A couple of weekends ago, we had our first official Kaplan family photo shoot. The weather was not cooperating (very cold), Reli was being her almost 2-year old self, and Vivianna was ready to take a nap when we got started. Those of you familiar with Shana Berenzweig's (www.shanaberenzweig.com) work will already expect great things from this post. For those of you who are unfamiliar, well get a load of what Shana can do under some pretty extreme circumstances to turn our family photo shoot into a phenomenal success.
Don't worry, I have already uploaded these images to Walgreens so that you can order prints of your favorite Kaplan pics. We got 7 high resolution images that can be printed to 5x7 or 8x10. We bought the entire gallery at low resolution images which can be printed to 4x6 or smaller. I created two separate albums on the Walgreens site for each of the different resolutions.
For 5x7s or 8x10s click here(or paste the link into your browser): http://photo1.walgreens.com/walgreens/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=8986161004/a=27058939_27058939/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=walgreens/
For 4x6s click here(or paste the link into your browser): http://photo1.walgreens.com/walgreens/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=8986163004/a=27058939_27058939/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=walgreens/
I realize that I will not be winning any "mother of the year" awards based on the length of time between blog posts about these amazing little girls. I hope that this post will catch you all up on what we have been up to these past few weeks.
In the time that has elapsed, Aurelia has potty trained. It was an adventure to say the least. She has come a long way and now she comes home from school most days in the clothes (and panties) she was wearing when she left the house.
Feast your eyes and ears on the photos and videos below.
Vivianna had her 2 month checkup today. She is perfectly healthy and weighed in at 10 lbs, 15 ounces.
Vivianna's play mat is one of the girls' favorite spots to hang out together.
They are so sweet together. It is obvious that they already love each other.
Aurelia is busy these days. I take her on mother-daughter dates whenever I can. We went to the children's museum the other day and she had a ball.
Another day we went to the pet store and she got to spend a lot of time looking at the fish - her favorite part.
Thanksgiving Day was a wonderful event at our house. One of my favorite activities is cooking with Aurelia and Koruna. We made banana bread together. It was a well-managed process with a lot of adult participation. What fun!
More Thanksgiving family fun:
Jonathan participated in "Movember" last month to raise money for prostate cancer awareness. Once it was over, he shaved his beard but left this amazing mustache for a few days. I love it!
Mornings are sometimes a very hectic time around here. But we usually spend at least an hour as a family before the madness really gets going.
Aurelia woke up from her nap in a particularly funny mood today. I generally find her to be humorous, but today her choice of words tickled me. Here are a couple of our conversations:
Momma (M): Reli, there's a fly on the window screen!
Reli (R): Shoo fly! (waving arm as if shoo-ing a fly away)
M: What's he doing inside our house?
R: He's working.
M: Working at what?
R: Tummy time. . . Bug flew away.
(5 minutes later)
R: Where is the "shoo-fly"? Working in the studio.
We were in the kitchen and Reli was hungry (as usual).
R: Want some kitty cat beans.
M: Kidney beans?
R: Yeah.
M: What color are kidney beans?
R: Red!
M: What color are black beans?
R: Black! (said sarcastically)
M: What color are garbanzo beans?
R: Kind of . . . airplane.
These days are funny, even when they are not always fun.
Jonathan went to California last weekend to see his family and Jeri Lynn and Marvel went to visit Honey. That left Ian and I here in Austin with the girls for the weekend. We decided to team up on Saturday afternoon for a sleepover, the girls' first.
We had a lovely time together. We baked banana bread, at snacks and the girls got to watch a video - something rare and special in Reli's world. She has seen one of Koruna's videos a few times at the Ingram's house and she LOVES one song on it in particular. In fact, she will randomly yell out "Old MacDonald!!!! Playing the guitar!!!!" days or weeks after seeing this one video.
Here is Aurelia in her own personal heaven, watching the video she so dearly loves:
For Halloween, I took the girls trick-or-treating at my office. We could not, of course, have gone without our dear cousins, Koruna and Marvel. They were sporting enough to come along. Aunties Whitney and Ivy came along as well. We had a blast and the kiddos were unbelievably cute! Proof follows:
