Another boring week :)

Not much went on here this week, other than everyone getting sick. Last week Maria had a sore throat, then a stuffy nose... then Duncan got a runny nose over the weekend... then Mike had a sore throat and was home from work Wed and Thurs... for the past couple of days the baby has sounded a little congested and I'm starting to get a sore throat. Beatrice has been pretty fussy for the past few days, so I'm guessing she isn't feeling too well :( I've been putting vicks on my chest hoping that it will help her congestion. Of course this is probably just the first of the ailments that will go around school this year.

Well, we almost had a new dog. Mike had a dog in at the pound there that was a pug/jack russell terrier mix and didn't really have the room there to keep him. He was a really well behaved and friendly guy - so Mike brought him home. He was housebroken, got along well with Sally and Jo-Jo, and just a really good dog. He brought him home last Thursday and he was actually a nice addition. But sadly his owner called Mike's work on Tuesday looking for him :( so he had to go back home. We were all pretty disappointed - especially Maria who had really gotten attached to him. He was damn cute and not barky in the least. We may have to search around and try to get a pug/jack russell terrier mix - we looked them up and people do actually breed them; they are called "Jugs" ;)

I guess something exciting did happen this week - we had a hailstorm yesterday! Of course there was no rain in the forecast. The funny thing was that when I went to the post office, the postmaster said that the next couple of days were going to be really nice, no rain until the weekend. And I said that it was "supposed" to be nice last week - supposed to be in the mid-70s all week and ended up being more like mid-50s all week... and then he basically said the same thing again, nice for the next couple of days - no rain till Sat/Sun... then we ended up getting a major downpour with hail to boot!

I managed to get out of the house by myself for a bit yesterday. I had been wanting to go to the post office for the past couple of weeks since I finally finished the gifts for my cousin's baby... but the logistics of getting in the post office with Duncan and Beatrice by myself... so since Mike was home and the babies were napping I went to the post office, meat market and gas station. All those little quick errands would have been very much not quick with two little ones. Anyway, I got to chat with the lady at the gas station who had her baby a couple weeks before Beatrice was born. Amazingly she had a very similar labor story - her labor also only lasted about 3 hours and she only pushed like two or three times. Her mom and sister almost missed it - they were going to wait until they got to the hospital until they called them, but decided to call when they were on the way - and luckily they just made it in time. Then I ended up chatting a bit with the lady at the meat market - she asked whether we had a boy or girl - she's got a 10-month old boy and a 9 year old daughter. It was nice to actually talk to some adults.

6 Weeks old already!!

Another week gone by... time is certainly flying! It's hard to believe that Beatrice will be 6 weeks old tomorrow! She's doing really good :) smiling quite a bit these days :) and she's been staying awake for longer stretches during the day. Luckily we have one last good week to put her in some of those darling warm weather outfits! :)

The trees have been busy turning for the past couple of weeks now - there are some stretches where most of them have turned, but then some where only about a quarter of them have. We went down a fire lane yesterday on the way home from the store and it was just so beautiful I wish I would have had my camera with me. I'll have to take a trip down this week or so to snap some pics!

Duncan is still on nappy strike. And not wanting to go to sleep at night to boot. It's so frustrating. You would think that if he didn't take a nap during the day he would go right to sleep at night... no such luck. Some of those nights he's even worse at going to bed... I'm about to start giving him a bath every night - it seems on bath nights he goes down easier...

I had my 6 week follow up appointment today and glad to say that I'm doing pretty good. I actually lost all the weight I gained with Beatrice... now just have to work on the leftover weight that I didn't lose after Duncan ;)

Nothing else really new to report... just wanted to post some new pictures of Beatrice :) I have been trying to get a pic of her smiling - no luck so far, but did catch Mike with a smile on his face, so decided to share :)

Two Baby Milestones in One Week :)

It was a real smile after all! Monday night Beatrice smiled when Daddy talked to her. Then on Tuesday she smiled at both of us several times when we talked to her :) and she's been smiling ever since :)
The second milestone this week was sleeping all night Tuesday night! That was really nice, since the night before she had woken up three times instead of her usual 1 or 2. Of course last night she was back to her twice a night...
Other than that, there hasn't been much going on this week... Maria is doing well. Still managing to get all her homework done on the bus before she gets home. She's invited to a Halloween party next weekend - why a month early?? I guess her friend tried to have a party on Halloween last year and it snowed... She had her school pictures yesterday.




This week Duncan has been really awful with taking naps and going to bed at night. But I actually got him to eat some fruit (other than a banana) yesterday!!!! It was a minor miracle. He has refused all fruit (but bananas) for about the past six months.


