Gabriel Comes for a Visit to Sadie Dey's

Old Friends at Chloe's House

These are pictures from our first post Christmas play date over at Chloe's house. It was fun looking through these, as our Friends Gabriel and Joshua were present, and we haven't seen them since.Sadly, Gabriel moved with his family to Australia, where his mom is from. We do stay in touch on Facebook though! Joshua is a bit older then the girls, so we don't see him often.Holly was really excited to see all of her friends again, it had been too long, and we had a lot of fun seeing everyone.Here she is with rosy cheeks, playing with Chloe's Wiggly Spiky ball. its funny now, our play dates with Chloe, as holly is so comfortable there.Here is Sachi, it was fun to see her on a Monday afternoon. Both of her parent's work so we don't get to see her very often, it is always fun when we get to play with her.So the battle of the day, every day, is one of the girls trying to slide down the slide, while the other is trying to climb up, and then inevitably the third one will sit at the bottom!"I win, I win" no not really, eventually they all climb up, and they all slide down. its when they are all on top squeezing past each other that I get worried, and jump up and stand by the "edge"Here are Gabriel and his mom Khan, We miss you guys so much! I hope you are settling in, and i bet Gabriel is getting so big. He is such a Character, Shy when there are a lot of kids, but when its down to the last 2-3 he comes out of his shell.Here is Holly stopping by to visit with Mommy. She does that every now and again, climbs onto my lap for a kiss or a hug, she is so sweet, and then she pitter patters off to play some more.Today we are sitting at home having a relaxing Saturday afternoon. i took holly for a walk in the stroller and then to the park which she really liked.It's a lot of fun having a slide in your living room, and holly does have that little slide in the back yard, but what she loves the most is the swings, so we go to the park for those.Sarah is such a happy girl, I feel like her personality is really exploding, and she is so exuberant. She has a big personality and makes everyone around her smile and happy.Now here is Joshua, he is also another shy sweetie, but as he is getting older I am seeing him come out of his shell more and more, I can't believe he is rearranging the furniture!Not sure what the girls are playing with here, but it looks like both Sarah and Holly are trying to open whatever those little poke-a-dotted container's are.Then there are the "hat's" The kids look so cute in these, of all the toys in the playroom it is amazing how much use these free red buckets get. The girls like to dress up the mommies in them too.Here is looks like Holly is up to something, she has that "uh oh" look on her face. There isn't much for her to get into, but somehow the three musketeers always find a way to make trouble.On one play date recently they took every book out of the book shelf and used it as a ladder to climb up to the books on the Mantel, the two of them, Holly and Chloe were standing on the top rung.It nearly took my breath away and of course they just giggle, like "what?" I didn't do it! They are little monkeys climbing on everything that has a foot hold.Today Daddy was sick and he decided to take a nap in the early afternoon. Everyone slept in today and Holly wasn't ready for her nap.So I decided to take her on a walk. I am supposed to do 30 minutes of aerobic workout two of the four days I don't go to my exercise program. I learned recently that it doesn't have to be consecutive.So I figured if I walked to the park, 15 minutes there and then 15 minutes home, 30 at the park it would be a good way to spend an hour till she was ready to nap. Well it is really hard to walk for 15 minutes.Our park is maybe 6-7 minutes away, so I had to loop around an extra few blocks and then make another turn out of the way to get there, but it still only took me 13. When we got there holly wanted to swing strait away.But the part I wanted to tell you about was Holly climbing up the side of the play structure, it was like red monkey bars curved, and I turned and saw her standing up on the second bar, looking over smiling at me. Yikes! I ran over to help her the rest of the way up and she was on the slide platform in a moment.She did it like 5 more times of course! Little monkey. I took the super long long way home, and it still only took me 15 minutes, I was two short of my 30. Anyway! At least i did my walk, and had fun at the park. And back to the photos, we had a wonderful play date at Chloe's as always!

