Baths, Hats, Caterpillars, Cousins, Mud and Love!

First bath - checking out the mirror.

 

Wearing the hat Grandma Rosie made for her.  We didn't know if we were having a boy or a girl, but I guess Grandma knew, because she made a pink hat!

 A friend of mine made this adorable hat for Lily.

Mary and Joey each made a fuzzy caterpillar with some friends.  They stuffed old nylon stockings with dirt and grass seed and decorated them.  Mary's grew up really nice and full!  She loves giving it haircuts!

Joey's ended up a bit more scruffy looking.  Love his face in this photo!

This picture is for Aunt Malorie - this is a dress she gave to Mary when she was a baby.  Lily says "Hello!"

Lily with her cousin Autumn, who is six months older.  They are already quite the pair!

Park day with friends.  It was a bit muddy, but still fun!  Mary and Joey had so much fun that they ended up riding home in the car naked with their muddy clothes in plastic bags!

Mary and Joey are always trying to give toys to Lily.  They put this turtle next to her so she would have something to look at when she woke up.

They both love to hold her.  Here is Mary and Lily together.  Lots of times when I ask Joey to do something now, like come upstairs or whatever, he'll say "Hold on, I just need to check on Lily!" and before he will go to bed he'll say "Just one more kiss for Lily!"

New Addition!

The newest member of our family has arrived - Lily Rose Marie!  Here is a snapshot of her first week.  You can click on the pictures to view a larger size image.

Born at home at 2:18 am on Monday, March 21st, the first day of spring!  She weighed 8 lbs 5 oz and was 21 inches long.  She was born in the caul, or with the amniotic sac intact, which is quite rare and some say is a sign of good luck.

 Lily and Daddy, minutes after birth.

 

 First morning!

Joey holds Lily for the first time and gives her a kiss.  He kept saying things like "She's so little!", "She's so smooth!", and "She's so nice!"

Mary holds Lily for the first time.  She says she *knew* the whole time it would be a girl, even the times when she *said* she thought it would be a boy.  She got to watch Lily being born.

Future Disc Golf Player!

Sleep smile!

Sisters!

Sweet face!

More sleepy smiles!

Lily went to watch Mary's final ballet class - the students were demonstrating for their families everything they learned in the past eight weeks.  We all thought Mary was the most poised ballerina of the five in the class!

Cute cloth diaper shot!  Her face looks much less squashed in after a few days.

Saturday - first trip to the library!  We had to go pick up the new Doctor Who series that dad had on hold.

They had a bunch of big vehicles at the library and Joey got to drive a fire truck and blow the horn!  There was also a police car, ambulance, excavator, and dump truck.

 

First trip to church on Sunday!  The congregation sang "Happy Birthday" to Lily, and Mary and Joey got to ring the church bell for her birthday.  She slept through the whole thing.

  

Another super cute diaper shot!

 

Giving dad a big hug.

 

Mom and Lily.

Long Overdue Update

Wow, it's been a long time!  Things got busy with the holidays, and then we were out of town on vacation, so I'm sorry for those of you who were waiting for an update!  Here's some snapshots from the past several weeks.

Hilarious picture of Joey dressed up in a pair of Joe's shorts, with guns.

Joey playing with one of our new Christmas presents.

Mary and Joey sledding at Grandma and Grandpa's House.

Mom and Dad on vacation at the Rose Bowl.

Mary throwing confetti at her first ever sleepover at a friend's house.

Hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things with some more updates soon!

December Begins!

Winter is really here - it seems that all of a sudden it is REALLY cold outside!  We had our first dusting of snow on December 2nd and Mary and Joey couldn't wait to go outside!  There really wasn't much snow at all, as you can see in the picture.  But they still had fun.

