Keeping Ourselves Amused

It's been a busy couple of weeks here in the Stockemer household. Nothing too out of the ordinary, so instead of going on and on about stuff that probably happens to everyone else on a daily basis I figured I'd share some pictures from the last few weeks instead.

Melanie really likes our shoes at the moment. Here she is trying Matt's on for size.

This is some tasty Kleenex! Would you like some?

Fun on the playground
Wheeeee! Sliding with Aunt Amber
Posing with mom's cousin Sara.

I was 12/13 when Sara was born and we were quite attached when she was little (probably something to do with pre-teen girls being goo-goo over babies and babies loving all the attention makes for a good pairing) So it's pretty fitting that Sara is the same age now that I have a baby. Now if Sara can just find the right guy, get married and have a baby in the next 12 years the circle can remain unbroken...

(No pressure Sara!)

Climbing on her shopping cart

Fortunately Melanie is too short to get on most furniture so far. She is smart however, so she turns things over to make them short enough for her to climb. When I caught her sitting on her cart she was squatting on it like it was a baby perch for her to observe the goings on of the living room from the top of. Once she realized I was going to take her picture she quickly decided to get off to foil my plans.

Climbing on the coffee table

Melanie is also smart enough to take toys over to the coffee table and use them to get where she wants to go. In this picture she used her Mozart Magic Cube to get on the coffee table, but she's also used her foam wedges to scale the furniture as well.

She also has really gotten into wearing her beads recently. I gave them to her for Easter, but the last few weeks she seems to have felt the need to accessorize because she wears them on and off throughout the day, even to the grocery store. I guess all that in utero exposure to Claire's has had it's affect!

This was supposed to be a picture of her eating string cheese (the current cuisine of choice, as long as there aren't graham crackers to be had instead) but Melanie obviously had other ideas as to what her picture should be like. I still think the picture is cute though.

Melanie has decided that our entry way table was purchased to be her own personal jungle gym. She really enjoys climbing around on the low shelf and playing with her toy cars on it as well.

And here is what I've done the last couple of days to keep myself out of trouble. The "pretty" jar is homemade strawberry sauce that I made for the moms in my FAMILIA group as a Mother's Day gift (I had intentions of giving them brownies to take home to make sundaes with, but that didn't happen so I just took a plate of brownies to eat during the meeting instead) I just tried some over vanilla ice cream and it's very good. I think it would also be good over pancakes or waffles.

The jar on the right is strawberry-rhubarb jam. Amy came over and we made this to send to her husband Michael who's in Iraq right now. Hopefully it will get me back in Michael's good graces, seeing as he was a bit irritated that I had encouraged Amy to send him pictures of a fake tattoo and tell him it was real (which he fell for). The story was funny though, and I laughed. I laughed a lot.