Grandpa Mark's Special Pumpkins 2010

Grandpa Mark's pumpkin tradition continues this year for both Clara and Janie, although since Janie's pumpkin had to be started before she was born, hers says "Baby Gem." Clara was the lucky cousin this year since her pumpkin grew to be the biggest, has a nice shape and great stem.

Clara with her 4th pumpkin from Papa - she even had one when she was in Mama's tum.

Janie's first pumpkin from Papa

Clara also has a special pumpkin that she helped plant with Grandma Carol while Mommy and Daddy were in London this spring.

Janie's First Bottle

Janie has been a great nurser from birth, but at 5 1/2 weeks old Mommy got out the pump and Daddy got to feed her a bottle. Unsurprisingly, she attacked it aggressively and cried when they took breaks to burp. We were also concerned with how much more Janie spit up than Clara ever did, but have now learned that is more of an issue of abundance of milk and a child that enjoys eating than any digestive concern.

C & J Hanging Out!

We were all hanging out in the bonus room the other day and I snapped a few photos of my sweeties that captured little nuances of who they are right now.

Right away, we noticed that Janie has the sweetest, yet kind of pointy, little tongue that she sticks out so cutely from time to time. She right on the verge of sleep here when she made this sweet little face.

Julie taught Clara the "mermaid pose" when she was taking the girls picture last week and here Clara is trying to work it. As much as we tried hold it off as long as possible, Clara has fully embraced all that is Disney, especially the princesses!

I liked this photo because it shows their size difference. I know it wont be like this for long, because Janie is much like Clara in that her growth is on the top end of the charts. Clara continues to grow like crazy and while she is only 2, I am purchasing 4T, sometimes 5T clothing!!!

Clara is such a little book worm. She LOVES to be read to and memorizes stories so that she can read them on her own. It is fascinating how quickly the memorization occurs at this age. Today she corrected me when I accidentally swapped out to for at while reading one of her books !?! I sure hope we can continue to foster her love of reading in her! We are so proud to watch her sit quietly with a stack of books for 40 minutes or even read one of her favorites to her baby sister!

Our Janie Bug is such a great sleeper! She lets us have a nice long stretch at night right now and still sleeps a lot during the day. Her yawn is just so sweet!

Playgroup Halloween Party

We have been attending the Highlands Playgroup for almost two years now. The group has gone through lots of changes in that time, but we always enjoy the good friends and fun activities like the Halloween party. This year Clara was so excited to be Dorothy!

Scout has been REALLY into dress up lately and had turned another dress up costume into her version of Dorothy and wears it daily! We let her look at lots of other fun options and while she was swayed for a little while by Ariel, and still likes to dress up like a witch, she has been dead set on being Dorothy for weeks. Mommy, being the life-long Wizard of Oz fanatic wasn't exactly sure I was ready for this. It is not the year (with J's arrival) for me to attempt to make a Dorothy costume or even have the rest of us dress up as corresponding characters, which I would LOVE to do someday. When we started to look at costumes, I turned up my nose at many which were not at all authentic looking, some with sequins all over (don't even get me started about the sequins and dress up clothes situation in our household), others that were not even recognizable as Dorothy with random colors and flair all over the costume resembling more of a toddler pageant outfit. While it is a little big, the one we found was indeed acceptable and Clara is over the moon! The costume has been hanging in her closet for a few weeks and when she finally got to wear it, she felt so proud. She walked around playgroup completely in character, telling everyone that she had a dog named Toto and she lived in Kansas - it was absolutely adorable!!

We dressed Janie up too, but she spent almost the entire party asleep in her seat so Mommy snapped this shot of her in her pumpkin shirt once we got home.

The kiddos enjoying snack and getting ready to do song time.

Clara decorating her very own pumpkin with stickers! Stickers are currently another one of her favorite things. She now has the motor dexterity to be able to effectively peel stickers from their backing all by herself and therefore can be entertained with sticker projects for hours. She will go through a whole page of stickers in a matter of minutes.

Baby Gem's Sweet Doo

Janie Has Her First "Playdate"

This past weekend the Ryan Family, with their new addition Delaney, came by for a visit. Wendy and Mommy became friends working on a project together in college, have birthdays just days apart, worked together right out of college, were in one another's weddings and now had the fortune of getting to be pregnant (with baby girls) at the very same time. The catch was that Wendy and her husband lived on the East coast for her entire pregnancy and lil' Delaneys birth. Good thing for technology as we were able to share our pregnancy rants and raves via many e-mails over the past few months and now finally got to introduce our sweet little ones who are sure to become close friends.

Delaney and Janie enjoy their first "playdate" together!

Miss Delaney has all that beautiful dark hair like her daddy and is sure to be a beauty like her mommy. It is a little comical that with my dark hair, I end up with the blondie baby and Wendy's sweet bundle has the dark hair!
* No, we did not plan the names, but they do sound pretty cute together.

