thanksgiving in boise

we just got back from a trip to boise to celebrate thanksgiving with randy's family. i took very few pictures, and the ones i do have aren't great. oh well. the one above is lainey and madeleine eating thanksgiving dinner. as i predicted, my girls took a few bites and then ran off to go play. something about lots of people, cousins, and grammy's toys around made it hard to focus on food.

the whole group. there were twenty-one people and it was great to see so much of randy's family. 

even though i didn't get lots of pictures, i did get pictures of the centerpieces that randy's mom made. 

and the place cards that i made. they're little mayflower boats. get it? 

before we left, the girls got to open christmas presents from bob and jeanie, since we won't be with them on christmas. it meant that they were well entertained in the car. diane wasn't sure about what was going on at first, but saw madeleine tearing into hers and caught on pretty quickly. good practice for christmas day.

we had such a great time and loved being with family for the holiday. thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays - family, food, and a chance to reflect on the things that we are grateful for.

first pictures

i had my twenty week ultrasound today and found out that we're having a baby boy!* a change-up to the routine will be exciting and different for us. randy and i would have been thrilled with either, but madeleine has been telling us for a few weeks now that the baby is going to be a boy because she already has a little sister. i guess this made it easier, rather than having to explain her faulty logic, as well as laws of genetics.

everything else looked healthy and i am on track with my due date, so this boy should be debuting some time around april 8th next year.

i love finding out the gender of my baby. i know that some people like to be surprised, but i am not one of them. this is when i bond with my baby. it enables me to stop thinking of my baby as a little parasite inside of me that makes me sick and uncomfortable (twenty weeks is also when i start to feel much better, so that probably contributes to this feeling) and start thinking of it as a real, live, baby that is growing inside of me and that is eventually going to join our family. if the ultrasound technician could not pinpoint the gender, i would fully be willing to pay out of pocket for an elective ultrasound. how did they do it back in the day? the suspense, not childbirth, would have been what killed me.

i love being able to put not just a pronoun with the baby, but a name. once again, i know that there are people who like to wait and meet their baby before they pin a name on them and i understand that, but again, i am not one of them. with all of our babies, we have given them a name within a day or two of the ultrasound and stuck with it. being able to call the baby by name when referring to it helps me bond with it and think of it as a real person.

i can't wait to meet this one in person.

as i side, i just have to mention that ultrasounds baffle me. this is my fourth one (i had two with madeleine because they couldn't get some measurements the first time) and i was only slightly less lost this time. the ultrasound technician cruises around my stomach, announcing grey fuzzy spots as kidneys, amniotic fluid (although that is actually black), and other body parts, but it all looks sketchy to me. she could be shooting from the hip most of the time and i would have no idea. i also do not understand how she can be showing me the brain one second, move the wand (i'm sure this is the technical term) a fraction of an inch, and suddenly we're looking at the feet. it's a topsy-turvy, magical thing to me. but as long as she can clearly decipher which gray fuzzy spots belong to which gender, i'm happy.

*surprise! to those of you that did not know i was pregnant.

phone photo dump

 some of these pictures are from quite a while ago. i may or may not sync my phone approximately twice a year. 

 just picking out a morning outfit.

testing out "joker," as a halloween costume. we went with candy corn instead. a little more age appropriate. 

my ragamuffin. she has gotten better, but she used to end up with most of her dinner in her hair by the time the meal was over. 

 

along the same vein... can you see that red object in her hair? yes, that is a fruit snack. and yes, we did take her out in public like that. i could explain the circumstances and why it wasn't removed before we went out in public, but the details are more complicated than i care to go into and i don't have to explain myself all of the time on my blog. suffice it to say it wasn't my proudest moment as a mother. 

one of our summer picnics in the park. i love my mountain backdrop.

another picnic day.

