Trying to stand

This morning I woke up and went into the kids' room and Lily was up building a fort out of blankets on the floor and Eric was STANDING up in his bed.

They are so independent.

Playdates, pictures, carnivals & parades

We went to a playdate at Chuck E Cheese and this game cracks me up. The game has a camera on the kids so if you stand behind them, the screen is above. I guess Lily thought the game was too loud.

Then I caught all three of them in the game together! They even had the seatbelt strapped across all of them! Lily wasn't smiling for the camera, they don't know that it is there, she was enjoying the game.

Eric doesn't have any friends his own age, so I thought maybe he'd like to talk to Lily's baby. He stares and stares at this baby. Probably because it walks & talks. But it is funny.

Just some cute pictures I took in the yard one afternoon when we were playing ball.

There are two churches in Hollywood that throw carnivals every year and we love to go to both. The one, is across the street from our house but for some reason, I don't have any pictures from that one even though we went 3 times! They are Catholic churches so there is beer there and the food is awesome so we pretty much ate there all weekend.

Lily really enjoys the rides, we can tell that she is going to be a roller coaster freak like Ross & I because she wasn't scared of anything. She isn't tall enough for the big rides yet, but I'd bet she would ride them if they let her.

She is so cute because she knows all about how things work. She stands in line and hands her tickets to the ticket man then waits to have her seatbelt checked. It is cute because she is so shy and if you watch closely you can see how hard it is for her, but she does it anyway.

Eric just waking up. Thought it was a funny face.

Aunt Marie sent us a bunch of Girl Scout Cookies that my dad bought from my cousin's kids.

We celebrated St. Patrick's day on Sunday because there was a parade. We started the day with green eggs. We didn't have any ham though.

I left Eric in the middle of the floor in their room while I ran to go get something and came back to find he had crawled all the way over to the book stash and was checking out some books. I think this is a good sign.

Lily's attire for the parade. I made her this "dress" last year for the parade when I woke up the morning of and realized that she didn't have a single article of green to wear! I'm too busy and too lazy to make her anything this year so we just threw some shorts on under and called it a shirt. As you can see, she has acquired many more green things in the past year.

This next picture touches my heart so much. I was so painfully shy as a child and I see myself in Lily. This woman, dressed as a princess was reading stories to the kids and Lily was so excited to go hear her. She ran right over at the very beginning before the woman had even sat down. BUT, she froze. Stood there wringing her hands while all the other kids crowded around. Then, Lily walked around behind the lady and sat down with her back to her. When Lily first sat down there weren't any other kids around the back, only her. It broke my heart because I know how hard it is to be shy like that.
Later that night Lily and I were discussing the day's events and talking all about the parade and the games and everything and she told me that her two favorite parts of the day were listening to the princess tell stories and getting her face painted. I couldn't believe that what I thought was the worst part for her was really her best.

Eric liked the princess's story too.

Ross missed out on all the fun at the parade because he was working. He does it every year. There is a little Irish pub that a friend of his owns that is on the parade route and they put up a temporary bar outside and Ross tends it. Last year he made some extra spending money, this year he made what I make in a month!

As we were leaving, one of the floats, an old fire engine, was parked on the side street and I asked the man if Lily could check it out. He said sure so she climbed up....

As I'm watching her, these two women come over and walk up to the side of the truck and pour themselves a beer! What?!

Those ingenious firefighters had built a tab right into the side of the truck! I was looking right at this and never even spotted it.

There were face painters at the parade but by the time I found the booth they weren't taking any more people and Lily was really sad about it so I told her that we'd paint faces when we got home.

To me, this was one of the best parts of the day. We sat out on the back porch and painted each other's faces. I painted Lily a Shamrock, and she painted me a smiley face. Then she look my phone, lined everything up and took this picture.

We had so much fun that we wanted to keep going..... so we did.

Some Video catch ups

I've been taking a bunch of videos to catch Eric and his new talent for crawling. The following one is about a week ago back when he was doing more of a scoot. I think his technique looks like the guys in military boot camp.

He does a proper crawl now and can go from crawling to sitting with ease. He can get up the step in our pool table room, but we haven't allowed him to attempt going DOWN the step just yet. I remember all the knots on Lily's head from that stage!

This next video is really dark, I'm not sure why, but my camera takes awful video in artificial lighting. Eric jamming out to Lady Gaga.

And lastly, again, a really dark video, but the sound is great. Ross sets Eric on the futon and throws a burp towel on him and he thinks it is so funny.