We stopped in to see some clearance items and pick up some clay. The kids got to enjoy a free craft.
Earlier that day we were at Michaels looking at some of their sales, particularly the jewelry and beads. During that time
The kids really had a great time at the store, many thanks to the tea samples in the back. Our kids really loved the chai tea!
Mom was out with the kids when she heard, "Mom look! It's snow angels except with dirt!" Amongst snow angels in the dirt, this little girl is a digger! And pretty proud of it!
Giovanna looks to be quite the little digger in training as well! Needless to say, the kids are getting a bath today.
So I caught the kids playing around in the stairs a while back, trying to catch the sunlight coming in the window at the top of the stairs. Either that or mesmerized by the tiny particles in the gleaming sunlight. Check it out, it's pretty precious!
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| Dairy Queen trip |
Lately we have been very successful at potty training Noah, and for the last two nights Noah has stayed dry all night! Yesterday when he was dry for the first time, we decided to take him out for ice cream to celebrate. Noah was pretty excited and Dolly was sure appreciative about it as well. We took them to Dairy Queen across from ONU, and Josh happened to be driving by and stopped to say hi. If you don't know, Noah loves Josh. And he was pretty excited about him showing up. Take a look at our video:
Ice Cream Trip from David Giove on Vimeo.
In other news: Today is Noah's Birthday! We woke up early (before the alarm went off at 6:30am) and I made Noah and Frencesca some cinnamon oatmeal pancakes for breakfast. Usually when I do this the pancakes never actually hit a plate, they come right off the frying pan and into a belly. Needless to say, they devour pancakes. Later today Grandma is coming to spend time with the birthday boy, and hand out presents tonight. I'm looking forward to it, and I'll have videos/photos of it to share later for sure. Check back soon!
Usually we put one child to bed first, and after about 30 minutes we put down the second. Staggering their bedtimes has worked well with the problem of them playing in bed together at night. This particular night I had Frencesca up later, and we were playing around in the living room. She really loves watching herself in the camera, which you might notice she's looking at the viewfinder. She's a pretty precious little girl, check out the video!
Camera time with Dolly from David Giove on Vimeo.
So Amie told me a pretty funny story and I thought I would share it. She had to get some blood work done today, and we weren't able to get a babysitter. So Amie brought the kids to the appointment with her. She was feeling quite dizzy on her way into the appointment, and upon getting to the examination room set Frencesca down. She must have been unsure of herself because she immediately fell and bonked her head on the floor. Amie was picking her up and comforting her when she heard Noah say, "mama dirty." She turned around to see Noah covered in red, and lip stick in his hands. She had no idea where he got that shade of red lip stick, but there he was, red cheeks and all. No sooner than she tried taking care of him did he touch Frencesca and gave her red streaks of lip stick on her head as well. Of course the nurse walked in at that moment, gasped in horror to what she deducted as blood on Frencesca's head! I guess she had known or saw her fall, and assumed it was blood. Amie must have had a fun time explaining it all to her!
Just a quick note to let you know that this morning Frencesca was caught at the breakfast table signing more for some more food! Very exciting! We are finding that it is very cool that Noah is able to communicate so effectively, and look forward to communicating with Frencesca more.
It's official: At 11:05am today Frencesca started crawling! She has been looking like she has really wanted to get up and going lately, but nothing that can be technically called crawling. She has rolled, and squirmed to whatever object she wants to get to recently. We are about to have to very mobile children!
I got an email from my Aunt Sandra today, sending greetings and some news that was surprising to me. She said:
I came across Grandpa's original birth certificate. Two interesting things on his birth certificate. First Grandpa's birth name was Lorenzo Vito. The second thing was Grandpa's mothers name is Frencesca, spelled the exact same way as your baby girls name. I thought that was interesting because I'm sure you didn't know that when you pick the name. Grandpa always told me that his mother's name was Frences, when I asked him he said that's just her nickname. Just thought you would find that interesting.I thought that was absolutely amazing, and it is exactly as she said. We had no idea that my great great grandmother's name was Frencesca. Even though it wasn't necessarily intended, it gives some depth to Frencesca's name, and as soon as I told Amie I could tell she was very excited and happy as well.
Just thought I would share that tidbit of additional information that came my way today, and I hope to upload some new photos soon!
To keep our bills low, we typically try not to turn the air conditioner on (unless we have company over or something.) On most days when it is seriously hot, we let Noah have what we call a, "special." This is a popsicle. But not any popsicle, a fudge or banana popsicle. We found out a while ago that he has some serious reactions to citric acid, which turns up in everything. Soda, orange juice, pineappple, and you guessed it, popsicles. Turns out that the only flavor popsicles that he can eat are fudge and banana! Lucky kid! Enjoy these photos of him on the porch, along with his sister Frencesca.
Also, I'm trying to upgrade the blog, and in doing so I am using Google's picasa for images. I plan on having a better set up soon, but here's a gallery for now:
We took a trip to Michigan on the weekend before last (14-15.) Here are some photos from our adventures! We got to see the great grandparents, and even a great-great grandfather. Noah got to hang out with his cousin Caleb, and he enjoyed that.
Oh! On the way into Michigan, we stopped to feed Frencesca, so Noah and I got out and explored the truck stop. We found little biker jackets, and had to take a few photos of him in one, which he wasn't too happy about. But he looks so cool! A man browsing the same question told him, "there you go, now you just need a motorcycle." I responded to him, "well dad would need one first... I'll have to talk to mom about that." Amie laughed when I told her, and I take that to mean that we will be going motorcycle shopping! (or not)
So I was looking through the photos I took this last weekend, and found a good one. We were getting some cute shots of mama and Frencesca, and she must have been pretty surprised about the kiss she was receiving. It's not a very flattering photo, but it's pretty funny. So check back for some really cute photos of our daughter.
We took a trip to Tennessee to visit family this Easter. It was a good trip. Google maps says it about 7.5 hours to get to Tennessee, and it took us roughly 13 hours to get there. We had to stop to feed Frencesca every 3 or so hours for an hour each stop, which really slowed the trip down. But the kids really did very well in the car. Noah sat there and enjoyed the new SUV that we rented. He loved it so much in fact that, he didn't want to leave it when I showed to him initially. He definitely thought it was very cool. We rented a Chrysler Aspen and it was able to take the E85 fuel, which was awesome. It would have been even better if we could have found a place in (or around) Tenn that had it. It seemed like everyone agreed that it was very cool, but no one knew what it was or where we could get it. Oh well. We decided (as we do with every car we rent) that we could like one.
We took a lot of photos, and I uploaded the following photos to my Wal-Mart photo account. So if you would like to print some high quality photos email me, or post a comment, and I'll email you an appropriate link.
Just a few days ago we realized that we put Frencesca down for a nap on her tummy (which she loves), and she woke up on her back! She's rolling! She's done it a few times since, and it's pretty cool.
In other news, Noah pee'd in his little potty chair yesterday! We got him one because he's been showing a sign of being ready: He points to his diaper and grabs himself after he pee/poops in his diaper sometimes. He mainly likes the novelty of sitting on the potty, and we're not sure how ready he is to start using it. But we thought we'd give it a try.
