Week of firsts

Rebecca has had quite the week. On Saturday she started babbling much more expressively, loudly, and clearly. And she will engage in gibberish conversations with us.  On Sunday she started crawling. On Monday she started going from her belly to sitting. There have been multiple times this week when she said "mama" when I walked away. And today (Thursday) she cut her first tooth. Apparently 8 months is her breakthrough age.

New York

There are a few pictures from our NY trip that I want to make sure to post.

We went bowling our first afternoon, which was Lizzie's first time trying it out, but she quickly took to it.  Well, took to the routines and the joy of doing it all by herself.  For most of the time she seemed only marginally interested in whether she actually knocked any pins over, particularly with the first ball when instead of paying attention to what happened she could be going to get her next ball and get set up.  But her expressions when she was interested cracked me up.

And what good uncles do they have that they were so excited for them?

There was also a lot of good cousin time playing with trains and reading or hug-tackling at dinner.

The next day started off VERY rainy so we went to the mall to get out of the house.  But not just any mall, we chose this mall because it has all sorts of activities.  Then it turned out that the indoor mini golf place had closed.  Boo.  But the kids had a blast with the carousel, exploring the Disney store, playing with things at the Lego store, and--the biggest hit of all--Build-A-Bear.  I can't tell you how much they love those bears.  Nicholas and Lizzie have hardly let their bears (well, Lizzie's is a kitty really) out of their sight and are both currently snuggled up in bed with their new favorite animal.  And all three kids chose animals and outfits that perfectly capture their interests right now.  Nicholas has a bear with baseballs on the bottoms of his paws and dressed him in a Kylo Ren outfit, naming him Baby Ren.  Lizzie chose a multi-colored cat (not even just multi-colored, more like funfetti--Joe calls her "Rainbow Vomit") and dressed her sparkles, pink and purple from head to toe.  Her official name is Tootie, but Lizzie kept changing it on the drive home today.  Ben has the same baseball bear Nicholas does but dressed in a Mets uniform.

Joe played with Nicholas and Lizzie in the hotel pool while Ben napped and then it was time for some wiffle ball.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Ben.  I wish I was skilled enough at photoshop to insert this into the group pictures below when he was less happy.

In the pictures of Nicholas and Lizzie you can see their eyes locked on to the approaching ball, which I think is pretty cool.  Nicholas of course makes contact with the ball much more often and hits it much further, but it is cool to see that Lizzie is tracking it, even if she doesn't quite have the timing down.

As an aside, don't you always wear pink glitter shoes to play baseball?  But it is so the epitome of Lizzie (at least at this age)--she loves dresses and sparkles and cute outfits, but she also loves running around and playing sports and seems to have some natural athletic ability.  And, best of all, it has never crossed her mind that those things might be incompatible.  A truly modern girl.

I love the determination on Nicholas' face here.  The ball better be scared.

What better than having an uncle who will pitch to you patiently and full of encouragement?

We tried to get a group picture of the grandparents and grandkids, but it didn't go too well.  Being outside was perfect for lighting and staging, but it meant that Ben wanted to go play, not sit and be forced to smile for the camera.  The first two are the best I got.  The third, however, is the one I feel like we'll look back at smiling even though it will never go in a frame.

This morning before we left Lizzie got to go to get her nails done with Grandma.  She went for the first time a couple weeks ago when Joe took the kids to NY on their way to meet me in NJ, but of course the polish was mostly gone by now.  I expected Lizzie to do a good job and be cooperative or I wouldn't have encouraged her desire to go, but even still I was shocked that she sat completely still for 45 minutes for a manicure and pedicure, managing not to even brush her hair out of her face or anything once (something she certainly has never managed to resist when her hands are covered in ketchup).  She just watched everything intently and whispered to me in a reverential manner (again, where is that voice in church?), so quietly I couldn't really hear her.  And when she would occasionally take her eyes off the process to look at me, the only word I can use to describe her expression is glee.  It was an "isn't this so cool, Mommy?!" look.  The only unfortunate thing is that it ended up that Alice and Lizzie were in separate parts of the shop for basically the whole time, so it wasn't much of a shared activity.  But I know they were together last time and I also know that Lizzie clearly associates getting nails done as a Grandma Alice activity.  It makes me happy for them to have a special bonding thing, something that is just theirs.

