It is precious to watch little Meredith play with stuffed animals.  She will be so soft and loving with them, the opposite of how Matthew is with his.  He will throw his around and play tug of war with Lily, typically nutball bean stuff :)

While I was cleaning out the hall closet, Matthew found the child carrier and had the fun idea to carry his lion around.  He was thrilled, even though the pack was so heavy it nearly knocked him down!

He then decided it was his new favorite place to sit while watching TV.  He even buckles himself in complete "to be safe"

He wanted to put Meredith in the pack (he started to try to put her in all by himself!) but she was having too much fun practicing her new skill of pulling herself up to standing position.  She has been trying to do this for awhile now and after she did it for the first time she started to show off and pull herself up on everything like it was the easiest thing in the world.  It's great to see how delighted she gets with herself when she does it.  Before we know it she will be walking!

Sharing is already starting to become an issue in our household.  Matthew doesn't want to share any of his toys with Meredith because they are "special" to him but it's okay for him to play with her toys because he is "showing her how they work", even if she is right in the middle of playing it.  One of Matthew's favorite toys, Legos, is especially troublesome because he likes to play them all the time and gets upset if she even comes near them (not to mention the safety aspect of her putting the small pieces in her mouth).  To try to remedy this, Meredith has her very own girly legos.  She loves them and will play with them while Matthew plays with his.  Of course Matthew still feels that he needs to "show her how to build stuff" and proclaims that she is sharing with him and that she told him to teach her...... *sigh*

Our lives have been consumed by house projects for the past few weeks.  What with Brittney and Aykut moving into their new house, us getting our house ready to put on the market, and packing and getting ready to move into our new house (yay!)  We were over at Brittney's new place this afternoon to hang out and work on random things.  Matthew jumped at the chance to help Papa fix a leaky pipe under the kitchen sink. 

Papa really is so good at including Matthew in these types of projects.  He will explain what is wrong and what needs to be done.  They will talk about the tools needed for the repair and then Papa will give Matthew an important job to complete, such as tightening the screws on the cabinets.  Matthew is always so eager to learn about anything and Papa never minds taking the time to explain something.

Meredith had fun exploring a new environment again.  The living room has a step down and she discovered that she could crawl up the step all by herself.  She would get so proud of herself when she did it and laugh and smile.  She still needs to work on the getting down part though

Good thing this wasn't a roller covered with paint!

She always loves digging around in piles of random objects

Being under a table or crawling through some sort of table is one of her favorite activites

Random exciting news:  After weeks of trying, Meredith succeeded in pulling herself up to standing position for the first time this evening!  Kudos to her :)

Brittney and Aykut finally closed on their new house today-Yay for them!  The kids and I went over to check out the new place today and help out in any way that we could-which really turned into Brittney cleaning while I kept the kids out of stuff (Sorry Britt :) ) 

Cutie Patootie

Meredith really looks forward to bath time.  (I hope she doesn't hate me for this picture when she is older-lol :)  )

Sunshine!!!!

Today was bright and sunny, so there was no way Aunt Brittney, the kids, and I could resist a trip to the park.  Matthew is noticeably braver this year when it comes to trying stuff out and venturing off on the equipment on his own (under our watchful eye of course)

Meredith got in some snuggle time with Aunt Brittney while watching all of the commotion.

Wheeeeee!!!!

We look forward to many more fun trips to the park in the bright sunshine

Meredith can't decide if she likes Matthew's Buzz robot or if it bothers her

Meredith's First Word

My little Princess said her first word this weekend-"Doggy". She has said it multiple times on different occasions, all while looking at a doggy. She says it twice in this video. Yay!

Happy Birthday Great Nana and Daddy

We got together this weekend to have a joint celebration for Great Nana's 82nd birthday and Matt's 32nd (Wow, what an old man-LOL) birthday.  Matt was his usual goof-ball self :)

Matthew brought his tools and helped Papa work on fixing the fireplace

Meredith went crazy over seeing Fitz and Sasha.  She does this everytime she sees them-it's cute to see her get so excited.

I found this to be beyond adorable :)

Who knew a Balmex box could be so entertaining? They played with it for almost an hour!

Chicken Spaghetti

It's more fun to play with than to actually eat it :)