So I finally got the pictures off of our camera and ready for another blog post. It's going to be a long one. Scroll down slowly and enjoy it, because it might be another month before you see a new post!
Here's a picture of me and my three babies on Mother's Day.
And here's Lily giving me a great big smile. Happy Mother's Day, Mom!
Chilling with Dad on the patio at Grandma and Grandpa's house. We grilled out with them for Mother's Day - beautiful weather for it.
After dinner we played Bocce ball in their backyard. Mary found a beautiful butterfly - black with blue and yellow spots on the wings. It was fairly large too, we don't usually see butterflies like this one.
I had my six week postpartum checkup with my wonderful midwife, LaNette. Everything is going great - Lily and I are doing awesome. I have officially packed up all of my maternity clothes and am back into my normal clothes. I still have an extra five or ten pounds hanging around, but I'm sure they'll go away soon enough. Here is a picture of Lily and the hands that helped bring her into the world.
It's great that the weather is warm enough for us to get outside more. Here is Mary playing on a friend's swing set.
I finally finished sewing the diaper bag that I started two years ago! Woo-hoo! I was going to make it when Joey was still in diapers, but I didn't finish it and then he was potty trained so I didn't really need it. It's such an awesome bag that I wish I would have finished it sooner - I can definitely see myself using it even after Lily's out of diapers. The tutorial is well done and it wasn't actually that hard to sew. I'm considering making myself another one so I can have some options when I go out and about. Hopefully it won't take another two years!
We went on a field trip to Angelic Organics Farm with a homeschool group. It was super fun. Joey loved seeing all the animals. Here he is feeding grass to a goat.
And here he is trying to get a cow to eat a leaf.
Here is Mary holding a chicken.
And Joey petting a baby goat.
Mary even got to milk a goat! The kids made their own cheese from goats' milk, and we ate it with freshly picked spinach and oregano from the farm. It was awesomely delicious.
We go out and about a lot, but some days we spend at home. On this day we got out the paints. As you can see, Joey is a serious artist.
Here is Mary working on a rainbow scene.
We also visited the Waukesha County Museum with Grandma and some aunts and cousins. One exhibit was on famous movie producers from Waukesha. They had a little theater playing a short piece from a silent black and white film. Mary and Joey loved it! Especially Joey - he watched it over and over. It showed a woman tied to some train tracks, and a dog saves her by running for help and they pull her out from under the train at the last minute and then catch the bad guy who tied her up.
Who knew that my kids liked silent film? I might try and check some out from the library.
Would you believe I remembered to take a two month photo?
I think Lily was happy I remembered.
We had an extended Memorial Day weekend vacation on the Mississippi River at Joe's parent's new cabin on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. Here is the spectacular view from their deck. Click to enlarge!
Mary and Joey building a tower on the deck. They have their disagreements, but mostly they get along well.
Family picture! We took a LOT of photos trying to get everyone smiling and this was the best one. Some of the others were quite humorous, but this post is already long.
We have a zoo pass for the Milwaukee County Zoo and go there once a week, usually. Here is a picture of an elephant and my little monkey. I like to dress him in bright colors at the zoo so I can spot him more easily. If there's ever a school or daycare group that comes in all tie-dye I might be in trouble.
Another day at home. This time - play dough! Mary made me a dessert plate of chocolate ice cream with cherries on top, a cookie with red icing, and I can't remember what the other red thing was but I'm sure it was something else yummy.
She also made a plate for Lily. You can see what Lily thought of it.
Close up of my pretty little baby. Her eyes are getting darker and darker - I think they will end up brown, but we'll see.
Joey made something out of play dough too! He told me it was a belly. I forget why he is only in underwear. Sometimes things just happen to your clothes when you are a little boy, I guess!
Lily chilling on the couch. I love how babies sleep with their arms thrown over their heads.
Mary loves to take pictures with the camera. Here is a self portrait of my little photographer.
Another day at home. We built our own ice cream stand using things from around the house. Mary and Joey have fun ordering ice cream cones and making them up. We had five different flavors of cones, five different ice cream flavors, and cherries, cookies, and candy wafers to put on top.
Here Mary is serving me a delicious ice cream cone.
Lily has started teething already! It doesn't seem to bother her too much - she's only had a couple of fussy evenings. She is drooling a lot though, and wants to chew on things all the time. She's not super great at holding things in her own mouth yet though. Usually she can get her hands in her mouth, but she ends up choking herself pretty often by shoving them in too far - poor thing! Here she is with a wooden hippo teether for the first time. She seemed to like it, but it was kind of hard for her to keep it in her mouth for very long. That hippo just kept jumping out of her hand and onto the floor!
The zoo has a special exhibit on butterflies for the summer, and we went to go see it earlier this week. Here Joey is trying to coax a butterfly onto his hand.
They handed out laminated cards naming all the butterflies in the exhibit. Mary liked being able to find the ones she saw on the card.
So that's the end of this one! I will try to post more about our summer fun - I'm sure there will be a lot of it!
