Natural History Museum

We had a free ticket so last week we finally made it to the Natural History Museum.  It was pretty fun.  Hannah was a little young for most of the stuff, but it was still fun to show her all the animals they had on exhibit.  And it was kind of cool to see where 'Night at the Museum' was filmed.

Here they are in front of the tyrannosaurus that greets you when you first walk in.

Here we are sitting on a turtle:

Merry Christmas

Here's to remembering the true meaning of the season!

A Whole New World to Explore

We were at the park a couple of weeks ago (can I say...I love LA weather!!).  Here is Hannah's usual spot sitting on the swing.

This is Sofia's usual spot siting on the ground playing in the sand or standing at the steps leading up to the slides.

However, she recently discovered the steps actually lead somewhere and decided they were more fun than the sand.  Here she is climbing up the steps...

 until she got stuck on a really big one.  She worked really hard to get up it....

 ...and, after several attempts, she was successful

Here's Hannah monkeying around:

Sofia has discovered a whole new world....and my trips to the park just got a little more difficult!

2 1/2 Years

I can't believe she's 2 1/2.  Yikes!  She's definitely turning into a 'big girl'.

*She loves pink

* Her favorite thing is to ride her bike.  We do circles around our apartment complex and she has recently learned to actually pedal all the way around (as opposed to pushing the bike).

* 2 is her favorite number...2 pig tails, 2 graham crackers, 2 everything

* She loves to read and sing.  She opens up books on her lap and then begins singing.  Sometimes it's songs we've taught her, but often she makes up her own words.

* She is becoming more independent and wanting to do things without help - I still haven't decided if it's good or bad.

* She is a definite daddy's girl.  The other night we were up on her bed and I was putting her to sleep when James got home.  He came in the door and Hannah instantly said "You (pointing to me) down.  Daddy get up."  Needless to say, James finished putting her down for the night!

10 Months

I can't believe she's already 10 months old.  I don't know where the time has gone.  She is such a cheerful baby (except at night, of course).  She's growing so fast and learning new things all the time.  Here's what she's been up to:

-  The bathroom is her favorite room in the house.  She discovered the toilet paper and learned how to flush the toilet and likes to do so repeatedly (Hannah's already teaching her bad habits)!

- She Loves food and prefers to feed herself.  I have a love hate relationship.  I like having a free hand, but don't care for the mess.

- She recently discovered stairs for the first time at the park and loves to climb up them.

- She loves holding on to something (anything) and bouncing up and down.  I fear she might have my sense of rhythm (poor girl).

- Likes to be tickled.

- She loves the bear hugs Hannah gives her for about 2 seconds until she decides she doesn't like to be strangled/sat upon, suffocated, etc....

Recently her favorite activity includes standing up on the couch and then diving onto the pillows.  She gets a kick out of it and repeats it until she dives off of the couch.

Science Center

This Thanksgiving weekend has been pretty laid back and relaxed for us.  James has been able to spend time on campus getting schoolwork done.  In honor of him finishing up on Saturday we met him at school and walked across campus to the Science Center.  The Center itself is neat, but they have a Discovery Room (aka Toddler Heaven) on each floor.  Can I say AWESOME!!  Anyway, I've taken the girls a few times, but James has never been to the Discovery Rooms so we decided to have a picnic and play.  It was pretty fun, but I didn't get any decent pictures, just a few random ones.

 This is the water fountain in the center of the Rose Gardens.  The building is actually the Natural History Museum, not the Science Center.  The Science center is adjacent to it, but the sun was too bright to get a picture of it.

 Hannah's listening to James who is talking to her from the other end.

 Here they are reading "The Three Little Pigs" and acting it out.

This happened to be the same day that USC played UCLA, so this is the tailgating that was taking place on campus as we walked by.  This is the view of the quad from James' office on the 6th floor of the Education Building.