someone left the cake out in the rain

So we've been following our fearless leader-Gretchen and trying to make different kinds of cakes for 'happy birthday father's day' Gretchen and our friend Luke like to stir and help measure and sing 'stir it bake it...milk for the batter milk for the batter' from the Maurice Sendak book which I really hate, but isn't that how it goes? Yesterday we made spice cake and upon mixing we added a little 'ginger' in the form of Gretchen's hair getting caught in the mixer.

Gretchen did not panic too much and to be quite honest my words of 'don't move' while I found the scissors were tinged a little with....'man I hope this doesn't ruin the cake'

She is quite the daredevil and rather fearless which we both try to embrace as much as we can. So jumping on the couch and bed is allowed in our house. Climbing to the tops of really high playground ladders is also allowed. I don't want her to be afraid of anything and at the same time I want her to realize her limits on her own without me constantly standing over her shoulder and waiting for something bad to happen. She can handle it. We don't let her run into traffic or eat poison(germs, bacteria are just fine) but we do let her explore her world on her own terms. And I don't want her to grow up thinking that she should be scared or constantly worried about terrible things, because in truth terrible things do happen and we deal with them but there aren't as many as the media or well-meaning people might lead us to believe.

So the cake was good even though it may have had a few hairs in it.

let's get it started

Been wanting to do this for a long time, but seem to never have the time. Well, my mid year resolution is to share my thoughts on our family and leave a bit of a record for the girls of what life was like when they were young.

Every single day I am extraordinarily thankful that I get to stay home and raise my girls. Even when I had to check the 'homemaker' box at my last doctor's appointment!

Gretchen, at 2 1/2 has been spending most of her days naked around the house and playing with her new obsession-the princess. We swore that our daughter would never by exposed to the princess culture, but she loves it and we especially enjoy her creating scenes with her princess that involve girls kissing girls, or princesses being attacked by spiders, or a farm animal being invited to the ball. She is going on the toilet all the time now and using similes to describe her BMs-"it's like a banana" or using number and size descriptions-"it's a small one and a big one, there are two." She is our resident weirdo and we couldn't be happier.

Fina enjoys everything Gretchen! She could sit and watch her all the time and wants to be right in the middle of all the action. Nursing her is a delight and sometimes a pain because she won't stop moving and stops quite a bit to look up at me and laugh. Her personality strikes me as someone who will be sitting in the classroom looking at butterflies out the window.

Today we went to a sing a long at a coffee shop and Gretchen went right up to the front to help sing the alphabet into the microphone. Fina took a nap in the Ergo pouch. We had monster cookies and splashed in puddles on the way back to the car. Afterwards, we went to the 'princess store' to get a potty training reward for G. We also stopped by Nana's house so that G could have some time with Grandma-ever since Fina was born she takes Nana out of the room away from Fina. A little jealous?