Another One...

Holly had another laser treatment today. It was, I believe, number six. We had to be at the hospital at 7:30 am, so we had to leave home at 4:30 am.

Luckily, the girls did beautifully in the car both ways. And my mom tagged along to take care of Josie, which was a huge help. And the wonderful anesthesiologist and nurses let me go back into the operating room and hold Holly until they put her to sleep. Which made the entire process a lot easier for her, but a whole lot harder for me.

And the best thing of all was, Holly woke up happy. I love this little girl! She is the best patient and holds still and does just as instructed. She has rolled with the punches so well since the start of these laser treatments. I don't know how she handles things so well, because I'm a nervous wreck. She's pretty fantastic.

She's not all sweet, though. About forty-five minutes after these photos were taken, she had an epic tantrum at a restaurant filled with old people...as we ate lunch at 11:00 am. It was awesome.

For more pictures of Holly's latest adventures (and some cute pics of Josie too), check out my sister-in-law's blog post here.

Pumpkins!

We had not carved pumpkins in several years, so we decided it was high time to change that! Plus, we thought it would be fun for the girls. So a few weeks ago, we passed by a pumpkin patch and decided to stop. The girls each picked out a pumpkin.

Holly was not amused. I think it's because they had signs everywhere warning of the dangers of picking up pumpkins by their stems. We were cramping her style.

Josie loved her pumpkin so much that she ate it.

Fast forward to last night: we finally got around to carving and decorating our pumpkins! I did not plan ahead so the girls had neon pink and green paint to decorate their pumpkins, and q-tips for paintbrushes. Holly worked very hard on hers for about 45 seconds.

And for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to give a one-year-old a q-tip covered in paint, thinking that she would surely know what to do with it. Right? It turns out she knew exactly what to do with it...put that pink paint right in her mouth.

Josie's baby pumpkin.

It took Andrew less than five minutes to pull out a power tool to help him carve his pumpkin. Let me just point out that we finished our carvings at the same time: he with his drill, and me with my old-fashioned knife. Just sayin'.

Our little pumpkin family. It has been many, many years since I carved a pumpkin so this was just to get me warmed up. Just wait until next year! Prepare to be impressed.

Happy Happy Birthday

Josie turned one last week, which leads me to wonder how on earth an entire year has passed since she was born. I have no idea what happened! I missed several months' worth of sleep, changed a few diapers, and now she's a toddler. Kind of.

To celebrate, I started off the day by vacuuming. The girls are both deathly afraid of our vacuum cleaner, so here they are protecting each other from it on the couch.

We had a party that evening when both sets of grandparents joined us for dinner and birthday cake. When the girls were napping, I transformed the living room into the party room by putting up a little birthday banner and blowing up some balloons to spread out on the floor. Holly ran around shrieking, "It's a party! It's a party!" and Josie was more subtle but equally thrilled. It was so much fun to see them play with the balloons and have a blast.

Josie's little baby cake. That lone sprinkle in the middle of the cake is driving me crazy!

The big cake for the rest of us. In case you cannot tell, the cake itself is pale pink. It's a vanilla cake with vanilla bean buttercream, heavy on the butter. It was actually quite delicious. I'm not entirely pleased with the non-smoothness of the frosting, but my only tool was a butterknife. So I think I did rather well, no? (Help! I need an offset spatula but I'm too cheap to go out and buy one.)

Josie not eating her birthday cake. She was incredibly skeptical of the entire thing.

The rest of us dug right in. Holly particularly enjoyed her cake, although she still insists on having everything cut into bite-sized pieces for her. I may have to visit her middle school daily to prepare her lunch for her.

After several minutes of skirting around the issue, Josie finally dug in. Once. Then she made a game out of handing me miniscule pieces of cake and frosting.

Opening presents is serious business! She got right to work and Holly was happy to help. We had a wonderful evening, thanks to our party guests. We are all enthralled by Josie. We love her so much and are so happy she's a part of our family!

It Has Happened

The day has come. The time is now. Josie pushed her big sister in their toy stroller today! And I laughed and laughed. And then I took this picture.

M-I-L-K

Whenever Josie drinks a bottle, Holly thinks it's great fun to lay down next to her and drink her milk or water out of her cup. They lay like this and giggle at each other and it warms my heart and makes me want ten more babies.

And then Josie reaches over and yanks on Holly's hair so hard a chunk of it comes right out.

But she is cute, isn't she? I cannot believe she's so small that she still fits inside the nursing pillow. We love our Josie so much that we even forgive her for pulling our hair and throwing all her toys and food on the floor. Especially when she smiles and says, "uh-oh!" It's adorable.

The Days of Summer

We have really enjoyed summer around here. Until it never went away. Seriously, it's October now and last week we had temperatures in the triple digits. That is disturbing and disgusting. Especially when you are me and have to run errands with two sweaty kids hanging off of you. We'll be happy when fall finally arrives.

But we really did enjoy summer! In July.

One of our favorite activities is to go outside and play in the sprinkler...or just play with the hose. Josie drinks the water in massive quantities.

Holly is always very busy filling containers with water and emptying them all over the yard. She doesn't have time for pictures. (P.S. See her birthmark in this picture? Didn't think so. Cool, huh?)

And this is my ever-faithful basil plant. I had a container garden in the back yard which died a horrible death in the South Texas heat (or maybe I neglected it...the truth remains to be seen). This plant, the seeds of which I got inside a Triscuit box, is invincible. It has survived both the extreme heat and my neglect and refuses to give up. I love it! And I always forget that I have fresh basil at my disposal.