I have trouble saying "no" to this sometimes...

A quick laugh

I was looking through the pictures from Robin and Bella's adventure on the train (see previous post) when I came upon this picture.

When I first saw the picture it looked like it did above and took me a little longer than it should have to realize that the train was not traveling 100mph and that Bella was not holding on while enjoying every second. The issue was that the picture needed to be rotated which is not nearly as entertaining as how I first saw it.

Reading on the Rails

On a Sunday in January, Bella and I took a train ride as part of the One Book, Two Book celebration. The train was the Hawkeye Express and we took it from the North Liberty library to the U of I Main Library. It was exciting because the train tracks run close to our house and we cross them and drive along them in our every day life, so I was interested to see the city from a different view point. I wasn't even sure where all the train tracks went.

When I read about it, I wondered why it would take 45 minutes to get from one library to another and when we got on the train I knew. It went really really slow. Bella was interested in looking around the train and they also had book characters on the train, so she really enjoyed that. By the time we got to the Main Library, it was already time to take the return trip home, so we basically spent two hours on the train. On the way back, it was getting kind of dark and Bella was getting bored, so she just drew for a while. I had a discussion with someone who was working on the train and knew a lot about it. I told him it seemed like the Hawkeye Express went quite a bit faster. He said "Oh yeah, the Hawkeye Express goes about 40 mph and the regulations for the historic track we are on only allows us to go 10 mph. " Yep... 10 mph. No wonder it seemed slow. It was the first time passengers had been on the track instead of cargo since 1957! The train got back to the North Liberty Rec Center at 6pm and Jeff was playing bball then, so it worked out perfectly for us to meet up with Jeff and Evie when we got back.

Ready to go

Corduroy was on the train!

Where we cross the train tracks every day

Iowa River



Bella sneaks another picture with Corduroy

Drawing on the way back

This is Evie waiting for us at the Rec center, she was actually pretty sick that day

We met up with the Davis boys to watch bball

How ice cream can warm your heart

Big sis helps lil sis eat ice cream

Happy Valentine's Day!

Evelyn's "Strong"

Grandpa Groves came to visit on Sunday and took this picture of Evie and aptly captioned it:

"I am so mad. Grandpa came to visit today and he did not bring us any of that great butternut squash"

Updates

It's been awhile since we have blogged on a consistent basis so here are a few updates. Evie has been using the potty for the past several weeks, she usually has a BM or pees when she sits on it. She is very proud of herself after going and has a potty dance that she does. Evie is not at the point where she can lose the diaper and we do not expect that for quite sometime, but we are very proud of the progress she has made thus far. Evie is mostly interested because she sees Bella sit on the potty and her big sister has been her biggest cheerleader. She will get in her face after she has gone potty and say "Good job, Sweetie" and dances with her afterwards. Evie is also saying a lot more words and is really developing her personality. She is currently refusing to eat foods that are not fruit snacks or treats (at least she is not eating her lunch and dinner particularly well as of late). Evie has also been taking off her coat and shoes by herself when we get home.
Miss Leah from school did this to Evie's hair-so cute!

Bella is growing everyday and learning new skills. She has been doing gymnastics and really is enjoying it. Her writing skills continue to improve as she worked on Valentine's Day cards today. She wrote her name on the cards and started righting them in the proper order. She has been writing them in them in the proper order but not consecutively (i.e. her name has often times looked like Bllae). Bella is a bit of a drama queen as she got frustrated about writing her name. She wrote the "A" before the "L"s and said "I am going up to my room to cry forever." Bella has become interested in the names of streets, but I think she only has one down which is Interstate 80. Anytime we go by it or on it she yells "Interstate 80!"

Sample of Bella's work. (She chose "Hidden Pictures" for her Valentines. She really is loving doing Search and Find books, and probably didn't realize that these are quite a bit harder, but she's still excited about them)

We will do some long overdue posts on our trip to Florida and Disney World in November/December, Bella's BDAY, Christmas, and more.

Isabella's first "drop off" birthday party (and Bella writes her own name)

This weekend Bella went to her first "drop off" birthday party. It was one of her friends from school, Ava, and she's been talking about the party for weeks now. She turned shy as I dropped her off but Ava's mom told her she could call me if I was needed. Then someone suggested Ava take Bella's hand and lead her into the living room and she went, so I basically just took off.

When I picked her up, it sounded like she had a really good time. It was a Rapunzel theme and they gave me a picture of Bella standing in a cardboard castle. She's not smiling, so I wonder what was going through her head at that moment. She didn't want to leave with me, so I took that as a good sign. If took me a little bit to get her out of there, the party was right during her naptime, so she was pretty cranky. Naptime for Bella seems to be a thing of the past anyway, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

All ready to go!

