In other news...

We've had a fun May...

We've enjoyed playing a lot inside and outside...

We've taken trips to the zoo, to parks, to the Children's Museum, to lakes, and the creek.

Siri and I took a trip to Chicago while Annie and Eric played at home.

Annie had her last music class.  She's attended since she was six months old, but we figure that preschool will keep her busy enough next fall.  I must admit it made me a little emotional, and made me (and probably Eric, too) a bit nervous for how high school graduation will affect me...

We had a visit from cousins Elliott and Kate (and their parents).  The kids had a blast playing together, and it was great to catch up with Sara and Alex.

We attended Eric's cousin's wedding and had a blast with his family.

Our Siri Girl is One!

Wow.  We've spent the last couple of days remembering last year at this time so vividly--the final days of preparing and waiting for Siri's arrival, the wonderful morning it became clear we were going to meet her, and her amazing birth.

She is, as I've said many times before, a delightful little girl.  She is growing more assertive, and is quick to let us all know when we've not met up to her expectations.  She is always been quite independent, but now her mobility allows this to take her to all corners to explore on her own.  I often find her at the dollhouse where she loves to find the babies to hold, or at the kitchen where she sorts foods.  Siri is loving organizing, she sorts pretty much everything she can get her hands on.  She is getting quite steady on her feet, and we anticipate that she'll be walking on soon, but for now she seems content to crawl or dive at what she wants.

Her verbal skills are picking up, she's got quite definite sounds for dad (da-da), mom (ma-ma), nursing (na-na), cheese--as in smile for the camera (cheese!), dog/duck--you just have to know the context (daaahhh!!!), ball (ba) and she is always working on animal sounds for elephants, monkeys, and sheep.  She loves to sing, and play the piano, and clap.  She thinks its hysterical to rub food in her hair, and her face lights up whenever Annie comes to play with her.

We had a fun day celebrating her birthday, especially enjoying that it was a weekend so that Eric could spend the day with us.  We opened presents before breakfast, Annie was quite eager to help and demonstrate for Siri all the possibilities for fun.  We had pancakes for breakfast, went to church, Skyped with my brother and his family--including our cute new nephew Lennart--and my parents in Finland, took a walk around the block in her new wagon, and had lunch all together.  After nap time, the girls had fun playing with new toys and watching the rain.

Siri loved her strawberry shortcake, licking the whipped cream off the plate...

We have loved this year with her and can't wait to see what the next one brings!

Happy Mother's Day!

We enjoyed a wonderful Mother's Day, and hope that all of you other mothers out there did, too.  Annie actually kept insisting to say "Happy Women's Day."  I attempted to explain to her that not all women were mothers, but I didn't get very far there.  She has definitely entered the "why"stage of life, Eric and I are getting to do lots of explaining.  Besides the why question, we also often are asked what words mean, and seldom give a satisfactory definition...right now it seems like she may turn out to be quite the linguist.

The girls are quite entertaining these days.  They love to make each other laugh, and egg each other on, and create games to play with each other.  Annie is working hard to figure out how to communicate with Siri, and what things are appropriate for her, and Siri is doing her very best to keep up.  It's going to be a blast to watch this relationship continue to grow!

Siri celebrated eleven months about a week ago...

As she approaches one year old, she is working very hard at standing up all by herself...she can usually stand up for a few seconds than tumbles over and tries again.

Last weekend, we had a fun Saturday visiting with friends, and then Sunday headed to Wisconsin for cousin Emily's first communion.

We were happy to be there with her, and Annie was thrilled to try out Emily's trampoline.

Annie's been enjoying trying out recipes in her new cookbook--this past week we had "monkey pizza" and "potato mice."  When I sat down last Monday to make the grocery list, Annie ran for her cookbook and said she wanted to pick a few things to make.  She chose these two items and did a great job identifying what ingredients we needed to get, and loved helping.  She's always been a good helper in the kitchen, but this interest in the recipes themselves is new.

For Mother's Day, we had a lovely breakfast at home before church,

brunch at a nearby restaraunt with Eric's mom, brother, and his brother's girlfriend,

then after naptime, took a walk past the lake and creek (where we got to watch a momma duck and her ducklings) to the ice cream shop where Siri got her first bite of ice cream.

It was a good day.