bathing beauties

We've been trying solo baths lately to avoid sibling conflict over bath toys and give more room to spread out. Working well so far! Squeaky clean.

walter visits

Wow September, how is it that you are almost over??  We have been camera slackers, but a lack of pictures does not mean lack of fun activities!  Last weekend Uncle Dan and Walter came to visit!  We had a great time playing with them.  Already looking forward to seeing them again sometime soon (and Aunt Anna too!)... Here are a few pics from the visit, and Uncle Dan posted some fun ones too.

Nate does some sleepy swinging at the playground....

General silliness.

Super climbers.

Silly bunch.

Top view.

Triple bath! (Quadruple if you count old bath baby back there...)

Two guys, just chatting in the tub.

b.k.t. (big kid tub)

Welcome to the big kid tub, Nate!  Abby washes Nate so gently.

Nate LOVES this development. Goodbye little blue bathtub, we're all done with you!  This is one of the first milestones that Nate has reached before Abby - she was over a year when she bid adieu to the blue baby tubby back in April 2009!

The clean team loves to splash.

We hope this means a summer full of pleasant bathtime, to wash off these sweaty days!

pre-bath, summer edition

Hellllloooo summer!  Naked siblings prepare for post-dinner bathtime.  Nate decides he'd like to grab Abigail's beloved mashup (berry beet flavor).

Abby decides she'd like to keep her special treat (reward for going poo poo in the potty - yay Abby!) to herself.  She should have reminded Nate that he slurped down his own mashup at dinnertime.... apple/blueberry/carrot flavor.

PS - we're surely jinxing ourselves by saying this on the blog, but it seems that Abby has fully adopted the potty lifestyle.  She's been dry all day for a couple of weeks now.  And dry during naps.  And usually dry when she wakes up in the morning (though we are still using pull-ups at nighttime).  Hooooray for Abigail!!

bathtub x 2

First joint bath chez nous - much fun:

Abigail was very excited about sharing the tub and helping to wash Nate's feet.

You'd never know it from his (lack of) facial expression, but Nate was feeling mischievous! He kicked his feet and splashed Abby! Hey!

"My baby brother splashed me!"

post-bath nate

"Hi guys, I just took a bath." Someone is getting to be a big boy! Look at these post-bath pics from way back when in September! What a difference a couple of months makes!

"What's that you say? You like my new jammies? Thanks! I do too... Grandma got them for me!"

Abigail really likes the whale on this footie suit. Nate really likes to blow spit bubbles.

imagination

One fun thing about Abigail these days is her very, very active imagination.... Here she is in the bathtub (sporting a fashionable bath hat!) "painting" - with water and a paintbrush - a picture on the side of the tub.

She narrated the whole thing... this was quite a masterpiece

Recently, outside of the tub, Abigail was playing with Po (and Po's new imaginary friend Zsah-zsy - spelling uncertain) and she was running to the kitchen to get an Elmo cup for them to drink juice out of. I hated to break it to her that we don't have an Elmo cup and she looked at me with a similar expression to below and said "Pretend mommy!"

Since then she has reminded both mama and papa several times to please pretend with her! Two other favorite Abigail-isms of late....

1) "Have you ever seen . . ." insert anything that is on Abigail's mind. When there was bird poop on our car windshield we had a conversation about that and Abigail's response to it all was "Have you ever seen a bird poop on the potty??" This phrase is repeated throughout the day with varying degrees of zaniness with the "have you ever seens..."

2) "Have you seen ... in a while?" When one of her stuffed friends or toys has gone missing she will earnestly look at you and ask "Have you seen Blue in a while????" when whatever she was looking for is found she'll say "I was JUST LOOKING for you!"

Back to the bath, Abigail very carefully fills up a bottle with water.

Lid-full by lid-full this project took quite a while....

snack, bath, hair

Kind of a rainy weekend, but in a nice on-and-off kind of way, so we had plenty of opportunities for walks and bike rides and grocery shopping (Abby loves shopping cart rides aka " shop wide"). Henry's 2nd birthday party was a big hit too - live musicians, a kiddie roller coaster in the backyard, fruit salad with grapes (aka "gape"), tons of kids, and a wooden train set inside. Wow.

Kitchen stool doubles as kitchen snack shack. Mmmmm dried cranberries. Quick flashback to one year ago when Abigail had her first taste of solid food . . . delicious rice cereal!

For anyone curious about what A's hair looks like in its untamed state....

Bath time is so much fun! Here, let me show you my tonsils!

Post bath grins. And while we're in flashback mode, post-bath Abigail, when she was a wee 6 months old.

look who . . .

. . . has a new ride - scored off Craigs List just today . . . the handle flips back and forth so little Miss A can face her parents or the big world ahead of her . . . we like getting to chat with her as we stroll.

. . . is fully mobile - she can get herself to standing from pretty much any position now, no need to pull up on things anymore, and she can chase chase chase the cat!

. . . graduated to the BIG tub - Abigail loves taking advantage of every square inch of tub space...and has a blast with all of her fun bath toys . .. clean baby!