The neighbors will wonder

When you have two kids you often find yourself trying to do a days work after they have gone to bed. Sometimes there are projects to do outside. For example, preparing the yard for the excavators to come in the morning.... Sometimes you run out of daylight before you finish what you need to do. Fortunately we have invested heavily in outdoor illumination.

Lighting courtesy of Lotus Elise's Mercury-Vapor, bi-xenon high intensity discharge lights - BOOYA!

Spring

I don't know if it is that I got to go to the grocery store all by myself or if it is just the sunny weather, but today is just a beautiful day. The cherry trees are in full bloom, as are the crab apple trees. While over planted and smelly, the Bradford Pears are gorgeous. The streets are littered with white blossoms that blow in the breeze.

Perhaps the most beautiful is baby Mette sleeping in her basket in the shade of the new leaves on the Katsura Tree.

She deserves her own post

I have been working on getting more photos of Mette and have some to share.

This adorable shirt was a gift from Nonna Jen and Grandpa Chris to Otto when he was small enough to wear it. Mette was rockin' it with some pink leggings.

If you were ever wondering what Mette needs, sun hats that fit her TINY head. This one is a 0-3 month and she is swimming in it. Looking mighty cute while doing it though.

Here she is in her first romper. I call it that mainly because eric is totally baffled by the names for women's/little girls clothes. Regardless it is sunny and cute.

Poor Mette has a case of the sniffles that has made sleeping a bit tricky. We set up the vaporizer in her room since it is small and turns into a rainforest the quickest. Then we put her in her car seat to keep her elevated. This all worked for the first stint of the evening. She spent the rest of the night on my chest in bed. Hey, whatever works.

Quotes

Fear not, I will do good by my promise of quotes. Here are some winners from the past week or so.

"we have so many wonderful things in our house."

-mentioned randomly while playing with toys and looking off towards the dining room

"psu truck with mette's diapers"

-he spotted a UPS truck in the Staples parking lot

"mette, what is this car called?"

-we told him he could teach Mette what the names of his cars were. He got started right away by holding a Ferrari at point blank and drilling her with questions.

"Well, let's just go check out the situation in there"

-he wanted a cookie and I was trying to play coy. I was lead to the kitchen to...

"I'm in trouble, I'm in a heap of trouble. You better call the sheriff."

-Smoky and the Bandit to CARS to Otto

"no, no, just travel"

-after running errands with daddy all morning he didn't want to get out of the car

"Kung Pao Chicken"

-I made this for dinner tonight and Otto thought the name was fantastic. While lying in bed after reading stories he leapt up and declared it scaring the bejesus out of eric.

Couple Questions

1. How many children and soiled outfits to you think it will take eric and I to figure out to buy the next size up of diapers? I mean seriously, we have been through this before!

2. Could Mette really be teething? I would just like to say that if she is I blame eric 100% and I don't care if he reads this, which he probably will. I didn't think babies started teething until around 6 months but in my "what your baby is doing this week" email last week they said that teething could only be two weeks off. They went on to say that some babies are even born with their first tooth poking through! If her constant fist chewing, daddy finger gnawing and my nipple chewing (pacifier and teether of choice) are any indication, she is teething. I think that is a rip off. If it means she gets three sets of teeth like eric did, that is an even bigger rip off. Perhaps I should look into which dental plan we have and if we need to beef up our coverage.

It might be spring

I would like to start this post off by saying that I seem to take a lot more pictures of Otto than I do of Mette. I am sorry about that, it seems to be a curse of the second child which I was determined not to do. There are two good reasons for my picture taking inequality.

1. Otto is always on the go doing new and exciting things which make you think of taking pictures. Mette pretty much just hangs out.

2. I spend most of my day holding Mette watching Otto do stuff which means I don't even see her that much, in a way.

Regardless I am making a conscience effort to take more pictures of her. Haven't I said that already?

Things are going really well here. It is threatening to actually be spring which would be lovely. We have had day after day of rain and the sun is much needed. We are all starting to feel a bit cooped up. Today was gorgeous and we took full advantage. The next day or so should also be nice and I am very excited.

Mette is continuing to be an adorable baby. I think she is looking more and more like eric these days. She has the chubby checks I have seen in his baby pictures that are quite adorable. She has been pretty mellow these days which is super awesome. She gets hauled around with Otto to playdates many a day and she seems to go with the flow. I am very grateful for that because I need the playdates as much as Otto does and not having to stress over how she will be makes it much easier to get out of the house. I hope it continues like this but I also know she is only 9 weeks old and has plenty of time to come up with her own agendas.

Otto just this past week watched Toy Story 2 for the first time. We skipped the first one as it is a bit scary. He loves the second one though. He likes all the characters though Buzz Lightyear gives him a bit of pause, but mostly he is interested in the Barbies. The GIRLS as he calls them. He cracks me up.