Play Date @ Sadie Deys

Look at her stretching, almost hanging, up on her tippy tippy toes. I am hoping that when she goes to gymnastics she will learn how to actually hang on her own.She is trying, she is holding on, and I am happy of that, but she isn't really strong enough to hold her own weight yet, Chloe can do it, but she weights a lot less and didn't have the same arm and shoulder tone issues Holly had.We are spending the afternoon here at Sadie Dey's, Gabriel and Chloe have joined us for the play date. This is one of our favorite places to go, and with the dark early evenings and cold, it makes for the perfect meet-up.We are missing Gabriel and Khahn, they left in early December for a fun cruise, and then we left for a long visit to Florida, so it has been almost 6 weeks since we have gotten together, but I think we will see them next week.Here Holly is waiting at the bottom of the slide for Chloe to come down. The two of them like to climb all over each other, slide together, and they both prefer to climb up the slide rather then slide down.I love this little outfit she is wearing, it is hardly ever cold enough for her to wear it. The kittens with the leopard print reminds me of both my mom and my sister. It is a very cosy top, I think its made of a warm fleece.I love this picture, you get to see the whole outfit, and you get to see how tall she has grown, or at least how stretched out she is able to get now a days, we practice every day when I change her diaper, we do "Big Stretch"Here Chloe is living dangerous, hanging on the edge, just barely holding on, seeing if she can give us a heart attack before she takes a step back. Look at that smile, as if she knew the fear in my eye.My sweet one is sitting carefully on the step, she does plenty on a daily basis to make my heart skip a beat, but it is usually something she doesn't realize is dangerous or risky, She doesn't pay attention yet.But Sadie Dey's is better for other things, not just climbing. She likes the Puzzles and the Dolls and all the toys as well. Plus she loves the company of good friends, and good food.

Playdate @ Holly's

Last month we hosted a play date at our house. I try and do that every so often, unfortunately we end up being so busy it ends up being about every 2-3 months. I hope to do it more often in the future.A new family joined us this last time. Leo and Luna were the two kids. Luna was about 13 months, and Leo was around 4. They had just moved here from Spain a week earlier.Luna was quite a sweetie, but it was strange to have her over because she only really spoke Spanish, so even though she could communicate, she didn't understand anything I tried to say to her.Chloe joined us as well. It was a roll reversal, now it was Holly's turn to share all of her toys with Chloe, and she actually did pretty well. Here she is both hording her cart while drinking her yogurt juice, what a silly little thing.They were both very excited about Holly's then new Yo Gabba Gabba toys, she didn't want to share them much though, but she did when she had too.She also took turns using the shopping cart. We have since had to take this toy away from her as she has figured out how to climb into it standing, which is very unsafe.She also showed her Puzzle to Chloe. She didn't mind sharing that, as long as Mommy wasn't paying attention and helping Chloe. Then she got jealous. It was ok for her to help Chloe, she could share the puzzle, but not mommy.The play date was supposed to be an experiment with scheduling something in the morning, and I set the time originally for 11:00 after therapy. All my previous play dates have been at like 3:00 in the afternoon, but it is hard to get Holly up by then, and lots of people want to leave by 5:00 for dinner, not stay till 7:00.Therapy got cancelled so I updated it to 10:00 Am. But the first family didn't arrive until 11:00, Chloe didn't come until almost 12:00 and Gabriel joined us also, but not until almost 1:00 in the afternoon. A few other mom's who were going to come cancelled because there kids were napping. The intent was for everyone to come before there nap and get worn out, not after.Everyone ended up staying until almost 3:00 by then Holly was exhausted, she had woken up at like 8:00 that morning, but we had a great time. Everyone who cam did have fun, and Holly was a trooper.She plays a lot with Chloe and Gabriel, so she is very used to them, and enjoyed having them in her space. They all three loved climbing all over each other in the ball pit, what a cute little bunch of rascals.