Here are some pictures from our last week (or so):
July 2, 2010 - Abby Kate is 10 months old! Unfortunately, she was ill with Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease. (Terrible name, and it made me feel like a disgusting mother - I really appreciate those of you clean mothers who confessed to me your child has also had this illness :)! As a result, it was a little more difficult to squeeze in a good picture. In an effort to make sure I got at least one picture on her actual 10-month birthday, I grabbed the camera after washing her off following a vomiting episode. This is what I ended up with!
3rd of July at the parade - Unfortunately, Abby Kate missed out on her first 4th of July parade (held on the 3rd this year because the 4th fell on a Sunday). Cline took Christa, who rode in the boat with cousin Maggie Beth and great-grandparents. Mi-Mi was kind enough to stay with Abby Kate so that I could participate in the parade, and Pa kept her while I enjoyed a little of the BBQ afterward.
Abby Kate's 1st 4th of July - She was feeling much better by the end of the 4th, so we did make it to a late-night dinner at Applebee's with Cline's family, giving me a chance to debut her cute outfit, that I purchased with great anticipation weeks in advance :)
On Tuesday, I had a long-distance play date scheduled with a nursing school friend. We started off at the American Girl Cafe, which was delicious!
After lunch, we went to a place called Play, a kiddie gym with trampolines, slides, inflatables, and a very fun foam pit.
Abby Kate quickly discovered that she could scale the slide....
.... and was so proud of herself when she made it to the top! (2 days later, we went to a local inflatable business as a reward for Christa, and she climbed huge slides with no trouble at all! If she slid down a little, she just scooted herself right back up - fearlessly!)
On Wednesday, we cashed in a library summer reading coupon to the Creative Discovery Children's Museum in Chattanooga with some neighborhood friends. I didn't get too many great pictures, because Christa was more interested in gluing construction paper together (something I could have done easily and cheaply from home :) We had a fun day, nonetheless, and I really enjoyed having so much activity, even though it was a lot for one week.
Abby Kate enjoyed the mirrors at the museum.
Digging for dinosaur bones.
The kids have done several funny things recently! I'll start with Abby Kate's antics. I joke that my children are proof that babies are sinful from the moment they're born (or at the very least, from a very young age). Abby Kate, unlike her big sister, is a little vacuum cleaner! She puts everything in her mouth, even trying to crawl under the stove to try and score some moldy crumbs! Now that she is crawling well, it is quite easy to tell when she has something questionable in her mouth. She will see me, smile a huge grin (sometimes dropping the precious morsel), and turn around crawling away as fast as she can while laughing. I've been tempted to scatter cheerios all over the house in hopes she'll be so busy eating those, she won't think to dig the tiny pieces of dirt out of the carpet!
Christa cracks us up daily with the things she says. Most recently, our whole family was in the bathroom getting ready for the morning. Cline started playing "nose" with Christa - the old game where you playfully grab someone's nose, put your thumb between your fisted fingers, and jubilantly exclaim "I got your nose! I got your nose!" Christa was having a blast, and asked me to play "nose" with her. As I "took her nose," Cline took the game to a new level by coming up to me and exclaiming, "I got Mommy's bottom!" He then proceeded to "switch" mine and Christa's bottoms. I said, in the most dramatic tone of voice I could muster, "oh how wonderful!! I have a small bottom now!" And Christa, on perfect cue, replied in an equally dramatic tone of voice...
.... "And I have a BIG bottom!"