Mary made a "nest" out of grass and leaves and sticks and filled it with snow.  She has been nest-building a lot lately, both inside the house and out!  Inside, she makes nests out of blankets and pillows and cozies up inside like a baby bird.  She and Joey also like to cover up with blankets and pretend to be birds hatching out of eggs.  Lots of times Joey prefers to be a baby dinosaur instead.

We had to make a stop at the Walmart pharmacy to pick up a prescription and the wait turned out to be incredibly long.  To pass the time Joey and I made faces and took pictures with the camera.

One of Joey's most favorite things to do is play the drums.  Joe and I were downstairs working on a project and the kids were playing upstairs.  I heard a lot of banging around in the kitchen and went up and discovered that they had built their own drumset!

On December 4th we had our first measurable snow so we all got our snow gear on and went outside to clear the driveway and sidewalk.  Here is a picture of the kids all bundled up to go outside.  I didn't get any pictures of the snow, so you'll have to use your imagination.  It was kind of nice to have snow on the ground because I'm always having a hard time keeping track of Joey outside, but now I am able to tell where he went because he leaves footprints!  The kids made lots of snow angels and enjoyed making tracks in the snow.  We tried to make a snow man but the snow just wasn't packing enough, so we made a snow mountain instead.  Hopefully we can go sledding soon!

Math and Jelly Faces

On Saturday evening I was working on something in the kitchen and dad was downstairs with Joey.  Mary brought a piece of construction paper and a crayon to the kitchen table and appeared to be drawing.  I noticed she was counting on her fingers from time to time.  Suddenly she said, "Hey, did you know that I know how to do math?"  I came over and looked and she proudly showed me this.  She did it all on her own!  I was pretty much blown away - I didn't even realize she knew the notation for simple addition sentences.  I'm continually amazed by the things my kids learn and internalize just by being curious and observant and engaged in the world around them.  For example, when Joey first really started talking one of the first things he said was counting from one to ten out loud.  I didn't know he knew how to do that! 

Today (Sunday) was pretty low key.  We had some family over for a Packer Party.  After the game we played Just Dance on our new Wii.  Mary loves this game!  We're borrowing it from a friend, but I'm thinking we'll have to buy our own copy soon.  Here is a picture of Joey with his "Scoop" loader.  I just put fresh batteries in it so he's super happy.  Mary was hungry for a snack and asked for toast with butter and a jelly face, so that's what they had.  Yum!

The Rest of the Week

So I was aiming for a new blog post every day, but maybe that goal was a bit too lofty.  I did manage to take some pictures every day, so I'm still quite proud of my efforts.

TUESDAY: Mary and I went to go see a performance of Strega Nona at the Wilson Center with a local homeschooling group.  Since so many of her friends have started preschool or kindergarten this year I've been reaching out to homeschooling groups to expand her circle of friends to hang out with during the day.  Mary really enjoyed the performance, and afterwards we spent some time playing in the park with new friends.  Then we drove over to the mall to go to Barnes & Noble.  Mary had saved up $10 from her allowance and wanted to go there to shop.   I have been trying to take her places other than Walmart to spend her money because it seems like most of the things there are plastic and cheap.  There were so many cool things at Barnes & Noble that we ended up spending a couple of hours there before she settled on her purchase - a reusable sticker set that came with a bakery scene and several pastries that you could design and decorate.

By the time we were ready to head for home Mary was pretty hungry.  I had packed the peanut butter balls we made the day before, some fruit strips, and water but we finished that off pretty quickly at the park.  Mary really wanted to get something at the Barnes & Noble cafe, but I suggested we stop at Pick 'N Save for doughnuts on the way home instead because they were much cheaper there.  So that's what we did, and we picked one out to bring home for Joey.  As you can see, he really enjoyed it!

