A trip to the Children's Museum

We had a great outing this morning! Handley and I went with our friends Avery and Tiara to the Imagine It! Children's Museum downtown. The girls had so much fun exploring all of the exhibits.

There were all sorts of things for the children to see...some of the highlights were:

• a farmer's stand and life-sized truck to drive the veggies to town in
• a tractor
• moon sand (the coolest stuff EVER...kind of a mix between sand and play-dough)
• a painting station
• tap dancing area (with real tap shoes they could try on and play with)
• musical instruments
• a giant water play area with fishing poles, boats, fish, and frogs
• vegetable gardens where they could help grow and pick the vegetables

Handley and Avery on the tractor

Watering and picking the celery from the vegetable garden

Sitting in the throne!

Playing with the giant train table

Handley really enjoyed the moon sand and the painting, but LOVED the water play area and couldn't get enough!

Playing with the moon sand

Avery and Handley painting their masterpiece

Catching a fish in the giant water table...they even had little rain jackets for the kids to wear so their clothes didn't get wet!

My two favorite rooms...

in our house are now Handley's and Harper's nurseries. One of my favorite things about being pregnant is getting to create a nursery!

My parents were here over the weekend and helped us get SO much done. We painted furniture, hung a chandelier and lots of stuff on the walls, and got everything put together in the room.

(this is the corner where the glider will be)

We were very grateful that some family friends gave us the crib they were no longer using. (Thank you Jeff, Tessa, and Paxton!!!) Also, my parents still had the changing table/dresser combo that they used for my brothers and I when we were babies, so we saved a TON of money by not having to purchase those big items. Because both pieces of furniture were in great shape, but not the color we had planned to buy, we decided to paint them to match and coordinate with the room. They turned out great.

Robby and a good friend worked on the walls a few weeks ago. They did the grid and shelf and Robby painted the walls with the stripe. Didn't they do a great job?!?

I sewed all of the bedding and curtains and made all of the accessories (including the lamp shade, wall letters, plaque, trash can, etc.). We're still waiting on the glider that will fill up the empty corner. It is brown with tiny pink polka-dots and I know it will match just perfectly.

Handley has been quite fascinated with Harper's nursery. The fact that there is a crib, changing table, bows and trash can directly across the hall from her keeps her amused. She'll walk in the room, point to Harper's trash can and say, "trash can," then go into her room and point to hers while saying, "Handley's trash can." It's sweet to see her try to figure out what's going on here.

Today I had my 28 week dr. apt. and everything looks great. My dr. did an ultrasound and it looks like Harper is right at the 50% for size and that she is growing right on track. He flipped it into 3-D mode and I got to see her sweet little face. She looks like a cutie already!

Double Stroller

We are getting all ready for our sweet little baby Harper to arrive and this evening we came one step closer to being prepared for her arrival. We bought the BOB double jogging stroller!!!! I can't even begin to explain how excited I am about this stroller.

Before getting a single jogging stroller for Handley I did A LOT of research and all the reviews were raving about the BOB's. However, they are pretty expensive, so we settled with a different brand that has served us very well the past year.

Because I do so much walking/jogging for exercise I knew that I really wanted a double jogging stroller that both girls could ride in. The BOB Revolution Duallie was the one I had my eye on. Just like the single, the reviews for this stroller are AMAZING. I've never read or heard anything bad about them. The only problem is that it is very pricey. Thankfully, Robby was just happened to look on the REI website today and saw that they were on sale for over $100 off the regular price. He called the store and they said they had the same ones for the same price. They were closing in one hour, so we jumped in the car, headed to REI, and bought it!

While at REI, Handley kept climbing into each of the strollers, asked to be buckled in, and kept pointing to the other seat and saying, "baby Harper" because I told her that was going to be Harper's seat. It has a car seat adaptor so that Harper's infant carrier will snap right in on one side and she'll be able to ride in it from day 1. I don't have a gym membership, so walking/running is my only form of exercise. I know I'll get my money's worth!!!

Cooking

Handley is still obsessed with the kitchen she got for Christmas. She would cook all day long if I let her. This morning she woke up an hour early and when I went into her room she immediately said, "eat, eat." I thought she must have woken up early because she was really hungry. However, she wasn't talking about the fact that she wanted to eat because as soon as I got her out of the crib, she ran into her playroom and started cooking and feeding all her animals and babies.

