Hopscotch

This one's a little long (mostly I think my mom will watch it) but it's a good representation of how Lucy and Jamie are learning how to play together.  It'll be a long process.  It reminds me of the movie my mom has of me and Ryan where every time he rides his bike into the frame I stop whatever I was doing to drag him away.

Easter

Eric and I joked not too long ago that the passage of time is marked by the holidays we celebrate.  Any holiday that gets a boatload of chocolate and a bunny that comes in the night to leave you a prize?  Awesome.

These first couple of pictures are from our neighborhood egg hunt the weekend before Easter.  One of the playgroup moms decided to organize it as she said that our town's hunt is one that might end up on the evening news as an example of how society has gone down the tubes.  Emily said that the grade school kids run the show, parents encourage finding as many as possible at the expense of the little ones, and she even saw a few adults out collecting baskets of eggs for their kids who had other commitments.  Yikes.

Lucy was the biggest kid at our 1st annual hunt, which is a change that's kind of hard to get used to.  It's some serious responsibility - and I'm pretty sure at times I've seen other parents taking mental notes about what they want their kids NOT to do when they're 3 1/2.  We talked about not running or pushing and making sure that all the other littler kids had eggs in their baskets as well.  I think she did well.  In this photo, Lucy is standing right next to her favorite neighborhood friend Carolyn (who just turned 2), in the pink jacket and orange skirt.  I'm pretty sure Lucy loves seeing Carolyn because she's so easy to boss around when we end up at her house: "Here Carolyn, let me show you how to use this toy/bike/ball/etc."

 She's a daddy's girl!

 Jamie got in on the action as well, but didn't find a single egg.  He was more content to chew on sticks.

 Now on to the actual day of Easter ... I thought it would be fun to leave baskets out for the Easter Bunny to fill, kind of like a stocking at Christmas.  Maybe this will become a tradition?  Like last year, we left a note and some carrots, which Lucy was thrilled to see got munched.

 The face of triumph!  It didn't take Jamie long at all to figure out how to open the eggs and that they contained delicious treats.  I had to pull a number of foil wrappers out of his mouth - he could get the egg open but didn't bother to unwrap the chocolate.

 When she opened the Strawberry Shortcake house the bunny brought her she exclaimed: "It's exactly what I wanted!  How did he know?  Just like Santa Claus!" 

A quick walk to the park and no hesitation to embarrass Ryan and Grace.  Trying to remember who climbed on first ...

 Then to the outside where I had put all the stuff Grandma sent.  We did another egg hunt (I had put my eggs inside) and this time gave Jamie a bucket too.  He immediately found an egg in the car and sat right down with it.

 Lucy showing off her prizes.

 This egg hunting was serious business.

 Still parked (haha) in the car with the jelly beans and fruit-snack things my mother stuffed the eggs with.  I keep meaning to ask what the heck those things were.  Mom?

 And a quick skype in with Grandma so that she could watch Lucy hunt for eggs and say hi to her midwestern kids. 

 Photography a la Lucy - great shot of her feet.  It really makes me wonder how much time this kiddo spends staring down at the ground.  It is literally all she takes pictures of, though to her credit this time there are some of the bugs that were in the eggs Grandma sent on the ground which I think were intended to be the focus of the shots.

 And the dis-easter (another haha) I suffered at the handle of the frittata pan.  For anyone who is unfamiliar with the concept of the frittata, you basically cook an omelet halfway and then pop it in the oven to finish it off, let it brown and puff up a little like a quiche to be cut and served in slices.  This photo does absolutely no justice to the number of blisters or pain and suffering I endured after grabbing the handle of a 400 degree fry pan just out of the oven.  I think I had a grand total of 13 separate blisters on every finger, thumb, and my palm.  The biggest blister is right on my lifeline - at the height of its glory it was probably 1x2" - and it's still, 2 weeks later, obnoxiously red, raw, and itchy.  It was miserable.  Eric, after working in kitchens for 10+ years said it was one of the worst burns he'd ever seen.  The frittata was pretty good, but next time I think I'll use a pot holder.

So ... other than the burn, Easter this year was a smashing success.  Lucy had fun, Jamie had fun, Eric had fun, I had fun (before the burn), and it was great to visit with Ryan and Grace again.

Reiman with Ryan and Grace

Surprise!  The garden again.  This time I was really excited to take Aunt Grace and Uncle Ryan, mostly Grace because she's super into bugs and used to work at the Butterfly Kingdom at the York Zoo in Maine, so I thought the Butterfly Garden here would be great.  And another surprise!  A picture of a butterfly.

 I think this picture is adorable even though Ryan is making his angry man face.

 It's tulip season here, which believe it or not is a HUGE problem and keeps making the evening news.  There's a town close by with Dutch heritage that has a tulip festival every year.  It's a big tourist attraction with gardens of tulips everywhere, events, a parade, and a pageant to crown Miss Tulip (or whatever it is she gets crowned).  The problem is that because everything has bloomed so early, the town doesn't expect any tulips to be left for the scheduled weekend.  Whoops.  They must all feel a little deflated, kind of like the poor droopy tulip in the front of this planter.  I totally didn't notice until Grace pointed it out.  We got a good laugh at the tired/wimpy/sad/etc. tulip.

