Mostly Wordless Wednesday: Earth Day

Last week all the kids at day care wore "earth colors" and did all sorts of earth activities. Here's Penelope in her adorable dress from the Grandmama:

Cleaning or Not

We spend Sunday mornings cleaning up from the past 6 days. Every week I look around the house and say "Now we just need to keep it this way during the week." Never happens, which means Sunday mornings are a whirlwind of cleaning and laundry. Having Penelope "help out" has made this even more interesting. I'm not a very good multi-tasker so if I get distracted things can get a little chaotic. Such as when I brought up the clean sheets to put on the bed...for some reason there were these 2 bowls drying on the bed.
I don't even remember why I came in the bedroom...probably to stop Cece from barking at the window or Penelope from banging on it.

Chris often goes grocery shopping on Sundays. On this particular morning he had swept all the wood floors before heading to the store.
I made the mistake of handing Penelope the entire goldfish box.
Then she wanted to see the photo and crunched a dozen goldfish under her knees. So much for those swept floors.
But thank goodness for Cece! This is one of the top reasons I will always have a dog in my life! She slurped up all the crumbs before Chris got home. Hmmm...maybe I need to follow that with a floor washing. Does dog drool hurt 90 year old wood floors?

Playing potty

Over the past month Penelope has become obsessed with the potty. We got her a potty a few months ago. At school they let the kids sit on the potty at every diaper change. We haven't been as consistent at home. It has been more of a bathroom art piece. Penelope also figured out she can turn the potty upside down to become a stool. She loves standing at the sink and brushing her teeth or taking every object she can reach on the counter and putting it in the sink.

Lately though I've been better about putting her on the potty to go "pee pee". She even asks to go pee pee. Now the action has only happened once. She seems to tell us "pee pee" after she has peed, or maybe I'm just not fast enough at getting her undressed and on the potty, but hey, she's got the concept right? I'm probably being naive but maybe this potty training thing won't be too hard for us? I've been hearing about potty training vacations where parents pretty much take 3-5 days locked up in the house with a naked kid running around and then they put the kid on the toilet until they are trained. I guess there's a book about the 3 day potty training that many parents read. Maybe we'll have a "potty vacation" near her 2nd birthday. In the meantime I got a hilarious video of her playing make believe potty.

Three kids at the Children's Museum

This weekend Chris and I took Elliot, Libbi and Penelope to the Children's Museum. It was a rainy morning so I think everyone in the Twin Cities with kids under 5 were also in attendance. We had a great time. Chris took Elliot (4 year old) to the Dinosaur exhibit and the Earth exhibit, while I hung out with the girls in the tot room...or rather I tried to keep the girls in the same vicinity so I could catch them if they fell on their heads or some other injury. It made me question my mom's sanity again. For years she took care of our friends Jorge and Amaris for a good amount of time so she always had to keep up with 5 kids all around the same age. No wonder we were in harnesses and leashes at Disney and other crowded areas. Next time you see us at the Children's Museum the girls might have those monkey backpack/leashes.

Penny and Libbi going down the slide.
So crazy that the first time we went to the Children's Museum in December Penny wasn't walking and barely made it down the slide without help. Now she's rope climbing! Maybe those Uncle Christopher athletic genes were hiding...

You'll notice both videos end up with me dropping the camera as I have to stop filming and take control of the situation. Multi-tasking as videographer, mommy and babysitter is a tough gig.

After we met up and ate our snack, we took all 3 kids to the Our Town exhibit. It is a mini-town with a doctor's office, grocery store, day care, recording studio. It is really well thought out. You can even pretend to be a postman and get the mail at all the mailboxes. The girls loved grocery shopping. Apologies to anyone who has bruised calves from being rammed with mini-shopping carts. Elliot was obsessed with cooking in the Chinese restaurant. I think he was there for a half hour. I kept asking if he wanted to see anything else and he'd say "no thank you. I'm busy right now. I have to get these dishes done and put this stuff in the oven" and would then race over to the oven. (Jackie Lee--you should kick your feet up and let Elliot make dinners!) Of course, at noon when I told him we had to go home he said, "We can't go home! I've barely seen anything. I haven't even gone to the other side of this room" I blamed it on Penny being cranky and said we'd come back another time.

There's also a career costume area. Not sure what Libbi is being...an explorer, zoo keeper? Who really wears a pith helmet?

Libbi--where are you?
There you are!
Penelope the firewoman

The rest of the visit

In 3 days we took photos with 3 cameras and ended up with over 1000 photos. They are all posted below..just kidding. Here are a few that make me saw "awwww..." You can see more on facebook

Penny and Dylan laughing together
My favorite photo.
Aunt Pam french braided Penelope's hair. my jaw was open in astonishment as I watched this amazing feat. Pam is very gentle. Laura played with her while Pam quickly braided both sides. She didn't even notice what was happening. My memories of french braids are my mom separating each piece with a chopstick, while using a huge spray bottle of water and pulling everything so tight till my face looked like the 9 year old Joan Rivers.