Today at the park Otto and I were playing chasing each other around. There is a little jungle gym thing that has a window that looks a bit like a drive through window. Otto was on one side and I came up to the window and ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, just to see what he would do. He totally got the concept and got me a sandwich. I then asked for milk and he went back in the "store" and got me some milk. I also got cookies and eric got a cheese burger. He plays pretend with his toys by himself and he pretends that he is different people a lot (Kimi, Bob the Builder, Jessie the cowboy etc...) but this was the first time he acted out a scene like that. It was so cute. It showed a complete understanding of a situation that up until then there really wasn't a way to know he got the concept of. Does that make sense? The last few months have really been major growth months for him. He can really interact on so many levels. He is turning into the greatest person. I really enjoy spending my days with him. I hope he thinks the same of me.

Now for the picture portion of our evening:

Here is Mette going for the black and white

My mom got Otto an amazing backhoe, skid loader and Mac truck for the cabin. The giant pile of sawdust outside the shop made a perfect construction site. He was in heaven!

Sometimes you just have to dig in.

While I was nursing Mette, Otto and my mom went on an adventure walk. Here they are returning to the house.

Because grandmoms like to do all the fun stuff my mom made cookies for an afternoon treat. Otto was VERY excited and quite attentive.

Quality control is a very important job.

Here is Otto in Mette's car seat with the rain guard.

He loves it. Figures, he hated it when it was his!

Baby Mette at the Fence! Her first time.

A lovely picture of Otto and I waiting for dinner.

Otto with the all important milkshake. He actually ate a good dinner in addition to his milkshake, we just had to put it in his mouth. He wouldn't take his hands off the milkshake. He would just open his mouth like a little bird and we deposited cheeseburger bites.

Mette was having a hard time going to sleep this evening and finally fell

asleep in eric's arms like this.

Life is good

My Bambinos

I would just like to note that I think Mette is very hard to photograph. It seems no matter how many pictures I take of her, they never really look like her to me. But here are some that I have taken over the last few days and you can see what you think. I am going to get eric to take some and see how that goes. He usually takes better pictures than me anyway.

Here is Mette working really hard on getting her thumb. She still hasn't figured it out yet but she seems to get some comfort from shoving her whole hand in her mouth. Hey, whatever works as far as I'm concerned!

We should all be so lucky as to have a Rachel. In addition to the adorable onesie she embroidered, she also made Mette this wonderful dress and is planning on making some more for her! I will get better pictures of the dress next time she wears it, this was a quick fit check and modeling with Rachel.

My mom got her this adorable bear coat and she is getting more use out of it than I thought she would as we keep getting cold spells. She fell asleep on the way home from the health food store like this and slept for a while, too cute.

Otto while rummaging through Mette's things found one of his old bibs and noticing it had race cars on it insisted on wearing it. Mind you he hated them when we wanted him to wear them and would pull them off instantly. This was the first time he ever "held" Mette. She was in a crabby mood so this is the only shot where she was not screaming. He is so good with her it is amazing. He is very gentle and sweet with his Baby Mette as he like to call her.

A local church has an annual used clothing and toy sale for kids stuff where I have come home with some good loot in the past. This year I got a bunch of summer clothes for Mette, some trucks for Otto and this workbench. The workbench was $10 which I am quite proud of. He loves it. Especially the sink. He is really big on playing in water and any sink with things to wash is a great way to keep him entertained.

We got Otto some rain boots for puddle hunting which came in the mail the other day. He really likes them. You can see them here next to him on the right. He is wearing Rachel's boots which he managed to get on all by himself.

It was quite a task but he stuck with it until they were on.

I saved the best for last. Lately Otto has been a bit obsessed with girls. He points them out on the street, in the store, in books, anywhere he sees them. He has also told me on certain days that he is a girl for the day. Last week at play group there was a girl who was wearing a princess costume. Otto was quite taken both with her and her dress. Two days later at bedtime he pulled blankie around him and declared himself Princess Otto. We have some dress up clothes here from the Playspace and he wanted to wear one a few days ago. It was adorable. He insisted that he be able to wear the "outfit" as he called it downstairs and during lunch. I wasn't going to tell him to take it off, it was too cute. Here he is dressed as Princess Otto which was how he preferred to be addressed. We went out for Chinese food for dinner tonight and all Otto wanted to do was flirt with the waitress who he declared was cute. We may be in for trouble with this one!

Mette at 2 months

I do have a lot of pictures to post, but I have to find the camera and cord so that will be a little bit. I will tell you that there are some fantastic pictures of "princess Otto". It will be worth the wait I promise.

Today Mette had her two month check-up. All went quite well as we thought it would. She is a whopping 11 lbs. 8 oz. and 23.4 inches long. This puts her in the 90th percentile which is crazy. How do we have these huge babies. As I suspected she has a herniated bellybutton which sounds worse than it is. It is quite common and there is nothing they can do about it. It should heal on it's own in a year. It just means she has a squishy "outie". She also has a mongolian spot on her hiney. This is also quite normal and will go away except for the fact that it is not supposed to happen to Caucasian babies. Any secrets people want to share?? She was livid at the nurse for giving her shots which I think is quite reasonable. She was so mad she tensed up her legs (familiar to anyone who has changed her diaper) and that meant that she bled and will most likely have some bruising. Poor thing. I always feel so bad when they get shots.

I don't want to ruin the streak that we have going, but let's just say she is sleeping better than Otto. I will leave it at that.

I will try really hard to find all the parts to upload pictures this evening and share some of the cuteness that is happening here.