Hello Again

Hi, it's me, phoebe, mom, writer of the blog.

Did you forget about me? Sorry about that.

Things are going full speed around here. We have had a few visits from Nonna Jen on her way to and from Corning to do research work which have been a lot of fun. Do you think I managed to get any cute pictures of the kids with her? No, that would have been too much. There are some great photos of when she and Grandpa Chris were here, but we are waiting on him to post and or send them along to us. I have also been going a bit crazy on the rearranging furniture moving/painting everything in the house mode and that seriously cuts into my blogging time. The living room is all moved around and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. (said in true Eloise fashion) I am also still chipping away at painting the kids room. Man is it ever hard to paint the room they sleep in!! When they sleep is usually my time to get stuff like that done and with them sleeping IN their room, well, it just doesn't work to paint while they are sleeping in the room.

In addition to all of this craziness eric was out of town for two big conferences which meant he was both gone and getting behind on regular work at the same time. Which means that when he was finally home he had massive amounts of work to catch up on and wasn't around much. That is fine, we miss him of course but we get by. What it really means is I am the only one cleaning, cooking, doing dishes, taking out trash etc... I do most of the house work as is, but eric cleaning up after dinner and taking out trash and watching the kids while I tend to eight million loads of laundry and make dinner is a huge help. When he is gone by the time the kids are in bed I am spent! This past weekend was fall break for him and to celebrate finally having a break from work, he spent it in bed working while recovering from a vasectomy. So it's official, our family will stop at four. That was always the plan, but we sealed the deal last week. He is still not up to full speed from that but should be soon.

I am thinking I better get going on the posting soon though because sometime soon my friend Rachel is going to pop out another baby (just like that, POP, wouldn't that be great if that's how it worked??) and I am going to want to spend a TON of time oogling and cooing over the new bundle of goodness.

So here is some news from our land:

After seeing kids get tickets to ride ponies at a fair a few weeks ago Mette now declares at random times "I ride pony my tickets!!!" It is said in a crescendo and repeated again and again.

She is also eating us out of house and home and appears by the looks of her clothes to be growing. I am going to try and measure her to see how much soon. So far today she has had:

one and a half bowls of cereal for breakfast

two cups of milk

a granola bar

5 big bites of my noodles

a kiwi

another bowl of cereal

a bowl of yogurt and granola

a fruit bar

and it is only 2 p.m. All this from the girl we never thought would eat. No worries there now.

Otto continues to love school. He has started singing the songs from school at home and it is wonderful. Eric is really going to try and bring the camera home one of these days so we can get some good footage of them. Mette is talking up a blue streak and Otto with his songs, it must be captured.

Really overall we are having a great time. Preschool and playdates are keeping us very busy and I am bursting through a series of projects around the house. I am taking a break to do somewhat boring winterizing projects and the garden needs to be "shut down" for the winter but all in all it is coming along.

I will upload some pictures soon. But for now I will leave you with this. Mette saw eric's phone which she knows is also a camera and said, "take a picture me, I say CHEESE" and this is what he got. Gold