Check out those baby blues!
Yay! A great family photo. The other Laura Strand is our official family photographer. Besides our wedding photos all the pictures framed in our house were taken by her.
Hugs! So adorable!

The famous pouty lip!I've had old family friends email and ask if Penny juts out her bottom lip during a tantrum. I hated when adults would say "That lip is going to fall to the floor if you aren't careful" I may end up saying the same thing to Penny. It seems to be a genetic trait.

A visit to Como Zoo

Penny had so much fun at Como Zoo when my mom was here, we thought it would be a great place to visit on Saturday.

Here's Grandpa with both toddlers. Big smiles on our way to the zoo.

Grandma bought Penny some cool new shades
Walking with Grandma and Grandpa. Who needs a stroller on such a beautiful day?
They throw a little kindness to the paparazzi every now and again.
Okay, so here's the thing about Como Zoo. It is close by, easy to see everything in a couple of hours, only a small donation required. Unlike bigger zoos, Como Zoo seems somewhat of a relic. The animals don't have big enclosures like the big city zoos I'm used to visiting. The flip side is that you tend to see almost all the animals. They did seem to be enjoying the weather so I tried not to feel too bad as we oohed and ahhed.
You just can't get this photo at those big zoos:

Yes, the tiger was right there. Penelope loved it!
Daddy and Penny taking a break.
Our diaper bags were getting some pretty royal treatment being pushed around the zoo. I don't think the kids sat in the strollers for more than 5 mins so Carolynne gave Pam a ride around the penguin exhibit.
Dylan checking out the buffalo...and shaking the fence. That's a lot of fun too.
Really anything can become a playground, chain link fences, bike racks...
a great aunt that does airplane rides...
and an aunt/mommy who becomes a jungle gym!

(Sorry for the small pictures. I was trying a different way to upload photos to blogger. I know I must be doing something wrong because their photo tool is so clunky and inefficient. Any help out there is greatly appreciated!)

Strand Spring Weekend Day 1

We've been very excited to have the whole East Coast Strand fam visit this weekend. Here's a photo from the last time the kids saw each other:Now they can hold their heads up and smile at each other, which makes all of us smile and laugh too.
And we can even get them to give kisses! I love when toddlers perform on command.
Penny was being a little shy in the beginning so we headed to her favorite place. She was so excited that Grandma knew peek-a-boo too.
And Aunt Laura turned into a tickle monster just like Daddy!
Swings were a hit. WEEEE! The cousins definitely bonded on the swings. I think they called each other beforehand to discuss all the cute things they could do to make Grandma cry.

We got our Hallmark moment of them going down the slide.

After all that playtime we enjoyed the cupcakes bought at the Cake Eater's kid's happy hour. Penny decided she does like cupcakes. Although, if you asked her she might say she would just like a tub of frosting with sprinkles, please.

Dylan was more interested in his cars than cupcakes.

Do you think Penny got over her shyness?
Later that night Penelope and Dylan got to see their great grandma, Great Aunt Carolynne, and Great Great Aunt Janet. Unfortunately I didn't take one photo. We'll take pictures tomorrow.

Mostly Wordless Wednesday

The girl may hate barrettes, but she sure loves headbands.

Gardening with our free help

I'm the first to admit that I might be somewhat of a wimp at this mom thing, especially in the beginning with the lack of sleep and breastfeeding. Whenever someone asks me if Penelope was a hard baby I say "well, I'm not sure. I think it was a mix. I'm kind of a wimp and she might have been a little challenging" Hard to say when you've only had one. I would sit for hours rocking her while white noise blared from the radio. You can have some pretty deep conversations with yourself at times like that. I remember when I became really skeptical about big families in history. You know, the whole explanation "they had 15 children to help on the farm." That's a huge long term investment before the kid is out there for harvesting. And then there's the "older kids take care of the younger kids" thing. But if you space out a dozen kids during child bearing years, you sure got a lot of little ones tearing your house apart before they can take care of the others. Sure, maybe expectations of kids were different and moms weren't wimps and somehow went out into the field in between all those feedings. I think these reasons might be a little rewriting of history. I've come to the conclusion that the truth can be summed up with "They just didn't have birth control back then". I know times were different, but I have a hard time contemplating Ma and Pa watching their first kid at 6 months old and Pa trying to convince Ma "well, we better get down to business and do this another 12 times so we can outfit our farm in 10 years. " (Eek, that's about as PG-13 this blog has ever gotten!)