This is the birthday card Bella made for Ava. She wrote Ava on the front and then drew a picture of Ava with their other friend Kate "stomping" on her head. (not sure what that is from). Notice she's writing her own name now. This is a really recent accomplishment. When she writes it, she writes the letters in order, but randomly across the page. She also likes to color/fill in any letters like Bs or As.

Iowa Men and Women's Gymnastics

Tonight we went to the Hawkeye Men and Women's Gymnastics meet. Bella was really excited because she is really into gymnastics and it actually held her interest once we were there for a lot longer than we would have expected. Having Herky there and popcorn helped too.

Both girls were very excited when they saw Herky and were waving at him from a far. I thought Evelyn would actually go up to him this time because she was waving with such a big smile on her face, but one he got close she would scream. He tried to get close a few times because when he would move back a little she would smile and wave, but nope, she almost gave him a high five but that was it. Bella had no hesitation and ran up and gave him a big hug.

Evie waving to Herky

Bella was really excited to see them do the rings during gymnastics. I was really hoping it wasn't going to be the last event because she kept asking when they would do the rings. Luckily, we didn't have to wait long. Bella also seemed most impressed when anyone did a handstand, probably because that is the only thing she knew the name of. (there weren't too many somersaults going on, but if she'd seen one I'm sure she'd have been excited about that as well).

Watching vault and eating popcorn

Isabella, the gymnast

Bella started gymnastics this week and she absolutely loved it. For the last couple months, she's been doing some crazy moves or jumping up and down and saying "Is this gymnastics?" We thought after the new year it would be a good idea to get her enrolled in something.

Her first night there were only two other kids in her class. She was shy at first, but with some coaxing off she went and she never looked back. We could only view her through windows, but we saw her following directions very well, like running through a routine while the teacher individually helped other students. We saw her (attempt) swinging around a bar, doing handstands, doing backbends over a barrel, jumping on a trampoline and I even saw her trying to do somersaults on a balance beam.

Evie was even a champ hanging out in the waiting room. We all went to the first night because we didn't know what to expect. Every once in a while she would just say Bella? Bella? and if she actually saw her through the window she would scream Bella! Bella! and jump up and down and point at her. It was quite a bit more energy that anyone else in the waiting room had(everyone was just reading or playing on their phones).

Bella will go once a week on Mondays until we decide to take a break. She's already very excited about next week.

Isabella, the swimmer

Isabella had her first swimming lessons in Oct. She went twice a week for 3 weeks. It is always hard to determine if she will enjoy doing something like that, but she ended up having an absolute blast. My biggest worry was that she wouldn't want to get into the water without Jeff or me. The first night, as they were walking into the water, she said "Mommy, mommy", but one of the lifeguards gave her a diving ring and asked her to take it into the water and from then on she was totally fine.

We began to realize how much she has changed recently. She was so talkative to her instructors, she was the first one to shout out answers to any questions. When they were making pretend soup she was always calling out ingredients to add. "Corn!" "Crackers!" "M&Ms". She also was looking for a lot of attention always telling the teachers to "Look at me!".

I could tell she didn't really understand the difference between blowing bubbles and putting your head under water. She was constantly dunking her head under water. When they'd get out the noodles to swim with she'd start swimming away and have to tell her to come back closer to the rest of the group. When they played with the diving rings and it was her turn, she always just stuck her foot out under water to catch the ring and get it that way - which wasn't the point, but it was so funny!

We are so happy she loved swimming lessons. The next level they said she was ready for was Level 1 which she has to be 5 years old to be in, so I don't know if we will enroll her in the same swim lessons until then, or maybe I'll just make more of an effort to take her swimming at the indoor pool every once in a while.

Butternut Squash Retraction - we have a taker!

The butternut squash has become an interesting food item over the years. Bella has never cared for it, although she states that she likes it with lots of ketchup (although she gagged last time she had it that way). I also find the butternut squash to be a vile food while Robin enjoys it. Evelyn has never tried it, at least until Oct 7th. Robin was eating the squash when Evie motioned that she wanted it. Being the wonderful father I am I had to grab the camera before she could take a bite which did not please her very much. Here is the video of Evie's first bite and subsequent bites of butternut squash.



It appears we have a divided house on the butternut squash, it pleases Robin to have someone else that enjoys the squash. I would imagine our supplier is probably also pleased.