Birthday Party Slideshow

Christmas Day

What a fun Christmas this year! Two year olds are the best! Happy birthday to the girls today - though the official celebration is tomorrow.

Here they are playing with the best kitchen (or chicken as Hailey insists it's called) EVER. They love it, and the grown ups do to!







Here they are later in the day, at Grandma Gerry and Grandpa Scott's. Hopefully spring comes early this year!


After a long day, Hailey cozied up on the couch with Auntie Sandy and cousin Jordan...


...And fell asleep.


And finally, Riley just before she zonked out on Arlinda too:


A great day was had by all!

A Holiday Message from Hailey & Riley

In the words of Hailey and Riley, "Merry Christmas Everybody!"



We had a fun Christmas Eve day. Here are the girls setting out the spread for Santa.


We also had a full day of cooking and baking. Here are Stacey's elves rolling snickerdoodles.


The Sheehans and Arlinda wish all of our readers a very happy and safe holiday!

Dough and D'oh!

Since this blog is a little bit like my baby book/scrap book too, I have to put up pictures of the the good and the not-as-good. Here's one of the not-as-good: Hailey with a fat lip. She had a tussle with one of her little chairs. The chair won. (She's fine.)



After I photographed Hailey and her giant lip, the girls insisted on showing off their manicures:


Today we made some Christmas cookies. The girls did great.

Hailey making the shapes:


Riley and Arlinda rolling the dough:


Decorating:


They had fun eating the cookies too! We set a few aside for Santa, the girls are excited for this week! I am too, I can't believe we're going to have two TWO year olds on Saturday!

Awww

Snuggle bunnies in their snuggle bunny pjs. I can't get enough of these pajamas, they'd wear them every night if it didn't require extra laundry. Don't you love their post bath fly away hair too? Riley is sprouting wings.

Grandpa's Helper

Whenever Grandpa Tom and Grandma Susan come to visit, we put Grandpa to work fixing something. This weekend there was some work involving the assembly of large Christmas presents, as well as fishing out the large bulb of garlic that had fallen behind the stove. Since Hailey wasn't allowed to help with the first task, she took advantage of the second and was quite the helper to Grandpa. She was very serious and stuck with it, holding the flash light and yard stick the whole time, and listening to Grandpa's instructions. Seems like it wouldn't have taken that long, but it was in fact a very large, and very stuck, bulb of garlic.





Here are some playing pics. Hailey:


Riley, with a cold:

Snowgirls

The girls and I went out to play in the first real snowfall of the year this morning. It was really the first time they've played in snow, they weren't walking this time last year and it was more of a pain to take them out. But I think they had fun today!

Riley:


Hailey:


After playing in the snow they were ready for their space walk.


On Friday, Erin took the girls for the day (which is always a nice treat for me!). They went out to lunch, to the park, and did some shopping. They came home in a ridiculously good mood as they always do after spending the day with Erin. She just sent me this picture this morning. I'd love to know why they were making this face and how she managed to get a picture of it!

Better Luck Next Year

Well, it didn't go any worse than last year anyway. Hailey sat on Santa's lap for a millisecond before freaking out. Riley had a death grip on my neck that tightened the closer we got to him. They said they wanted to see Santa, but really not so much.

But they got dressed up anyway, and got lots of attention running around the mall. Riley is in the off white dress, Hailey is in the red.

Early Christmas

We are up in Massena, NY, for Thanksgiving. We drove up Monday, and it started as a much better trip than usual due to this fantastic invention called a portable DVD player (it's a 6 1/2 hour drive without stops, and let me tell you, it's not a popular drive with the toddler set). But lunch didn't sit so well with Riley and we discovered she has motion sickness. Four times in four hours to be exact. The DVD player might have attributed to the motion sickness, but given how otherwise quiet the trip was, I'm not sure which I prefer - 6 hours of whining or a smelly nasty car and 4 fast baby clothes changes in the freezing cold. Riley may disagree, but I think I prefer the latter (you might too if you listened to them whine for 6 hours). Anyway, we called the pediatrician for some tips and are hoping for a smoother ride home.

Kelli and family are here too, and the girls are having a blast with cousin MacKenzie as usual. They brought the girls their Christmas and birthday presents again this year, so they had an exciting day. They had a lot of fun in the mini ball pit. Here's the view from above:



Hailey peeking out the side:


Riley actually posing for the camera for a change:


Riley after a serious grocery shopping trip. She's stocked for Thanksgiving:


Cousin Lexi checking Riley's blood pressure:


Hailey found her own heartbeat:


Thanks for the fun toys guys! Unfortunately, we now need a bigger house.

