Little Mama

CeCe got this baby for Christmas and has always enjoyed playing with it (him/her?) for short periods of time. Today though, she woke up playing with baby and has played with it all day long! On our way out the door to take Bryce to school she brought baby to me in the stroller and said "Baby go?" I couldn't say no to that! CeCe strolled baby around Hobby Lobby and was mad I wouldn't let her do the same at Publix. When we got home she immediately began taking care of baby.


She changed it's diaper
Showed him/her how to properly ride in a carseat

Fed baby some lunch

Took baby shopping

Rocked baby

Showed baby how to colorShared snack with baby

And shared her big girl carseat with baby on the way to pick Bryce up from school (by this time she was done with me taking pictures and was saying no no picture!) She never keeps anything in her carseat with her for more than 5 minutes at a time but today baby stayed up there with her the whole drive to school! She talked about baby's toes, feet, hair, nose, tummy the whole way there.

We need to come up with a permanent name for baby. She was calling it baby Jasper (my sister's son is Jasper) but that hasn't really stuck. Today it was just baby.

I turned CeCe's carseat around to forward facing 2 days ago. For the last month she has been screaming bloody murder anytime the sun gets in her eyes in the car. I tried to wait it out but it was getting worse and worse. She is almost 19 months old and 23lbs so I'm comfortable with the decision to turn her around. She is so proud of her 'big girl carseat' (its the same seat, just feels so much different to her I guess) and says big girl everytime she gets in!

Painting and a little yellow car

My sister got Bryce a Hulk paint with water book for Christmas and I found a Mickey Mouse one for CeCe at Target. They had fun paiting together. I'm still way too nervouse to let CeCe paint with real paint so this was perfect!

We finally have a nebulizer for Bryce!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, that is a lot of exclamation points but I'm that excited over this little yellow car! It has been amazing so far. He was coughing the whole way home from Orlando so as soon as we got home we did a treatment and the coughing STOPPED! WOW! It is amazing! I'm so thankful we have this now.

Busch Gardens!

Tuesday we got up early and drove an hour to Tampa to have fun at Busch Gardens. CeCe slept great Monday night but was acting pretty cranky Tues. morning. I grabbed the Ibuprofen as we were heading out the door as a just in case. This would prove to be a great thing because by the time we got to Tampa poor thing had a fever and felt crummy. She crumbles when her temp gets over 99.5 or so. I know the Drs. say it isn't 'fever' until it hits 100.4 but my poor birdie doesn't buy into that! We gave her a dose as we were getting out of the car at 9:00 and she was good to go until 3:00. At 3:00 she crumbled again so Anthony being the awesome dad he is walked aaaalllllll the way back out to the truck to get the bottle of Ibuprofen. It took about an hour this time to kick in but once it did, she was great! We ended up having a great day!

Bryce and CeCe checking out the map before we left the hotel

Bryce found more animals to climb on!

CeCe's reaction To this!! She loved it!

There were a couple of rides they could ride together

Bryce's favorite ride of the trip....Grover's roller coaster!

Papaw Ruff had fun on the bumper cars! I tried to get a pic of Bryce and Anthony in their car too but they were too fast!

We ran into this cool character in the Jungala section

I bribed Bryce into trying the log ride with me (promised Pizza Hut for dinner if he tried it!). I was 50/50 on whether he would love it or hate it. That last hill is a pretty steep drop but......HE LOVED IT!! Yay! I was so proud of him because he was so nervous but tried it anyway. We ended up going again later with Anthony too!

This was taken shortly after CeCe's 3:00 fever went down. This was another thing I was 50/50 on......luckily she loved the characters. Anthony snapped about 20 pics and she would not look at him in any of them. She couldn't take her eyes off of Abby!

Bryce got to meet his favorite Sesame Street character too!

Sea World!

We arrived in Orlando after a long drive on Saturday. The kids are amazing in the car on long trips. I am so grateful since we seem to travel often! We went to the airport to pick up my parents after unloading our stuff at the hotel and then all ate dinner from a restaurant next to the hotel.

We had decided (after Bryce requested) to go to Sea World on our first day. We got there right as the park opened and felt like we had the place to ourselves for a while!

Papaw Ruff, CeCe and her signature bird, the flamingo!
Waiting for the whale and dolphin show to start

It was amazing and ended up being our favorite show of the trip! We tried to see it again on Monday but the weather was too bad.

