"Spring" 2011

It's been a wet, cold, sorry excuse for spring. (On the plus side, my tulips have never looked better. . .at least, the ones that didn't get eaten by deer.) But despite the lousy Smarch weather, we've stayed busy this spring. . .

April brought Ben's blessing. Grandma and I found his outfit at a store just down the street from us. Aunt Kellie says he looks like a character out of Jeeves & Wooster:


At his 2-month checkup, Ben weighed in at one ounce shy of 15 pounds, and the pediatrician remarked that he'd set the record for the biggest 2-month-old in their office. I felt pretty vindicated at this--a nurse in the hospital had hinted that I probably wouldn't be able to keep up with such a big baby. Ha. I ought to send that nurse a snapshot of his fat rolls:


In May, Jared took a day off of work to go with Elizabeth's kindergarten class on their field trip to the zoo:

They had a great time, and Elizabeth couldn't stop talking about the camels, the dinosaur statues, the snake slide. . .so a few weeks later, I took the kids to the zoo one evening. Between taking Anna potty every 20 minutes and dealing with a grouchy baby who decided he did NOT like the double stroller, it was a little stressful--but still fun. Major props to Elizabeth, who cheerfully (and competently) pushed Anna all over the zoo in the double stroller so I could carry Ben. We bought a zoo membership this year, so I've got all summer to master the art of singlehandedly taking the kids to a public venue without losing my mind. Or a kid. Maybe I'll even manage a photo or two. . .or maybe I'll leave the zoo photography to Jared. I've been to the zoo countless times and haven't gotten pics of the animals as good as these ones that Jared took:

May also brought Mother's Day. This year, along with breakfast in bed, the girls surprised me with a special message in Legos:

Anyone else reminded of old-school Nintendo games?

In between rain showers, Jared has been toiling away in the backyard. We'd planned on putting in a new fence on the south side of the yard sometime soon, but the decision to put one in ASAP was made for us by an impressive windstorm that hit our neighborhood over the winter and knocked down the old "fence". If you've seen our yard, you'll know why that's in quotation marks; when we tore out the overgrown shrubs along that side, it revealed a rather Hoovervillian structure that was more building pallets and slabs of particleboard than actual fencing:

(summer 2009)

To say the new fence is an improvement is something of an understatement:

"Something there is that does not love a wall."

That something is not my husband.

Not having many nice days to work in the yard, I've been puttering around the house instead. I set up a new sewing area in the basement with high hopes of sewing some summer dresses for Elizabeth; ready-made dresses are just too wide and too short for my long-legged grasshopper of a girl.

Oh, and did I mention she's flexible?

I also finally got around to taking care of Ben's "cradle cap". Those of you who've had babies with cradle cap know that nothing else invokes quite the same combination of satisfaction and repulsion as going after that stuff with some olive oil and a toothbrush:


And now it's June. Anna is about to turn four. Elizabeth is done with kindergarten. I'm feeling a little verklempt, even more than I did on her first day. I mean, now we're staring down the barrel at first grade. . .Full day! Lunch at school! TWO recesses! First grade is the big leagues.

Elizabeth at her kindergarten program

But we've got a nice long summer to enjoy before I start getting too sad about my girls going off to preschool and first grade in the fall. We're kicking off summer vacation with a marathon week of visiting cousins, swimming lessons, and Anna's birthday (which I'm determined to get pictures of this year!) Stay tuned.