Fingers crossed that our Santa visit on Friday goes better than last year!

Color School

Chris caught this great moment on video this morning, Hailey giving Riley a lesson on colors. They still have a little work to do on those colors, but they were playing so nice!

Chatter chatter

These girls are talking up a storm. They've already jumped into three and four word sentences pretty regularly and we are always astounded by what they observe and say. And sing - they LOVE to sing. Hailey made up her own song about colors to the tune of "You are My Sunshine" the other day!

As we head toward those "terrible twos", we are starting to hear some of that inevitable independence. This weekend both girls started saying "I'll do it!" to us (not "I do it" - they are already grammatically correct!). Hailey wants to snap her own buckle on her high chair, and Riley is perfectly capable of eating a whole cereal bar on her own, thank you very much.

Hailey even told her first joke about a week ago. It's sort of an inside joke, so here is what you need to know. First, the girls are obsessed with the moon. Every night it's "where's the moon, where's the moon?" Second, we play "what does the ___ say" all the time. (What does the sheep say, what does the cow say, etc.) So one night Hailey says, "what does the baby say?" I said, "I don't know, what does the baby say?" Her answer: "Where's the moon?!"

Said joke can be heard on the below video, along with 2 and a half minutes of other songs, counting, and toddler silliness. Enjoy!

Leaves!

We had an obscene amount of leaves in our backyard this fall. There were 27 lawn bags full when Chris was done raking today. But, 27 bags of leaves = lots of fun!

The girls hadn't jumped in leaves before, but that didn't stop Riley from knowing exactly what to do. Chris barely had a pile together when Riley ran, dove, and flopped face first into it. They were practically burying themselves in leaves.











In other exciting news, BOTH girls went pee in the potty today for the first time! Hailey had been saying "poop potty" for a few minutes, but it doesn't usually mean anything or result in a successful use of the potty. But after she insisted for quite sometime, we headed to the bathroom, and much to our surprise and delight, we heard the little tinkle in the potty! And Riley, after witnessing her sister's accomplishment and not wanting to be outdone, immediately sat down and peed!

Trick or Treat!

It was the girls' second Halloween, but their first time Trick or Treating. They dressed up as leopards, had their Elmo buckets ready, and off they went!

They had a dry run on Thursday when I took them to my office Halloween party. Here they are getting ready to go. Riley is the pink leopard.


On Saturday, after a visit to Grandpa Tom and Grandma Susan's, we headed over to Grandma Gerry and Grandpa Scott's for some serious trick or treat action. Hailey did most of the talking at each house, and had the "Trick or Treat", "Happy Halloween" and "thank yous" down pat. They were super cute, if I do say so.


We marched up and down the street complete with entourage. Grandma Sandy was also visiting for the weekend, Erin came by, and Arlinda joined us - no one wanted to miss out on the trick or treating. I don't blame them, I had a great time myself!


We also saw cousins Tyler (the grim reaper), Jordan (the giant flip flop) and Nicole (she was a witch, not pictured). Jordan is very creative and always comes up with the best costumes - and makes them herself!


We all had a great time and can't wait for next year!

Colds. Blah.

The girls have had colds the last week. One of the things no one tells before you have kids: how much time you are going to spend wiping snot off your children's faces.

They are happy as always though. Once again, photos courtesy of Grandpa Tom. He takes better pictures than I do. And about ten times as many.

Hailey:


Riley:


Don't worry, Hailey doesn't have blue snot. She just colored it blue with marker.


Balloon in one hand, marker in the other, and Riley being very serious about her artwork.


My babies:

A boo!

This weekend we went to a little pumpkin festival sponsored by the YMCA, with face painting, a free pumpkin per kid, apple crisp and ice cream (yum!) and bowling with pumpkins. We didn't stay long, but the girls had a good time and love their new mini pumpkins. They've been walking around the house hugging them for two days.



They got their face painted for the first time. Both girls got a ghost on their cheek, or "A boo! A boo!" as the girls like to call them. Here's Riley; she loved her Boo, but was very serious during the painting process:


And Hailey, who I think is trying to look at her Boo:


Here are some photos from last weekend. While Chris was off celebrating our five year wedding anniversary with his college buddies in NY, Arlinda, the girls and I went to hang out with all of my central Mass family members. Saturday we stopped by Grandpa Tom and Grandma Susan's for a bit (and had fun with stickers):


Sunday we went apple and pumpkin picking with Grandma Gerry, Grandpa Scott, Aunt Sandy, and cousins Jordan, Nicole and Tyler:




That's all for now!