Leif 6 Weeks; Summer!

It's summer! Not technically, but it feels like it AND it's past Memorial Day, so yeah, it's summer. We've had a couple of good days enjoying it after a rough rainy-Tuesday-after-Kurt-was-home-for-four-days kind of day. We went to MadTown Twisters open gym yesterday - gymnastics stuff set up for little kids. The girls loved it as they have before. And we got to hang out with Cynthia and Viggo.  Freya climbed all the way up the "rock" wall, probably about 6 or 7 feet off the ground (big mat underneath). And we had a tree-climbing incident over the weekend with both girls climbing about 10 feet up a pine tree. That was kind of scary because I had Leif in the Moby and if someone fell....well, no one fell. Upshot is, they seem to be developing into climber-monkeys like their mama.
Leif continues to be a mostly happy camper. He's arguably had some smiles, I think he has and Carol saw some too, but I know some people probably just think they're gas or whatever. Looking forward to for sure real smiles! 6 weeks has gone by in absolutely the blink of an eye.

One thing re: summer. I always sort of scoffed at two-piece swimsuits for little girls, like, why start them so young on these adult things. HOWEVER. I realize now the eminent practicality of a two piece with potty training toddlers...might actually have to invest in some. With long tops NOT bikinis.

Funny things from the girls: last post I talked about pretty dancing flower/mean rattlesnake. They love speaking in opposites. Lots of times they'll answer a question with what ISN'T the answer, telling us what it isn't. One funny one is, they like to be super heroes (Super Freya and Super Signe), and we say "Super Freya is going to save the day!" etc. They both decided the opposite of saving the day is cutting the day. So if they want to be oppositional, they say, "no, I'm going to CUT the day."

One other thing mostly Freya does is "magic" tricks. Doing the jack-in-the-box is a magic trick. This morning she said she did a magic trick and pointed to two blank places on the floor. No idea what it meant. But hey. The whole world is magic to a little kid right, gotta appreciate that :-)

 I can tell you that this is not a baby lacking stimulation

 A little surprise from Freya...we find the covers pulled up after putting the kids to bed...

 THERE are her friends we couldn't find for bedtime

 In a box, in a row, strapped in, on a pillow, tucked in. So Freya.

 Going for some morning playground fun

 Our "triple" stroller. The girls were very good sports

 Is Mr. Leif developing curly black hair like Grandpa Jim? And a Brewers mania? We'll see...

 Fun with bee friend

 He looked at it and batted it for quite awhile. Kurt even saw him smiling at it

 Kurt has been introducing the girls to Calvin and Hobbes. They LOVE it (even though they can understand about 5% of it ;-))

 Summer!

Leif 5 weeks

Leif is starting to get more interactive - more interested in making eye contact, and responds more. He was in his bouncy seat this morning when Kurt was saying his goodbyes before leaving for work, and he told Leif, "you can wiggle around your legs and arms if you want", and then he did wiggle around! You never know what babies can understand.

The girls continue to adapt too, although they sure do understand that they can take advantage and get away with more shenanigans when I'm alone and nursing Leif. Little stinkers :-)

A couple cute-isms. Freya loves to call herself a beautiful, or pretty, or beautiful pretty, dancing flower, than dances around on her tiptoes. This is usually after putting on a skirt or pretty shirt or in anticipation of it. Signe does it sometimes too. I think they got it from Daniel Tiger. And in their minds, the opposite of a beautiful dancing flower is a mean, or mean Mean MEAN, rattlesnake. As in, Freya says she is a beautiful dancing flower and tells me that Signe is instead a mean rattlesnake. Although sometimes Freya is the mean rattlesnake, but don't worry, she tells me she's a nice mean rattlesnake.

Signe's cute/funniness - she says I love you and I love you too back all the time. Very cute. Sometimes though we'll say I love you to her, and she'll just say back "thank you." You don't want to hear that in response to your "I love you" ;-)


Thought it'd be fun to include a couple pictures from 2 years ago [I don't have any pictures from earlier than that other than low-quality ones from off this blog because also 2 years ago my computer crashed :-(].

2 years ago. Wow. Just...the girls were so small, it's gone by so fast...wow:

And current pictures:

 So tall!! 

 Cross-eyed

 Here you go mommy

 Leif and Great Grandpa Welch

 The girls were running around and around Uncle John, wearing aprons and sweaters of course

 Nice outdoor nap during family get-together

Can't get enough of these daddy-son snuggle pics. Waiting for when Kurt gets fed up with pictures of him sleeping being on the internet ;-)

Leif 4 weeks; settling in

Leif is 4 weeks tomorrow, wow! He weighed in at 10lbs 2 oz today, almost 2 lbs above his birth weight. This despite me having mastitis 2 and a half weeks ago. We made it through that little crisis thanks to help from lots of awesome people. Things are still hard at times but I'm settling in to being a mom/corral-er of three under three. We've gone to the children's museum twice, been to the indoor playground at warner park a number of times, and made it to various appointments. Maybe I can do it after all!

I had a nice Mother's Day, we had a brunch at Jack and Carol's with one of my favorites, eggs benedict. 

I keep missing all the funny things the girls say. One good one last night - Signe was asking Kurt for a stuffed animal at bedtime. She asked him for her "rabbiteen bunnit". Yes, Velveteen Rabbit :-)

Happy Mother's Day from the girls...so what if I coached them the day before and told them to tell it to me in the morning ;-)

Changing baby's diaper in the twin nursing pillow (I used it while recovering from the mastitis/painful latch that caused it)

Getting so big and stretched out!

You never appreciate dandelions as much as when you have toddlers who spend tons of time picking them to make soup, pie, etc

Carrying Tiggy like Mama carries Leif :-) I need to make those some of those mini baby carriers for the girls!

More and more awake, alert time

What a great daddy :-)

Did not know this happened until I transferred the pictures from my camera to my computer

A series comparing him to baby Signe. Total resemblance.