Playtime

So blurry it hurts your eyes, but it shows how much she likes her boucy seat. She loves to watch the bubbles and the fishes, and it's the only inanimate object she'll smile and make noise at.



Mimi 4/15/10: Tummy time is hard to do--you can't do it right after she's eaten, because she'll spit everything up, so we don't do it as much as we should. She's also still tired a lot, so has a low tolerance for it.



Like I said, it's really hard.



But maybe not so bad.



And her head gets lower...



And then finally we face plant. Sometimes she'll just lay there with her cheek on the floor, but more often that's when the screaming begins.

Like Three Weeks Ago

I am so crazy behind. We're going to catch up, though, without skimping on the pictures! This was Mac's drawing, and POTD 4/12/10. I have finally started letting her use markers to color with. And she's done a fairly good job. She really went to town on this drawing. Usually her drawing sessions result in a couple circles and maybe some scribbles.



POTD 4/13/10: Finally finished my mom's skirt for my brother's wedding. And because I'm writing this much past the fact, I can also report that it will not be worn for said wedding. The fabric is all wrong for the pattern, and the skirt was not flattering. Darn it. But it was well sewn!



Miriam 4/13/10: 2 month mark! Commemorated with a visit to the doctor's office, complete with shots! Mimi is doing great--weighing in at 13 lbs. 1 oz. (50th percentile), and measuring at 24 inches long--95th percentile. She's Brad's daughter. I was wondering why she was growing out of all her 0-3 stuff! She's long! I think she may have had a reaction to the rotavirus vaccine they are giving now, because that night and the next morning, she was throwing up bright yellow bile. Super.



POTD 4/14/10: While Brad and Leiden were gone, I got to cook whatever I wanted--with Brad gone, that usually means fish. This night's menu was salmon, couscous, and lima beans. Mac said she was eating 'goose-goose'.



A little blurry--how did I ever get good or even decent quality pictures with my point and shoot? Brad and Leiden took my good camera to Europe, so I was left with sub par pictures while they were gone. But an awfully cute little girl! Mimi 4/14/10:

NLBook

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Safely Home

Just letting you all know Brad and Leiden, by some miracle, arrived home last night! Brad broke down (and got EXCEPTIONALLY lucky), and purchased outrageously expensive tickets, or they would have been there for weeks.

Pictures are to come--I haven't even seen them yet, but I think there are a lot!

Some Footage

Really long video, but there are about 5 seconds that make it all worth it as far as I'm concerned. It's frustrating, because without the camera (this weird blue thing in mom's face), she was making A LOT of noise. But, take what you can get!

Mac just recently started doing this.

Jet Setters

For any of you who don't know, Brad and Leiden took off to Amsterdam on 4/11. Here's Mimi taking them to the airport for Miriam 4/11/10:



Leiden and Brad when we dropped them off. Leiden was very excited. Mac wasn't quite sure why she wasn't getting to go on a plane, and talked about getting on an airplane and going to the 'orport' for days afterward. I was gearing myself up for a week in this apartment without them and feeling kind of weird about the whole thing. They were going to be gone until the following Saturday, and I already had all kinds of plans for their return. POTD 4/11/10:



And then this happened on Wednesday.



Brad and Leiden are stuck over there in Amsterdam. Flights on Delta appear to be cancelled through 4/20 at least, and they non-revved over there, so they are flying standby. We're not really sure at all when we'll see them again. Brad over there and us here in the States appear to be getting very different reports, so it's impossible to know.

On the upside, Leiden has been behaving very well for Brad, although we're waiting for the homesickness to set in. She has had a great time there, but any day now we're worried she'll just wake up and want to come home. At any rate, Brad and Leiden are in a much better situation than many people stranded over there. But keep them and us in your prayers--we miss Daddy and they miss Mommy!

Honeymoon

This was the calm before the storm. We enjoyed a beautiful Saturday before Brad and Leiden left for Amsterdam. Brad had just gotten home from Florida the day before and so we got some time with him. He took the girls out for a trip to the park with some popcorn for a snack. POTD 4/10/10:



Brad got some new boots for work, and Leiden thought they were pretty cool.



Sweet Mimi.

Miriam 4/10/10:

Randomness to Get Caught Up

Here are some pics to start the catching up process. Here's Mimi with a cute little face.



