Lauren "the Ham"

Lauren has become the clown of the family.  I have very little photographic evidence because we're all too busy laughing to snap a picture.  She does this grunting laugh (it sounds like the French chef on The Little Mermaid.  "Hee, hee, hee, haw, haw, haw!"  go to :28 secs. to hear the laugh)

I'm still trying to capture it on video.  I have a short clip-- you have to listen for it.  The camera is moving all over the place and you can just hear her little grunt of a laugh at :13 seconds.  You don't have to watch past that because nothing happens...  seriously.  Don't.  

The other day we went for a family walk after dinner.  Both girls were so tired I thought they might fall asleep in the stroller.  Well, we're walking along chatting, and out of the corner of my eye I see something bulging out of the top of the canopy-- much like an alien bulging out of a chest cavity.  I did a double take and realized it was Lauren's FACE!  She was pressing her face against the little plastic window like you would press your face against glass.  I was laughing so hard.  I only caught her smiling at us, no smushed face shots.

And here's Kate, laughing because we're laughing.

Lauren carries this doll around everywhere.  It's nearly as big as she is, but she LOVES it.  Every time we pick her up, she immediately turns around and squawks until we pick up her doll too.  She will bring it over to Armando and squawk until he makes the doll dance for her.  Today she woke up early and saw her doll laying a few feet away from her crib.  She screamed until Mando went in to see what was wrong.  He didn't see the doll, so he picked up Lauren and Kate and sat in the rocker with them.  Lauren just kept screaming and screaming.  Kate finally looked at Mando and pointed to the doll on the ground.  Armando said, "Oh, is that why your sister is crying?  Does she want her doll?"  Kate nodded.  Armando then said, "Will you bring her the doll, Kate?"  Kate hopped off Mando's lap, walked over to the doll and brought it back to Lauren.  Lauren immediately stopped crying.  :)  sisters.  Love.

Lauren is a collector.  She likes to wander around and collect different things that she finds interesting.  You will always find her with something (or several things) grasped in each hand.  Her favorite thing to collect is food.  Food in one hand-- usually scraps of toast that she finds on the ground after breakfast-- and some new item that she's fished out of the recycling bin in the other.  It's always fun to watch the wheels in her head turn when she finds something more interesting than what she is already holding.  She'll look at the new item, look at what she has, look at the new item... try to decide what needs to be sacrificed in order to hold this new item.  Sometimes she can't bear to part with any of it, and she tries to hold everything in her two little tiny hands which ends up making her look like "Gus Gus" in Cinderella.   (excuse the music in that link)

She's also the dancer of the family.  Every time there's a beat, you'll see Lauren bobbing her little head and moving her feet.  Her new dance move is to pump her shoulders up and down in time to the music.  

The other day Armando took her out of her highchair and washed her off at the sink.  When he put her down on the ground, she took off running out of the kitchen with her arms raised in a high "v" over her head, hands in fists, yelling like she had won a contest.  She does little stuff like that all the time--- surprising all of us and making us laugh. 

Lauren, Mom, Kate (L to R)

Speaking of ham...  We had a huge spiral ham for Easter.  Jenn, Kurt, and co. came over for Easter dinner and we polished off about 1/4 of it.  I split the remaining ham and sent half with Jenn.  Two days later, this is all that remained of our half:

Armando amazes me.  TWO DAYS, people!  That's A LOT of ham!  I would bet you anything Jenn ended up throwing most of her ham away because it went bad in her fridge.  Am I right?  I had planned on making some nice lentil soup from the leftover ham and hambone.  No such luck.  Bone picked clean.