Budding Photographer?

Or what happens when a three year old gets ahold of Mommy's camera?

Blog Revamp

We've been doing The Mallard Family blog for about three and a half years now. We started this blog as a sort of baby book for our first born, Evelyn. With a new year approaching and having made many, many changes in 2011 (the addition of our second child and our move to Tampa, among other things), I thought it was time to revamp the blog a bit.

So for 2012 I will be doing a photo a day, with or without explanation, to try to capture a true year in the life of our little family. I'm looking forward to the challenge and hope you enjoy seeing what we get up to this year!

Sweet Darcy

Halloween 2011

Evie's school had a Halloween Party.  Here she is with some of her friends in her classroom. 

 Our little girl can ride tricycles all by herself.  She can really scoot on these things! 

Baby Lucas and Darcy got to ride in the wagon while the adults were trick or treating.

The above video is of Evie trick or treating one of the local houses.  They had a very scary garage.  You can't see the man in the mask in there, but Evie did and promptly leaves when she spots him. 

Head Injuries & Haircuts

We had two milestones this week.  First was Evie's first stitches.  She took a bad bounce off the couch and cracked her head open on the corner of the coffee table.  It was bleeding really badly and required three stitches to get sealed up.  She had them off in a week, but it scared her mom and dad something fierce.  Also, while playing outside she got a mosquito bite to the right eyeball which caused her to look like Rocky for a few days.  You can see her scar from the stitches in the center of her forehead. 

Secondly, and more happily, Evie had her first haircut.  Below are the before and afters.  Her mom could only stand to have the back trimmed by an inch, but on her little head its very noticeable.  She was really good at the salon.  Didn't squirm or nothing!  

Fall Festival 2011

We went to the fall harvest festival in Bradenton several weeks ago.  By far Evie's favorite thing was the pony rides.

This was Evie's reaction to the fire juggler.

Playing carnival games for prizes and candy!

The Big Girl Initiative

Since her birthday in July we have been moving Evie away from baby mode and into big girl mode.  Kiley and I believe this happens in three steps...

STEP 1:  Dress yourself.

 

Evie has learned to pick out her clothes and dress herself. This is good and bad news as she now takes FOREVER to get dressed. She has learned that the "taggies go in the back" when she puts on her pants and to put your head through the hole first (a very important life lesson). An unfortunate side effect to all this is Evie will now pitch a tantrum if you try to dress her ("I want to do it!"), which makes life difficult when we are in a hurry. 

STEP 2: Poop in the potty.

Potty training has been an interesting journey. Evie got peeing in the potty pretty quickly after seeing all her friends do it. However, she still has occasional accidents. Pooping has been a little more difficult.  She would poop in her pants and then say "I've got poops in there!" (which is what we used to ask her when she had a dirt diaper). We were getting frustrated because most of her friends and kids her age were already potty trained. Lately it seems as though our persistence has paid off. It has been two weeks since Evie has used a pull up and is in big girl underwear 100 percent of the time. And while she does still have poopy accidents at school she does go regularly at home (mostly because she has discovered the joy of reading on the pot).

STEP 3: Eat what we eat at dinner.



In all honesty, unless she's eating spaghetti or ice cream there's not a whole lot she'll eat readily on her own. It takes some prodding to get her to pick up the fork and even then we find ourselves having to put the food in her mouth at times. She'll eat her veggies and meats, but it takes a lot of work. So we count the small blessings. 

Overall two out of three isn't bad. The hardest part is knowing that in three years, we'll be going through this all over again with Fussbucket (aka Darcy)!

Halloween Costumes

Evie and Darcy have chosen their costumes for Halloween. Evie will be going as a bumble bee and Darcy will be the flower. Evie loves her honeypot candy bag and Darcy is very snug in her flower bud (literally, they only make this costume in 0-6 months and she barely fits in it). The preciousness is almost too much to bear!

Snaggletooth Becomes SnaggleTEETH

Darcy now has two teeth poking through those purty gums!

Two Girls at the Same Age

Here are pictures Evie and Darcy taken when they were both about 6 months old. This is also about the time they had their first boat ride in Pops' boat. It's amazing to see the differences between them at this age, even though they are both our babies.

Look-A-Likes?

As Darcy's personality and appearance begin to take shape, people (we're not pointing any fingers) have begun to speculate who she looks like -- and we don't mean her relatives!

Here are some pictures (in some cases obscure) of what our precious angel has been compared to by her extended family:

"Who do you think I look like?"

"Gizmo?"

"Sloth... Really?!"

"Now, you're just being cruel."

"Okay, I have put on a few pounds..."

"Wait, are you saying I'm the boy or the girl?"

"I look like what?!"

Baby Lucas

This is our newest nephew, Lucas Daniel! He is Ken and Tiffany's son born January 3, 2011. Not surprisingly, this little marshmallow is 90th percentile on all measurements! 

Cute Pictures of the Sisters

The chubby monkey on the right is their cousin Lucas on Blake's side of the family. 

"Da-Da"

Darcy is starting to babble. Here she is saying da-da. (Now to work on ma-ma!)

Mirror, Mirror

Darcy just loooves looking at herself in the mirror. Such a girl!

Evie's "Put Me in the Zoo" Party

For Evie's third birthday party, we decided on a Put Me in the Zoo theme (For those who don't know, Put Me in the Zoo is a children's book by Robert Lopshire). Blake's mom and dad and his brother's family came up to Tallahassee to celebrate with us. Here are the highlights...

Blake and Ken took Evie to the pool while we decorated the house...

 

We read the book Put Me in the Zoo, then decorated our own zoo leopards with Evie's Do A Dot Markers.

 

Evie's loot.

 

Putting spots on her zoo leopard with Pops.

 

Uncle Kenny, Aunt Ti Ti and cousin Lucas.

 

Darcy is ready to party!

 

Here's a video of Evie blowing out the candles:

The aftermath: Wearing one of her new outfits, some dress up jewelry and shoes and playing with her three balloon. This balloon was by far Evie's favorite gift.

Willy Nilly Silly Old Bear...

Our little Evelyn is turning 3 years old next week. To celebrate and as part of our "big girl" iniative (more on that later) we are taking her to her first movie theater experience. This morning she went to see Winnie The Pooh which was the perfect movie for her. Not only does she love all the Pooh movies (we have 7 on DVD that are on heavy rotation!!) but the movie itself is only an hour long with most of the showings in the morning. So we hyped it up as much as we could, hopped in the car and drove on over to the theater for a 10:30 showing. Here are pictures and video of her little outing:

Evie was very excited to see the movie.  She kept saying: "We're gonna see the big screen!"

Anxiously waiting in line for our tickets...

You gotta get your snacks! All that candy was almost too much for her.

This video is of Evie practically pulling me to our theater. 

Snuggling into our seats with some coke and popcorn. 

Evie after the movie was over.  She is truly the sweetest thing ever!!

Evie holding up her ticket stub. 

Evie must have liked having her Daddy take her out cause she wanted to wear his hat.  My sweet princess....