A Renewed Commitment to Blogging

Blogging is hard.  Especially when you intend to do it somewhat frequently, then don't, then you lose all the good stories you had been thinking about writing the previous few weeks (and now months).  Quite a bummer.

Anyhoo, on the bright side, Norah and Lila keep filling up the queue with cuteness, so it isn't hard to find new material. 

Hard to tell whether the last 13 weeks have been longer or shorter than normal, which I take as a good sign.  Lila is doing very well, though she has very much missed her Mama since she returned to work last Monday (and she didn't start drinking from the bottle until Thursday night, ending an admirable 3.5 day hunger strike).  She enjoys playing in her baby gym, kicking the farm animals on her rocking/bouncy chair, and getting about a thousand kisses a day from her big sister.  She is sleeping through the night pretty much every night, though there is the occassional 2 or 3am wake up.  And she is smiling so much now.  Big, beautiful smiles that make you light up inside.  See below, from Easter morning.

We took several trips to see friends and family the last month of Karen's leave, taking advantage of those days off that rarely have when work is calling.  There was Nashville the first weekend in March, Houston two weeks later, and San Antonio to close out the month.  Something to note: since my good intentions of wanting to post numerous pictures in each blog post has slowed down the actual blogging process, I'm abandoning that now.  I will try to post the best two or three each period, but for the most part my new plan is to instead post links to the Shutterfly site where the girls' pictures are.

So, here are pictures from Easter:  http://norahevelyn.shutterfly.com/1452

And from San Antonio: http://norahevelyn.shutterfly.com/1148

And from Houston: http://norahevelyn.shutterfly.com/1246

And from Nashville: http://norahevelyn.shutterfly.com/1302

We also took advantage of some free tickets to the Rangers exhibition game a couple of weeks ago, and we made it through 7 innings (3 of those innings elapsed before Norah spotted the cotton candy).  This picture was taken pre-cotton candy.

 

Some random cuteness to report:

• Norah said "y'all" for the first time this week!  She wasn't very polite in so doing: "Y'all read to me!", but it was cute nonetheless.  The best part is that it wasn't a fluke; "y'all" has continued well into this week.
• Having been read many stories at school and storytimes throughout her young life, Norah has a new schtik during our own story times at home.  She'll take the book, hold it out for us to see, and say "Do you see the picture?  Can you see the picture?"  Adorable.
• Norah has it in for ladybugs for some reason (we hope it isn't because we have referred to Lila as our ladybug).  In Houston, she and her friend Hannah found a ladybug.  Hannah named it Mary.  Norah promptly squished it.  Once we got home, Norah named a newly acquired stuffed ladybug Mary.  And she still squishes it, over and over.

There are a thousand more cute and adorable things that happen around here on a weekly basis, but most are seemingly lost to memory (or posted on Facebook).  Here is to hoping more frequent posting lets us share those wonderful moments with you.

Until soon