My Crazy, Silly Eliza

Oh, how I love my little Eliza.  I was giving her a bath and stepped out of the bathroom for a minute, and came back to find her like this!  She loves playing on this ledge. 
Eliza is in this fiercely independent stage right now. She wants to do everything on her own! She wants to change her own diaper, get dressed head to toe including shoes and socks, walk everywhere without holding any ones hand, pour her own cereal and milk, etc, etc. The problem with this independence is if I try to help her she throws a big fit. Also, everything she does takes a lot of time, so it is really hard when we are trying to go somewhere. I know it is probably a good thing in the long term, but it is really hard to deal with right now. She is mostly a happy girl, but watch out when she is grumpy. She loves wearing dresses, and often requests to wear dresses in the middle of the week so she can go to church. She loves going to church, which is so cute, and seems to like hanging out with me in nursery. Eliza loves being outside, and is happiest if we are outside all day. She says anything and everything now, which is so cute in her little way of saying things. She loves playing with Ben and Hailey and they are such good siblings to her. Hailey is definitely my girly-girl, but I can't decide on Eliza yet. She definitely likes her dolls and dressing up, but she has her own spunkiness, we'll see.

The Valentine Day Attack!

My kids have asked multiple times for silly string, so I gave them all a can at Christmas.  We had yet to use them, and I knew Mike would be home any minute.  So, we rounded up the silly string and crouched down waiting to attack Mike the minute he got home.  He walked through the door and bam, was hit by three cans of silly string!  Mike started screaming playfully, and we kept the silly string coming.  Ben and Hailey loved every second, but Eliza had no idea what was going on.  She started crying and was so worried about Mike.  She just kept crying and was wondering why in the world we would be attacking her dad.  It was great fun though!

So, I haven't played with silly string for a long time and forgot how slimy it is.  It took forever to clean up!  We kept finding tiny pieces of silly string, and I found a big piece weeks later.  Next time the silly string fight will be outside.  Happy Valentines Day!

Mike and I were able to celebrate Valentines the Friday before.  We went out to dinner and then our area has an adult dance.  It was fun to go dancing, and remember our first date (fourteen years ago) at the Naval Ball.  There was a couple at the dance who had been married 65 years and were one of the best dancers out on the floor. I hope Mike and I are there at our 65 year anniversary.  On our second Navy dance, Mike had to do the Chicken Dance along with all the other new Navy recruits, it was the best!  I tried to get the DJ to play the Chicken Dance at the Valentines Dance, but he said he wouldn't go there. 

Bowling

We had a fun bowling birthday party for Boston, who is the son of Mike's cousin Jenny.  His Aunt Elise was also in town, and Grandpa Lamar and Mae also came.   Eliza wouldn't get off my lap most of the night, so Grandpa Lamar was really nice and helped Ben and Hailey bowl.  They had a lot of fun!  I'm really excited that Mike bought a new camera so we can get better indoor pictures than these turned out.

Hailey is a Sleeping Bear

Hailey's preschool did this adorable sleeping bear play.  Hailey was so excited about it!  They got their parts a few weeks earlier, and she was the sleeping bear.  She wouldn't let me see her part, but practiced in secret with Mike, so that I would be suprised when I saw the play.  It was absolutely adorable!  Hailey's preschool teacher is amazing, and school is her favorite thing to go to, even better than dance and soccer.  The kids were so good and it was so fun to see them do their play.  Hailey was an awesome sleeping bear, and remembered her line when she woke up!  Hailey has done really well in preschool learning her letters and their sounds.  She just started reading Bob books and I am so proud of her.

Eliza is Two!

I have a two year old!!!  My family taught Eliza how to use her fingers to say I'm two at her birthday party.  She caught right on, so whenever you ask her how old she is, she puts up those two cute fingers and says "I two".  I just love my cute little Eliza and her fabulous smiles. 

We brought up Eliza's present on her birthday and she happily said, "oh my bike, my bike present, thank you for my bike present"!  She was so excited.  It is a push bike that we bought her and hopefully she will be as easy to teach riding the bike as Hailey was.