We've moved!

Not physically, just virtually. Please visit us over at the new and improved blog, Life As We Know It!

Where's her shirt?

Allie is working on dressing herself. She's able to take off her clothes, but hasn't figured out how to put them on.

The last few days Allie has been eating a ton and sleeping a lot. She's even volunteered to go to bed! Last night she actually went to sleep too. Tonight she's been playing in bed a bit, but she fell asleep a few minutes ago, which is earlier than usual. I guess she must be going into a growth spurt or something!

Egg-stravaganza, Part II

Easter Sunday morning Allie came downstairs to find her new bunny basket with some plastic eggs, a chocolate bunny and a little Cinderella figure. She picked out everything except the chocolate bunnies (and she didn't eat them!). We surprised her with some jelly beans in each egg. There were 12 eggs, so she got 24 jelly beans and Mama and Dada ate the rest of them in a relatively short time span.

But I digress... Allie enjoyed examining the contents of her basket.

But there was more than just her basket! We had another Easter egg hunt in which SHE got every egg! We put six in her basket and hid six in the living room. She had fun hunting for them and then eating the jelly beans.

After Mama ran 9 miles we went out to brunch. We all dressed up. We all ate, a lot. The Easter bunny came to visit the table when Mama was at the buffet. She got a little treat bag that she played with the rest of the day. I didn't take pictures at brunch but I had to document how pretty Allie was on Easter Sunday, so we had a little photo shoot at home.

Saturday was so busy that we didn't have time color eggs. We finally got around to it Sunday evening. Allie colored on the eggs with the magic crayon and then put them in the color.

While the eggs were in the dye Allie mixed them. Her absolute favorite activity is mixing.

The finished products! Allie doesn't eat eggs much, but Mama and Dada are liking the boiled eggs for breakfast and snacks. I need to make some egg salad!

Our egg-stravaganza, part I

We had an action-packed Easter weekend!! We started it out with our Saturday morning pancakes and then we had to take care of some normal Saturday chores. But then after lunch it was off to the park for an Easter egg hunt! We got there a bit early so Allie played on the swings a bit. She wanted to use the big kid swing. She never liked the baby swing and she's kinda big for it anyway.

She enjoyed it and it didn't even phase her when she tried to get off while the swing was still going and landed flat on her face. Good thing this playground was lined with shredded tires!

Allie picked out her Easter basket that morning. She liked the bunny basket with the ears!

The hunt itself was typical egg hunt pandemonium. I never understood it until I became a part of it. In the 0-3 age group, its actually a parent egg hunt competition to grab as many eggs as you can. I managed to grab a grand total of ONE egg for Allie. She didn't mind though, she had a blast.

Here she's trying out the jelly beans that were in her egg. There were two and I think its safe to say she would have liked more!

The egg hunt was sponsored by the Fitchburg Lions Club. Among the attractions was a fire truck, which Allie enjoyed.

One of the bigger surprises was that Allie ran right up to the Easter bunny! Too bad her hair was all over her face.

The other fun activity of the evening was decorating homemade peanut butter eggs that Mama made.

The red and blue sugars came out really fast!

I found the recipe here.  I ran across plenty of peanut butter egg recipes, but this one sounded good while also not being terribly terrible for you, based on the ingredients at least. I have yet to calculate the weight watchers points for them because I ate too much over the weekend and gave up tracking for a few days. I wasn't able to find powdered milk so I used coffee creamer. I microwaved the chocolate chips too long or something so instead of dipping in the chocolate I had to spread it like frosting. Tastes the same though!

They didn't turn out like the picture, but they were fun! They're not the real thing of course, but a pretty good substitute!

More egg-tastic Easter activities tomorrow!

A day at the zoo

Last Sunday we spent a great morning at the zoo. We were talking about it a lot before we went and Allie was so excited to see the animals.

When we got there the first animals we saw were the flamingoes. Allie was so excited! She sat on the fence for awhile and said hi to them and waved. I don't think she wanted to leave, but there were plenty more exciting things to see.

We told her about the choo choo train and the carousel too. She was very excited for the choo choo.

She seemed a little unimpressed. But she may have just been cold, the train was the first thing we did and it was a chilly day.

The giraffes were out and about to say hi. Allie liked their long necks.

The zoo wasn't terribly crowded, which was nice. It was easy to tell where you could glimpse the animals though by the crowds. The lions were out and creating a show.

We've taken a picture of Allie in this penguin sign every year. It was so cute she actually knew what to do this time, but was interested in looking at the picture underneath her instead of the camera.

Then it was time to see the real penguins. I think penguins are her favorite, but there were only a few out that day. But Allie waved hi to them anyway.

The seals weren't out the first time we went to see them, but they were out later. Allie liked the displays where she could look on her own.

The last thing on the agenda was the carousel. While Allie seemed underwelmed by the choo choo, she really enjoyed the carousel.

I think she did get a little dizzy though. She was really enthusiastic at the beginning, but seemed more mellow at the end. But she wanted to go again! We did go one more time. I think she'd have gone more than that, but I didn't want her to lose her breakfast.

We ended the day with a quick lunch at Panera. We like going there and getting Allie the peanut butter & jelly. That is one restaurant meal we know Allie will eat.

This was such a fun family day. It was especially fun to see how Allie takes in the sights as she gets older. She was so delighted to see all these animals. Sometimes places like zoos get a little boring to grown ups, but I don't think they ever get boring to kids!

Is she heading for the beach or the snow?

She likes to take her shoes and socks off in the car and play "sock puppets." Monday she also decided she wanted to wear a hat even though it was about 60 degrees. It made quite a funny sight. She's been quite proud of herself lately for both putting the hat on herself and taking off her shoes and socks. The joke was on her though, as when we get to our destination and Dada has to carry her because she's not wearing shoes.

Allie is doing so many funny things lately! I need to start carrying around a notepad to write them down. I always swear to remember them for a future post and then I end up forgetting.