Sunny Easter Sunday

Our Easter morning got off to an early start. By 6:30, both girls were awake and ready to dive into their easter baskets. The Easter Bunny brought Gwen a book about penguins, a toy bug that blows bubbles, some toy pots to stack, and a new chewing ring for her ever-growing collection of teeth (she's up to 3, and counting...).

For Morgan, there were crayons, a new alphabet toy, bubbles, a pair of crocs, candy and a new toothbrush to scrub off all that sugar.

With all the excitement, Morgan had an "Ozzy Osbourne moment" and bit the head off a bird. Thankfully, it was just a Marshmallow Peep.

After breakfast, we headed outside to find Easter eggs.

Morgan liked finding eggs. But after a while, she discovered that she likes eating the M&M's and jelly beans inside the eggs even more.

After nap time, Morgan was itching to dye eggs. She has watched the video of herself dying eggs last Easter dozens of times. So as she dyed eggs, she acted out lines that her 2-year-old self said last year, repeating "I touch it" over and over again.

By late afternoon, the sun had burned away all the clouds, and the temperature reached 80 degrees. So we all put on our shorts and headed back outside.

Gwen loved watching Morgan and Mom blow bubbles.

Finally, we all came inside for Easter dinner: ham with spicy mustard and orange glaze, risotto, and sugar snap peas with creamy pancetta sauce. Everything was delicious. Even Morgan, who rarely eats meat, enjoyed the ham (although, she requested her pieces "with no syrup").

April Showers

April showers bring May flowers. And as of this morning, they also bring a certain little girl who wanted to put on her ladybug boots and jump in the giant puddle in front of our house.

Gwen at 9 Months

Crawling. Standing up. Waving. Pointing. This has been a huge month for Gwen. It's safe to say she has graduated from being an infant, and is steamrolling toward toddlerhood.

Speaking of graduation, Gwen's teachers moved her into "Infant B" on April 1, right around the time she really got the hang of crawling. So now Gwen is reunited with some of her older, crawling colleagues and is free to spend her days frolicking around with the other soon-to-be-Toddlers.

Food-wise, Gwen is still getting the hang of solids. We skipped several stages of mushy food and went straight for the almost-like-real-food baby food. Gwen seems to like that much more. (Honestly, Gwen's favorite food seems to be whatever Morgan is eating. Unfortunately, she's not quite ready for all of that yet. Pretty soon, though.)

At Gwen's 9-month appointment, she weighed 18 lbs 12 oz. and was 28 inches long (both are in the 50th percentile). She also shook-off her recent stranger anxiety and put on a brave face for the doctor and nurse. She even waved goodbye to the doctor as he was leaving, prompting him to say "Wow, that's really advanced!" Way to impress the doctor, Gwen!

Here are some photos from Gwen's 9th month (including some behind-the-scenes shots of Gwen's 9-month photo shoot with guest photographer Morgan).

Gwen's personality is developing very fast lately, as you can tell from the expressions below:

Here's "flirty" Gwen...

... "thoughtful" Gwen

... "giggly" Gwen

... and, last but not least, "cuddly" Gwen.

As we mentioned in an earlier post, Gwen's curly blonde hair is growing fast.

Lately, Gwen's favorite thing to do is pulling herself up on everything in sight. If she keeps this up, she'll be cruising in no time.

While exploring every corner of the house, Gwen discovered all the magnets on the fridge. And, not surprisingly, she also discovered how much fun it is to take them off the fridge and scatter them all over the floor. Yeah!

Last weekend, Gwen helped cheer-on Henry as he took his test for his black belt. She wasn't quite sure what all the kicking and punching was about. But once it was all over, she very proud of her cousin, as we all were. Congratulations, Henry!

Up, Up, and Away

Gwen continues to check milestones off her list. On March 29, she pulled herself up on the Crawl & Cruise Jungle. Since then, she's kept herself busy pulling herself up on everything she can get her hands on: tables, stairs, chairs, Mom, Dad, Morgan, other kids at school, you name it.

Here come the babies

Two weekends ago, the Bonsteels and Chiaverinis made the trip to South Jersey to get the babies -- Gwen, Lucas and Cate (all born within 17 days of each other last summer) -- together for the first time since November.

While Cate napped, Gwen and Lucas got reacquainted. Gwen asked, "Dude, what's that stuff on top of your head? How come I don't have any of that?"

Before long, Morgan and Cooper decided they wanted to play in the attic. So everyone came along for playtime. Gwen showed off her crawling skills for Lucas and Lina.

Meanwhie, Morgan and Cooper kicked-back in the ball pit.

Jeff wasn't able to make the trip to Jersey that weekend. But, thanks to the magic of Skype, he was able to join us for playtime, too.

After playtime, we all came back downstairs for a special "pre-Birthday" party for soon-to-be 3-year-old Cooper. Coop opened presents, and everyone got to snack on yummy Star Wars cupcakes.

After a hectic end to the day, everyone finally settled down for the night. Ariella, Nicole and Lina went out to dinner and enjoyed some "Mommy Time", while Andy and Lance stayed at the house and enjoyed some "Daddy Time" staring at the insides of their eyelids.

On Sunday morning, we took Lance, Lina and Lucas to the Adventure Aquarium to check out the fish, and snap some photos on the turtle.