Eric, getting ready to walk

Eric has completely mastered crawling. He is so fast that you can put him down in one room, run out into another room and seconds later you'll see his little head poking out around the corner. He just takes off so fast that he has calluses on his knees and tops of his feet.
He has also mastered the standing holding things skill. He will cruise from one piece of furniture to another and just within the last week or so is attempting to stand without help.
I've seen him standing, holding the couch then let go for a few seconds, but today I saw him stand without help! He had a little help because he used the step to get up, but stood there with a big grin and when we all cheered for him, he did it again.
He is really good at pushing his push toys around and Lily, ever so jealous, is constantly taking them away. We finally found a solution, one rides, one pushes. The following video only has a couple of steps of Eric pushing, but he actually pushes her all over. It is really sweet.

Easter

I just realized that I forgot to post the pictures from Easter... oops. So, here we go...
Aunt Charlotte sent me a newspaper from Huntsville when they did a Breast Cancer awareness issue and dyed the entire paper pink. I thought it was so cool so I saved it. I didn't know what I was going to do with it at first, but when Easter was coming around I decided that instead of dying eggs, we'd make paper mache eggs with this pink paper!

They came out really nice and Lily loved the project.
Easter Sunday...
I guess the Easter bunny thought that three teeth is enough to get a big chocolate bunny. Eric chewed on the box... Ross & I ate the chocolate.
The Easter Bunny left plastic eggs full of candy & chocolate all over the house and the yard. After we found all of them Lily and I went to Church.
It is kinda sad, but this was Lily's first time at church. My mom would be horrified. Well, she did go to church once before when we had her baptized but she didn't stay the whole time. She behaved so well. She sat on my lap most of the service, but was quiet and although she was bored, she kept still. They invited all the kids to the front for a children's lesson and I figured that she wouldn't want to go being that she is so shy and we were towards the back in a pretty big church, but another mom asked her if she wanted to go and surprisingly, she said yes and jumped up and followed the other little girl. It was funny because after it was over, I guess she wasn't listening when they said to go back to your seats because she just sat there after all the other kids had gone. I had to stand up and wave her back over to me. The sermon was of course about Easter, but they related everything about butterflies and gave all the kids butterfly lollipops.

After the service, as we were leaving the church, they gave everyone a box with a real butterfly inside. Everyone gathered around and released them at the same time. It was fabulous.

After church, we went picked up the boys and went to the beach.
right after tickle time.

Mothers Day

Mothers Day is always a little bitter sweet for me. I love that I get a holiday, but it always makes me a little sad that my mom isn't around anymore. I usually take the day off from being a mom and do something by myself. This year I only half did that. We spent the first half of the day at the beach. Eric is getting to the age where the beach is fun. It is still a little work to keep him from eating all the sand, but it is worth it.
Butterfly world does a mother's day special and lets moms in for free. I took advantage of this on Saturday. I had been wanting to take Lily there for awhile now but it is very expensive so I'd been putting it off. I am so glad that we got to go. Lily is at such a great age for this. She was just full of wonder. Eric stayed home with Ross so we had a nice little "girls day".
Lily fed the birds. She was so funny because she wasn't afraid at all. She kept putting her face closer and closer to the birds. So close that I had to go wash her face because the birds were flinging the fruit soup up on her cheeks.
Last weekend we went to a picnic with the Hollywood Craft Mafia and made pet rocks. Eric just licked them all for us.
Last week Lily brought me her pillow to stitch up because it had a hole in it. I took it as a teachable moment and taught Lily how to whipstitch.



Eric and Lily play together so well. He can't walk yet, but gets around pretty well with a combo of crawling and scooting along the furniture and walls. He likes to open and close things. Lily likes to hide inside things. The other day they played this game for ages.