September 30

Here are some pictures of a happy, smiley baby:

You know, because I didn't take any pictures of her all day, so I had to take a few at bedtime, in crummy light.

But at least she's happy and adorable, with a darling little bit of drool trickling out of her mouth. :)

It was a busy day - playdate with Amber and her kids, then home late, rushed everyone off to naps, used my food processor for five different food items over the course of the afternoon... One of those kind of days.

And this girl? The one who won't sleep for us in the evenings? Fell asleep in her swing, in my kitchen, with all the lights on, while I was using my food processor.

Really.

I will never understand babies.

September 29

This girl.

Oh, this girl.

She's a charmer all day, and then bedtime rolls around and all she wants to do is scream!

Last night was another milk volcano - she nursed happily, I burped her, she nursed some more, and then she stopped and smiled at me. I thought to myself, "Wow! She's stopped nursing because she is full and content, not because she's asleep! How wonderful and odd!" Of course, thirty minutes before, I had thought to myself, "Gee! Lily hasn't puked milk all over me in at least a week! That's great! Maybe I should change the sheets!"

And then my smiling baby opened her mouth and - without any warning - torrents of milk gushed forth, until I found myself sitting in pool of milk on my clean sheets. 

*sigh*

Good thing we have really effective waterproof mattress pads!

Good thing I love her.

Good thing I have a great sense of humor.

Today was a productive day. Chris stayed home from church and painted Lily's room; when I came home I did the trim and touched things up. Then Chris replaced the old, dingy electrical outlets and covers, and we moved furniture around.

The girl is ten weeks old, but we finally almost have a nursery ready for her. 

Not that we're in a hurry to use it - we'll keep her in bed with us for a few more months, at least. Daisy stayed in our bed until she was nearly one, but I'm not sure we'll let Lily stay quite that long.

In the meantime, I plan to let her nap in her room, and use it as a quiet place to nurse her.  It's shaping up to be a really pleasant place! 

Now, if only I could find a way to get these Pottery Barn Kids curtains... I found a tutorial to make my own, but by the time I've factored in material, plus blackout fabric, plus my time to make them, it almost makes more sense to buy them...

September 28

All week, Caleb and Daisy have been begging to go apple picking - again.

Caleb has already been apple picking once this season, and Daisy twice. Either they really, really like apple picking so much that they can't stop thinking about it, or their book about a trip to an apple orchard keeps reminding them about it.

Regardless, they've been asking about it all week. So Chris and I decided that today was a good day to take them to a different apple orchard.

Poor Lily. Always getting dragged along on her brother and sister's adventures. At least she's a good sport about it!

Though Daisy is clearly shouting, "NO!", she was actually very excited to go apple picking.

The orchard offered hay rides out to pick apples, so of course we hopped up in the trailer. Chris really wanted to make sure Lily experienced as much of it as possible before we put her in the Ergo.

Caleb wasn't as thrilled as we thought he'd be about a hay ride.

Daisy, however, LOVED it!

Goodness. Can you see how chunky and big Lily is getting? Look at those arms!

Those thighs!

The girl's rolls are absolutely amazing to me, not because they're so impressive but just because Daisy never had any rolls.

Extreme close up! Darling baby!

The kids were old pros at apple picking. They didn't need any instruction at all!

Caleb only wanted the biggest, reddest, most perfect apples. Nothing less than the best for this boy!

This picture makes me melt.

Now that we have Lily around, it's easy to push Daisy into the "big girl" category. She has been doing so many awesome "big girl" things lately that it's easy to forget that she's only two. Not even two and a half yet, just two. She's still just a little girl! This picture reminds me of that, and reminds me how important it is to let her be a little girl as long as we can. She'll be a big girl for a really long time, but she's only a baby for a little while. 

And there she goes, trying to be a big girl.

That bag was too heavy for her!

My wonderful husbando chose to wear Lily in the Ergo, giving me a bit more freedom to enjoy the morning. What a good man he is.

After we finished picking apples, we headed to a play area. 

Caleb had the place to himself for a little while, and he took full advantage of it!

Love this shot! 

And then Daisy came up. I love how she's peeking around the corner, watching what her brother is doing.

And then her turn! She was so tickled about it!

Seriously, how cute are they?