Mimi has started batting at her toys, which makes her playtime a little more interactive. No purposeful grabbing, but just smacking stuff. Miriam 4/8/10:



Brad had to go out of town a couple weeks ago, and while he was gone, I had all three kids to entertain. So, one night we went and got the stuff for ice cream sundaes.



Both girls tucked right in. There was marshmallow, chocolate mint, magic shell, and sprinkles.



This was the state of Mac's cone, which she chose to eat independently of the ice cream.



And this scary little picture makes the previous picture understandable.



Mimi is very tolerant of her sometimes-over-eager big sisters--particularly Mac!



Mac is great. She puts on her own shoes, and while she often puts them on the wrong feet, she can do it without help. Of course, when she doesn't get help, she likes the tongues out. POTD 4/9/10:



We had been sleeping Mimi in the carrier for some time, as she was spitting up a lot. Then it seemed like she was a little uncomfortable. So, this is Miriam 3/9/10, the first night back in the bassinet:

(This went really well, by the way! She started sleeping for 5 hours instead of three, and a couple nights we got over 6--then something happened the last two days and last night I was up with her 3 times. Grrr.)

Children's Museum

The girls love dinosaurs, so we headed off to the Children's Museum where there is a dinosaur exhibit. Mac LOVED the 'bog walk', which was squishy and soft. She probably walked over it 20 times.



Leiden loved digging for dinosaur bones. Although she was disappointed that there were no real ones.



There was a little table after storytime where the kids could paint their own faces with special crayons. This is POTD 4/8/10:

Leiden dressed up as a troodon. She ran around loudly growling at all the other kids.

We went to one other room there, where there's a little stream. Well, Mac and water go very well together. She was thrilled that I allowed her to play in water!

Fire Alarm

So last week while Brad was out of town and I was here in this apartment alone with the girls, I was just settling the baby down for the night at about 10:30. She was nursing, and pretty much asleep, while the other two had been sleeping for about 3 hours. I was pleased that the baby was sleeping, and hopeful that she would go down for the night. Then this little sucka went off.


Seriously. It's 10:30 at night, and the fire alarms are blaring through the whole apartment complex. And in an apartment complex, you never know what could be happening on just the other side of your wall. So, I put Mimi in her carrier in case we had to go far, found blankets to put on her, put a shirt on me, woke up the girls with their coats and shoes, and evacuated my apartment. (This was one of the nights it was 34 degrees outside, of course.) The girls were totally disoriented, and were a little afraid at the blaring noise, and were a little teary about the whole thing.

As I was shooing them down the hall, I started to notice what smelled like burned food. Not smoke like a fire, but just burned food. I'm thinking to myself, "So help me if we had to do all this because someone left their curry on the stove for too long." I then realized that was an unkind thing to think, and was grateful that there was the fire marshall standing there in the lobby, and firemen in full getup wandering around. Evidently there was not an open flame fire, just some smoke that set the alarm off.

So, when they allowed us back in, I shooed the girls back down the hall, helped them get their stuff off, said prayers with them as they were still a little shook up, and put them to bed again. Mimi, of course, was WIDE awake, and didn't go to bed that night until 12:30. Super.

The next night? I smoked up my apartment with a quesadilla left on the stove too long. Just not long enough for the alarm to go off.

(The picture, by the way, was the POTD 4/7/10.)

More Mimi

It seems like Mimi is a lot easier to take pictures of these days because her face has become more mobile with the advent of smiles. Miriam 365 for 4/6/10:

Brad's really funny--he always wants to put a clip or something in her hair and most of them are just big, but they sure look cute!

I've been really bad with tummy time with Mimi, but I'm trying to do better.

It hasn't seemed to affect her strength, though!

Love the looks of confusion. The whole world must be confusing to her!

Miriam 4/7/10:

For anyone interested, a few more are here.

New Library

We found the library the other day, and I was totally surprised to see that it is BRAND new--opened March 13. This means that everything in it is also new. It's like checking books out from Barnes and Noble. The girls don't care, but I think it's great.

All the shiny new books just waiting to be picked up.

All of them in their shiny new covers, and relatively clean. I always wonder if the last kid who checked out a book read it while they were home with the stomach flu or something equally gross. (It's the OCD talking.)

Certainly the highlight of the morning was this big, long bench that runs half the length of the building that the girls thought was a race track. This is POTD 4/6/10: