this was such an incredible month for you -- reaching lots of developmental milestones, spending lots of time with friends and family, and growing in independence. you are interested in everything around you, but you also play happily with your toys by yourself for long stretches. you absolutely adore Greta and Cecilia. whenever you see them, you flap your arms and squeal with delight. they love to include you in their imaginary play and you love it too, even when they are making you be the cafeteria lunch lady in their pretend school. for now, they can keep their tiny toys out of your reach, but pretty soon we'll have to banish the Barbies to a baby-free zone!
yes, your sisters made you wear one of their ballet hairnets to play lunch lady
the perennial favorite 10 Little Ladybugs book that Grammie gave to Greta, still going strong!
hanging with the big girls
this month we visited the zoo with our dear friends Amelia, Ryan, Adeline and Elias. the whole zoo was decorated with incredible creations for the Asian Lantern Festival. it was a hot, humid day and at one point while Elias was out of his stroller, you got to borrow his stroller fan. you were immediately so much happier that we obviously had to get you one of your own!
the cool parents and babies club
born in the year of the bull! (so was Mommy!)
had to get this picture, since you were wearing your elephant onesie
ahhhhh, this is the life!
in mid-August, we flew to Washington state to visit family, including the newest member of our clan: your first cousin, Milo! of course, you had lots of snuggles and playtime with Grammie, Grandpa, Auntie Kris, and all your aunties and uncles. on our way to eastern Washington, we drove through the Bavarian-styled town of Leavenworth for a delicious lunch and you got to taste your first soft pretzel. it was a big hit!
the restaurant had cool misters running to temper the 100+ degree heat
sister snuggles ... melt my heart!
helping play Herd Your Horses
i'm so excited for you and Milo to grow up together and get into cousin mischief. you were intrigued by him, but probably more so by his blanket and possibly his pacifier, since it's the same as yours. watching the two of you together, my mama (and auntie!) heart was so full!
the cousin crew! (photo credit to Tia Genesis!!)
so happy for Auntie Kelli snuggles!
our family is so blessed!
first tandem Ergo walk! (can't blame you for being more interested in the sunset!)
another milestone of this month was that you had your second taste of ice cream, and liked it! you still made a face at the cold temperature, but you loved holding your very own adorable miniature cone.
on our flight back to Pittsburgh, you were absolutely entranced by the flight attendant's safety demonstration. the sweet couple sitting in the row behind us snapped this picture! after that, your delight continued as you got to eat your first Biscoff cookie.
this month you learned how to scoot around on your butt, just like your daddy used to do. we still haven't seen anything resembling actual crawling, but you can get up on your hands and knees, and given enough time, you manage to scoot yourself around wherever you want to go. you can stand while holding on to something. and literally on the day i took your nine month photos, you clapped for the first time! you cut four of your top teeth this month, and have taken to gnawing on the legs and tag of your penguin Wubbanub in addition to the pacifier.
it feels a bit preposterous to sit down and type out a list of woes on my personal laptop, in my own heated house, while my four healthy children nap or play (respectively) and I sip on a San Pellegrino flavored water from a case that a neighbor on our Buy Nothing group just gifted us. and yet. and yet! there has been quite a bit of woe in the last several weeks and I want to complain about it, so I shall. at the top of the list: car woes. not one, but two of Nick's cars were hit by other drivers within the past month. fortunately he was not injured, but working on his cars is essentially therapy for him -- so he lost not just two vehicles in his fleet, but also the time that was required to deal with insurance and police reports, and the emotional benefit of his favourite hobby. this car was rear-ended while parked. Nick wasn't actually in the car, but saw it happen -- the driver of the SUV in the photo below was driving full speed in the right hand lane and didn't reali
Victoria Anne was born on the Fourth of July, weighing 6 pounds 3 ounces and measuring 19 inches long! Miss Victoria arrived right on schedule -- I had requested a 39 week induction based on numerous factors, including my age and gestational diabetes, although thank goodness the diabetes was well controlled without medication, so my maternal fetal medicine/high risk OB was comfortable letting me go up until 41 weeks if I wished -- which I didn't! I had an easy induction experience with Greta (at 10 days post-due date), so I was fairly confident that my body would kick into gear quickly the fourth time around. Cecilia's birth was a precipitous one-hour labor that has garnered her the nickname Sidewalk Baby, and Elizabeth was born after a relatively quick five hour labor. 39 weeks happened to fall exactly on the Fourth of July, and we decided to go for it! Mom arrived on a red-eye flight the morning of July 2, and came along to mass with us. that evening, we squeezed in
1) Baby Victoria Anne is here! you can read her full birth story here . she arrived at 5:18 PM on the Fourth of July, and we are all absolutely smitten. she is four weeks old today. as I've experienced with now all four of my girls, time is such an elusive concept in the newborn stage. on the one hand, it seems she can't possibly already be almost a month old, while on the other, I can't imagine a time that she wasn't a part of our family. one of the things I treasure most about this postpartum time is the opportunity to visit with friends and family. I'm so grateful for their support and thoughtfulness in bringing meals and spending time together -- it's nourishing for both body and soul! Vin and Susan brought us a delicious meal featuring pork belly and pork tenderloin (we had corn on the cob and salad too, but we probably could have all used a bottle or two of Lipitor!) unbelievably delicious ladies' night with my best girls (not pictured: pizza and wi
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