WEDNESDAY: Today we decided to go and buy a new van!  Our car has been giving us more and more trouble lately, so we haven't been driving it much.  We didn't want to put any money into repairing it because we've been planning on trading it in for a van before the new baby comes.  So we've been shopping around for awhile now and Joe finally found a van that we like at a really good price.  We called ahead to tell the dealer which vehicle we wanted so it would be ready when we got there.  We had other errands to run, and really didn't think it would take that long to finalize all the paperwork and whatnot.  However, it was almost SEVEN HOURS before we were able to drive our new van home.  So many things took much longer than anticipated, and there were some issues with the keys/security system on the van so a locksmith had to be called in to make new keys.  It was very frustrating to be waiting so long inside the dealership, and especially more so for Mary and Joey.  Still, I think they held up rather well.  Mary wore her one of her Christmas dresses all day - she's really excited for the holidays because she has several winter/Christmas dresses she's been wanting to wear for a long time.  Even though we had a bad experience at the dealership, we really like our new van and I'm happy to finally have my own vehicle to drive so we don't end up trapped in the house while dad is away at work.

Our new van!  Tra-la-la!

THURSDAY: Mary spent the morning dressing up.  She tried on a few outfits and settled on Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.  She asked me to braid her hair so that she looked more like Dorothy.  She even found a dog to be Toto and a basket to carry him in.  In the afternoon Mary and Joey went to play at Grandma Terri's house so Joe and I could go to Home Depot and shop for a new hot water heater.  We talked to a man there who was extremely helpful, and he gave us a suggestion about how to try repair our water heater ourselves for around $10.  We also learned that our water heater was much newer than we thought (we weren't sure since it came with the house) and might still be covered under a manufacturer's warranty, so that's good news.  Joe is going to try to fix it, and if the $10 fix doesn't work then the problem is likely to be too costly to repair and we'll end up buying a new water heater.  I think we'll probably go with a tankless one - endless hot water sounds pretty good and with the energy tax credit wouldn't cost much more than a conventional storage tank water heater.

FRIDAY: Today the kids and I went to a workshop with a local homeschool group called "Theater Fun 101" at the Waukesha Civic Theater.  The kids got a tour of the theater first - it was really neat to get to go up on stage and to see all of the costumes in storage and other backstage things.  Then they did a little acting workshop for the kids - and it was all free!  Mary seemed to have a good time.  The room where they did the workshop is affectionately called "the hat room" because the entire ceiling is covered with hats!  It seems that hanging is the best way to store them so they don't get crushed in boxes.  Afterwards we went into a few little shops on Main Street just for fun, and then both kids fell asleep on the way home which is how I found time to update this blog! 

Monday, Monday

This morning we got out the paints and created a table full of paintings. We're going to use the painted paper to make leaves for our Thankful Tree soon, hopefully.

We made peanut butter play dough - yummy! We made most of it into peanut butter balls, but Mary made a snowman and a bunch of worms and tadpoles too.















For lunch we had pasta with shrimp and crab meat and some of the homemade applesauce we made yesterday. Mmmmmm! Since the table was covered with paintings, we built a fort in the basement and had a picnic lunch inside.

After lunch we went outside to get the mail, and that turned into a walk in the woods in our backyard. We played in the woods and the sun and the leaves for awhile and then went back in the house.

I finally got Joey to take a nap without a huge struggle. I could tell he was getting tired because everything Mary picked up to play with he tried to grab away from her saying, "Mine! I need that!" So I carried up to my bed and got him to calm down and then we sang finger play songs like "Two Little Blackbirds" and "Where is Thumbkin?" and "Little Bunny Foo-Foo." Then he kept asking for "The Ring Song" which I finally figured out was his name for "The Twelve Days of Christmas" from the line about the five golden rings. He fell asleep around the tenth day.

While he was sleeping, Mary and I played board games. First we played Pizza Party (one of my favorites from when I was little!), and then Disney Princess Monopoly Jr., and then Ribbit. Mary was making all her own change during Monopoly, which she hasn't really done before so that was cool.

After dad got home from work we had supper and then we all went the library. Then we went home and hung out until bed time. Fabulous Monday!