I love that they're looking at each other, conferring about their pumpkinhood.

And this is how Lily spent the whole time. She may look smooshed, but the girl is so comfortable in there that she always falls right asleep. She slept through almost the whole apple picking session!

Daddy with two very happy girls. Love it!

September 27

Have I mentioned that I have the kids working on memorizing Scripture? We're on our second Bible verse so far, and it's going really well. Caleb and Daisy can both recite the verses we've worked on, and even explain what they mean. So far, I've chosen verses that I think are pertinent to my little ones and that have coloring sheets to go with them. Priorities, people.

Our verse this week:

It has a coloring sheet with Halloween-y stuff, which the kids are into right now. But more importantly, Daisy has become more fearful lately, and Caleb... well, Caleb has always been fearful. So when Daisy is afraid of the blinking red light on the smoke detector in her room during  nap time (true story), I remind her of our memory verse. She tells that red light, "NO, SIR. Do not be afraid, for I am with you!" and then goes back to sleep. Really. Scripture is powerful stuff!

We went grocery shopping this morning, and came home right before lunch. (Tangent: I opened the car door to get Lily out and found her staring happily at her feet. I feel like it's a bit early for her to have discovered them, but it's super cute and she really, really likes them. Funny!) I handed Daisy a bowl of plantain chips and turned around to make the rest of her lunch. When I looked back, I saw this: 

Girl knew she was being funny.

Today is Friday, which means (gluten free) Pizza Night! I'm currently reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. If you care about food, I highly recommend. Her family has pizza night every Friday, too, and she wrote about the beauty of children in the kitchen and each person decorating their own portion of the pizza. That got me thinking... Caleb and Daisy are perfectly capable of decorating their pizza! 

So I set out an amount of toppings I was comfortable with and let them go to town. They had so much fun, and I totally didn't care how it turned out because I wasn't eating the pizza!

(They got new tattoos today. Fun, huh? Each child found a freckle on his/her arm and asked that the butterfly be placed over the freckle.)

Ta da! Their finished product. They were quite proud.

Caleb quite appropriately named it "The Cheese Mountain" and went outside to find Daddy just to show off his handiwork. It was really cute.

When they weren't looking, I evenly distributed the cheese because this mama knows her children certainly won't be willing to eat cheese-less pizza.

After dinner, we had a massive clean-up effort, and then baths. Lily got her bath first, and I put her on Daisy's changing table to get jammy-ified.

She's really interested in Daisy's birds. She'll happily watch them for at least 15 minutes, which is really sweet.

Happy girl!

Does it look to you like she's getting her new hair in without ever having lost the old stuff? Interesting...

She's been sleeping well for me in the afternoons the past few days, but nighttime has been really, really rough. Girl will scream for an hour straight, and Chris and I just can't figure out how to make her happy. It seems that she's only happy when she's held just so. Otherwise, woe be upon you. Poor baby.

Poor Mommy and Daddy.

But it's just a season...

September 26

Okay, I'm calling it.

Aside from naps and nighttime, Daisy is potty trained. And she's almost there on the naps. Hooray!

We had a MOPS playdate today while Caleb was in school, but I didn't feel like bringing my big camera to take pictures of all of the cuteness. Then we picked Caleb up, came home, ate lunch, and napped. All three kids napped for three hours straight, which was beautiful. And Daisy has figured out that she can just get out of bed and come find me when she wakes up from her nap, so that's great, too.

Caleb woke up about thirty minutes before Daisy, while I was prepping things for dinner tonight. I had a last-minute change of plans for dinner, and realized I was a little bit short on butter. (A travesty, I know!) BUT, I had some heavy cream. So while the girls slept, Caleb and I decided to try making butter for the first time.

Normally he hates all loud noises, but butter-making is surprisingly quiet. Plus, he was really excited about it.

The finished product!

Can you tell by the smear on his face that he's been sampling the goods?

What fun! I call butter making a success. Although I feel bad for all the people who had to do it by hand before the advent of electricity/food processors!

Lily slept from 1:30 to 5, without interruption, which was beautiful for me. What wasn't  beautiful was that she woke up hungry right as I was in the middle of making dinner. The only picture I got of her today was this cell phone shot of her in her car seat on our way home from Costco: 

Little girl, BIG seat. The no-pumpkin-seat thing is working out pretty well for us; so far the only drawback is that sometimes I need to be able to set her down while we're out, and without a pumpkin seat that's not an option. Think, trying on clothes at the store. Not gonna happen. But other than that, it's been great.