Bryce doing tricks on the whales

Papaw Ruff, Bryce and Cappy on a ride

Anthony, Bryce and Cappy on another ride

Waiting for the Shamu show to start (good show but a little slow compared to the whale and dolphin show)

Both kids sharing the stroller! CeCe was basically sitting in Bryce's lap. Neither one of them ever complained about it!.

CeCe has started doing something new.....touching her stomach to things. It can be the freezing cold bleachers at the shows, the glass from aquariums, the elevator at the hotel, doors, and now that we are home, Reagan. It is pretty funny!

This was an aquarium you could stick your head into. He thought it was so cool!

As I mentioned in my last post, we went back to Sea World on Monday since the weather was forecasted to be so bad. I didn't take my camera because of the rain but we had a great time, even though we got soaked. The pouring rain started as we walked into the penguin exhibit so we hung out in there for about 30 minutes. It was a perfect place to be stuck. It had benches and a moving sidewalk!

A preview of Sea World

Here are a couple of pictures I've taken with my phone over the last two days. My phone doesn't take good pictures so I apologize! I'll get the good ones up once we get home Wed.

Yesterday we had beautiful weather. It started out chilly but warmed up to a wonderful 70 degrees around lunch! We had a wonderful time exploring Sea World. The animal exhibits are AMAZING! We were amazed at everything we saw. Bryce has always loved sharks so it was fun to get to walk in the shark tunnel where everywhere you look you are surrounded by them! We ate lunch at the shark restaurant and were seated right next to the huge shark tank. CeCe noticed and enjoyed so much. I didn't know how much she would actually get from the animal exhibits but she said 'wow', 'ooh' and 'sish' (fish) many times! It was a long exhausting but wonderful day.

CeCe checking out the map to see where we need to go next.
Waiting on the Shamu show

Today (Mon.) we were planning on going to Busch Gardens and then deciding which of the two parks to go back to on Tues. The weather changed our minds.....90% chance of steady rain all day! We decided to go back to Sea World and do the few things we didn't get to do yesterday. We got there at a great time and had over an hour before the hard steady rain started. We got to do everything on our list after 2.5 hrs! After getting SOAKED (and it was only 60 degrees, pretty chilly when you are soaking wet!) we decided to head back to the hotel for lunch and naps. I think we made a great decision. It has not stopped pouring all day! The radar looks promising for the rain to stop soon and hopefully we can get back out and explore around our hotel.

We have our map of Busch Gardens and have a plan for tomorrow. Since we know we only have 8 hours there we have to make the most of our time!

Shaving cream!

The other night we decided to let the kids play with shaving cream in the bathtub. It was a huge hit! Bryce loved it from the start but CeCe had to warm up to it. When I first put some in her hand she looked at it, then said "Mama help, dirty"! Once I showed her to rub it on the walls and on her tummy and arms she got in the spirit. They played until the bath water was cold!

This afternoon (another super cold day) after nap CeCe wanted to get in Bryce's chair with him (CeCe Duke Bryce's chair is what she said!). They stayed this way for a while! Bryce is still doing the Hulk thing where he only wears shorts around the house even though it is 35 degrees outside. Instead of wearing more clothes he carries this blanket around with him!

We leave Saturday morning for our trip to Orlando!!! We are going to Sea World on Sunday, Busch Gardens on Monday, and we will decide which one to go back to on Tuesday. We will head home on Wednesday. I'm so excited!!!

An early birthday celebration

Anthony's 32nd birthday is coming up on January 19th. We decided to celebrate early since we will be driving back from our Busch Gardens/Sea World vacation that day. Last year the kids and I were pretty sick on Anthony's birthday and despite promises for a re-do we never really celebrated it right! This year we tried to make it up to him!

Bryce, CeCe and I started out early this morning making strawberry cupcakes. (Bryce is going through another major Hulk phase and will only wear shorts around the house "because I'm the Hulk and that's all he wears". I choose not to fight this battle, but I do make sure he wears proper PJs at night and of course he must be dressed appropriately to go outside.)

After lunch we sang and ate cupcakes!

Delicious!

Yummmmm!

An electric leaf blower!! Yeah!!

Tonight we finally ate at Surf Burger on Pensacola Beach. Anthony has been wanting to try this place for years and since it was his day, he got to pick the place. It was delicious and had a great atmosphere. We will definitely be going back!

CeCe getting tickles from her Daddy

He's getting so big!!

I took this yesterday.....this was my baby ring and I LOVE to see it on her little finger!