The Big Race

I have more than once touted how our town does super cool things for kids, and this past weekend was no exception.  There was a bike race downtown, and they had a "kid's zone" for spectators, which included, you guessed it, a bounce house.  Of course that was popular with Stephanie, but the really cool thing they did was a bike race for the kids.  This included a race number and a metal at the finish line.  The race was just short of a block (but Stephanie will tell you it was 100 miles, since that was Kevin's last race length), and the kids were super cute... and here are the pictures to prove it.

A couple of months in pictures

 It has been a busy few months and the blog has been a bit neglected.  Counter intuitively, I should have more time for it once I get back to work.  In the meantime, I'll just post what most of you guys care about anyway... the pictures.  These are in no particular order, and not at all chronological.

We painted this at an event downtown.  They said they had cardboard cars to paint, but a limited number, so I made sure to get there on time because I thought it sounded like fun.  If I had known they meant giant, life sized cars, I would have run late that day.  

But as usual, Kevin managed to find something fun to do with the car!

In very sad news, Mary is moving, BUT we have at least gotten to see her a ton this summer!

Photos (mostly by Alaina, unless Alaina appears in them, in which case they are mostly by Alaina's camera taken by me) from Alaina's visit in mid May:

Cousin Alaina and Dave and Katie's visit

A Stephanie and Gwen Series

Father's Day

About 1 and a half weeks old

Gwen is about 8 weeks old

Steady there Gwen... Just use sister for balance

Gwen often gives a little smile if you tickle her cheek... not so much this time.

And finally, Stephanie posed just the other day at a downtown statue and said, "Take a picture to send Grandma!"  So, here you go, Grandma.

Let me be very clear

A while back, while playing on her magna doodle, Stephanie asked me to draw a word that sounded like "tree" to my ears.  So I said, "a tree?".  She said, "no, a [word that still sounds exactly like] tree". "A treat?" I ask.  "No, not a tree, a [still sounds like] tree, like you drive on".  OH... A street!  Got it!  I had never had her explain a term to me, and I thought it was quite clever.  Now she does it most of the time that I don't understand her, as she has realized how effective it is.
One of the recent ones was when she offered me "skates" when I had barely stepped out of bed.  She was holding two blankets, and I felt in no condition to start my day by scooting around on a blanket on the floor, so I said, "oh, honey I just woke up, I don't really want to skate."  And she said, "no, not skates like you use on a pond, a cape like you wear in your shirt."  Realistically, I wasn't exactly feeling like a morning superhero either, but that was a more appealing option than ice skating around the house.
Another language thing that she has been doing lately is talking in gobbly gook, and then translating for me, as what she just said was either in Spanish, French, or German.  Kevin thinks she has language overload.  I blame Dora, Fancy Nancy and Kevin (in that order) for the desire to speak to me in another language, as it can really slow down meal preparation when she places her order in another "language", but it is fairly comical.
Stephanie's use of words and her creativity is still so much fun for us.  She says so many things that we find charming and hysterical.  I try to remember some of the favorites to record here for posterity. I think it will be fun when Gwen starts to talk to look back at the similarities and differences, but that will be a while from now, hopefully long enough for me to think of some clever name for a blog for her... Perhaps since Stephanie is my little wordsmith, she will have an idea, and I will be off the hook for that one, as right now the best I have is "The squawkings of Gwen the Hen", and I don't think Gwen will forgive me for that one!

Hipping to the Hop

After weeks of intensive training, it was finally time this morning for the big dance recital for our tiny hip hopper.  Stephanie dressed for the occasion, but I had her remove some of her accessories for the actual recital.  Mary even came to enjoy the big dance!

The full outfit

And back in the hat right after the recital!

I've never loaded video before, so I'm not sure how this will work...  I had to reduce the image quality to have it load, which is unfortunate.