I snapped this picture of her playing in my bathroom while I was getting ready this morning. It's a common thing for her to line up all of her animals and feed them. So cute!

Science Experiment

Yesterday Handley was invited to a friend's birthday party. She received a fun little goodie bag and inside was a small rubber duck. The package said if you put the duck in water, it would magically grow to be a full size bath toy! I thought it would be a fun science experiment for us to document and watch how the duck grows each day. It claims to grow up to 600% in size, so I'm not really sure how big it will get?!?!? The directions said it could take up to 10 days to grow to full size, so stick around to see the outcome...

The duck size before we put it in water (about 1 1/2 inches tall)

In goes ducky for a swim

Handley checking him out

And just for laughs, this is now one of the faces Handley gives me when I ask her to smile...lovely.

Time is flying by...

with this pregnancy. I'm already 26 weeks and I can't believe that my due date is about 3 months away! The great news is that I still feel great and can't complain at all. For those of you that have been asking, here's a picture of my growing baby belly. It's not the best shot because I had to set the timer to take it, but you get the idea.

We started working on the nursery and I am SO excited about it. Robby finished the walls last weekend (they look fabulous) and I've been sewing like a mad woman. My parents are coming in town this weekend to help us paint furniture and get everything put together. As soon as it is completed I promise to post pictures!

"Go People"

Handley's explosion of vocabulary in the past few months has been amazing to me. We've also realized that she can and will repeat almost EVERYTHING we say, so we've really had to be careful about what we say around her. Just last week she tried to repeat the bad word I said when I turned the wrong way down and one-way entrance by accident.

Well she has opened my eyes to something that I say more than often than I realized. Whenever we are in the car and the people in front of us are either taking too long to turn, not paying attention when a light turns green, etc., I say, "go people."

Last week every time when we were sitting at a red light she would say, "go pepo" and I just started laughing out loud! Now every time we are stopped behind other cars she gets a kick out of saying it. :-)

Wii

Last night we got together with some friends for dinner. Justen and Jen cooked a delicious meal and then provided us all with some fun entertainment. Justen recently got a Wii for his birthday, so after dinner we all gathered around in the living room to play.

I had heard of Wii before, but had never played or even seen it played. We had a blast! The sports games were fun, but the funniest part of the night was when we all started playing the game, "Rock Band."

For those of you not familiar with the game, the basic concept is to play the correct notes to a popular rock song as they are shown on the screen. It sounds a lot easier than it looks!

Handley had so much fun trying to imitate what we were doing.

She also had fun dancing to all the songs.

Dressing

Handley has recently started trying to dress herself and the results are really funny! She'll end up with pants on her head, my bra around her neck, and her jacket on upside down.


A few days ago I told her we would go outside after her snack. As I was getting her snack ready she decided to go ahead and get dressed for the cold weather.

Robby's new toy

Handley and I gave Robby a tow-behind bike trailer for Christmas this year. He's been talking about one for a while now and I was so excited to give him this gift. I knew Handley would have fun going on bike rides with her Daddy. It can hold 2 children, so eventually Harper will get to join in on the rides too.

Before Robby went out of town this week he set it up on the garage. Every time we went outside to go to the car Handley would get so excited and kept talking about going on a ride with Daddy. Today they finally got to take it out for a short test ride down our street and she loved it!

Here's a little video clip...Robby said if he slowed down she would say, "more!" Her helmet looks really big and seems really uncomfortable in this video. I still need to get the straps adjusted correctly. :-)

Happy New Year!!!

Justen, who is one of our best friends, has a New Year's Eve birthday, so every year we get to have a fun celebration with a big group of friends. This year we went to dinner at a Japanese steak house. The hibachi grill was a lot of fun and Handley was so entertained watching our chef cook right in front of us. When he made the flames blaze she would grab my arm like she was scared, but then as soon as they died down she'd ask for more!

Trying to use her chop sticks

Brian and Lisa

Christian and Katie

Justen and Jen...they made the birthday boy put on this funny hat as they sang to him.

Handley tries on the hat too

After dinner we went back to Jen and Justen's house to wait for midnight. Handley knew it was time to party. She had a blast running around hanging out with everyone until I put her to bed. We all spent the night at their house and Handley was very excited to be staying over at Jen's.

This shirt makes me look VERY pregnant...I'm not really that big (or at least I don't think so) it's just the shirt!