Chinese New Year

My little dragon baby just celebrated her first Chinese New Year with everyone!  We went and spent the day at my parents' house. My brother came home (he lives and works in St. Louis) for the weekend and we got to meet his friends Nathan and Mallory (who also happen to be Diablo 3 players, hehe).

Here are some pictures!

Beautiful girl

Eva in her Chinese New Year outfit - complete with dragon onesie and a custom headband by (who else) Mia and Mackie in the Mirror

Future piano prodigy

Playing a song for Grandpa

Grandpa with Eva and Ethan

Eva and Momby

Cheesecake- my mother's favorite dessert!

The spread

Daddy and the kids

In n Out and Cupcakes

As some of you may know, Chris was out of town last week at the SHARE conference in San Francisco. He even brought me back some In n Out (the fries were still crispy!).

The only proper way to order In n Out - double double animal style with fries well done

Other than daddy being gone, things went on normally, or as normally as they can when you've got a 3.5 year old that doesn't stop talking and a nearly 1 year old that is all over the place. Let's just say Ethan ate a lot of chicken nuggets for dinner!

I did try to get in a few fun activities and one of them was going to The Sugar Path (super yummy cupcake shop in downtown Geneva) for their ribbon cutting ceremony! The kids (and let's face it, mommy too) split a red velvet cupcake, ate some yummy snacks, and enjoyed mini cupcakes (mommy's favorite was the salty caramel!).

Ethan and the cupcake

Cupcake closeup

Somebody was clapping with joy! Also wearing one of Mia and Mackie in the Mirror's hair prettiest (seriously, check them out! Jodi makes the prettiest and most unique things!)

Ribbon cutting!

Cupcake crumb covered princess

Fun in the Snow!

We've had a decent amount of snow this year, so we've been able to have lots of fun outside!

In the morning, both kids got to go out in the snow - Ethan helped shovel the driveway (and he even did the sidewalk and the neighbors' front walk!) and Eva and mommy got to play.

We just went in the backyard with Molly (who if you remember from previous posts, is Ethan's girlfriend) - there's a decent group of hills that go from the golf course into the neighbor's yard. The hills are little, but 3 year old friendly. Even I got to join in on the action! Sadly, Eva was napping and missed all the excitement.

Daddy's little helper

Suspicious of all the fluffy white stuff

Going down the hill backwards!

Annie, the neighbors' super cute dog!

Ethan <3 Molly

Children For Sale

We were wandering the aisles at Home Depot last weekend, and when I saw this sign, I couldn't resist!

January Roundup

There goes the "blog more" resolution :P 

I thought I'd do a picture roundup of some of the highlights of January fun that hasn't been blogged about yet. Besides, I know you read my blog to see pictures of Ethan and Eva :P

Love love love that toothy grin!

Tallest person I know (Kyle, who is 6'8" I think) with the shortest person I know (Eva, who is 2ft something)

Ethan with his bestest Candyland buddy

Ethan and Pooh Bear doing yoga with mommy (I avoid the camera at all costs!)

Eva and Ethan cuddling on the couch

A camera that plays songs and has colorful buttons is way cooler than mommy's DSLR

Celebrating  Auntie Dixie and Uncle John's 40th anniversary!

Testing out the "night vision" effect on the DSLR - it looks like it's from a security video!

What this girl wants - pigtails and a pink cell phone

Pretty in pink - can you tell someone loves accessorizing this girl?

Snow children :)

Girl Meets Snow

It's been a odd weather year with the hot dry summer and the warm (well, warm for winter) largely snow free winter. It's snowed a little bit by where I live, and by a little bit, you can still see most of the lawn! This morning, however, it snowed a little bit more. I could still see the lawn, but there was enough to shovel (Ethan was VERY excited about this!) and enough to play with.

I bundled Eva up, grabbed the camera and headed outside for some fun and pictures. After a few test pictures and adjusting the shutter speed and ISO, I got some pretty good pictures! Most importantly, Eva had fun :)

All bundled up and ready to go! The super cute pink bear hat was made by my friend Jessica!

"What is this white fluffy stuff?"

Having so much fun!

Just playing

Doh!

Baby girl <3

11 months old!

This is the hardest post yet. Not because it was particularly hard to write, but because as I started to write it, I can't help but think "Eva will be 1 in less than a month". My baby, my little girl, my Eva Marie will be 1. 12 months. Yikes - where has all this time gone?

Weight - a little over 18 pounds according to the scientific method of stepping on the scale with and without Eva. This seems a little excessive as she only weighed ~16 pounds last month and a 2 pound gain in 1 month doesn't seem right! Oh well, I'll find out for sure soon.
Clothes - not a whole lot of change here. 6 month short sleeve onesies are still in the rotation as layering pieces. The majority of our wardrobe is 9 month with a few 12 month pieces.
Diapers - has my daughter grown? We're still on the smallest rise setting with only 1 set of snaps showing for our cloth diapers.
Sleep - No change here! Miss Eva adapted to a schedule so nicely. Nap from 12:30 to 3:30. Another nap from 6:30 to Mommy's bedtime.
Eating - this girl will eat anything! She loves yogurt melts, her purees (she gets really excited when she's in her high chair and I'm at the microwave) and table food! We're still nursing 6x a day, but we'll be cutting down to 5 really soon. We're starting sippy cups of soy milk!
Likes - the girl still loves peekaboo. She'll even play it with her dolls. Eva loves crawling over to the entertainment center and pulling down the DVD's as fast as she can. She also likes to pull books off the shelves at the library :P
Dislikes - sitting still, having her non-toys taken away, having things in her hair (I say boo to this one!)
New tricks - talking (she says dada, mama and hi), waves hello and goodbye, high fives. She pulls herself up on EVERYTHING, crawls up a few stairs and if she's in the right mood, she'll stand independently. Miss Eva still refuses to walk.

I can't wait to see what the upcoming month brings!

Here are a few pictures of the past month in no particular order...

Cousin It can't decide between combing her own hair and going up the stairs

Chewing on mama's cell phone

Monthly sibling shot!

All bundled up for the cold

11 months of trouble!

Cuddling with Ethan under the Spiderman blanket