Girl Time

We were home for a week before Josh took off for five day a business trip to Denver. We missed him a lot, but we had some great home time and adventures together while he was away. 

Gulp. So cute. They started giving each other hugs this week. I'll catch either of them initiating it with the
other, and I even heard Joy say something that sounded like "hug" too.

During dinner the first night Josh was gone, I had stepped down the hallway for a moment to attend to another need, and I was beckoned back to the kitchen by sounds of vivacious giggles. As always happens, I missed the best ones while locating my camera to try and capture them, but here's a few for you to enjoy anyhow. ;o)

 Starting into her fish lips face...

 ...you've seen that one before.

Later, Deborah, a friend of ours from church came over to spend some time with the girls. Hope and Joy both love her, and it was nice to be able to tell Hope that Deborah was coming to give her a diversion while Daddy was away. :o)

Deborah stayed and read stories to Hope while I put Joy to bed, which was a help that first night Josh was away. :o)

Hope got a package in the mail from Granny that had some foam stars in it for her to imagine with. I hadn't exactly thought up what Hope would do with them, but no need to. She came up with a game on her own... all she needed from me was lids from the kitchen pots.

My sweet little helper. :o) She put all 60 eggs into cartons without breaking one!

This was after our adventurous outing to Costco, wherein we had to make a return trip home and then back to Costco again because unbeknownst to me, my debit card was not in my wallet, and I didn't have enough cash for the things on the list to buy. Thankfully, I discovered that as I was fishing for my Costco card before going in to the store. I was just going to have all the cards ready in my pocket.... trouble was.... they were in another pocket, in the sweater on my bed at home. :o) So, with Joy still intact and asleep in her carseat, we drove the 20 minutes back home, I went into the house and grabbed my cards and a snack lunch, and we drove back to Costco to do our shopping. WHAT A DAY! (this was the "adventure" part of the week.) Thankfully, both the girls love riding in the cart at the store, and like holding items we need and feeding each other snacks and water while they sit there.

Reaching for a specific storybook... :o) "I want yyyisss one."

Hope has such a sweet spirit. She loves helping Joy, and is quite willing and eager to do whatever she can to help out with Joy, such a getting Joy's orange off the table and giving it to her while I was fixing breakfast on the counter.

Enjoying some new story books before naptime.

Joy was up before Hope (normal occurrence), so I thought I'd let her try playing in the sink, since it was all set up from Hopey doing it earlier. Well... she had fun, and didn't mind getting wet. Even with the waterproof apron on, she still got fairly soaked... it's just her nature and her height! :o)

Next Morning:
Joy likes to feed herself, and sometimes does a neat job of it too.

As you can see, she also likes to praise herself for eating well, hence the clapping hands. :o) 

She was happily eating her bowl of oatmeal, so I dashed off to attend to a personal need with the thought "I wonder if she's gonna dump the remainder when she's done." Uhm - YEP! She did. Some on the tray, and the rest on the flor. And She took her bib off too, so... that was that. Glad I was doing laundry that day anyways! :o)

Yes Joy, Mommy will clean it up.

Likes raisins in her "warm cereal" this one does. :o)

Hope had been asking to be allowed to draw with the markers, so I let her go at it while giving Joy a snack. (Even though it is washable ink, I don't like the idea of Joy sucking on the open markers, so I don't often let Hope draw with the markers when Joy is around Joy.) Joy snacked for a bit and then I pulled her onto my lap... etc. :o)

This is just to document that we did it - we painted our toenails. All 30 the same colour. I wasn't going to bother with Joy's, but she was making known in very baby-talk ways, that she wanted just what Hope and I had, so on it went... and onto more than just her toenails, as you can imagine. :o)

Creative child. Pretzels are the latest craze around here. Joy arranged it in her mouth like this on her own while my back was turned.

Joy - SIT DOWN! (I say that about twice a minute at times such as this... She obeys, it's just she doesn't stay sitting for very long.)

"Me too Mommy..." :o)

And thus ended our week without Daddy. :o) He came home late that night while the girls were sleeping. Joy decided his homecoming should be celebrated by her having the worst sleep of her 13 month-old life... She was up 3 times before midnight, and again at 4:30 and 6:30, and though sweet Josh thought he'd help me out and put her back to sleep, she wanted nothing to do with him in the night. :o) Oh well. After the night comes the day and she liked him again then. Yay!!