Natural Disaster Week

Doesn't that sound dramatic?  Natural Disaster Week.  It's a bit misleading, though.  Brandon experienced a slight tremor in his building at work during the earthquake, but the girls and I were oblivious to it.  I had no idea that we'd had an earthquake until a good 2 hours after the fact.

Brandon said that this is pretty much the same as his experience of the earthquake as well.  It was subtle enough to make them all wonder if they'd really felt what they thought they'd felt.  His text to me said "I'm not on any drugs, but I think we just had an earthquake."  

And then there's Miss Irene.  Earlier this week we were expecting to tangle with a category 3 or 4 hurricane this weekend. Thankfully, the storm has lost strength as it moved north and now they're projecting that it'll be down to a category 1, or even a tropical storm, by the time it reaches us.  I haven't relaxed completely yet, and I'm not going to until after the storm is well beyond us, but at least my stomach and shoulders have returned to normal.  In the mean time I will continue to prepare and pray that our hurricane experience will be as uneventful as the earthquake.

PS:  Irene passed by us on Saturday.  We fared very well; we never even lost power.  Yesterday was a gloriously bright, sunny day, and today promises the same.  I think we're going to the beach.

Rolling Over!

Kaylie started rolling over about a month or so ago, but I just got around to trying to get it on camera today.  I got some good pictures of her, though none of them are of her rolling.  I did get some video; if I can figure out how to get it on the computer, I'll share it with you.

New Shelves & Adventures in Toddlerland

There has been a giant clutter on Brandon's desk, and a giant blank space on the wall above Brandon's desk, ever since we moved in.  Then, my computer died, and Brandon's desk suddenly became our desk, and both things started to bother me more than they had before.  This is not to say that my desk (now my full-time craft table) was never cluttered, because is often was.  Is.  But it always reaches a point at which I have to clean it.  Brandon's desk was at that point.  

The answer??  Shelves.  We had a gift card from Home Depot that we hadn't used, and I thought this the perfect opportunity to get it out.  They had just the thing: black shelves with decorative silver brackets, to match his desk.  He hung the shelves Saturday, and today I moved the paper bins and wooden puzzle box up off of the desk, and raided our box of homeless decor items.  Then I cleaned the desk.  I really like the results.  I think the shelves could be a bit lower, but they were such a pain to hang that I'll not be asking him to move them.  

Oh, so much better!

Life with the girls is always interesting.  I was here at the computer, checking my e-mail Saturday morning, while Kaylie played in her exersaucer and Elora went back and forth between watching tv and playing with her sister.  Out of no where, I hear Elora say "Oh, Kaylie, you look so beautiful!"  I look over and see that she'd put her Firehouse hat on Kaylie, and I laughed.  Kylie turned toward me at the sound, and I saw that Elora had put her sunglasses on her as well. 

Oh. My. Word.  I had to take pictures with my phone and the camera, it was so cute.  Then, today, I left Elora at the table in her high chair to eat while I fed Kaylie.  The child loves peanut butter, and often eats it by the spoonful, so I thought nothing of leaving her with a spoonful of peanut butter.  This is what I found when Kaylie was done.

My first impulse  Let's just skip that.  I snapped a few pictures, and got her cleaned up.   I tried wet wipes first, but gave up and just put her in the bath.  I didn't want to reward that behavior, so I didn't let her play.  It was just get in, get clean, and get out.

Ugh.  What in the world possessed her to rub the PB all over like lotion?  Maybe because it is a bit like lotion. Especially Kaylie's Cetaphil... Oh well.  I'm sure I'll be able to laugh about it, later. 

Maybe tomorrow.

5 Months and Peguy's Visit

Little Miss Kylie is already 5 months old, and growing growing growing!  She's growing and changing so fast, I can hardly keep up.  She went for a check up on Monday, and is as healthy as can be.  She's up to 16 lbs 11oz, and is 26.5" tall.  That puts her in the 90th+ percentile for both weight and height.  (In other words, she's heavier and taller than more than 90% of other babies her age.)  She's still exclusively breast fed, but we'll be starting her on solid foods next month.  She cut her first 2 teeth only a few days apart in the past week or two.  She's getting more stable when sitting up every day, she's started scooting herself backward when on her tummy, and she can roll almost all the way over--she just gets her arm stuck underneath her.

Peguy came down to see us again last week, and we had a really great visit. Neil stayed home this time, but Tyler came with her, and she brought along her cousin, who is visiting from London.  It was a very lazy couple of days, in that we didn't really go anywhere or do anything.  But, sine we had a 2 year old, a 12 month old, and a 5 month old to look after, I'm not sure that "lazy" is the right word.  We spent a lot of our time refereeing between Tyler and Elora.  If the experience taught me anything, it's that we need to wait at last until Elora is in kindergarten before having any more children.  :)

We went for a walk late in the day on Friday, and ended up at the little neighborhood play ground.  All three of the kids got to swing, but we had to cut our play time short when it was discovered that Tyler needed a clean diaper.  (It wasn't until we got back that we realized that Elora needed one too.)

It's crazy...when we met 4 years ago, we were both newly arrived in Germany.  Neither of us had children. I'd already been bitten by the baby-bug, and Peguy was telling me that I was crazy to want a baby so young.  Now she's in Maryland, I'm in Virginia, and we both have kids.  Where will we be 4 years from now??