Stephanie meets Clementine

Fair warning:  While this blog is usually all Stephanie all the time, I will take a few minutes to talk all about me AND introduce a new, and likely recurring, character...
New baby had been measuring very small towards the end of the pregnancy, and, while it may seem slightly counter-intuitive, this, among a couple of other reasons, landed me a date with an induction early this week.  While I was concerned about the interventions that sometimes come with inductions, I was happy that I could easily plan for Stephanie's care and that I would be in the hospital for delivery, because I honestly wasn't sure we would make it when I was in labor the first time, and they say the second one is faster than the first.  The plan for Steph was that Kevin would hang with her at the library and parks near the hospital until delivery seemed imminent, at which point Mary would meet them at the hospital and Kevin could join me.  In the meantime, I had our doula with me, and I felt like that properly supplied my need for a support system during labor.  Well, as should have been expected, things progressed rapidly and the doula took the initiative to change our plans, and had Mary go immediately to the library and trade cars with Kevin to send him directly to the hospital.  Rightly so, as baby was born within 5 minutes of his arrival.  While I refuse to acknowledge the term "easy" to describe my labors with both kids, as there is nothing easy about going from zero to baby in less than two hours (my doctor, on the other hand, described it as frightening, which I think is a good description).  I looked a little worse for the wear in photos immediately after, but appear nicely recovered in photos several hours later.
Mary gave us a few hours to recover and then brought Stephanie to the hospital to meet our newest character in the family, Gwendolyn, weighing in only one ounce more than Stephanie (and I pulled some pics from the archive for comparison purposes).  My research about introducing a new baby said that I should not be holding new baby upon seeing my older child, because she would mostly only want to see me and might rush to hug me.  This was not at all true for us.  She wasn't all that excited to see me... after all, we had been apart for less time than a normal daycare day, and she had an awesome morning with Kevin and awesome afternoon with Mary.  Nor was she terribly interested in the baby.  She did look at her, ask to see her hands and feet, and then requested that Mary play Curious George on her phone.  When she came back to visit that night, she was actually very excited to see her sister.  She wanted to hold her, and at one point demanded to Kevin, "Move Clementine closer so that I can see her". We assured her that "Clementine" could be her special sister name, but we were fairly committed to some version of Gwen.  By far, my favorite moment was when Stephanie asked to take a picture of her family, and got several good shots of Kevin, Gwen, me and "Gwen's big brother" Buzzy Bee.
We are all home now, and I enjoyed my quiet recovery in the hospital getting to know Gwen, and Kevin enjoyed his stint as a stay at home Dad.  Stephanie is doing great with her sister.  She wants to show her things and let her join in the games.  Gwen is at least as interested and good at games as Buzzy Bee!

Last days pregnant with Steph

and a few days before I had Gwen

Baby Gwen

Baby Steph

Photo by Mary right after we introduced Steph and Gwen

Stephanie's family!

Easter Weekend

By Easter weekend, we knew for sure that new baby would arrive, ready or not, the following week, so we tried to have one more fun and active weekend.  Lawrence had an Earth Day parade, which Steph and I went to after her dance class.  Then there were Earth Day activities at the park, but the only one we saw were the bouncy houses and bouncy obstacle courses (as large houses being pumped up with huge air pumps are very Earth friendly and certainly don't waste absurd amounts of our precious energy resources).  Regardless, for the reasonable price of $5, your child could bounce all day.  Since bouncing around is pretty much what Stephanie does all day most days, I knew she would get some serious bounce for our bucks!  There was a rope climbing portion of the obstacle course, and Stephanie scaled it better and faster than many of the other children (we have always thought she was part monkey...).  It was a highly unregulated bounce experience, and kids were just piled in there, which would generally be concerning, but Stephanie really just had a blast and moved through it all so quickly that it didn't seem to matter how many kids there were.  In fact, when the line for the rope climb was too long, she took to just scaling the wall without the rope (so apparently she is also part Spiderman)!

Sunday, of course, was Easter.  We went to morning church, which had a small Easter Egg hunt afterwards.  Then home for lunch and nap, during which time the Easter Bunny set up an elaborate egg hunt with picture clues.  After "nap", which of course she didn't sleep after being told about the Easter Bunny's imminent arrival, she did her egg hunt.  She was unimpressed with the Easter basket at the end, as she just wanted more clues to follow and was disappointed that the hunt was over.  Just a note on the outfit she wore to church... This was the outfit we negotiated for.  We wanted her to wear a dress, and she wanted to wear pajamas with her bathing suit cover-up on top.  We got the dress with the promise that she could wear and bring any accessories she wanted... She took full advantage of this offer, and we ended up barely being able to see the dress.

Her Sunday finest

One of the clues in the eggs.  I think the Easter bunny really outdid himself!  And as a special favor to us, he hid the clues such that it maximized her running around the yard, just to get a bit more time out of the hunt and burn off a bit more energy.