Back to the house to say goodbyes.

On our way out of town we stopped by Grandma Claire's to say hi.  And of course the kids brought in their new animals, because they can't be separated from them for a minute.

This one is the one I'll put in a frame. 

But this one is actually my favorite.

And this one.  I don't actually know what to say about this one other than that it makes my heart so happy.  Lizzie has started to pick up on the fact that she and Grandma Claire have matching names.  She was telling Claire about it today, as though Claire didn't know.  Lizzie doesn't yet seem to understand that she was actually intentionally named after Grandma Claire (she thinks it is a fun coincidence), but once she really understands it, I think this is something she will treasure.

 I am tempted to write that next I'll do a Kansas City post, but I have about 1300 pictures from that trip and with my track record, I think the likelihood of actually doing a KC post is probably about 20%.  But you never know--it could happen.

Baseball!

In addition to being delinquent on this blog, I have also been delinquent on taking pictures of Nicholas' baseball season.  It is just so hard to even watch any of his games because I tend to stay home with Lizzie if Joe is available to take Nicholas and when Joe isn't available, I spend the entire game watching Lizzie on the playground and trying to keep the overtired preschooler who is up after her bedtime, cranky, and inevitably desperately in need of a bathroom (there are no bathrooms or port-a-potties at any of these fields) from going over the edge.  Anyway, long story short is that today Lizzie and I stopped by to watch 1 inning and Joe watched her on the playground so I could get a few pictures.  I'll try to take some more at his last game next week, but see the above note about trying to juggle both kids at baseball.  Maybe I'll take the ipad for Lizzie or something.

A couple close-ups:

Making the play at first:

Going for catches:

Up to bat:

And a few others in between plays.  One of these days I'll get a lens that lets me zoom further, but for now, this is what I've got.

Snow!

I know--I've lost track of this again.  Life is just so incredibly hectic and work so overwhelming that there never seems to be a minute.

So here are a few pictures from the snow we've had in the last week:

Halloween

What would Halloween be without a million pictures?  Thankfully I took roughly 3/4 of a million over the weekend because by the time we were ready last night it was dark and the kids were occupied.

Nicholas was Darth Vader and he and I made his light saber out of a wrapping paper tube.

He painted the "handle" black and we wrapped the rest in tissue paper.  We then had to make another one because he of course broke his by hitting things on the second of our three-day Halloween.

Lizzie was a butterfly, Cinderella, a butterfly, and a kangaroo.  She picked out the butterfly costume in the store and I rejected it as not practical for New England and so made her pick one of the full body animal costumes.  She chose the kangaroo and seemed excited about it (mostly because of the baby joey) but then kept talking about being a butterfly so I caved and went back and bough the butterfly as well.

So the butterfly was her "real" costume and what she wore for our Halloween photo shoot with friends, as well as for trick-or-treating at school.

And the kangaroo was what she wore for nighttime trick-or-treating in the cold.

And Cinderella was a dress-up dress she has from the summer that she put on for pictures with her pumpkin because she had chosen Cinderella's carriage for her pumpkin and Nicholas had chosen Darth Vader for his and they both had those outfits so of course I needed the picture with them matching their pumpkins!

My trick-or-treating pictures are all awful, but both kids did a great job.  Lizzie was completely brave and spoke up, saying "trick or treat" and "thank you" clearly and without prompting.  I think Nicholas was good about saying them too, although it was hard to hear with his mask and with him ahead of me.

And a few of my favorite pictures from our pre-Halloween costume days: