Belly Laughs

Emma is quite the chatter box. She also gets into fits of giggles. They've been hard to capture on video because she's mesmerized by the camera. Finally we caught her.

Halloween 2012

Yes, we're a few holidays behind, but we thought everyone would still love to see Zoe and Emma in their Halloween costumes as they break out their Christmas decorations.

Zoe absolutely loved her fairy costume (except the crown). Of course, we lost the wand 2 houses in, which has been a big bummer ever since.

This year, Zoe couldn't wait to go trick-or-treating, even though it was going to be by herself. We were still excited to go around our own neighborhood for all the festivities. We only had to avoid a handful of houses because they were too scary. Thankfully, we still had one more year where Zoe doesn't quite know what was actually being put into her bucket. (However, she did start to catch on when Mommy and Daddy allowed her one treat after dinner or lunch for a couple days afterward).

Emma enjoyed being along for the ride through all of this!

Hopefully we'll catch up on everything before the Christmas barrage sets us back 3 months on updates. :)

ABC's and Counting

Zoe still loves to sing. She picks up tunes quite easily. This time she was repeating the songs being played from her house.

Rolly Polly

It happens just like that. I put Emma down for some tummy time and walked back into our room. When I came back out, she was on her back! Since then, she's been rolling over several times a day. Yesterday, she finally did an on-camera performance.

Emma Smiles

Over the past couple weeks, Emma has really started to smile. When she really gets going, she coo's like crazy. We're waiting for Grandpa to visit so we can get some really big belly laughs out of her.

Our Littlest Peanut

Some pictures from the past couple weeks, including the girl's first bath together. Now Zoe requests 'Emma tubbies' every other night.

Emma's Latest Feat

Emma is getting bigger, stronger, and more alert everyday. She's staying up longer and has started to search for her hands and feet. Her favorite activity (whether by choice or not) is to sit in the bouncer and watch her big sister. Zoe definitely gets the biggest smiles. It's pretty cute. Luckily, Emma hasn't lost a foot in the process.

Emma Photoshoot

When Aunt Nats came to visit, she helped Kate with a couple photo shoots of Emma and Zoe (mostly Emma). I've finally had time to poke through them and get them up on the blog. It sounded like it was pretty amusing trying to get these two girls to sit still long enough to get some pictures.

MeeMa & PawPa's Visit

MeeMa and PawPa finally (well finally as in a month ago) had their turn to come and visit and meet Emma. Unfortunately for the second child, the first child seems to still think that whenever we have visitors, they are there to see and play with her only!

In between Emma snuggles, Zoe did get quite a lot of attention and had a ton of fun with MeeMa and PawPa. They went to Happy Hollow, the zoo, and on the Niles Canyon Railroad (which was a big hit for PawPa as well). Unfortunately, we've also figured out that trying to get pictures with the second child is also much more difficult since the first child almost always needs to be occupied. So we don't have many from the visit.

This might have been PawPa's favorite visit with us thus far as well. He is very excited about our new (old) house and all the projects. We had several visits to the hardware store (which now Zoe loves because they have the little kid cart that she can push, so now she gets very excited anytime Daddy needs to go get something). PawPa guided Daddy through his first faucet replacement to about 95% success (the remaining 5% is waiting for when he returns). The old timers also turned back the clock about 15 years and removed the huge 'bee hive', as we called, it in our backyard. That was quite the project!!

Zoe's Birthday Party

So, it's been awhile and we have lots of events and activities to catch up on. We're going to start with Zoe's birthday party. At the time, I would have said we finally had it, but now it seems so long ago, we've already forgotten how long we had to put it off.

Originally, we planned to have the party the weekend Grammy left and Aunt Nats arrived. Grammy helped us get our house all prepped and Aunt Nats, Party Planner Extraordinaire, had prepped all the decorations. Well, Zoe ended up getting sick and everything had to get pushed. We ended up having pseudo celebrations with Grammy and Aunt Nats instead, and saved the full party for when everyone was feeling better.

We finally got to throw the party when MeeMa was visiting, so she got to enjoy all the efforts of Grammy and Aunt Nats! Zoe had a blast with all her friends and cousins. The duck pond was a huge hit and had been most of the summer even after the party! It was super fun being able to actually host a party for the first time since we've been in California. Now we can't wait for Emma's!

(And for those of you keeping count at home, according to Aunt Nat's, having cupcakes, mini cupcakes, cake, and chocolate covered pretzels is evidently not going over-board in her book)

Oranges

We're starting to take advantage of our constantly producing orange tree. Zoe loves to help out with picking oranges. For some reason though, she's more fascinated with picking up the 'yucky oranges' that fall on the ground instead of the yummy ones Daddy picks off the tree. Lately we've been able to pick a couple target bags full every couple days to make fresh orange juice for the mornings. Katie is already swearing off going back to the other stuff.

Emma loved sitting by and watching the picking and squeezing. Zoe was more interested in stuffing as many orange slices as she could into her mouth. Katie has also used them for making orange scones ('cones' as Zoe likes to call them) for snacking. Yum!