Duncan will probably be living in this sweatshirt until he outgrows it! I was barely able to get it folded from the laundry before he insisted on putting it on. And today (luckily we aren't going anywhere) he opened one of his drawers while I was changing Beatrice and came up with his Curious George swimming trunks and insisted that he wear them... but it's cold here (again!) today, so I put some sweats on underneath.
It was supposed to be in the mid 70s yesterday and today - neither day has gotten above 50. It's overcast and gloomy and cold. :(
~~Funny, I was just reviewing the blog before I published it and noticed that in all three pictures of Duncan (taken on 3 different days) he is wearing his George sweatshirt! Oh well.

Playpen Follies

Well, it finally happened... the boy breached the walls of his playpen... For the past couple of weeks he had been flinging one leg over and hauling himself up, balancing on the bar, halfway in halfway out - not quite brave enough to fling the other leg over, and probably not knowing how close he was to escape... But Sunday morning, after being sent to the playpen for the third or fourth time for jumping on the couch or throwing his toys, he came racing his dump truck into the kitchen with a whoop of glee and freedom.


He's turned into quite the daredevil these days. And he loves driving around his dump truck. But he loses control of it in the kitchen, since the floor is slipperier than the carpet - it goes too fast for him and it always ends in tears... three times in a row he wiped out with it - the second time he slammed into the kitchen cupboards with such force that he was sent diving into the back of it...the third time hitting his nose on the tail end of it, so we took it away for a bit and then he brought out his tiny dump truck, and within a few minutes of driving that tiny one around he took a nose dive over top of it onto the carpet, resulting in a nice carpet burn on his nose... He's taken to calling people honey... hi honey, bottle honey, juice honey, play honey. It's a riot! And he's started saying Thank You (gank ooh) in the right context - at first he would say it while handing you something, probably because I would say thank you when he handed me something. But he finally caught on and was saying gank ooh every time I would give him a piece of a blueberry muffin.



He had his 2-year dr's apt last week. He's doing great health-wise, growing really well. Although I'm sure that every measurement they did was slightly off - he did not want to cooperate at all. Wouldn't stand on the scale, wouldn't stand against the wall or lay on the bed to be measured for height... the nurse measured him at 33" but said that she wasn't sure that was right- which it wasn't because when the Dr started looking at his chart she said well, it looks like he shrunk! :) so she measured him again and came up with 37 1/2 and said that he was in the 90th percentile for height... we think that measurement was a little off too...



Maria is still thrilled about school - she is really loving the choir and band lessons. Now she is so paranoid about missing the bus again that she's waking up at all hours of the night thinking its time to get up. One day last week I went up to make sure she was up at 10 till 7 and she met me at her door with her clothes on but obviously looked like she had just gotten out of bed... she later said that she had gotten up around 3am thinking it was time to get up, got dressed and then realized what time it was, so went back to bed in her clothes... Last night we heard a cupboard door slam at a little after midnight... there was Maria in her clothes with her hair combed, all ready to go to school!



Baby Beatrice is doing well. Still eating, pooping and sleeping most of the day away. But I swear she smiled the other day! I was changing her diaper and noticed that she was really paying attention to me, so I stopped and started talking to her and she was looking right at me and smiled. I was thinking it was a little too early, but one of the books I have said they can start smiling at a month - but she hasn't done it again. Of course she smiles quite a bit, but it's not really a controlled smile. I just love the way babies stretch - I think it's my absolute favorite thing in the world. They just put their whole bodies into that stretch upon waking up - even their faces participate in the stretch. They bring up their legs (which seems a little backwards), arch their back stretch their arms out and stretch their faces out. Sometimes I want to wake her up just to see her stretch. :)



Well, we spent Sunday afternoon taking down and storing our yard stuff for the winter :*( It got down to 20 Thursday night... Mike's brother said he saw some snowflakes Friday morning! Of course it's supposed to be in the mid-70s this week - the last hurrah before winter takes hold.

New Baby News!

