Cypress Gardens

I took the kiddos to Cypress Gardens a few weeks ago on a Saturday when Mike had to be home sleeping all day after working the night shift.  Every 3rd Saturday of each month, Berkeley County residents get in for free! I love free stuff! And this is something I've been wanting to do.  Cypress gardens has a Butterfly house, walking trails, a swamparium (basically a small aquarium), and swamp boat rides.  It's a pretty cool place. So, here goes...
Anabelle showing her "terror" of the enormous alligator.

 They did have 2 huge live alligators here, too.

Declan, chillin' in the stroller.

 So many lily pads.  It's very pretty.

 I love this cute girl! (and yes, Mom, I did take this picture myself)

 Cute little duck in the butterfly house

 If you look closely, you can see a couple of butterflies

 They had some gorgeous flowers!

 Woohoo! Proof of our adventures at Cypress Gardens!

 You can see people taking their boat tour in the background

 Anabelle fell in love with this "Princess Castle". She didn't want to leave it.

 Ginormous tree trunk, and Anabelle giving it a big hug :)

As we were ready to load into the car to leave, I remembered we had to have a photo of all 3 of us, so I set the timer and propped it up on the stroller.  Not too shabby, eh?

Gymnastics

Anabelle had a gymnastics expo a few weeks ago.  She's been taking classes since about October, and loves it!  The event was pretty crowded and crazy, but fun, too.  Here are some photos.  I took video, but apparently they don't work on blogger, so, sorry.

Stretching.

Anabelle is in the black leotard with her back to us.

Half of the gym.

The 3rd one in the line on the left.

I don't know why she decided to pull her underwear down so low, but there they are, bright and blue.

On the bars :)

Wahoo!  Look at my trophy!  She loves this trophy.  The first 2 days after getting it, she'd walk around holding its hand and dancing with it.  So much fun!

Playing Catch-up

So much to post about, not enough time...

Anabelle loves to play at the splash pad at Wannamaker Park!  We have so much fun here and at the playground for playgroup each week.  

 Love this face!  Declan is wearing one of Mike's baby outfits.  It has a truck on it with "Michael" stitched into it.  It's such a cute outfit.

 Big boy! And this was taken a few weeks ago, so yes, he is quite a bit bigger now.  He's quite a bit thicker since starting his cereal.

 ...which he loves!  Look at him, just eyeing it...

Yum, yum, yum

 We went to Sullivan's Island last Friday.  The beach was okay.  It was completely overcast all morning, so not very warm, and the sand wasn't as nice as at IoP.  We had fun though.  One of the neatest parts was how there were so many jellyfish, dead crabs, and neat shells washed up all along the shore.  I'd never seen a real jellyfish before (ok, besides at an aquarium).

 Look at the shell I found.

After we got home from the beach and showered (leaving all of our swimsuits on the bathroom floor for a while), Anabelle came out wearing these :)  

 We set up our camera to take pics of us the other morning because I realized we basically have zero with all of us together.  So, here they are.  I think they're pretty cute.

We went to the Submarine Ball a few weekends ago. It was fun to get all dressed up.  Mike actually switched shirts and wore his long sleeved choker (looks SO much nicer!)  But nope, no more photos of us.  We had a good time with a bunch of good friends.

  Such a silly girl! She has been getting very excited every time she sees my breastpump lately.  She wants to assemble it "like a puzzle", which she does, but then she wants to use it :)  "Mommy, I want to pump".  Ere go...
She proceeded to explain to me how to use it to "pump the milk."  The last few days, she has even gotten all excited whenever I feed Declan, saying, "Mom, I wanna pump your milk" and going to try to find the pump. I have to explain to her than Declan is trying to eat and I can't pump right now.  She just makes me laugh.

 She has also been a little obsessed with wearing my skirts and shirts as dresses lately.  She even got into my shoes this time :)

 And this last one is for you, Katie!  I told you I had some cute baby crying pics.  You know, the more I look at these, the more precious they become.  Picture that tell a story are so memorable.  Declan had had enough of the picture taking!  But isn't he so cute? And Anabelle is so sweet trying to calm him down. Thanks again Alysia for ALL of the great photos.  I seriously love all of them!

The end.

First cereal/Fun with big Sis!

He kind of likes it :)

I was going to wait until Declan was 6 months old, but he was pretty ready for this

Anabelle and Declan have a lot of fun with each other

And their handsome Daddy, coming home from another long day at work.  Doesn't he look good? :)

Playtime

Our strong, hefty boy weighed in at 16 lbs at his 4 month appointment the other day.  25 inches long. 42 cm head circumference. He's in about the 75th % for weight for height.

Guess who did this???

 Ta-Da!  You may guess Mike did not wholly approve of this decor

Anabelle loves to play with Declan.  It's very cute!  She watches how I play with him and then tries to mimic it.

I'm still trying to teach her to be gentle with Declan.  You can't hit babies with your toys, or head-butt them, or stretch their appendages as far as you can.  She is just a little too much excitement for him to handle sometimes, but both of their faces do light up for each other with smiles.  Such cute kiddos!

 She is excited that he has begun rolling over, so now she thinks it's fun to lay down with him and "roll over" together

And yes, she does roll him all the way over her, but I don't have a photo of it yet.  

And this is just too adorable! 

And for those of you who haven't seen this on facebook, here is Anabelle discussing the millions (ok, maybe a small exaggeration) of caterpillars in our backyard.