in april ...

Dang. This is going to be a long post. We packed a lot into the glorious month of April!

In April (in no particular order) ...

• C really started smiling a lot more this month. Her smile is kind of a wide-open-mouth-squinty-eyed bunch of sweetness. Love. Love. Love. She's one happy babe.
  
• J discovered a new favorite food - corn on the cob. Our neighbors had a crawfish boil and I think J ate 3 cobs by herself!
• We celebrated Easter here in Tulsa. J loved hiding and finding eggs this year and we also dyed Easter eggs with family. She wasn't so much into the whole dying eggs process. It was more fun to plop the same egg in and out of all the different colors of dye over and over again! Easter morning we went over to Grandma and Grandpa's to hunt eggs and see what the Easter Bunny brought - most notably an octopus bubble machine. J was incredibly thrilled to find that there were soooo many baskets full of candy at 9am! She might have eaten jelly beans and M&Ms for breakfast. We spent the afternoon with family at Uncle Rudy's house.
• I want a new camera, but I don't know what I want and can't justify spending a lot of money on a fancy camera I don't know how to use. But, in April I re-discovered picnik.com and went a little crazy editing some pictures. I'm sure you noticed all my random posts of pictures with various effects ... anyways, it's fun, free, and super easy to use. I highly recommend. Also, send any camera recommendations my way if you'd like.
  
• We enjoyed many a bubble filled afternoon in the backyard drawing with chalk on the patio, watching Charlie attempt to eat the bubbles, sending baby dolls down the slide, and looking at the clouds. C moved from her bouncy seat to a blanket on the ground as she was starting to try to roll over.
  
• We visited the Bouncy Barn one rainy day for a fun morning bouncy around on the inflatables with friends. The inflatables were geared toward smaller children and it wasn't very busy so that made for a good first experience for Juliet. It was fun, but I just can't stand the noise of the fans/pumps running constantly!
  
• We finally broke down and got a double stroller. I researched and thought about this decision for months. I even borrowed a friends double to try it out. I scoured Craigs List, read reviews, etc. In April, C was getting heavy enough that pushing J in the stroller and carrying C in the Baby Bjorn was KILLING my back ... sooooo we now have a snazzy BOB Revolution Duallie to call our very own. This is the one I was going to get because I couldn't justify the cost of the BOB (we have the Tike Tech single and really like it), but I ended up finding a BOB on Craigs List for cheaper so my problem was solved! And I love it. The double I borrowed was a Graco Duo Glider and I just felt like I was fighting with that stroller constantly every time I used it. The sun shades weren't big enough, it wouldn't steer, etc. We've taken our BOB to the park, mall, and around the neighborhood so far and I'm pleased with my decision :) The girls seem to like it as well so that is good! Random tidbit, but babygizmo.com does great reviews of stuff and even has video reviews which I found helpful for this particular stroller purchase.
  
• Corinne had her 4 month checkup with the doc on April 13 and weighed in at 14 lbs 5 oz (56%) and 25 1/4 in (76%). Our little preemie has caught up quite nicely and is a healthy little love bug :)
• C started playing in her Exersaucer and Juliet likes climbing in it as well! She can climb in by herself, but can't climb out. Occasionally I'll here "Mama ... come here Mama!" from the play room. I usually find her stuck in there :)
• Juliet decided that potty training was a no go right now. She just stopped telling me. I didn't push the issue. We'll get there at some point.
• Corinne's hair fell out. It's true, just look at the pictures from March and then at the end of April! It was clearly coming in blond, and there was definitely lots of new growth coming in, but all the longer stuff started falling out. It was everywhere! She ended up with a weird mohawk/monk-ish looking thing going on! I gave her an unofficial hair cut at the end of the month to trim the longer wispy stuff back closer to the length of the new growth. Silly hair. She's still cute even without her long hair! It's just funny because by this point, Juliet had a bob. I had to put a clip in it to keep it out of her eyes and she'd had 2 haircuts!
  
• Juliet can identify 100% of her letters 95% of the time. She has specific words that she associates with each letter. For example, D is for Dada, O is for Octopus, C is for Che Che Bunny, etc. Occasionally she'll point to an L and tell me it's a J, but she's getting quite good. I thank Sesame Street and our letter refrigerator magnets for helping her learn her ABCs!
• Juliet is also getting really good at counting. You can ask to count something (leaves, dolls, etc.) and she'll point and count aloud. If there is more than 4 she sometimes looses track of which ones she's included in her count so may be one or two off, but I think that's pretty good for a one year old!
• J's sentences get longer and more complex every day. It's amazing what goes on in the brain of her and what she puts together. I can understand everything she says though it may take me a couple times especially now that there are more words to put together. For example, she when she used to say "Get juice" when I went and got her in the morning, she'll now say something like "Get blanket. Go get juice. Go see Dada Che Che Bunny?"
  
• I turned 29. I'm officially old! We had a family gathering the weekend before my birthday and on the actual day we went over to a friends' house for lunch. She got some things for the kids and made cupcakes - it was a great day! Dominic surprised me with an iPhone (I guess my not so subtle hints on the blog paid off!) and I'm loving being able to take short videos of the girls. I need to upload all of them ...
  
• I had pink hair. I just wanted to get some highlights for my sister-in-law's wedding and it went all wrong. Highlights the color of Barney only a little less purple. Yikes. After 3 trips to the salon and about 10 hours of complete hair madness, I can say that the pink is about 90% gone. If you saw me on the street you probably wouldn't notice, but there are still some strands here and there. The wonderful thing is that I love the lady that does my hair and I still love her after the whole fiasco! It was a freak event and whether it was the product or my post pregnancy hormones we'll never know ... anyways, that was step 1 of my wedding beautification process ... a few things still on the list and I'm hoping they go better than my trip to the salon!

I feel like I'm forgetting something, but will have to add it later if I did! I have to get some other pictures from my sisters from Easter, but for now, here's what I have from the month:

April 2010