 I wish I had taken a picture of this body of water in its entirety, because it's hilarious.  It's called Lake Helen.  Lake, in my mind anyway, means something more than a dug pond.  It is, to the lake's credit, a rather large pond, but still something you might see on someone's front lawn in Maine, if they've got a few acres.  I suppose it's named after someone and they might have thought Lake Helen sounded a bit more stately than Helen Pond or Helen Water Feature.

This is a picture of the nesting Canadian Geese, though you can barely see the nest.  It's on the right, amidst the rocks and weeds.  At one point, one of the geese got out of the pond and walked toward the people at the garden, which thrilled Lucy.  Ryan kept trying to convince Grace to catch a goose ... that would have been fun to watch.

 Awwww, this looks like it could be Ryan and Grace's family.  As you can see, Jamie was struggling toward the water.

 Grace wanted to take a picture under this beautiful tree.  I've got to find out what it's called and have searched for "purple flowering tree", but what I come up with are a bunch of pictures from people's blogs that say things like: "This is a beautiful purple flowering tree, I've got to find out what it's called."  It makes for good photo taking though!

What fun to have our Minnesota family in town!  Lucy will sometimes sit down with her guitar and sing a song that goes like this: "I want to go to Minneapolis but Mommy said no tee dee dah dee."  There was a sincere disappointment when Uncle Ryan and Aunt Grace showed up without Lucy's best friend Tiger, too, but at least we could send Ryan and Grace home with the gift we got for Tiger ages ago.  We'll be looking forward to going back to Minneapolis and seeing Tiger play with his Angry Bird cat balls.

Reiman with Grandma

While Grandma was in town (remember that?  yes ... it was in January) we went to Reiman, our favorite garden.  We love the butterflies and Grandma did too.

 Lucy's favorite photo to take - I've got hundreds of pics of her walking feet.

 And with that reference to Lucy's favorite pic, I have a hard time not taking bunches of pictures of the butterflies while I'm there too.  Maybe I'll make a calendar for Christmas gifts this year.

 In the conservatory there is a pool with a waterfall.  Grandma gave Lucy some coins to make wishes, which she did enthusiastically.  I love the way she wishes - it starts with "I wish for a new ... " and then she casts her eyes about until she finds something "... stroller!" or whatever else happens to be in view.  Often it's a new mommy.

 Hugs.

 This was too funny - Jamie, my water baby, was desperately crawling to splash in the pool.  You can see how I'm hanging on to his pants?  He probably would have gone right in if we'd have let him.

 Grandma gets the job of stroller pusher while she's in town.  It's a very poorly paid position.

 These last two shots are of how the kids felt at the end of the visit.  Lucy was totally spaced, and Jamie totally asleep.  Nothing like a great January day outside to wear out the 3-and-under crowd.

Stay tuned - next post is Reiman pictures from Uncle Ryan and Aunt Grace's visit just this past Easter weekend.  Come to visit, see our one attraction!

Walking

It's been ages since I've seen him crawl.



I think it's been a little over a week since I took this video and he's already so much better walking than he looks here.  Jamie's practically running.

Look Who's 1

You'll never know how fast a year can go until you spend one watching a baby grow.

From this:

To this:

 We had a MASSIVE birthday bash for Jamie on his birthday ... haha.  The elegant dinner began with the pre-nibbled bagel, leftover from Lucy's lunch.  Jamie found it and was desperate to eat it; I couldn't tear it away from him.  Who doesn't love nutella, right?  Even when all that's left is whatever soaked into the bread before Lucy licked all the good stuff off the top.  Let it sit for a few hours and voila - a dinner fit for kings, or first birthday princes.

 On to a delicious yogurt with a dogged determination to feed yourself, no matter how messy you might end up.  We're building spoon skills here.

 Continue by opening the one gift left that Lucy didn't already sneak away to open under her covers in her room.  Oh, wait.  Continue by letting your big sister open your last unopened gift.

 But, hey, at least mommy got a little creative with the cake.  Jamie loves loves loves playing with balls.  We got him a tiny fisher price basketball hoop that lights up and sings when you get a basket, which is why I thought of the basketball cake.  So far he's unimpressed with the hoop, but carries the two balls that it came with around like prizes.  As I write this Jamie's going back and forth in our kitchen with a ball - toss and chase, toss and chase.  I kind of wonder if this baby obsession is at all a preview of how many years I will spend sitting on bleachers. 

Finally, what's better than a personal serenade by Lucy followed by digging into that basketball cake?  I didn't hold sweets and junk from Jamie like I did from Lucy - I was more relaxed this time and he was a much better eater from the start, giving me less reason for concern about eating habits.  Pair with the sharing that happened (Lucy started shoving things like Doritos and brownies in his mouth at about 4 months when he was upright in the exersauce or jumper) and the cake wasn't necessarily totally new, but he hasn't ever been able to chow down a big slice like he did here.

The aftermath.  Thanks for the wonderful year, baby J, and many wishes for a hundred more.