising along the couch.

She eats Elijah's toes...and he encourages her to do it.

The child lock on the snack cabinet is broken. I put the car ramps in front of it to keep Eva out. Then the kids were playing together with the cars in the kitchen.

Eva took off her jeans and started to cry.

Elijah didn't want his picture taken. He was smiling though.

Even baby girl gets in on the wrestling in this house.