Mud

Alasdair & I went to the wedding of some sweet Dartmouth friends on Saturday. It was so lovely! It was fun to see a number of our friends with new babies, and we were a little bit sad not to have Emily with us... but she is definitely too old to sit through a wedding. Conveniently, the wedding was 20 minutes from my parents house, so we swung by and dropped her off on the way (oh, and wrapped the gift and upgraded my whole outfit... I love my mom!) . We didn't take any pictures, of course.

What we do have pictures of, is MUD. With all the rain this spring, we have a constant puddle in our dirt driveway. Sometimes I make Emily stay away from it, and sometimes I just don't fight that battle. Today while I made lunch, she pulled on her green frog rainboots and my winter hat, and went outside. I could see her through the window splashing in the mud. I looked out a few minutes later and saw just two green rainboots sticking out of the puddle. I opened the door to find Emily standing there holding out her brown hands and explaining "I got muddy."

Chatterbug

We had a lovely visit from Granny & Uncle Alden this weekend -- no pictures were taken, but it was a great weekend. A playground visit, lots of time playing outside, and of course, lots of time with Emily in Alden or Granny's arms. :) While Emily was sleeping, Alden beat us in Boggle (nice to have some good competition around here!), we played pinochle & chatted. We finally had great weather for guests!

Picking daffodils is a new favorite pastime- we have a lovely bowl full of them on the dining room table. This morning she picked one "for mimi".

Emily has become quite the little chatterbug lately. She's been a good talker for awhile, but only in the last couple weeks has she started warming up to guests enough to dominate the dinner table conversation. Her conversation consists mostly of pointing out her surroundings (repeatedly). As in...

"That's a window. That's a monkey. Monkey says 'oo oo'. Monkey eat denana. Those is horsies, horsies eat grass. Horsies live in the barn. Because dey're animals. That's mommy. That's daddy. That's the window. That's the window! That's monkey..says 'oo oo' etc."

We need to start learning where to draw the line between letting her participate, but also to keep quiet and let the grown ups talk.

She also talks to herself, her toys, and especially the cats. Her standard conversation starter is, "Hi Syntax! Did you wake up?" She's lately started ordering the cats around, "C'm eer Blaisuh, c'm eer! Sit in Emi's lap." I am surprised by how well the cats tolerate her affection (see picture below.) Today in the car she asked the stream we were passing, "Waters, can you hear me?"

(Sytnax actually hopped up in the chair of her own accord & didn't run away despite Emily's insistent kisses.)

Video

another attempt to post video here....

Easter

[Rosalie 26 mo * Daniel 8 mo * Emily 22 mo]

We spent a lovely Easter weekend in MA with my family.

Saturday morning we brought the kids to visit Great Granny Ware, and since it was raining the girls did a little easter egg hunt in the kitchen. I really missed going to the sunrise service on Easter morning - it's usually my favorite part of the day but this year I felt like I needed the sleep. But, we did enjoy the warm sunny morning as the girls did an outdoor egg hunt (they played soo well together all weekend - it's so fun so see how much they love each other) before church. After church & Easter dinner at home "just us" (we fill up a table now with 7 adults & 3 kids... or we would if nap schedules & restless toddlers actually allowed us to sit down all at once!). After nap attempts, it was back to Sunny Hill to see the extended family & friends. I love those times.

A few more great pictures in our April album.

You will notice that in one of the pictures I look rather pregnant. You can consider that your formal announcement. ;) Emily will be a "big sisser!" in September!

Childproof

I left the cereal cabinet open for Emily to pick out which one she wanted to eat. A few minutes later I heard her calling me and couldn't find her. When I did, I couldn't stop laughing.

Marathon Monday

Emily & I headed back to MA on Monday to watch Nick run his 8th marathon (6th Boston). It was a beautiful day to be outside, and the marathon is always a great atmosphere. We saw Nick 4 times, and heard on the radio that the men's winning time was a world-best 2:03 & that an American woman came within 2 seconds of winning (and that the Sox won with Dice-K on the mound!). Emily loved riding in Papa's car & looking for Uncle Nick and throwing her hands up in the air & yelling "Hooorayyy! Unca Nick! Run run run." After spending so any hours looking for him, you can see at the end of the day she wouldn't take her eyes off him. Great job Nick!

(This is at the finish line, despite the fact that Nick looks like he just took a walk around the block.)

MA

alasdair was out of town this week, so emily & I spent a wonderful 5 days in MA with my family - visited a few playgrounds where i played as a kid, played with driveway chalk, watched a Barcelona (soccer) game, went for walks, dyed easter eggs, and spent lots of time with mimi, papa & uncle nick.

i explained to emily that daddy was in chicago, so she'd say "daddy go in chicago['s] house"

she also looked at the blank TV one night and said "emi watcha red sox" she doesn't care about their dismal record!

i didn't take any pictures! oops. here's one of emily in her iniesta jersey instead.