Sara's 3!

Happy Birthday Sara!

Yup, she is the big T-H-R-E-E now! Needless to say she is pretty darn excited about it. Sara has had a fun day today. She wanted and helped make biscuits for breakfast, saw that we have two very young baby deer in our backyard, and opened some presents already. She is looking forward to more play time and cake, of course, later after her nap.



She has definitely grown a lot since last year.

Smiles..

Yes, a certain little one is becoming all smiles, which is a lot of fun. Hard to believe that she will be turning 3 months old this week, and her big sister will turn 3 years old a week later!

The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic with the end of the semester, Danette starting back to work, and Abby starting day care. Just to top it all off, I took my first trip since Abby was born, leaving Mom with the two girls. Fortunately, it went reasonably well... Sara was even a decent helper with Abby in the evenings.

The girls are starting to interact more, which is fun to watch. Sara clearly enjoys having a little sister even as she struggles with the level of attention she is getting relative to before. Fortunately, even that is settling down a little.

Abby seems to really be growing, getting bigger and longer all the time. The smiles are fun, but she is still a pretty serious girl, undoubtedly a function of her belly... but even that is better than a month ago. There are many times when she is clearly fascinated watching Sara and we expect that will definitely continue.

And in other news: Happy Birthday Grandpa H.!

Abby goes to school!

So, Abby hit the 10 weeks mark last Friday, and today she went to school for the first time. She is in the same room that Sara was in as a little baby, which is nice for us. There was more than a bit of trepidation around here about how today would go. Little Abby had decided recently that she was going to refuse (at length, and at the top of her lungs) bottles from her father the last week to ten days. This was quite a switch from her big sister who has always had rather strong fond feelings for food, regardless of source. However, Abby did fine today... she ate enough, though no marathon sessions of feeding. Regardless, she ate and is a good sign, we hope. She was all smiles and had a good time today. Her big sister even walked over with one of her teachers and some of the other kids with younger siblings to check them all out.

Abby has definitely been more smiley and interactive lately. It has been fun for all of us... she is also getting more into watching her big sister, which is fun to watch too. The last couple of weeks she has been pushing the envelope of sleeping, and we even reached a nominal 'all through the night' last night, which was good timing! Abby is not horribly consistent on these things so far, but we are definitely going in the right direction.

Things have been a little hectic around here since the last post. This includes some increasing rebellion from our eldest, and basic grumpiness to boot. Not quite as easy-going and carefree as we are used to, but we are doing our best to cope and redirect in a positive way... though our creativity is often challenged. And of course, it is the end of the semester for me and Danette headed back to work today.

We have had some good weather lately, and tried to get outside. I am looking forward to the trees being done with their acts of procreation so they can leave me alone, but otherwise it has been nice. Heck, we have had several visits to the park, and even our first visit to the outside portion of the Zoo yesterday.

Ah well, here are those pictures you wanted to see....



in the back yard



big red chair


Abby at the zoo



animal watching