Weekend with Grandma M and Grandpa V

This weekend Grandma Marianne and Grandpa Vito came for a visit. Anabelle showed off her monkey suit.


Here are the girls with Grandma Marianne and Grandpa Vito.


And more happy pictures below.



Grandpa Vito sang to Anabelle, and she was completely mesmerized. It was very sweet.


Then, Grandpa Vito and Vita played a game of catch. Vita laughed so hard!

Vita also read lots of books with Grandma.

And a great time was had by all.

What Anabelle Has Been Up To

Anabelle has been quite busy lately.  As you know, Anabelle comes with me to work, as employees in my office can bring their babies until the babies are six months old.  Here's Anabelle with her "work buddies" Kourtney and Jahir.  Yes, none of them are smiling, but just getting three babies to look at the camera at the same time is kind of a small miracle.  Anabelle loves playing with her work buddies.  They smile and coo and share toys.  It's pretty cute.

Anabelle has also slowly started to ease into her daycare routine.  She has been going to "school" two mornings per week for a few weeks, and she's doing great!  Next month she'll go half time, and she'll work up to full time in daycare in May.  It breaks my heart to think I won't be able to take her to work with me forever... but fortunately her daycare is REALLY good.  She is happy and engaged in daycare, and I know I'm leaving her in good hands.

Anabelle has been trying really hard to start crawling.  You can't tell in this picture, but she has her knees up under her belly and she's pushing herself forward.  She also pushes up really high on her hands sometimes, and does a few other things that look like complicated yoga moves.  She's determined to be more mobile, but I'm in no rush for that!


Anabelle has a favorite toy.  This dog she is holding is actually a toy Vita used to play with, and Vita has no problem sharing her old baby toys.  Anabelle absolutely LOVES this toy doggy.  She gets so excited that she sometimes flaps her arms like a bird.


She also loves sitting up in this Bumbo chair.  She's getting pretty strong, and pretty soon she'll be able to sit up without one of these supportive chairs.


Anabelle has a beautiful smile that can light up a room, but I love all of her facial expressions.  This is the face she makes when she wants to eat, and I'm taking too long to feed her and she has about five seconds more patience before she's going to completely freak out.  Isn't it a cute expression?


We recently borrowed a friend's high chair.  When we pushed this up to the table, Vita said "now we can all eat together like a family".  Its amazing to think that in just one more month we can start to introduce solid food.


And finally, Anabelle is a good sport about dressing her up in absurdly cute outfits.  Look at my little monkey!

Vita in Action

It must be birthday party season.  Vita had a birthday party to attend last weekend, and two birthday parties to attend this weekend.  Two of the three birthday parties have been held in a local gymnastics studio.  The kids get a "tumbling" lesson, and basically get to play on all of the fun equipment for about an hour, followed by lunch, cake and presents.  Vita LOVES the gymnastics studio, and went straight for the balance beam.  Perhaps gymnastics lessons will be in her future...

Here are a couple of action shots.  They are all blurry, as Vita was running around trying everything out.  She had a blast.  Here she is climbing across a bridge.


Here she is rolling down a slope.

And here she is with her friends, playing with pool noodles.

Vita's ballet classes have now ended.  Here's a picture of Vita bolting down the hall... the very same hall that she found so intimidating on her first day of class.  I'm really not sure how much "ballet" Vita learned, but the class was a great experience for Vita, who was really brave in a large class full of older girls (Vita was the youngest kid in the class).  I think it was an empowering experience for her.


Here are a couple more pictures from the last day of ballet class.


So cute!


And taking a bow.

In other news, Vita has been drawing some really amazing pictures lately.  Vita is really making images, and the best part is that each picture has a story.  Here's Vita with one of her pictures from last weekend.  Vita said that this was a picture of a monster with spikes on his back, and he's carrying a baby monster, and even though they look scary, they are nice monsters.  The monsters are dancing underneath a rainbow.

Anabelle is doing great too, and I'll do an Anabelle post tomorrow with all of her updates.  I can't believe she's almost 5 months old!