Summer Days...

My "cooking" routine these days is really pretty simple. Mostly, I don't cook. Our meals usually consist of some kind of vegetable (Peas, corn, carrots, green beans) fruit (bananas, strawberries, grapes, water melon, pineapple, pears, etc )and meat (deli meat, grilled chicken).

Mostly it's because:

1) I try to stick to non messy meals. Nothing that's going to require a huge cleanup, either of the kitchen, dishes, Chloe's eating area, or Chloe herself.

2) It's very inconvenient for me to try and spend much time in the kitchen. Chloe wants to be able to be RIGHT there no matter what I'm doing.

3) It's so hard to really cook much in single servings. Or single and a half servings. So a lot of times when I cook we have leftovers for days. Which is no fun.

I'm sure it'll get better in the future, but for now, that's the way we roll.

However.

Tonight, we semi-cooked. We actually grilled out. We did bacon wrapped chicken kabobs. Chloe even helped me put them together. And as proof, here are beginning and ending pictures.

Mmmm. Looks good, right? Unfortunately, this was WAY too much food for just as. Really, after cooking it, I found out I just wasn't that hungry. So we kept one and gave the rest to my neighbors. They were pretty excited. We ate about half of one between the both of us. Kinda disappointing. But what do you do?

So as I'm grilling, Chloe is playing with her water table. This is what I turn around to:

Too cute, huh? This child loves to climb on, over, through EVERYTHING. She's definitely going to be trouble.

Something that makes me smile....

Chloe has been doing a lot better in the car seat here recently. Of course when I say a lot better, that doesn't mean she's doing great, it's just not ALWAYS terrible.

It gets to the point where I just kind of try to tune her out when I am driving. Nothing I say, do, or offer her will calm her down at certain times.

I always have my rear view mirror turned so that I can see her. I like to be able to check on her when she gets quite, as usually it means she's doing something that she shouldn't be doing.

But the bad times are becoming fewer. And in the past few weeks I've noticed something new. I'll look back in the mirror and notice that she's just kind of staring off like she's in her own little world. And then she'll get this huge grin on her face and start quietly laughing to herself. It's not like there is anything funny around or I'm talking to her or she's trying to make me laugh.

I'll keep watching and she'll return to a normal look, then in a few more minutes she'll start grinning and laughing again, completely oblivious to everything around her.

How I would love to know exactly what she's thinking about that makes her laugh like that. Whatever it is, it truly makes her happy. I love that her thinking is getting so complex that she is able to use her imagination and think of happy things. I suppose I am making the assumption that she is using her imagination, but if you know Chloe at all, you definitely know that it's not the car seat that makes her happy!

But anyway, it does make me smile to see her back there smiling and giggling to herself like she doesn't have a care in the world! :)

And I'll leave you with a pretty cute video of Chloe showing off some of her crazy animal sound talents. Enjoy!

PS Don't let the black eye distract you.

If you think this is bad, you should see the other guy....

Just kidding.

But Chloe had her first noticable accident this past week.

She was sitting in one of those booster seat/high chair things. Unfortunately it wasn't tied down, she leaned forward and fell on her head. Luckily she was ok, she just ended up with a knot on her forehead and a black eye.

Sidenote: Before anyone thinks about giving me a hard time about this, we did end up taking her to prompt care to make sure everything was ok. And we have taken steps to make sure this doesn't happen again.

These pictures really don't do it justice, but its the best that I could get :)

I've also been trying to teach Chloe animal sounds. She can do dog, cat, duck, tiger, owl, and elephant (which is totally cute, she does this little hand motion to imitate the trunk... :).

Anyway, the other day I tried to teach her to make a fish face. Her fish face kind of looks like she's about to kiss someone. Now she goes around doing it all the time, especially when I try to take her picture.

Finally...

So this past weekend was awesome. I kept meaning to get on here and post some more pictures, but the problem is that we took so many, it's so hard to try and choose what to choose. Seriously, we took over 300 pictures the whole weekend!

So Sunday we went to the zoo in the morning. By the end of the afternoon, the girls were SO worn out. But we had a good time. Here are some zoo pictures:

As always, the carousel has a huge hit with Chloe. Now Anna wasn't so convinced that one could have very much fun.

Apparently there was something not so fun about the getting measured....

Waiting in line for the train...enjoying some frozen lemonade!

Here they are at the fountain/water area at the end of our trip. Neither of them were so sure about the amount of people around, but Chloe had lots of fun. I think Anna just wanted out of there:)

These next few pictures should show you how exhausted they were. We left after playing in the water. This is Chloe trying to keep her eyes open on the way out to the car. And then of course both girls were out by the time we got them in their car seats!

After going home and taking naps (well, Anna napped at least) we blew up Chloe's pool and they played outside for awhile. Anna enjoyed the pool over the fountains.

And that brings us to the end of Saturday.

Oh I forgot! We got Chinese for dinner.

Turns out Anna is a master noodle slurper! It was the funniest thing. We didn't even have to show her what to do...it's like it came natural! I tried to see if Chloe would slurp, but turns out she's more of a fan of shoveling her whole hand in to her mouth.

Coming soon:

*Children's museum pictures and our last day of the visit.

*Living Simply Week 2

*Chloe's Accident

We're having a blast - Day 1