Ring Out Wild Bells: Pictures and stories

I can't believe it's already September. School is starting back up, Elliot is 10 months old and Libby is 2 1/2! Where did the time go? We had a great trip to Washington last month, but unfortunately I didn't really take many pictures and I forgot to steal some from my mom's camera.

School started up today for Richard. His schedule seems pretty nice. He should have lots of time for homework between classes and work, which will be nice. Maybe he won't be at the school till 8 pm every night this semester...One can hope. So thankful that Richard is going to school and working so I can stay home with these crazy kids.

Doing "science". Baking soda in a pan with colored vinegar to drop in and make cool little explosions and pretty colors. Loved it!

making some sort of fort on her chairs

pretending to sleep

Craft time!

Liberty is hilarious and crazy as usual. A few days ago she gave us quite the scare. Richard was at work and we were home hanging out with Julie and little Zach in the living room. Libby went into my room and was playing on the bed. She slipped off and hit her mouth on the dresser drawer. She was screaming and bleeding everywhere. Her teeth looked a bit like Halloween teeth: bloody, puffy gums, and a tooth that looked slightly out of place, yuck. Her lip was all cut up from her teeth and got super puffy. Julie called Richard who rushed home on his bike. Of course this happened at 5 pm when our Dr office and most dentists close. We don't even have a dentist so we made a few calls and tried to go to Urgent Care who referred us to an on call dentist. The dentist basically said "this happens all the time and she'll be fine." It was so sad to see her in so much pain. She fell asleep for a few minutes between screams in Richard's arms. (No naps + screaming = very tired girl). Anyways, her lip is still a bit puffy, but the teeth/gums look normal now. Thank goodness.
Libby is really into pretending. She is always "making cakes" at the playground with woodchips/rocks and then uses a stick for a candle and wants us to blow it out. She is always talking about Jessie (from toy story 2)who is her imaginary friend. They do all kinds of crazy things together. Richard has started telling her "Princess Liberty" stories each night before bed and she LOVES them. I am no longer allowed to put her to bed and if I have to, she won't let me tell the stories because I tell them wrong. Her favorite princess besides princess Liberty is Cinderella. She sometimes pretends she is Cinderella. We are so lucky to have such awesome, talented grandmas; Grandma Olive made her a Cinderella dress and accessories that we should be getting this week! We are very excited. Definitely put pictures up.
Libby and I have sort of started doing "mommy school". Still getting into the swing of things, but she loves it. I've been wanting to do this for awhile, but it seemed overwhelming and then I found a great idea on pinterest. We have a binder with clear page protectors. I found lots of good preschool workbooks at the dollar store and we have a letter of the week, number, animal, shapes, color, weather. Each thing has a little activity (matching or coloring, etc) to go with it and we use dry erase markers or crayons on the page and erase when we are done. We are mostly practicing on writing (tracing) and recognizing numbers and lower case letters, she's known the rest for a long time.

put curlers in Libby's hair, this is the result!

Can't get over this cuteness!

kisses!

One day Libby thought it would be funny to climb into the excersaucer with Elliot...With two sets of legs in there, it was a tight squeeze and took like 10 minutes to get them out, by then they were both screaming. I don't think she will be doing that again.

Elliot is obsessed with baths. If we leave the bathroom door open, he is in there banging on the tub, trying to climb in. We started actually doing a bedtime routine with him where we give him a bath by himself after Libby is in bed. It was so exciting for him to get the bath all to himself (instead of sharing with Libby, who lays down and hogs most of the bath). It's hilarious to see him crawling around and splashing. He also loves the piano. I've been scooting the high chair to the piano so he can play. I think he will be our musical child. He enjoys watching Richard play guitar too. It seems like Libby got bored of piano and guitar a lot faster than he does. He also has a love for Taylor Swift. If he won't calm down to go to sleep, we just turn that on and he usually goes to sleep pretty quickly. It doesn't work with other music as well. Elliot has 4 teeth now! Which he was not happy about getting. He is also crawling everywhere and getting rather fast.