End of the Week

Another week comes to end.  A fairly routine week but not without a little excitement coming from the sticks of New Hampshire.  My cousin Shannon is pregnant!  Yes, the one that lived here and then got married last September.  It was a surprise pregnancy but welcome nonetheless.  It's still early on but we're obviously excited that another cousin will be joining the ranks of parenthood come October.  Let's see.  The way I see it, we need another boy as the girls (Mia, Calleigh, Aubree, Zasha, Acadia) outnumber the boys (Camden, Tyson, Grodack baby yet to be named), 5-3.

Shannon holding Calleigh at about a week old.  Hard to imagine her with her own!

As a said, this week was fairly routine schedule wise although I should say it was an extra good week because I didn't have to go to the dentist!  That will be coming soon though.  Of course, being Friday night and that I'm tired, I barely even remember to what we were doing at the beginning of the week.  I think Monday we went to the "wood playground" as Calleigh has deemed Phelps Park.  Oh no, wait.  That was Tuesday before story time.  So I have no idea what we did on Monday as it turns out.  Must not have been all that important then.  So yes, we did go to the wood playground and enjoyed some very nice weather.  The cold temps from the weekend and being at the farm have definitely been forgotten.  Tuesday we did go to story time as I said and saw Yolanda and Emma there.  We aren't going to be hanging out with them this week or next because Yolanda's mother is visiting from Spain and she doesn't speak English so it's a little awkward.  Yolanda thought it would be best if they just spend time with her alone without distractions of other people.  Makes sense to me.

Aubree definitely has hit the stage where you does NOT want to look at the camera.

Calleigh was very happy that she was able to do this all by herself.  It's a bar that's attached to a track and you move from one platform to the other.

Okay, I'm back.  I took a little break between paragraphs to make myself a pineapple smoothie.  Did I mention I got a special smoothie blender for Christmas?  They're a little pricey but if you drink a lot of smoothies like we do, totally worth it!  It's amazing how much faster and easier it is to make a smoothie now.

So Wednesday we went to the big consignment store to look for some new jeans for Calleigh.  I really don't know if the sizes for toddlers are supposed to correspond with the age (like 6 - 9 months did, theoretically anyway) but Calleigh left 3T in the dust ages ago.  Her 4T jeans are now getting too short and too tight so we're on to 5T.  I do know she's tall for her age so I'm sure that accounts for it.  Anyway, we did find a couple of pairs so I was happy.  I also found her a pair of new pink sandals since she's outgrown all her old sandals during the winter months.  When we got the sandals home she fiercely announced to me that she did not like them at all and I was trying to figure out in my head if, at $5.50, it was worth the drive back to return  them (you can return stuff up to a week at this consignment store).  But wouldn't you know, since then, she's worn them about every minute of the day.  So much for that.  

Yesterday we were Walmart for grocery day.  Because I've been buying less there, thanks to my Publix deals, it's only taking us about 45 minutes to do our shopping so we ended up with a bunch of extra time.  I've been getting sick of the same old playgrounds but then I remembered we hadn't been to the Minnehaha playground in the longest time (it's a little farther down the road from the "green" playground.). So off we went and half the fun of it was the girls saying "Minnehaha" over and over again.  It is a pretty funny word, actually. It obviously stuck in their minds because Grandma came over to babysit this morning and that's where Calleigh insisted they go.  I had a capital committee meeting at work, hence the need for Grandma.  It was killing me to go because it was such an incredibly gorgeous day and I just knew we were missing out on a bunch of great yard sales.

Grandma brought the bike from her house so Calleigh could ride around Minnehaha.  Note the pink sandals I mentioned.

This week I booked some tickets for the girls and I to fly up to Boston for a visit at the end of March.  My cousin Jonathan, who lives in Texas with his wife Marcela and baby Zasha (born in October), is leading out the Northern New England Music Clinic so we are timing our visit around that as many of the relatives will be in attendance.  Obviously our main motivation (besides seeing Papa and Gigi, of course) is to meet baby Acadia.  This will be last plane trip for a while with just me because I imagine I won't be brave enough (crazy enough?) to travel with three by myself...at least for awhile.  Besides that, we'll have to start paying for Aubree come May.  Boo!

Calleigh is in another one of her clothing phases.  It seems to change from week to week, really.  I'm so glad the tights phase is over because honestly, what a pain to have to put tights on and off her several times a day.  Very tiresome!  The phase this week is her bathing suit.  We got invited to a birthday party in a couple of weeks that will involve swimming in an indoor pool.  Apparently this has inspired Calleigh to don swim wear pretty much 24/7.  Thank goodness she can do it all herself so I'm not needed for the countless wardrobe changes as she goes from one bathing suit to the next.  I don't know where she gets her ideas from but she also came up with this interesting fashion statement where you puts her elastic bands with hair bows on them around the bottom of her shoes so it looks like her shoes have bows.  Actually, she might have gotten it from these books we checked out from the library called Fancy Nancy.  They're the cutest books but what's even cuter is hearing Aubree say Fancy Nancy.  Every time I try to video it, she clams up though.

One of her many bathing suit ensembles.  Notice the shoes with the homemade bows.

Calleigh kind of outsmarted us this week, in a way.  One day she was having a particularly hard time sharing, as a 3-year old tends to struggle with from time to time.  Duncan and I were trying to make a point so we told her how we loved to share things with her.  In fact, the house, the toys, the clothes, the food, etc. were all things we had bought but we share them with her because we love her.  The next day, Duncan was trying to get her to pick up her toys to go up to bed and Calleigh says to him "No Daddy, these are YOUR toys.  I was just borrowing them.  So you can pick them up."  So that came back to bite us in the butt.  And yes, she did eventually pick it up but it wasn't a pleasant experience.

I will end here but before I do, I just wanted to mention that Dewey is doing very well despite the loss of his sister.  I mention him because it's his 11th birthday tomorrow.  It's still sort of strange because Aubree calls him "Marlee" half the time. I really have no idea why she does that but she does.  Anyway, we haven't noticed anything about his demeanor that would indicate he's depressed or something of that nature so he seems to have pulled through just fine.

Have a good night and Happy Sabbath!