And now she's been crying for about an hour straight. Night time has been pretty rocky for her lately! Poor baby! I wish we could figure out how to help her...

September 25

Oh, goodness.

I have a lot of pictures today, probably because it was an all-around good day. (Darn well better be, after how rough last night was!)

Chris and I did some furniture moving last night after the kids were in bed, and we brought this newly-acquired piece (from my grandparents' house) in from the garage. It's not even fully assembled yet, but Caleb and Daisy love it!

Then we went outside to play, partially because it was a lovely morning, and partially because we were expecting someone to come deliver a dining room set we found on Craigslist. The table and chairs arrived early, and it was one of those wonderful transactions that reinforces your faith that there are lots of good, decent people in the world.

Now I need to get to work refinishing the furniture they brought!

Our neighbor's tree is producing lots of inedible berries (perhaps it's a mock cherry tree?), and Daisy loves gathering and collecting them. Each one is a little treasure to her, and thus far she has refrained from eating any of them.

Caleb found a paper party horn that he got at church during their lesson on Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. He marched up and down the sidewalk, tooting that thing like it was his job. I'm sure the neighbors appreciated it. Then, we heard a tooting in response. At first I thought it was a goose, honking back. But then we realized that one of our neighbors must have had a trumpet, and was trumpeting back at Caleb from inside their house. It was really funny, and Caleb was delighted!

He even gave Daisy a turn with his horn.

(He only gave her a turn because he wanted a turn with the bubbles.)

We're still working at the potty training with Daisy; she's got the pee down, but hasn't pooped on the potty very many times yet. This morning she had to go, but wouldn't do it on her potty. She kept asking for a diaper, but I refused because I knew she could do it. Finally I got her to sit on the potty while I played "Royals" for her, and that did the trick.

Later, after lunch, I was putting Lily down for her nap when Daisy declared she had to poop again. I tried to help her, but she wanted none of it. So I told her I was going back to take care of Lily, and she could come get me if she needed anything.

Just as I got Lily down, I heard the kids' toilet flush. I went into the bathroom to see Daisy standing proudly at the toilet. She had climbed up onto the toilet, pooped in it, and flushed the toilet, all by herself. It's a big deal because it was her first time using the big toilet; until now, it had always been her little potty. Plus, it was a poop. She was so proud!

Now she just has to figure out how to stay dry during naps and bedtimes!

All three kids napped for nearly three hours today, and when Daisy and Lily woke up, they were happy to snuggle together. See Daisy holding Lily's hand?

Happy girls!

Daisy wanted to take a picture of Lily with my camera. This was her best shot.

Sweet sister kisses.

Daisy wouldn't let Caleb snuggle with her (he was willing and eager to do it!), but she was happy to snuggle with her Lil.

While the girls snuggled, Caleb "read" his Superhero Squad library book.

Then we played with the kids' name trains. 

I'm so glad that Daisy has one of her own!

Caleb may not be writing yet, but he can spell his name, and pick out all of the letters and arrange them in the right order. That's something!

I'm not sure why he looked so surprised here, but I just like the picture.

This was right before the trains went crashing to the ground!

Then, back outside. 

Guess who's now wearing 3-6 month clothes?

This girl!

This outfit was one of my favorites of Daisy's, and I'm so glad that Lily has a chance to wear it before it gets too cold for summery rompers!

And then Chris came home, and the children may not have eaten a good dinner, but they took at least a few bites, and then we went for a lovely family walk at sunset.

And best of all? Chris tucked Caleb in at bedtime tonight. As Chris was leaving the room, Caleb called out to him, "Just remember, Daddy: I love Mommy more than you."

That, my friends, is why I do what I do! Ha!

It would have been a perfect day, if Lily had just stayed asleep when I put her down at 7:45. But she didn't; she woke up at 8:10 and then screamed for an hour straight. Nothing we could do would console her. Poor baby! She seems to be feeling better now, though. As I type this, she's sleeping in her swing, swaddled and sighing contentedly. Love those little baby noises!