Twenty Two Months!

Over the weekend, Cassandra turned twenty-two months old!

I feel like I repeat myself a lot on these because not much changes at times. She's still wearing 12-18 month clothes. The 18month pants are still too long on her so we're always rolling the waist or something to hike them up. Shirts and onesies fit her fine though.

She's still a good sleeper, although we have been having a rough patch because of her coughing. For about a month straight she coughs like crazy overnight. She has little "attacks" that range from a half hour up to 2 hours! She does sleep through them most of the time, but it keeps me up for sure! I had her at the doctors two weeks ago and they had me try allergy medicine for her, which did nothing. We went back to the doctors on Friday and now she's on amoxicillin-they think it's a sinus infection. So far, it seems to be helping, which is good! Now she's back to sleeping through the night and napping for about 2hrs in the afternoon.

Cassandra is a pretty good eater. She has her picky days of course but overall she does pretty well. And she's getting to the age where she can tell us what she wants, which is nice.

She finally got her last canine in so she's now up to 16 teeth. Just the 2 year molars to go!

Some new words this month include: "pumpkin", "sprinkles". Some phrases include: "____ right there", "my room", "hold my hand", "dot org", "what you say?", "eww gross", "____ gross".

Cassandra plays a "where's Daddy" game with Avery where they ask questions about where he is. Cass will say "is he moon?" "is he bus?" and Avery will usually respond with "no" until she guesses the right answer. It's pretty cute!

Cassandra also has learned a lot of color words, but doesn't always get them right. For some reason, she calls everything either yellow or blue! She'll get them one of these days! She also tries really hard to count. She can get 1-4 then she skips to 8,9 then 13!

If we ask Cassandra what her name is, she says it. It comes out "Danda".

Avery has started loving the song "Wrecking Ball" so now whenever it comes on or one of us sings it, Cassie will say "Wreck Ball".  Also, we sing a song "Oh Cassie Mac" (to the tune of "O Canada") and Cassie will say "OK Cassie Mac" very excitedly after! It cracks us up!

She has really good manners and says thank you all of the time. We very rarely have to prompt her and sometimes she says it to us when it's not needed. It's so sweet!

Getting pics this month was tough-she wasn't in the mood, but I tried my best!

giraffe hugs

happy huh?!

My two faves:

I told her to smile! Haha!

Flashback-Avery at twenty-two months!

First Snow

I was raised in the wrong climate, that's for sure. You'd think after living in the NE for my entire life that I would get used to the cold/snow right?! Nope.....not at all. I am a fan for the changing seasons-I can't imagine Christmas without snow-however, in these parts, our "winter" seems to be about 6 months long. It gets old really fast.

I'll just say that I wish I was as excited to see snow as my kids are. When Cassandra woke up from her nap and I told her it snowed, she laughed and was so excited. When she saw it, she waved and said "Hi snow!" Yep, I could just eat her up.

Of course that also meant that we were all bundled up and outside in no time to experience the first snow that decided to stick.

Luckily for me, Cassandra lasted about 5mins (which is about as long as I can handle it) and we went inside. Time for me to hibernate. See you in April! (I kid, I kid-sort of)

Happy 6th Bianca!

Friday night we went to my Sister-in-Law's house for my niece's family birthday party (we have the kid party next weekend!).

We got there and ate some dinner. Then while we digested, the kids did a piñata. Cassandra even got to try it and I think she got a kick out of it!

Of course when the candy fell, she was clueless and just sat there sucking her thumb and watching everyone get the candy! But the kids were all good sports and gave her her own bag of goodies!

Then it was present time!

For every kids' birthday, my in-laws give every kid a gift. So Cassandra and Avery got to open up a present too! Cassie got a nice new drawing set (which she loves by the way).

I didn't get a picture of it, but Avery got a porcelain doll that's dressed up like a garden fairy. She loves it too!

After presents, it was cake time!

Happy Birthday Bianca!

This one loves her cake (who doesn't?!)!

It was a really fun time-the kids all had a ball as usual! Party #2 next weekend!

Cookie/Brownie/Candy-YUM!

This week was pretty much status quo around here so I have nothing exciting to post about. I have a few recipes I have saved to share, so I figured I'd throw one out there!

This one has been going around on Pinterest and Facebook-maybe not this exact recipe, but definitely something similar. I finally decided to give it a try when some friends came over for dinner a few weeks ago! And I have no idea what it's called! Haha!

Cookie/Brownie/Candy Bars

1 roll chocolate chip cookie dough (or you could use homemade)
peanut butter cups
Brownie mix plus ingredients to make brownies

1. Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9x9" pan with non-stick spray
2. Spread out cookie dough in the bottom of the pan.
3. Layer on peanut butter cups
4. Prepare brownie mix as directed on box. Pour on the top.
5. Bake for 45min. Let cool before cutting.

(Notes: I wouldn't use homemade cookie dough only because you pretty much only taste the brownies-they definitely overpower the cookie taste.  I used mini PB cups but you could use the larger ones if you wanted. I used a smaller pan instead of a 9x13" because I don't think the cookie dough would have fit in a pan that large. This made baking tricky because of course the outer edges were more than done at around 35min...I removed mine then. However, the middle was like eating raw brownie batter. Don't get me wrong-I LOVE them that way, so for me it was fine. But when you're serving it for guests, I would have liked them a little more done. You just have to keep an eye on them!)

These turned out very good-I'd make them again for sure. Maybe if I doubled the cookie dough you'd taste them more? Not sure-either way, they were tasty!

Rub-a-dub-dub!

Rub-a-dub-dub....two girls in a tub!

Lately, Avery has been wanting to take a bath by herself. I have no idea why, but she does. Somehow we convinced her to take a bath with Cassandra the other day, and they had a lot of fun!

I never have my camera near me when they're bathing so I don't have too many silly hair photos like this one:

When I stepped out of the bathroom (Gabe was in there with them), this cuteness happened....

I love my girls and they totally love each other....most of the time!

Happy Birthday Leigha!

Yesterday we took a trip to Buffalo.

First, we stopped at my Mom's for a bit-had some yummy lunch and did lots of playing!

So darn cute with the pigtails!

Mom and Avery

Then it was off to my friend Megan's house for her daughter's 2nd birthday! Avery of course was so excited-she's very "into" birthday parties these days. Whenever a birthday is mentioned, she'll ask, "What kind of party is it? What kind of cake will there be?"  It's pretty funny!

The kids played pin the wand on Tinkerbell:

and Cassandra watched:

She had lots of fun with this little dog too!

We had some great food and then of course it was cake time! Isn't it beautiful?!

After cake, she opened presents and then most people left. We hung around for maybe another half hour and let the kids play. Then it was time for jammies and time to hit the road to head home. But before leaving, I had to get a pic of the birthday girl in her cute outfit!

Unfortunately, she was too close so you can't see her green tutu and matching shoes that are adorable! Happy 2nd Birthday Leigha!!