Baby Olympics and 5-Month Birthday

The necklace I chose for Samantha was deemed a choking hazard, and sadly, I was disqualified!

Next was the stroller race.  The rules stated that we had to keep both car seats in the stroller, but only had to push one baby around the sidewalk to the gate that leads out of our neighborhood, cross the street and weave back and forth across the brick driveway to cross the finish line. Jake and Amelia went first, with Maddie and Bandit running alongside, timing him and watching out for safety violations. I went next and surprisingly beat Jake’s time by a few seconds! I also received extra points for being extra cautious…apparently Jake had several safety violations along the way. I guess all that practice maneuvering the stroller through stores and on walks everyday really paid off! I’m sure our neighbors thought we looked pretty crazy running wildly down the street with the baby and stroller.

Following the race was the laughing contest to see who could make the baby laugh first. Samantha was getting over-tired at this point and began crying before the event even started, so I knew I didn’t have much of a shot. Jake is so much better at making the girls laugh than I am even when it’s not a competition! He quickly got Amelia to giggle with one look and thus won this one fair and square.

Our next event tested our knowledge of nursery rhymes. We had to draw five random nursery rhymes/lullabies out of a hat and sing them. While I won the event with 100% accuracy, Jake failed miserably, although he did earn some extra “creativity points” for making up words he didn’t know. My favorite was his rendition of Baa Baa Black Sheep…”One for the dude and one for his ugly wife who lives down the lane.” He was also allowed to recoup some points by singing a few songs in Spanish, but it wasn’t enough to clench the win.

Our last event was getting the girls to go to sleep the fastest, which I had already won while singing nursery rhymes. After all the points were totaled, I reigned victorious (duh) with 120 points, with Jake a close second at 100  points. We absolutely loved the Baby Olympics and hope to add some more events next time– bathing, loading the diaper bag, and guessing weights!

 It was a lot of fun and a big help having Maddie stay with us. As her reward for helping out with the girls all week, Jake took her to LA to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame and hang out at the Santa Monica Pier before she hopped on her plane back to Alaska. She’s already planning on returning next year and told us if we ever want to go on a cool vacation (her suggestion was Hawaii), she would come with us and be our nanny on the trip haha.

 Today was a gorgeous day and I found some adorable swim suits at Baby Gap on sale earlier this week, so we decided to let the girls take a swim for the first time!

We filled the pool earlier that day in order to give it a little time to heat up, but I think since the girls are accustomed to their warm bath water, it was a little too cool for them. Once they acclimated to the water and after we threw some toys in, they were in better moods and entertained themselves for a while.