 

diane has been transitioning to one nap lately. it doesn't always go so smoothly though. sometimes she falls asleep when i would rather she doesn't.

art mornings in our living room.

the girls helping me smash the leaves down in the dumpster. one of their favorite jobs.

a most wonderful surprise

last week, i received a package in the mail, which is always exciting, but this was a package of the best kind. an unexpected package. not a birthday in sight, christmas still a ways off, and no prior warning of the package's arrival. to top it all off, it was from one of my dearest friends.

and then i opened it.

it was a book by emily gravett. i have blogged about emily gravett before. i love her children's books. really great illustrations and simple, sweet, and clever stories. this dear friend had asked for recommendations on children's books a while ago and emily gravett is one of the authors that i recommended.

but i had never heard of this book before. 

cover

the rabbit problem.

i will try to describe the book, but words don't do it justice. it is a book that you have to handle and examine to really appreciate it.

it is a book about fibonacci's rabbit problem from the perspective of the rabbits. but as the back of the book says, this is not a book about math (although i think that it is so much more enjoyable for us math nerds).

inside cover

the book is in calendar form, due to the monthly nature of the fibonacci problem. each page spread is a calendar page (which means that you get to turn the book sideways while you read it), filled with illustrations, notes scribbled on the calendar, and three dimensional pamphlets, booklets, etc. that relate to the month. reading the book was a delightful textural experience and i spent an hour pouring over the pages last night. i imagine that i will notice new things each time that i pick up the book.

february's spread

the details are stunning and it is one of the best tactile experiences i have ever had with a book. i highly recommend it. if you're really nice, you can come over and look through mine.

thank you, liz, this was such a thoughtful and delightful surprise.

in the wee small hours of the morning

every afternoon, madeleine and i get about an hour of time to ourselves. just the two of us.

after an hour of quiet time (i use the term loosely), i sneak into her room and tell her that she can come out. diane, blessed child that still takes a nap, stays asleep about an hour longer than madeleine's quiet time.  as we creep out of the room, madeleine whispers to me, "i want to do something fun." those exact words pretty much every day.

and pretty much every day, she picks painting as her something fun. that girl could watercolor for hours. and since diane could eat paint for hours, it's the perfect activity to do during our one-on-one time. and as soon as we hear diane wake up, madeleine's job is to go distract her in her crib while i put away the paint supplies. we have it down to a system.

lately, i've been praying to know how i can spend more one on one time with diane. i feel like she gets neglected sometimes because she is younger and more easy going than madeleine. plus, there just hasn't been time where she is awake and madeleine isn't.

except occasionally in the morning when she wakes up before madeleine and i can sneak her out of her room without waking up madeleine. and the last few days, she has consistently woken up much earlier than madeleine. given my extreme morning fatigue recently, i have answered that opportunity by putting diane in front of an episode of sesame street and going back to bed myself.

but this morning, when i was a little bit more with it than usual in the morning, i had the strong thought that this was my answer. this is my one-on-one time with diane. really? 5:30 in the morning?

but i went with it. as we slowly turned on the dimmest lights in the house to adjust our eyes to daylight (or the lack thereof at such an hour), i crept back into madeleine's room to retrieve some puzzles. i couldn't find diane's favorite one that she carries around with her all day, so we went on a dimly lit treasure hunt and finally found it safely stowed under the kitchen table.

we spent the next hour doing three puzzles over and over. lots of quiet clapping after each one was completed and then promptly dumped over to be done again. after puzzle fest 2011, we went into the kitchen and ate cereal at the table together. one of us ate her cereal in a very dramatic manner and drank the milk afterward. it wasn't me. i never drink my milk.

and then madeleine woke up. and i put away the proverbial paint while madeleine quickly began to dominate the scene with her made up songs and long, dramatic stories. the lights came on and the curtain closed on our intimate time together.

maybe i'll get to bed at a decent hour and be up for it again tomorrow morning. it was a surprisingly pleasant way to spend the five o'clock hour.

autumn leaves

we have a large tree in our backyard that has been depositing its leaves in our yard for the last month. this leads to lots of raking, which the girls love. madeleine has me make her a "nest," and then she spends the rest of the time trying to convince diane, her "baby bird," to come and join her in the nest. baby bird would rather flit about the yard though, wielding a rake, or seeking our decaying vegetables from our garden that i mostly have torn out but still has some vegetables lying in the ruins.

here are more pictures of my children than most people care to look at: