The girl's got skills!

Esme continues to get more and more independent.  She's getting better and better at eating with a spoon.  Yogurt is a favorite.

Next she'll be cutting steak with a knife!  

Playtime or Work???

Esme's favorite thing right now is the sink.  It's kind of funny that she goes back and forth between hating water and loving it.  For the moment (luckily) she loves it.  Especially when it's in the sink.  She will rinse the dishes and pour water from one cup to another.  She's constantly asking for more bubbles.  At first I put dish washing soap in but she was not satisfied - it wasn't what she wanted.  Actually what she wanted was the water turned on and running fast. so it made bubbles in the water.

 It's always important to wear eye protection when doing the dishes. :)

Hopefully she always enjoys doing dishes this much!

Music Class with Grandma

Esme has been going to Musikgarten with Grandma Barb for a long time now.  Thursday mornings at 9:30.  I've gone once or twice with her but this last week.  Mamoo got to go because she was in town.  She took a few pictures. :)

 

The music class is definitely having an affect on her.  She's always singing and dancing and humming.  I love it!  The great news is that Ginni (who teaches the class) also teaches piano lessons.  So Esme will have someone she knows to teach her!  Yaaayyy!

Still a Gangster!

Remember this?  Well, Esme is continuing her gangster look.  Somehow I think might not be what Minnie had in mind when she designed her hat...

And yes she did put the hat on by herself each and every time.  There was no posing by Mommy!  Thanks Papa and Mamoo for the hat from Disney!

Long night

Esme woke up last night just after midnight.  I rocked her for awhile and she would just not fall asleep.  She would sit and stare out into space, half way between sleep and awake.  Finally, after trying several times unsuccessfully to put her to sleep, she and I went downstairs.  I laid on the couch and she played and played.  She danced, sang, hopped and was WIDE awake. At about 5 am Aaron took over and I went and laid down.  He said he'd wake me up in about an hour when he left for work.  I woke up at about 9:30 and the house was quiet.  It turns out that after I went up to sleep, Esme grabbed a box of graham crackers and was holding onto it like a teddy bear.  She fell asleep in her chair like this.

So Aaron took her upstairs and put her to bed.  She slept until about 11:30!  Let's hope this pattern doesn't continue...  I don't like it one bit!

Crow Hassan with Papa and Mamoo

We went for a hike today.  It was really fun.  The dogs got to run and we all got a little exercise.

Afternoon walk

We went out for another walk today.  We are all loving that it's finally warming up a bit.  This has been a long winter.

Right now Esme says "hot" all the time, even when it's not.  This is her touching the snow and saying "hot".  We'll keep working on that.

And here is one of my favorite pictures ever of Esme.

Love it!

Plymouth Fieldhouse

Today we had another play date with Emily and Ty.  Ty wasn't much company - he could hardly keep his eyes open.  Actually he slept the whole time.  :)  But Esme and Emily had fun, although not always together.  It's funny to watch these two learn how to play together.  They really have no idea how to do it, they both just sort of do their own thing.  Sometimes they acknowledged each other, but for the most part - not.  It's cute, and I'm looking forward to watching them become friends.

Esme wanted to go down this slide, but she was a little intimidated.  It was big and there were a lot of bigger kids on it most of the time.  She did manage to get up on the bottom part of it for a few minutes and hop up and down, but that was it.  At one point, I was going to go down with her, but then about 10 kids came sort of took it over and she got scared.  We'll have to try another time.

One thing that both Emily and Esme liked was hopping on the mats.  They had a great time, although I'm still not sure that they really paid much attention to each other. :)

Three Words...

 FLOCK

 OF

SEAGULLS!

Spring???

Is spring really here?  Maybe, but probably not.  However, there was actually sun melting some of the snow on the deck. That's gotta mean something.

Esme is happy that it's warm enough to go for walks.  She's also very excited to see grass again.

It took a lot of persuading to get her to leave this little spot of grass.  Hopefully we get to see more of it soon!

Accessories

Esme loves to take her babies for walks.  She will put them in the stroller and walk them all over the house.  Today she grabbed her purse and was ready to go.  We tried to shorten the strap so it would fit her better, but that made her really mad.  Evidently she likes dragging it around behind her.

We'll have her keep practicing her parade wave for the catwalk someday.

Sending smiles

Esme was helping me send some smiles today.

Our friend Karen is a little under the weather and so we are on a card sending mission.  It's so rare to get good old fashioned mail these days and we thought it would be nice to send her lots and lots of cards.

Here is the artist herself drawing beautiful pictures for Karen.  Our plan is to send cards as often as we can to make her smile!