Playground time with one of my favorite girls.

The professors

Reid loves to wear the Potato Head glasses. Harper has upgraded to the glasses that came with her doctor kit. And no, neither one likes me to brush their hair.

A message from a bathing Reid on her second birthday

Love the water-choking incident at the end ... I've been talking to her about her party (it's tomorrow) but big sister is definitely more excited about it than she is.

Harper's drawing

She said that it's a picture of her and Reid, getting ready to take a rocket ship into outer space to see all of the planets. This girl loves the solar system!

Harper's modeling debut

Can be seen here:
Little Wing
and here:
More Little Wing

Field Museum

 Reid made a drawing in the art area and then kept going to the mirror to show it to herself. She alternated between smiling, laughing or making a very serious face in the mirror. She was making a lot of people laugh!

 Harper busy at work uncovering a dinosaur fossil.

I love that we can get on the highway, drive for 20 minutes and be in the heart of Chicago, looking out over Lake Michigan. If we lived outside of New York, I feel like an outing to the city would require more thought and planning because of traffic, parking etc, but here it is very simple. I would prefer we could take the train, but today's high was 10 degrees so that wasn't happening. The girls and I went in to the Field Museum today. They had a blast checking out all of the exhibits and of course loved the family play area.

Fun at the Hamill Family Play Zoo

The girls love going here, I'm so glad it's not even 10 minutes from our house. They can paint their faces, water the plants, visit with animals, play pretend in the animal hospital, pretend to be birds in nests and many other activities.

Bath time!

Harper's quote of the day

I'm trying to play little pigs and the big bad wolf with Reid and blow her house down but I just don't have a big breath!

Reid was in the bathroom and Harper was trying to blow down the bathroom door.

Harper shows her dance moves

Harper normally takes ballet but due to the holiday it was cancelled a few times so her teacher welcomed her to try hip hop. She loved it, as you can see from the video. Daddy and I weren't too keen on the music but she certainly enjoyed herself and got a workout so maybe we'll do it again.

Loving her new cowgirl boots

She told me that she is going to wear them every day until she's 5. She is also loving the new skirt that came in the mail as a birthday gift for Reid from our dear friends, the Burkeys. She insisted that it is too big for Reid (it's a little too big) and that she needs to wear it until Reid grows. Let the sister clothing war begin!

Parading in the neighborhood on a 50 degree January day

Wearing their new mushroom hats handmade by our lovely neighbor, Tina!

She's on fire today.

Harper's quotes of the last 15 minutes: 

Why can't I do magic? You see, when I say I'm going to make myself disappear I just run away.

Mom, you need to help me find out how Earth and the other planets got into space.

Reid's quote of the day

When we were leaving open gym at the gymnastics studio today, Reid saw the concession area and started begging for a snack. They were offering a bunch of food we don't eat: GMO-laced chips and hormone-infused milk and I told her, "no, that kind of food will give you a stomachache." She turned to me and said, "Stomach cake! I want stomach cake!" and had a mini tantrum.

Singing and talking

I caught Reid singing "Twinkle, twinkle little star" and "Baby Beluga" to her doll. Of course, when I grabbed my phone to record her she became distracted and stopped. But she still did a little bit of a performance for me. I am trying to be better about capturing video of them, they are growing so fast.

She's got her own sense of style.

I often don't bother trying to pick out Harper's clothes for her these days because she protests and ends up changing. Letting her dress herself certainly gains some interesting results. I liked the leg/arm warmer combo she came up with today. And yes, no coats in Chicago in January! Crazy weather.

Sisters down the slide

Quote from Harper

Harper is very close to reading, she gets closer everyday. She is motivated and excited to learn so I have been going with it. In addition to going through books, she has a ring of words that she looks through. Today she was asking me about "from" and trying to use it in a sentence.

Harper: Mom, where am I from?
Me: You're from Boulder, Colorado, that's where you were born.
Harper: No mom, I'm from Italy because I'm Italian, remember?
She is about a 1/4 Italian and she is very proud of that.
Harper: You're not from Italy but that's okay. We can pretend.

Dancing and singing with joy at Spanish class

Hamill Family Play Zoo with Aiden

 The girls love painting their faces. Harper helps Reid out.

Almost two year old Reid

Reid enjoys walking up to people and asking, "What are you doing, Mommy?" (or Daddy or Harper or whoever she happens to be talking to.) She has the sweetest little soft voice. This morning, she asked me her usual, "what are you doing, mommy?" and I told her that I was washing dishes (what else is new?) and I asked her, "what are you doing, Reid?" and she replied, "I'm biting a pancake with my mouth."

She is absorbing everything around her these days. She can recognize colors and know the Spanish names as well as English. She knows many of her letters, thanks to big sister, who likes to play school with her. She is feisty but sweet and has a big personality. She likes to pretend to be different animals, she likes to make animal noises and tell us she's "Reid the tiger!"  She loves looking through books and will entertain herself by sitting on her floor and tearing apart her bookshelf. She and Harper are best friends, most of the time. She is very girly and insists on wearing a dress daily, which is in contrast to her sister at this age- Harper would only wear the same octopus t-shirt everyday. Again, I think it's the influence of big sister, who also likes to wear dresses. Her other best friend is a little boy named Aiden who we met through our play group. Aiden is less than two weeks older than her. Reid is louder than her sister was, I'm sure it has everything to do with having to compete to be heard.

She is still nursing. I would like to be done but she screams, "I need it!" and wins me over. I feel like you hear so much about people with trouble getting their babies to nurse, I have the opposite problem: my girls never want to stop nursing. I hope bribery starts to work on her within the next few months and we can work out a deal. So far, I've offered her a doll, money, cookies, lollipops, a milkshake .... right now nothing is better than nursing.

A few from our trip to Florida

We spent Christmas on the gulf side of Florida, staying with relatives in their gorgeous home. Andy, Reid and I all ended up getting very sick! I have not been so sick in years, literally, it was very poor timing to have it happen on our vacation. Though I guess if I had to be sick, I'd take doing it with warm weather, sunshine and a pool for Harper to keep herself entertained in.