First foods

We commerated Julian's five month birthday with rice cereal, he was all over it and seemed to be saying "what have you been waiting for?!" Since then he has had carrots, bananas, apple sauce and butternut squash and he seems to like the veggies best.

Tremendous Two

Irrational, demanding, willful, and volatile
Independent, creative, curious, and energetic.

Audrey jumping on bubble wrap while dressed in nothing but leg warmers.

Precious, peaceful, and growing.
Restless, irritable, and needy.

Julian checking out toys and practicing push-ups.

Mama had a crazy-making week last week, luckily I made it through and this week has been a thousand times better. I made it thanks to supportive and empathic friends, the help of my rock star co-parent, some therapeutic self-help (published on my other blog), and seeing I'm not the only parent muttering obscenities as I read a funny blog post about a wild preschooler.


In Audrey's search for independence and identity she has created a proclamation that she has stated a handful of times: "I am Audrey Kai. I am two. I eat cupcakes...with my mouth!"

Sitting up

Julian is starting to get good at sitting.

Here he is at the library a few days after Christmas (okay, I'll tell the truth I was in the teepee propping him up).



But here he is less than a week later clearly doing it on his own.


He is still tippy, but able to keep himself up long enough for me to admire his strength and balance, grab the camera, and snap a couple pictures.


He hasn't been doing a whole lot of rolling around since he figured that out. He spends a fair chunk of time on his belly before protesting and while there he can rotate himself a bit and push his chest way off the ground with straight arms.

Christmas

We got to see Santa roll up on a fire truck at Howelsen Hill a few weeks ago. He went straight inside to take present requests while we stayed outside.

Here are the out-takes from posing by the tree, there all cute right?!


















We asked and Santa delivered, presents!


Audrey was more interested in playing with the unwrapped toys than opening any presents, but we eventually convinced her to open them. She also enjoyed delivering presents to the rest of us, such a sweet little elf.


Here's Audrey playing with her new musical instruments.



And Julian watching.

Boxing Day brought us Mary and Dan for a super fun visit,



they blogged about it here and caught some really cute video footage.

Thanksgiving

Here's a bunch of cute pictures of the cousin gathering in Denver. We spent the long weekend with all the Denver folk joined by Brian, Ashley, Jake and Lucy as well as Dan McG up from Durango. I'm very slow in posting partly because anytime I pick up the iPad Audrey sees it and yells "my turn! I need a turn on the padpad!!" and grabs for it, and partly because I have been absorbed in book 5 of the game of thrones series, but I'm done with that now and Audrey is napping so here's my chance ;)

We all ate at Lisa and Rahja's



and played

and bathed.

Cousin Lucy is four months older than Audrey.







Here's Gammy with six of her eight grandbabies: Jake (1), Noah (5), Lucy (2), Julian (4mo), Audrey (2), & Oli (10)

Roll over

Julian did his first rolls today. Two consecutive belly to back, here he is contemplating a third:






Audrey did a bit of coaching by showing him how she does it and by helping him push himself over.

Halloween