Our Baby Girl . . . .

. . . . is growing up! She has officially been a toddler for a while now, but sometimes certain moments make us realize what a beautiful little girl she's turning into. The other day Leah and Carissa were in the backyard. Carissa was trying to take some pictures of the leaves changing colors (our backyard backs up to a forest, it's great!). Carissa snapped this picture of Leah and thought it was such a perfect moment that represented her so well. She is certainly our bright beautiful little girl.

Blow Out

Jason has proven that he has what it takes to have his own reality show a la Jonathon doing hair. Carissa caught him styling Leah's hair after her bath the other day and snapped these shots. Ever since Leah insists that Jason dries her hair with the blow dryer and brushes it.

And the final product:



Look at the volume and sheen. Beautiful.

When Leah's cousin Mikaela was in town awhile back they wanted to try styling their hair by themselves. These two are too cute together and we wish that we were closer to them so they could continue playing together. Occasionally Leah will ask, "Where Kayla?"

Then we explain that she is at home in Kentucky to which Leah responds, "Tucky?"

"Yeah. Tucky."

I love this series of pictures. You can almost see the conversation these two are having.

"What's that?"

"A blow dryer."

"Should we turn it on?"

"I don't know."

"Uh-oh, it's on!"

"Funny!"

"Ahhhhh!"

Chuck E. Cheese!

Just a few weeks ago we took Leah to Chucky Cheese. It was her first time. Although a lot of these pictures show a troubled and/or scared face she really enjoyed herself, and even cried when we left.

She really loved the kiddie rides and we had a lot of fun watching her reaction to this new experience. She especially liked Barney - he talked - and they must have had a wonderful conversation because she stayed by him for a long time. And, of course, Leah LOVES slides! She can't get enough of them! It was all she could do to wait her turn to go, and there were only two other girls playing on it.

And there was a simulating fishing game that Leah thought was super cool, but so did daddy. And he is bigger so he won that battle, and enjoyed using up a few tokens himself!

We all had fun on this evening eating crappy pizza, watching Wubzy, and just being together as a family. We love hanging out together and this was a good opportunity to watch Leah laugh and learn new things! Yay for Chuck E. Cheese!

Brief Update

People have been clamoring for updates. Unfortunately this one is without pictures. We need to take a few more and upload them for everyone to see.

Jason has been busy with work. It's been nice though of late as he hasn't had to travel away from the office which has allowed Carissa and Leah to lunch with him a few times. There are a few projects ramping up though which will require him being away for a few weeks. Jason isn't looking for to being away from his girls at all. But it's part of the job.

Carissa has been busy with Leah and reading. Carissa is quite the bookworm and reads incessantly. So much so that she keeps giving her English major (19th century American women literature emphasis) husband fits. She tore through the Twilight series in about 3 days. This little gem sums up Jason's feelings on the matter:




Jason will be sleeping on the couch now for posting that. Truly though, Jason is grateful for Carissa and all that she does. She has a thankless job raising our rambunctious toddler. Though he gives her a hard time, the respite she receives by curling up in bed with a book is well deserved.

Leah has been busy being two. That means there is lots of good and lots of bad. She bounces all over the place with endless energy. Her vocabulary has increased quite a bit of late and she's trying to talk more and more with sentences. She's become a parrot so we have to be extra careful with what we say around her. Leah now says "dang" and "sucks" because of Jason's carelessness. Jason will not be taking Leah along with him golfing until she is out of this phase. More exciting than Leah's increased ability to communicate is her hair. She's only 4 months away from turning 3 but it's starting to come in. We couldn't be prouder.

That's about it