Tea Party

Sophie had the privelege of attending her first real tea party yesterday. Kiki's "Meemaw" was babysitting Kiki for the weekend, and they invited Sophie and Alexa over a tea party. When I told Sophie about the invitation, she was very excited, especially when I told her that Eric and I would not be attending, and that Cynthia and Amir (aka "Abba") were out of town. "Just me, Kiki, Alexa and Meemaw, and no adults?" she exclaimed. Hopefully Meemaw doesn't mind being classified in the "other" category. Sophie has been lucky enough to be around Meemaw many times ever since she was a baby, and in her eyes (and ours), she is one cool Grandma! Thanks for a fun afternoon, Meemaw and Kiki!

"Naked"

Ever since Sophie became proficient at dressing and undressing herself, she has taken great interest in this activity. She's not so much into playing "dress-up". She simply likes to remove her clothes, run around without them for awhile and then choose some "cozy pants and a cozy shirt" to don while lounging around at home.


It seems that Jack is now benefiting from this activity (or maybe not so much, depending on how you look at it). While I was packing today for my trip to Chicago, I hear Sophie downstairs chanting to Jack..."You're naked, you're naked, you're naked!". And this is what I found upon heading downstairs.







So he's not completely naked, but she sure put in a good effort considering how much he typically resists having his clothes changed. Fortunately for Sophie, Jack is still at the age where he pretty much will cooperate with anything she wants, so there's no telling what might come next. It's so fun to watch them interact!



Here's a picture from the other day when Sophie was sharing her dinner with Jack. Those of you who know Sophie well know that this is a BIG DEAL, since she normally is not easily convinced to give you a bite of her food, unless maybe it's a sprig of broccoli or crust from her PB&J sandwich. Jack was quite happy to be fed by her and even offered her some of his mashed up, partially chewed green beans. And she happily accepted the offer.

Peer Pressure

Now that a lot of our family friends are "blogging" away on a daily basis, I've felt the urge to step up my game and post a little more often. We'll see how long that lasts! This should come as welcome news to those of you who check the blog regularly for new posts only to discover that there's nothing new to see. Hopefully I can keep up with this and give those of you who live far away a better idea of the ins and outs of life in the Balzuweit household.

I also discovered the new Picaso web album slideshow and have incorporated this to spice things up a bit. Many thanks to my good friends Cynthia, Susana, Liz and Crystal who have all inspired me to do this through their own creative masterpiece blogs!

To start things off, we had a wonderful visit with Eric's Dad the weekend before Easter. He is know as "Opa" to the kids. Sophie enjoyed playing chutes and ladders with him and he was persistent in teaching her the real rules. He even babysat Jack while the rest of us went to a birthday party for one of our neighborhood friends.

Easter weekend was very busy with a lot of fun activities. Jack's one year photo session with my good friend Crystal took place on Friday evening. To see a glimpse of the shoot, check out ccjamesphotography.blogspot.com and look for a recent post called 'blog stalker". We had a lot of fun reinacting Jack's 1st birthday with some messy cupcakes with blue frosting. Eric didn't think it was so "fun" when he saw how quickly the frosting went from cupcake to fingers to floor and all over the kids and floor. We had to act fast to contain the kids and ultimately stripped them down on the front lawn followed by a long bath.

Sunday was jam packed. It all began with Sophie searching high and low for her easter basket, eventually to be found in one of her favorite spots...the dryer. Sounds strange, but lately she really likes to help fold laundry (I'm certainly not complaining) so it was an obvious choice for the Easter Bunny. Later that morning, Eric and I had nursery duty with Sophie's class. Jack decided that his new class was not a whole lot of fun and screamed enough to get his teacher to walk him across the hall to us to join the rest of the family in the 3 year old room.

That afternoon we enjoyed a wonderful meal with our good friends The Kings, who also have a Sophie, aka "Baby Sophie". Later that day we all participated in a neighborhood Easter Egg hunt at The Seymours' and had a great time. We are so thankful to have so many wonderful friends in Atlanta since our family is all so far away!