Plants, Paints, and Pictures

More than anything else in the world (well, maybe not more than watching Toy Story) Penelope loves to paint. Last weekend we had a painting playdate with our friends Holly and her daughter 'Busy' - Poe had a fabulous time until it was time to put the paints away and then she had an epic tantrum. The likes of which are rarely seen. But it was still a good day, and they girls made some beautiful flowers which Penelope and I "planted" the other day. Here are some pictures:


Pen & Busy


Planting our flowers


Our flower garden!!

Also? Griffin has tooth #7! Finally... it's been awhile since his last tooth. I'm hoping #8 makes an appearance so he's not lopsided :)

More pics:


Bubba loves the bath!


Penelope decided to wear her Abby costume for the day. Daddy did her hair.

Pools, rooms, and teeth

This afternoon Pen and I met up with a bunch of our mommy friends for lunch, play, and pool-time. There's an indoor pool in Roseville that has inexpensive open swim, so after a delicious lunch (thanks to Sarah & Alisha), we headed over and hopped in.

Penny was in love. She's been swimming before, but it has been awhile since she's been in that much water. The pool was a little on the cool side (although not as cold as it would have been had the pool been outside) but Penny didn't seem to care. She laughed, splashed, and did her very best to escape from my clutches. She thinks she can swim, and as soon as she got comfortable (it was loud and new so it took her a few minutes to warm up to the place) she wanted nothing to do with me and spent the rest of our time in the pool pushing me away and kicking furiously (while laughing and screeching with happiness). It was cute, but exhausting. This summer should be a lot of fun :)

Yesterday we started the long process of getting P's new room ready (so "&" can have the nursery). I sorted through a ton of clothes Pen's outgrown, pulling out all of the newborn-3 month sized outfits and boxing up everything else (by size - so when we need them they're easy to access... provided "&" is a girl). Those, plus a bunch of my pre-pregnancy clothes went into the garage. We have to move the furniture out next (and by "we" I mean Bryan), rewire some stuff, put in insulation, sheet rock, texture, and paint.

We weren't really planning on repainting, but the more I think about it the more I don't want Penny to have a blue room. I certainly don't want her to have a [i]pink[/i] room, but plain blue walls? Doesn't really sound appealing. Of course, having a theme and doing anything fancy requires money that we just don't have. I'll have to do some searching online to get ideas on how to make her room cute without breaking the bank. She'll need a sheet set for that Queen sized bed so maybe that will dictate what the room looks like. I'll have to keep an eye out at Target or even Ross and then we'll go from there. It's certainly not essential that Penelope has a coordinated room, but if we can make it work then I'd like to have one for her.

As for teeth... I think the light at the end of the tunnel is approaching. We need one more canine to break through and then we technically have all of her teeth "in" - they won't all be fully in for awhile, but at least they'll all have at least broken through the gums. Of course, we only have a little break until she gets her two year molars. And then she'll loose all the d@mn teeth and get her adult ones later >:|

Have I mentioned how much I hate teething???

Tomorrow Bryan is taking her to a museum with Daddy/baby friends while Sarah and I make cloth diapers! Wish us luck, I hope they turn out - it'll save us a ton!

Objet d'art

Today Pen and I went to ArtBeast, a kids art studio in Sac, and she painted her first masterpiece. The studio itself is really neat with three different levels for kids and has all kinds of things for kids to explore - visual arts, performing arts, you name it they have it. It also benefits a really wonderful non-profit organization so double score! Pen got a gift certificate for her 1st birthday (thanks Alisha, Nick, and Linden!) so we made a date with some other mommy/baby friends and made an afternoon of it.

P and I got there a bit late since she decided to take a morning nap (I'm not complaining, hooray for naps!) so we hung out in the baby area for awhile with our friends and the kids crawled/walked around, climbed over stuff, and stole toys from each other. :) Not too long after we got there all our friends had to leave so Pen and I hung out in the painting/sand/craft area and I let her loose!

I brought my camera, but had neglected to charge the battery - so there are no pictures of Penelope actually painting, playing, or her in the cute apron... next time I promise.

We focused on painting since most of the other crafts were made for slightly older kids. It was really the first time she had painted; she'd done some finger painting before, but this was her first time with a brush (and an easel) and she really seemed to enjoy it. She also liked playing with the sand, although she didn't want to actually touch the sand - that was apparently too icky. She just liked to stir it with a wooden spoon.

After about an hour of making art I was ready to go, my back was killing me and I was having more contractions. I'll be very surprised if this baby holds out until its due date.

So we took her paintings and left - swung by my parents house and dropped one off (she made two).

Here are pictures of her masterpieces:





It was a fun day, we'll have to go back!