But today my thoughts changed. I was cleaning up the vegetable plot to get it ready for planting. Penelope started picking up leaves too. We got her a brown bag just her size.
Maybe I was wrong...maybe it isn't a 5 year investment until kids are able to help out. Not that we actually need free help around the house. She has mastered the job of "Laugh Coordinator" in our house, and I think she'll continue to do well at that job for about 11 or so years when she will then move onto "Eye rolling Executive"

Good thing she isn't in danger of being laid off as "Laugh Coordinator" because she didn't do well as Gardening Apprentice. Once her bag was half full, this happened:
At least she couldn't tip over Mommy's bag.
We let her finish her chores of giggling and playing. I think it is very fortunate for both me and Penelope that we weren't born 100 years ago.

Cake Eatery

Lots of other blogs are warning about the impending swimsuit season. All sorts of tips for thigh toning, crunches, and slimming tricks. You are NOT at a blog that discusses any of this. All winter we've been waiting for the new cafe to open in the old Cliquot cafe location. The Cake Eatery Bakery opened on Monday. We now live a block away from a bakery that specializes in cupcakes. Ahhh! So dangerous!

They had a grand opening event on Saturday. Our neighbor said the line was 45 mins long and they ran out of food. Good thing we had the day off on Monday where we were able to leisurely peruse the sinful delights. We got home from Kansas at 2 am, but you bet by 8 am morning we were off for cupcakes. They had all sorts of muffins and scones ready. I bypassed those. I've been reading about these cupcakes on facebook for months. The two women who own it also have an award winning catering business, and their cupcakes are already loved by many Twin Citians. I had to have one, but which one should be my first? Thankfully they were still baking so my choices were limited. Limoncello, Red Velvet, Chocolate Raspberry Cheesecake, or the Elvis. I went for the Elvis: Banana cake, peanut butter cream frosting topped with a small piece of bacon. So delicious!! And they sell mini cupcakes for $1 each. (Mini is probably equal to a realistic serving of cupcake. Considering that vending machine candy bars are over $1 this is quite a deal). If you ever invite us to any party/gathering/playdate I will now be bringing mini cupcakes. You've gotta support your local merchants, right?

Here's a pic of Chris and Penny. She had already eaten her oatmeal and peaches and wasn't really interested in cupcakes. (Yes, I was at her birth. We are related...that's a very very recessive gene she is expressing) Chris got the chipotle cheese scone. Very good. He doesn't like having his picture taken at restaurants after only 4 hours of sleep, even for the blog...or maybe especially not for the blog.

I've been saving this cupcake onesie for her to wear on our first outing to Cake Eatery. I think the staff thought I was a little crazy.
Running off the calories...oh, wait, she wasn't the one to partake in the bacon, peanut butter, banana cupcake.
Love this photo. She was laughing her head off.
Chasing the birds.

Swing Time

Ahhh...it was the perfect night for a musical. I'm always worn out by Wednesdays. I like something light and amusing to watch. Modern Family had a rerun so I popped in my Netflix movie. This was the best Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie I've seen. They did 10 movies together during their careers. This one made Time's 100 Best Movies of All Time list a few years ago (you know me, I can't pass up a good list!). Here's why I loved it so much:

1. Tap, tap and more tap! Tap dancing is my favorite by far and this has lots of it. The Mr. Bojangles number has to be one of the best tap numbers I've ever seen. Unfortunate that he does it in black face since that is pretty offensive nowadays.

2. Cute funny story. I hate when it is just "hey, let's put on a musical" plot. It works well for White Christmas and a few others but gets pretty old and boring if you've watched a ton of Garland/Rooney movies.

3. Ginger Rogers' character is named Penelope, but they call her Penny. I'm thinking of telling Penny we named her after our favorite Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie. Doesn't that sound much better than "we found your name on a baby name website"? Too bad Chris only sat through 15 minutes of the movie. I guess it can't count as his "favorite".

Highly recommend it if you are a old movie fan or like musicals. Oh, the song "The Way You Look Tonight" is in it. I didn't realize the song was that old.

Easter trip---photo galore

Easter in Kansas was wonderful! We kept busy with Amy, Cory, Molly and Charlotte. Penny was great on the car ride. On Friday morning we went to downtown Kansas to see a fairy tale exhibit and visit the Crayola store. Then in the evening Avery came over and we took adorable pictures with monogrammed shirts I got them from an Etsy store. On Saturday Aunt Jo had us over for an amazing brunch. Everything was ridiculously delicious. The girls colored eggs in under 5 mins. I think they made some kind of record. That evening we went to a restaurant called Fritz's. There are toy trains all around the ceiling and they bring you your food. Penelope went bonkers. She loves yelling Choo choo! Easter morning the girls got all dressed up and got lots of loot from the Easter bunny including new purses (see pic below). We went to church with the Laffertys. Penny and I had fun in the nursery most of the time. Then there was an easter egg hunt in their neighborhood and back home to MN. There was also a lot of "NO!" and "Mine" If you want to see for yourself check out our videos at youtube.com/clpstrand.

I also had way too many great pictures to try to load here. Check out our shutterfly album share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AZuGzVw0YtGL9A