Violet's Six Month Stats

Weight - 14 lbs 10 oz (25th percentile)
Length - 26.5 in (75th percentile)
Head Circumference - 43 cm (70th percentile)

Sledding

Violet missed her nap for this. I think she was mad.

You were right!

The Robinson's get first place in the Paxton baby photo identification contest. The Norton's came in a close second.

Congratulations Daddy!

It's official.
Too much excitement.
Trying to keep everyone together.
There he is!

Tyler graduated from Oakland University on Saturday. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems. Mom had the flu all day so she kept the pictures to a minimum. Good thing Tyler got the flu on Sunday instead. Many thanks to all our family who was able to attend. It was a wonderful, cold day.

Paint!

I tried to get a good picture of Ava's hands with little luck. Last night after Violet was asleep I found her in a puddle of dark purple nail polish painting her hands and her toes. It came out of the carpet with little success. The next day she wanted to "paint" some more. My suggestion to any parent is to never let their child paint because they will never want to stop. At our Monday playgroup Ava gets to paint and loves it. She made two ornaments for the tree out of home made puffy paint. The recipe is as follows: Equal parts of flour, water, salt, and then add a little tempra paint for color. She now enjoys trying to eat the dry paint. Ava also knows where the stamp pads are. I thought a stamp pad would be better than using actual paint, so I let her play while I folded laundry. I came back and her hands and lips were covered in black and purple paint. Her poor baby dolls suffered a similar fate of purple and black faces.

I'm glad Violet doesn't do much yet. She isn't eating solids yet probably for this precise reason - less mess!!

Red Hot C-Mas

Forget the cookie, Ava likes to eat red hots and frosting straight.

Ava and Violet

Can you pick which baby is Ava and which is Violet?

A Trip to Fort Wayne, IN

This week Tyler had another business trip to Columbia City, IN. The nearest big city is Fort Wayne, IN, so the whole family tagged along. This is about three and a half hours away. I thought even though it would be a lot of work to bring Ava, she still would have a good time in a different setting. Our room had a jacuzzi tub in it which provided minimal entertainment, and other than that the kids and I colored, stacked dice, threw dice, watched cable, went to Wal Mart, dressed baby dolls, didn't take naps, and best of all, discovered an amazing library.

Our local library is very nice, but the Allen County Library is amazing for small children. You could tell that whoever designed it knew exactly what they were doing. They had a huge separate room for children to play in and even had an area for non-walkers. They had tons of dress up clothes, a puppet stage, a play house, a train set, cardboard books, a store area, coloring stations, a play tent, a huge magnetic wall for letters, a walk-thru fishtank area, a playscape for kids and a larger one for ages 7-12 where the kids can climb up the playscape and sit in a nice chair to read. On the wall in the kids area were some of my favorite quotes, "An involved parent is the best toy a child can have," and, "Play is a child's work."

There were a lot of kids there and a librarian even invited the kids for a story time in the next room over. This never happens at our local library because pre-registration is required weeks prior and each child needs a library card in order to register. (Don't get me started on this one) I tried to get some good pics online of what it was like, but I could only find the above pictures. Our camera was out of batteries!