Ramblings from Alabama

This is now the preferred stroller strolling method.  These girls sure can come up with some funny ideas.

So I’m changing Nora’s diaper on my bed, and Elise walks in and CLEARLY needs a diaper change herself.  (She is an every-other-day pooper, so every other day, I just about pass out from the, um….experience.)  I sent Elise out to fetch a diaper from her room and to give myself time to breathe again before she came back (Sorry, Elise.  I’m done teasing you now!)  Then we made an assembly line.  I was amazed at the size difference, and even more amazed to recall that Elise was Nora’s size when she was like 5 months old!  It is hard to believe that little Nora will be Elise’s size in two short years…maybe less!

Since it was close to the big girls’ nap time and I was in the diaper-changing mood anyway, I sent Mary to fetch her own diaper.  If only I had thought of that sooner and lined all three of them up, it would have saved me a good five minutes of valuable time…and made for a much better picture!  Oh, well.  At least in this picture I did get, Mary is showing you her toe-holding skills.  She likes to hold Bunny with her toes while getting her diaper changed.  Don’t ask me.  I have no idea how this one started.

More faces from my sweet baby Nora.

She is definitely smiling now. You know how at about 4 weeks, you wonder if they are “real” smiles? Well, they are real now. You can see it in her eyes and she does it in response to my playing with her and smiling at her, so I am convinced. Here is a picture I tried to get while we were playing. It is not easy to get a good shot of a smiling baby. The biggest problem is that she’s expecting to see my face for her entertainment, and the big camera is in the way! But I tried.

She likes this pose when Travis is holding her. Any guesses as to what she’s thinking? I sure would like to know.

While Aunt Cara was visiting here with us, she found a great deal (of course!) on an outdoor table and chairs for Mary and Elise. The day before M&E received the patio set, they got a tea set from our friend Paige. Naturally, an outdoor tea party was in order. Cara spent time with the girls teaching them about all the parts of the tea set and how to use them, down to the last detail. She even put tissues in each of the little napkin rings! Then it was tea time. We dined on water (for tea), fruit snacks, and cashews and had a ball.

Hannah came over yesterday, so of course we had to have another tea party!

Cara came up to visit us last Thursday, and has been here the whole week spoiling us all!

She loves to hold Nora, and Nora loves it, too.

When the pacifier stops being effective, Aunt Cara tries to fool Nora by letting her suck on her finger. That works for a little while, too, but you can’t fool a hungry baby forever!

M&E enjoy hanging out with “CaCa” and watching a movie with her in her bed. (Actually, this is one of their “big girl beds,” but since CaCa has slept in it, now there will probably be some fighting when they finally move into their new room. I can hear them now…”Leesie want CaCa’s bed!” “No, Mary gonna want CaCa’s bed!”)

We made chocolate banana smoothies and shared them outside under the tree, while Nora slept nearby with bugs falling all over her.

Cara has helped so much with the babies and with housework, but we always make sure there is time left for shopping. You can tell that we love a deal as all of our bags are from discount stores like Old Time Pottery, Ross, Thrift Mart, and the Dollar Tree. Seriously, all of the stuff you see here, plus about five other bags you don’t see, cost probably $100 or less…and we got some good stuff!

We have really enjoyed spending time with our friends and playing outside in the nice spring weather.

As you can see from this photo, my dear friends watch my kiddos for me while I sit around taking pictures!

Elise spends most of her time in the swing in a very relaxed state. I think I’d be on the verge of falling asleep after an hour of swinging, too! Here she is giving me her famous response to the command “Smile.” Maybe if I tell her to “Squint” instead, she will actually smile. There seems to be some confusion!

Eli thoroughly enjoyed the rocks and hardly noticed the 547 close calls he had while sitting directly in front of Elise’s swing. We tried to get him to scoot over but he was too engrossed in his project to hear us. We finally just moved him ourselves. Just in time, too…that 548th swing would’ve clobbered him!

Then there is Mary. You just never can predict what she will…or won’t…want to do out on the playground. Some days it’s the rocks, some days she just wanders the yard looking for treasures. Some days she wants to go right back inside. She’s a very unpredictable little girl!

Our little daredevil is Hannah. She is the one who taught Elise how to climb the playset at the church playground, and I think she will teach them how to climb this one, too. She has no fear trying to climb these ladders on our playground, which have rungs made of dowels and basically go straight up. So they’re not exactly designed for toddlers, but Hannah doesn’t care. She just goes for it! To keep her adventurous spirit going, Hannah stops occasionally for a quick cookie break.

Today at lunch, eating watermelon:

Elise:  It’s juicy!

Mommy:  The watermelon is juicy, huh?

Elise (dripping watermelon juice from her mouth, down her front):  It’s juicy in my knee!

Mommy (thinking to herself):  This is getting messy.

Elise (more dripping, and on her 500th piece of watermelon, at least):  It’s juicy in my booster and my knee!

Mommy:  OK, last piece of watermelon!  (I have to call “last one” on them for several foods, or they will eat themselves into oblivion…and, in the case of the watermelon, soak the entire kitchen in watermelon “juicy.”  Some of these foods are grapes, watermelon, cashews, chips.  They simply cannot stop themselves!) 

Today, after nap:

Mommy (extracting a large booger from Mary’s nose and then showing it to her…yes, I showed it to her):  Wow, Mary, that was a big booger!

Mary:  Cawwww….leeee!  (This is Cajun for “Golly,” or something to that effect.  She picked it up when MaMa came to visit and it has really stuck!) 

Nora is a big baby.  I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with a big baby.  I guess I will just keep feeding her.  She seems to like it!

We went yesterday for Nora’s two week check-up, although really she is three weeks today.  Yesterday she was 22 1/4 inches long (95th percentile) and 10 lbs 1 oz (90th percentile).  Everything checked out fine with her and the doctor has no concerns.

As a comparison, Mary and Elise didn’t hit the 10 pound mark until somewhere between 4 and 5 months.  I suppose that’s the difference between being born 10 weeks early versus 1 week late!

Sleeping beauty…

The froggy pose…

Well, I am not done, but I can procrastinate on the rest, so I guess I am done…  I strongly recommend thinking things through before you begin a project of this magnitude.  Talk about snowball effect.  Anyway, 4 days later and a few helping hands from Mike and John and 4 pallets of sod have been put down.  I won’t go into all of the dirty, painful, stressful details.  I will just post the pics of the near complete project.