Happy Belated Easter!

Hope everyone had a great Easter weekend! Our trip to Peoria, although for an unfortunate circumstance, ended up a big family reunion. My sister Ela, who is soon moving to Seattle came into town with her husband. It had been Thanksgiving since we saw each other last. Then of course we saw our parents... Aniela was spoiled rotten as usual (Babcia and Aniela pictured bottom right). She also had the opportunity to play with her cousin Tomasz from Peoria as well as her cousins Rebecca and Patrick from Colorado. Baby Patrick (pictured bottom left) was just born a month ago and we all were anxious to see him!! I forgot how tiny babies are!!! At Grandma's funeral Charlie was also able to spend some time with his cousins who he hadn't seen since he was in junior high. One of his cousins Jimmy played the bagpipe at the funeral. It is such a neat instrument and brought tears to my eyes every time it played! It's hard to imagine that this trip was the final trip to Peoria before our move. It'll probably be awhile till we get a chance to visit again. Although with the way time flies we will be back before we know it!


Speaking of time flying...on Easter Aniela turned 11 months. She is such a little young lady already and definantly has her opinion on everything. She is also quite demanding and likes to think she rules the house...who am I kidding she does rule it!!! Her favorite things to do are "reorganize the cabinets", unroll the toilet paper roller, and crawl all over the house!! Imitating actions is another big thing around the house lately. When we say, "How big is Aniela", she will raise her arms over her head stretching them as high as they will go and then give a big grin. She also knows how to shake her head "no"... hmmm I wonder where that came from!! It's very cute but also scary that she already knows how to communicate "no" without saying it! This last week Aniela learned her first baby sign!! I have been working on signing with Aniela since she was about 4 months old. Her Aunt Ela is deaf and I feel that it is even more important she learn it. The sign that she can do is "Milk". It's adorable when she does it, although now she has generalized it for everything and has turned it into the sign for "I want"! Aniela has also mastered cruising and we find her at times standing all by herself without holding on to anything. She then of course realizes she isn't holding on to anything and plops down. It will be amazing to see her start walking!!!



Mommy's little helper! As with any traveling theres always the fun part of unpacking and mounds of laundry. Aniela loves helping me load the dryer...she actually does put the wet clothes in as I hand them to her. She loves to take them out too!!