Green Halloween

Our neighborhood has a fun festival every year where the local restaurants and retailers sponsor booths for the kids to Trick-or-Treat for "green" treats. This year Clara was the perfect age to enjoy the fun, unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. While it was not too cold, it was rainy. We bundled Janie up in the carrier and dressed Clara up in an alternative costume and joined in the fun. Janie wore her cute little Halloween onesie from Grandma Jan. She really is Mommy's Little Pumpkin!
One of our first stops at the Halloween festival was at a booth for the local rabbit and cavy 4-H club. Mommy grew up sharing rabbits this way at lots of community events so it was fun to support the local group. Clara stood there for a long time petting this sweet bunny. We all still are missing our Vertigo rabbit and look forward to selecting another pet rabbit for our family in the spring.
The weather didn't stop Clara from enjoying the spooky fun. She ran around the hay maze with the other children.

She had fun painting her own face (while enjoying fruit leather)...

She got soaked jumping in the bounce house...

And was delighted to ride this pony "all by herself"!

We also ran into the Keddington family at the festival and Clara's buddy Davis who looked so adorable in his spider costume!

The kiddos hadn't seen one another in over a week and so they greeted one another with a sweet little hug! Of course, even seeing Davis wasn't enough motivation to get Scout to put down her treat!

Rainy morning with my girls

~ Janie is 1 Month Old ~

WOW... has it really been a month since our precious Janie Caroline joined our family? It doesn't seem possible! This feeling of time flying faster than ever before is something that we both never understood prior to becoming parents and now with a second child, our heads are spinning! While there is more work with two kiddos, it is amazing to have a newborn again and a big sister to share the fun with.

Janie is an absolute blessing and the perfect addition to our family. She and Clara already seem to have a special connection and it warms our hearts in a whole new way to watch them interact. Janie has the brightest, wide (still blue) eyes and when she is awake she likes to take in her surroundings. Her looks are pretty baffling to us since we both have dark features and yet our little one appears to have light eyes, fair skin and even reddish-blonde hair. While Clara was a "little Kevin," Janie resembles Mommy more, but we still stare at her trying to decide who she really looks like.

At this phase, Miss Janie seems to enjoy riding in her swing, watching her mobile and short segments of tummy time. In her first few weeks she was asleep whenever she wasn't eating and now she has longer periods of wakefulness during the day and late evening and only wakes up once per night. She is a wonderful cuddlier and is happiest being held tight in our arms or laying on her tummy or over a shoulder or on Daddy's chest. We REALLY enjoy this part of her personality.

Little "Gem" is a wonderful eater and today at her 1 month appointment, she now weights 10 lbs., 1/2 oz. and is 22 inches long, placing her in the 90th percentile in both categories. She eats like a messy little piglet but spits up a lot afterwards, then acts famished again a short time later. Mommy is trying to get her to burp several more times during her feedings to reduce the spit ups, but nothing makes her more mad than interrupting her feedings. Could this be reflective of her future personality!?!

Another endearing quality of our sweet baby is that she has a huge repertoire of noises. She makes happy, eager grunts, funny pooing noises, sweet little gasps, high pitched squeaks and of course different cries. Even when she sleeps, she lets out adorable squeaks here and there. Then there are all the adorable little expressions that go along with her noises. Each one reminds us of a different person that she resembles at that moment. As each day passes we see more and more of her sweet smiles. Daddy and Clara get the most from her after we all have eaten dinner.

We wish there was a "slow down" button so we can savor this wonderful time in our family, but the four of us have so many more amazing times to look forward to knowing that we have been so very blessed!

Loving the Baby Cutenes All Over Again!!

Family Adventure to Fall City Farms

The Michael Family at Fall City Farms

What a beautiful October day we chose to go to the pumpkin patch, although we were not the only ones, the quaint farm we stumbled upon last year was bustling with families this year when we returned with my family along with us! We almost turned back when we encountered a bit of a traffic jam along the country road to the farm. Once we got parked, we ended up having a blast. There were a lot of great activities for Clara and Taylor. Little Janie didn't make a peep the whole outing - she seems to enjoy riding in the Bjorn carrier.

The growing Stevens clan.

Clara was so excited to go out and explore!

Uncle Matt & Taylor in the Hay Maze

Girls running through the hay maze - great way to wear them out!

Papa Mark & Brendan Matthew

Tay being silly

Clara wanted to stand on the pumpkin - She needed Daddy's help to do it in her boots!

She was on the quest for "the perfect pumpkin" ...

...so much so that she was hard to keep up with!

Mama & her Scout

These cousins LOVE being together!

We took advantage of the great seasonal backdrops for some fun family photo opps.

The girls with Grandma Jan and Papa Mark

Uncle Matt, Auntie Danielle and Cousins Taylor and Brendan