I just heard from my sister Ally that they are expecting their second baby around the middle of April! Congrats to them! Can't wait to find out if it's a boy or girl so I can crochet up something :) Of course boys are a little harder to crochet things (other than blankets) for as everything seems to look a little too "pretty" - even in blue :) I am finally almost done with the hats and booties that I'm making for my cousin Brad and Holly's baby boy who was born last week - a few weeks before her due date. (did you see the jealousy pouring off those words?) ;) I was going to make a blanket - got the yarn as soon as I found out the sex... but then I was so busy making things for Beatrice, and figured that I would have plenty of time after she was born to do the blanket for Henry... ? what was I thinking? ;) Hats and booties are relatively quick... so I figured that I would do up some hats and booties... One of the sets does look a little too pretty for a boy - but Mike assured me that all baby stuff has that "pretty" element to it. But the second set has been giving me problems ;) the hat was easy and I finished that really quick, but then for another pair of booties I decided to make some faux high top tennies - which are damn cute, but a little complicated... and sometimes the instructions aren't quite as clear as they should be... and with small projects like booties, one stitch too many or two few really makes a big difference... I had to undo a couple sections because I had one stitch too many... ugh :) so I finally finished one of the "courtside booties" today! The second one should go much quicker now that I figured out the first one - that's how it usually works, and that's why I usually make "firsts" for my kids first :) that way I don't have to give away projects that don't turn out quite right... Anyway... my next projects will be hats and booties for Ally's two friends who are expecting, Lisa in November (wants to be surprised by sex of baby, so she'll get some white and yellow stuff) and Angie in January (having a girl). Then I will probably be starting on Christmas gifts, which I haven't yet decided what they will be...

Maria and her Saxaphone :)

Well, Maria had a good first week of school, if you don't count missing the bus on Friday! She was so excited and happy to get back to school. Hanging around at home was just so boring for her! ;) I have to say I miss the extra pair of hands during the day. She was really good about helping out with Duncan and really enjoyed it. She loves her new teacher. She loves being in choir this year and is looking forward to their performances. But best of all she loves her new saxophone!! :) I think getting that saxophone was her focus for the last part of the summer, and she was so thrilled to be able to finally bring it home and try it out after the first week of school. It was ultimately the saxophone that caused her to miss the bus on Friday. She was outside waiting for the bus and then remembered she need to take $1.25 to school to buy a reed for it so she could play it over the weekend (although we didn't know at the time that it came with one). She spent most of Friday evening and a good chunk on Saturday testing it out, playing random notes, which sometimes sounded like actual songs. I think she's going to be a natural! It takes a certain amount of skill just to blow and get an actual note to come out since it's a reed instrument. We are all pretty excited about the saxophone. It's such a gorgeous instrument. I was surprised at how shiny and pretty it was :)

Maria finally got Duncan to sit on his sit and spin, so he likes it now :) And he's discovered that he can fit his little butt into his new dumptruck, so something new for Maria to push him around in ;) he just loves getting rides! And I just had to throw in the pic of him eating his lunch... if all else fails eat it right from the bowl!

And of course I had to throw in a bunch of new pics of Beatrice! :) Last week it was in the upper 80's most of the week, but the past few days it's actually been chilly! In the upper 50's and lower 60s!! It looks like the seasonal change is here - up here anyway... we noticed the trees were already starting to turn the week before last when there was a spell of lower temps... Tonight there is a frost warning! So tonight will probably be the first frost of the season, and I bet it's all downhill from there! Time to drag out the winter coats and such... so much for a gradual shift in temps...

The Big Number "Tew!"

Duncan's second birthday started with a bang... when he fell out of bed at 1am! I usually slide my pillow sideways in case he rolls over when I get up to go to the bathroom or now when I get up to feed Beatrice in the middle of the night... Fortunately, he didn't get hurt.

He actually said "ello" on the phone for the first time when Emma called to wish him a happy birthday - then again when grandma called, and that time he also said "bye." I'm sure that he has no concept of age or birthdays at this point. In the morning I told him it was his birthday and that he was 2 years old! He repeated "tew" several times. Then I asked him how old he was and he said "tew" again :) of course, lucky for him, that just happens to be his favorite number! It's about the only number he will say. Once in a while he'll say "nine," but usually he will only say the number 2 - and he will say it over and over again. I've started that whole counting to three thing - which he has absolutely no concept of - but it does work because once I get to the number 2, he stops whatever it is he's doing and jumps around saying "tew...tew" :) I have no idea why he is so obsessed with the number two...

We got him a few new books (Bob the Builder, Curious George, and a frog counting book), a simon-says sit and spin and a huge tonka dumptruck. The sit and spin plays music and talks and he was terrified of it. We sat him on it and pushed one of the buttons and he started crying and ran from it :( It was too funny. He seems to be scared of new things a lot - but once he's seen them around for a while he will warm up to them - he was like that with his Monkey Chase and his Tickle Me Elmo and he plays with those things still... We turned off the sounds and he keeps checking it out - but I'll tell him to sit on it and he'll go to the doorway to the kitchen and sit down. Too funny. Just had to throw in the pic of him in my flip-flops, as he is still obsessed with walking around in everyone's shoes! ;) Too cute.

And of course, I can't really post a new blog without posting any new baby pictures!! I'm taking pics everyday of course - got to make sure to get a picture in every outfit!! ;) because they are all too damn adorable!!