Anne is growing

One happy girl who likes to sing like a bird.



Now she has learned to sit up.
L'Anita thinks she looks like my old pictures in a wrestling stance.



We've also started solid foods. And discovered a few teeth coming in.

Fun with Great Grands

Eagerly awaiting lunch. A napkin will do for now.

Special story time on GreatGrand's lap

Anne is just kicking back on the porch.



Abigail has a nack of charming her way onto anyone's lap. Not quite the introvert her parents usually are.

Happy birthday Grandpa!

Beach Fun

Something therapeutic about taking a long drive to the coast and turning back to the memories of my childhood on the beach. Watching my daughter explore those same adventures is twice as fun as reveling in my own memories.

Dig til your heart's content.

But don't dig too deep.

Not quite half way to China, but its a start.

My Girls

It wasn't very nice of me to post for the first time in a month and not include a single picture.

So here are a few! My girls are getting so big...

Abigail's trying to help Anne grab onto the little bug.

So happy to see DaddyAbigail almost always joins Anne for "tummy time"--at least for a few minutes. I have about twenty pictures like this. But it's just cute every time!

A little background before you watch the video: Abigail and I (and Erik on his days off) have a little devotional each morning when we sing a few songs and read scriptures. Abigail loves it and often requests a second devotional at some point during the day. She always wants to read "just one more" chapter.

Recently we finished reading the New Testament stories. (By the way, these are abbreviated versions of the scriptures, with pictures accompanying the stories. They are published by the Church and designed to help young children transition easily to the full text. I loved reading them with my mom and later on my own when I was young. They are a wonderful resource to have when your kids are young. You can order them online here.)

Not surprisingly, we've started hearing more New Testament language from Abigail. She really cracked us up one evening when she put on my shoes and informed us she was going to the Sea of Galilee...

"Let no one shirk"

I had an interesting conversation with Abigail at dinner tonight.

She wanted to sing a song from our hymnbook called "Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel." The message of the song is essentially that there's plenty of work to do in the world and in the Lord's Church, and we should all be a part of it. Abigail enjoys the hymn mainly because it contains the word "shirk" in the chorus, which she thinks is a very funny word for some reason. It sends her into a fit of giggles every time she hears it.

So tonight at dinner she requested that we sing it. So we sang the chorus several times. It is as follows:

Put your shoulder to the wheel; push along!
Do your duty with a heart full of song.
We all have work; let no one shirk.
Put your shoulder to the wheel.

At one point, I paused the song to ask, "Abigail, do you know what 'duty' means?"

She shook her head.

"Our duty is our job--the things we're supposed to do. Heavenly Father has given all of us a special duty. My duty is to take good care of my sweet girls and Daddy. Daddy's duty is to--"

"--love us!" she interjected.

"Yes...and to work hard so he can help take care of our family. What do you think your duty is?"

She named several things--pick up her toys, obey mommy and daddy, be a good big sister--which were accurate, even if not always perfectly observed...

I then explained what it means to "shirk" one's duty. Abigail apparently didn't follow my logic (I sometimes forget that three-year-olds can't always follow adult logic...because most of the time she seems so capable of reasoning!) because she kept asking what shirk means. So I tried to give a more concrete example.

"If I said one day, 'I don't want to fix dinner for my family tonight. I don't want to take care of Abigail. I don't want to feed baby Anne'--that would be shirking my duty. And my family and Heavenly Father would be very sad."

Abigail was listening intently as I spoke. When I finished, she said, "Mommy, if you do that and forget your duty, I will remind you!"

I nodded solemnly. "Please do."

She raised her eyebrows. "And will you obey me?"

Happy birthday, Abigail!

We celebrated Abigail's birthday last Friday, March 19th. We can hardly believe our little girl is three years old! We started off the special day with a trip to the doctor's office--how exciting! Our little preemie weighed in at over 11 lbs (!!), and Abigail let everyone know she was a big, independent 3-year-old by wearing two left shoes and politely responding with "no" to every request or question from the nurse. We're right on target!

Erik was post-call on Friday and it was a gorgeous Spring day, so we packed a picnic and went to the park in the late afternoon.

It's so nice to have Daddy with us.

I took Abigail to Publix with me to get subs (with very selfish motives on my part), and she latched on to one of the little jello cups on display in front of the deli (she did not inherit a taste for jello from her mom, which is probably why she wouldn't let go of it. She never gets it at home). She inhaled the entire thing at the park, and I spent the rest of the time trying to coax her to take a bite of her sandwich. She humored me for one bite before running off to the playground. So someone else had to eat the rejected sub....

This little boy jumped on the swing with Abigail and ordered Erik to "make it fast! REALLY fast!" Erik started swinging them to the boy's chorus of "faster! faster!" Abigail quickly joined in. After about five seconds of going "faster" Abigail started to look a little anxious. Then suddenly she said, "I'm done" and promptly slid off right through the hole. Erik didn't have time to stop the swing, so it plowed right over her. Of course after a reassuring hug from Erik, she was off romping again.

We're starting to feel the jello now.

On Saturday morning Erik took Abigail for a long-awaited Daddy-daughter date. Erik bought her a "big girl bed" (a new crib mattress), and she got to pick out some new sheets for it.

We explained the rule for the new big girl bed: if she gets out of it after we tuck her in, she has to go back to her crib. After our usual bedtime routine, we closed the door and didn't hear a peep from Abigail until we went to wake her up this morning. She was still sleeping soundly in her new bed! We were proud parents.

Tonight after snuggling into her big girl bed and reading a story together, I told Abigail how proud I was that she stayed in her bed all night. She smiled sweetly. And then said she wanted to go back to her crib.

Ah, well. Couldn't expect a perfect transition...

Two sweet girls

Erik has had an incredibly busy schedule the last two months. We were pleasantly surprised when he came home one night before I put Anne down, so they got to spend a few minutes getting reacquainted. She had learned to smile and coo while he'd been away, and he had grown a beard and mustache. (this is what happens to guys who start feeling insecure in their female-dominated work environment....Actually all the guys in the peds residency are growing facial hair this month. Something to do with March madness?)

Mmmm....I find those cheeks irresistible. I'm ordering all my babies with chubby cheeks in the future.

Snow!

I know, I know. Five posts in one weekend is probably overkill. But it's feast or famine with this blog!

We had snow this weekend! And since this was Erik's week off, he and Abigail got to enjoy it together. Sadly, I was too comfortable inside in my pajamas to come out and take a picture of them both.

Right outside our condoAbigail kept calling the snow "sand." Maybe the beach toys were confusing her.

Can't play in the snow without getting a runny nose!

Is she testing the snow or licking the runny nose?? Hmm...