Piper Really is the cutest Baby...

..and her little bottom is darling (coos her mother).

Big Girls

Kyla spends quite a lot of time at bedtime stalling by getting for Dolly: a binky, bottle, blanket, pillow, and sometimes a diaper. Today, she gave Dolly a piggyback ride to her bedroom.

Kyla insisted we take a picture of Dolly.

Piper enjoys sitting in the big girl chair eating a book.

Rub a dub,

Three men in a tub.

Inconceivable. Two little girls barely fit in the tub; 3 grown men would be impossible!

Our Literate Genius

If you squint just right, and try to imagine the scribble before Kyla wiped her fingers through it, you can see that she drew her first letter: P. To give her credit, she actually said she was drawing a "P" so it was intentional.

Piper is not so convinced that Kyla just wrote the first letter to her name.

By the way, did you notice her new teeth? They are now big enough to see, but they first broke through when she was 6 months old. She's 9 months now!

These boots were made for walking...

(...stumbling, falling, tripping) And that's just what they'll do!

You'll notice I stopped filming right before Kyla pushed Piper out of the car. However, to give The Toddler due credit, she really wanted Piper to ride with her; it was not Mama's idea.

Why it takes all day to put laundry away...

Kyla's first use of a laundry basket to get forbidden items. (Usually it is her potty, a chair, or an overturned garbage can. The curses of having Dwayne's evil genius genes.)

Singing in the Rain

Kyla has begun singing. Her favorite is

Rain, rain, go away,

Come again some other day.

Little Kyla wants to play,

So rain, rain go away!

Juxaposed with this is her usual two-year-old self. It was a typical evening; I was trying to cook dinner, Kyla was doing her best to prevent me, Piper just watched and grinned at our ritual. As I kneeled down one more time to clean up yet another mess, I hear Kyla sing-song

Clean, clean, go away...

You sing it, girl!

The Fam

We celebrated my dad's birthday and his mother and sister came up to celebrate. We always love getting pictures of the girls with their great-grandma. She had her 90th birthday last August and we are pleased she was able to make the trip.

Great-Grandma with both Kyla and Piper

Grandma and Piper amuse each other greatly

Sharon get her giggles in with Piper, too

Mama Braids Gone. Daddy Help.

...is what Kyla said for several days after I finally removed the braids exactly 4 weeks after I had them in. It looks a little funny after a month of cornrows. Poodle is too kind an adjective.

My braids can be seen in the Halloween picture (following). I miss the ease of doing, well, nothing with my hair every morning.