Happy Girl! We were packing up gifts to mail and Julia moved into this box. She put all her favorite bed things in it with her. Then she kept opening and closing the box lid playing different peek-a-boo games. Don’t worry, we didn’t mail her to her grandparents. While she was napping we packed up the real gifts.

There is something about out of town guests that gets you to pick up your camera and photograph things you find in your daily life that you don’t photograph often. We went outside to play in our back-porch playhouse. The roof is only half installed to give the girls more light in their house. Also, it makes it easier for parents to check on the girls. The fact the roof is missing annoys Emily a lot. This day it was not so annoying. She figured out that she could climb up and look out of the top of the house. That was her fun new game. The big people pretended to be giants and visit the house with the normal sized little girls. We also read “The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs” by Jon Scieszka. This story gives the wolf’s defense of the house-blowing-down events. After reading this story the playhouse became the pig’s house built of brick. You have to love the world through a child’s eyes. Both girls love to open and close the windows and doors. They both took turns knocking on the door and having the other answer.

It is spring break for Grammy so we went over for a little playtime and lunch. It was a bit cooler outside than I was expecting so the girls were underdressed for playing outside. So we found a shrug for Julia and Emily got a sweatshirt that looked like a dress on her. They played outside for a long time both on the swing set and picking up leaves and putting them in a pot with water in it. It always amazes me at what keeps kids entertained.

Julia is looking older now days in her photos. I guess she is getting older. I’m not sure she asked permission to grow up.

Notice that Julia’s mouth is imitating how she is imagining the Mama eating the food off the spoon. I love it!

(27 months) The girls are always finding new things to play and making new favorite games. Julia has been exploring the dollhouse in the last week in new ways. At Christmas when we got the dollhouse she was more interested in dropping pieces down the stairwell or inspecting each piece.

This last week she has become very interested in playing with the dolls and the furniture. One game she plays is to go to her play kitchen and “fix” a bowl of food and then take it to the dollhouse. She takes turns feeding the different dolls with a big spoon. It was hilarious!

Our dollhouse family has grandparents, parents, a son, a daughter, a baby, and two “best friend” dolls. When Julia plays with the family members she sings a little happy song and occasionally interrupts the song with a doll making a comment to another doll like “night-night”. Once the interruption is gone the song resumes immediately. Her favorite dolls to play with are the kids. Emily rarely plays with the baby, but Julia does all of the time. Occasionally other toys work their way into the dollhouse. One day I noticed that a small Elmo doll was riding the rocking horse and playing in the pack-n-play with the baby.

We had a beautiful snowfall today. We did a little playing in the snow and these are some of our best memories.

We made angels.

We rode our sled and played with our neighbor Laurel.

We played with Daddy.

We got cold noses.

We made snowballs.

We made funny faces.

And lastly, we built a sled that Mommy, Emily, and Laurel enjoyed.

We have had several snow events already this winter which is rather unusual for us. One even gave us a white Christmas. We had a fun morning playing in the most recent snow. The girls kept trying to throw baby snowballs at Robby, but they just couldn’t hit him without his help. They also enjoyed riding around the driveway in their new wagon. We played outside until we got cold. The new rain boots were a hit and kept our feet dry!