So Ben's birthday party the weekend before last was great. Our guests piled into our kitchen because it rained so we couldn't do it in the park this year. Ben had a blast, everyone had cupcakes, and Ben was spoiled with gifts.

His actual birthday was not as nice. At 3am, he crawled into our bed and coughed until he threw up, then coughed more and was just burning up. The day was spent being listless and cranky and unable to settle or sleep. Finally, I went to the pharmacy and got some children's nyquil, which worked after a while. Poor thing! We had planned on visiting Angrignon Farm and having some wading pool time and then going out for chinese food at Ben's favorite restaurant.
The rest of the week was a blur of sick and semi-sick children. Naomi's still got it and last night she was either screaming her lungs out and coughing them up, or fitfully sleeping on me, we're both beat.
Yesterday we made it to Angrignon Farm and Ben had a wonderful time and Naomi had an amazing snooze in the stroller.
Click the photo to see the set.
Ben's really making progress with his speech. He's getting much better at using names, and has even referred to himself, which he's never done before. When he plays hide and go seek, he pretends not to see you and looks around saying "where's Daddy?", its very cute!

Naomi started crawling with gusto and couple of weeks ago and chasing her brother, father, mother, cats, and brooms (we can't figure that one out either). Not only that, but that very week, she also started pulling herself up to standing using the furniture, toys, and people's legs. Ben is often the target of much of the chasing and pulling up because he is his sister's favorite person in the house (unless my boobs count as people). He has been pants a few times and now tends to avoid her which makes her very unhappy. We figure that she'll be cruising by the end of the week. This has all happened so fast that I haven't had time to video it properly. If I don't do it soon, I'm going to miss all the wobbles. Ben didn't cruise until he was almost a year old and didn't walk until he was about 13 months or so, so this is a big change for us. We had to break out the playpen and put it in the kitchen for containment purposes.

She's into everything and gets so mad when you restrict her movements. I don't know where she gets that from :-)