Meeting Travis!

Last week Samantha and I headed down to Virginia to hang out with the Chens.  We desperately wanted to meet Travis and get some time to hang out with Tiff and Cadence as well during these slow newborn days.  Mostly we hung around the house and chatted while the girls played and Travis nursed, but at least we managed to take a few pictures :)

Most meal time looked like this. Samantha was a mess grabbing for whatever Cadence wanted to eat, and Cadence told Samantha no and stayed perfectly clean.

Everyone is happy because they are eating pasta.  Cadence with that one ponytail cracks me up here.

There was some ball bouncing with Travis, while S was napping and C was at daycare.

And when we picked up Cadence from daycare we headed to the soft play room at their community center.  I wish we had one of these!  To say Samantha loved it was an understatement.  She quickly followed Cadence up all the apparatuses.  The only thing she didn't like was the ball pit.  It was tough to make these two leave.

Um I love Cadence. I think she was singing me a song while these pictures were being taken.

This is what Travis was doing while the girls were playing.  I promise he was sound asleep- poor kid looks like he's having a gas problem here...haha.

I couldn't believe how fearless she was!

These two held hands so well.  I felt like a very lucky mommy!

Travis snuggles after the girls went to bed.  Great friend and a glass of fruity wine and snuggly baby = good night :)

Travis still snuggling the next day.  That's the redeeming feature of newborns- they are so darn scrunchy and snuggly.  

Cadence got home from daycare right when Samantha was waking up from afternoon nap.  Cadence was happy to go say hi to Samantha post-nap.  Samantha still looks a little sleepy (have I mentioned she always wants to sleep with her doggy stuffed animal now?)  It makes a little appearance here :)

There was lots of C and S playtime post nap.  Here it looks like Samantha is really listening to Cadence.

This is what happened next.  Samantha demands whatever Cadence had.  For the most part they played well together. Often it was parallel play, but sometimes they shared things and played with the same object.  Samantha sometimes grabbed things from Cadence, but Cadence was so good at using her words to ask for them back.  I can't wait until Samantha can express herself like that, too!  

Letter magnets.  Cadence is so good at her letters!

Helping the girls with their smoothies.  Samantha ate a smoothy with kale!!!  Thanks, Tiff, for that idea- now to just replicate the smoothy here so that my child will eat green vegetables!

"Do it myself"

On our last morning there was still time for a little play before we headed out.

And two movies of the girls "playing."  Seriously be impressed by all of Cadence's language.

And an attempt to get us and our little ones all in one shot.  This is the best we could do, but pretty much representative of life these days.

And just for fun... the history of Cadence and Samantha hanging out.  So fun to see them grow and change together.  Love that our little families are growing up near each other!

April 2013 (S-3 months, C- 8.5 months)

 August 2013 (S-7 months, C- 12.5 months)

 November 2013 (S-10 months, C- 15.5 months)

February 2014 (S- 13 months, C-18.5 months)

June 2014 (S-17 months, C-23 months)