The look

Lauren has this look...if she were an adult, it might make you shake in your boots because it's so intense. But because she's just over a year old, it kind of makes you laugh. Wally and Dena (via skype) and Miss Gwen our day care provider have been fortunate (or shall I say unfortunate?) enough to see it, and they too have laughed out just how severe it is.

I've been trying to capture it with the camera for like a month now, but I haven't had much success. I've been purposefully trying to upset Lauren over the past weeks so I could take a picture of it, but that unfortunately has resulted mostly in faces like this:


And I swear she knows that I want her to make the face because she's not been making it as much lately. The other night at dinner though, we were able to irritate her by telling her no when she started throwing food on the floor and we got a close approximation of "the look". It's not nearly as intense, but here's what we were able to capture:







While trying to catch "the look", we were able to take a few other fun pictures of Lauren in action:












Lauren has been having a rough go of it lately when it comes to sleeping. She will just wake up screaming and there's nothing we can do to comfort her. She'll flail herself around to the point that it's hard to hold on to her sometimes. We're not sure if it's her teeth bothering her, bad dreams, or ears. It's so hard to not be able to do anything to comfort her at those moments. It just tears at your heart, so we're hoping that she's feeling better soon and that she's able to get a good night sleep tonight!

We took Lauren to the doctor for her 15-month check up. She's up to 22 lbs, 5 oz and measures approximately 28 inches in length. She's shrunk in length from the last visit though. They even measured her three times but we couldn't get her up to the 28 3/4" that she was in June. I think that must have been a bad measurement though. The doctor wasn't worried about it and just called her the mysterious shrinking baby. We got a new prescription for her eczema on her back and will be working over the next week or so to get rid of the bedtime bottle. But other than that, she's doing great. She's adding a few words to her vocabulary - she now says book, dada, and an approximation of Alyssa. Every once in a while she'll come out with something else, but it's mostly still lots of pointing and grunting or screeching of some sort. But I love when she says those few little words of hers.

Hollywood

For as long as we've been together, Aaron has called me Hollywood when I put my sunglasses on top of my head, and on occasion even when I'm just wearing them. Alyssa has picked up on this and says it sometimes too, so that seemed like an appropriate title for a blog with photos of the girls hamming it up in sunglasses.

In keeping with the Hollywood theme, here's the latest out of Alyssa's mouth...while looking through a catalog of birthday party themes for her birthday, there was one with Justin Bieber. I asked her if she liked Justin Bieber, to which she replied "Yes, I like Justin Bieber" (she had said she liked everything). I told her to go tell Aaron; when she did, he laughed and said "No, you don't like Justin Bieber". Her response "I do." This was a few days ago, and then tonight, she came upstairs to tell me "Daddy tell me I no like Justin Bieber. But I do like Justin Bieber." The best part is, I don't think she's ever heard his mustic.

The sunglasses pics were taken this morning. We took advantage of a sunny morning today by going for a bike ride on the White Pine Trail by Rockford. We planned ahead and went to mass Saturday night (something we decided we would never do again) and then enjoyed a morning of family time. I took Lauren on the back of my bike for the first half of the trip and Aaron had Alyssa in the buggy, and then we switched. Lauren fell asleep on the way back to the car, and Alyssa complained that her tummy hurt but aside from that it was nice to get out and get some fresh air.

After the walk, we enjoyed a leisure stroll through downtown Rockford, checking out the swans, kayakers, and beautiful scenery. The girls posed for some fun pics that we thought we'd share with all of you.









I love days like this!

Dance moves

We love to dance!

There's something about music that just gets into you and you've got to move. Although Alyssa has been "dancing" for a while now, her moves have evolved as she's grown. And Lauren has just recently begun to really start grooving to the music. I really love watching the two of them dance, for those few moments when they're dancing, it's like they're carefree and they're just happy. Not a week goes by where we don't have a dance party up in Alyssa's bedroom. Alyssa likes to dance on her "night-night" (aka her blanket), but we all join in the fun.

This video of Lauren is from one day not too long ago in the kitchen in the morning. She doesn't dance too much, but there's a few little bounces and a spin or two that you can see. Rather than editing the video, I kept it all here so you can just watch her for a moment - she's growing up so fast.



This video of Alyssa is from the Hudsonville Community Fair. We went there with some friends from work a few weeks ago, and Alyssa showed off her new dance skills. The handle of the wagon gets in the way some in the video, but I think you'll be able to see her doing her thing. Part of why I love this video so much is that her moves seem to go so well with the music.



I can't remember if I ever included this in a post before or not, so I'm including it here...but on multiple occasions throughout the winter and into spring, we'd ask Alyssa if she was ready to "shake her booty" when we were getting ready to dance, and she'd run and put on her cowboy boots.

Can't wait to see what new moves the two of them come up with next!