Easter

Easter morning started out with checking out the baskets - from The Bunny & Aunt Katy & family
After church we took this years azalea photos - hopefully our last with these particular azaleas. (they're one of the few things I will miss about this house)

Then it was time to hunt the eggs left by the Easter Platypus (it's more feasible than an egg laying rabbit. :P)

Alex promptly opened this egg and eyed the chocolate like he wanted to try

We decorated eggs on Sunday afternoon - we don't hide boiled eggs - it would be really bad to forget one.

Hope you had a Happy Easter Weekend!

I Think We'll Keep 'Em

Since we did not do portraits at Christmas, we went last weekend. Here are the best ones of th kids, the new family portrait is on my side bar.

Last Hurrah

Today was my last day of maternity leave. Done. Over. Finito. Sigh . . .

So what did we do? I took my munchkins to the zoo. Luckily the weather cooperated. It was cool, but not cold and sunny. The animals cooperated for the most part and were out to be seen. And the field trip kids, while numerous, were well behaved.

Here's Alex & Laney are ready to see some animals.
Laney & one of juvenile the giraffes.

As usual, Laney got to take a ride on the carousel. Today she picked a tiger.

The obligatory I took it myself photo. Alex spent a few minutes in the front carrier but mostly he was in the stroller - I think he might already be too tall for the carrier! He was bumping my chin today.

I actually managed to get a family shot thanks to a nice lady on the carousel.

It was a good morning. The grind stone awaits.

Visiting Grandmama

Valentines weekend we drove a few hours to visit my Grandmother ("Grandmama" to Elena) and introduce her to her newest great-grandson.

We got the complete tour of Grandma's assisted living center (laundry room and all!). She had a great time showing the kids off to her friends and the staff. And Elena got to ride in style.

I post this for it's cute value. I tried Elena's Valentines outfit on Alex, after all he managed to wear some of her Christmas outfits. Not so much with this one. It was about 3 inches too long.

Statistics

Alex is now 2 months & 1 day old. We went for his 2 month well baby check up yesterday. He’s 24.25 inches tall and 11 lbs 7 oz. For those keeping score, he's grown 5.25 inches and gained 3 lbs 7 oz since birth.

The other statistics make me sad. I have one full week left before I return to work part time. I have a total of 1 Monday & 1 Wednesday left, 2 Fridays, and 3 Tuesdays & Thursdays left of maternity leave. Sigh. That's 3 more Story times and only 2 more Mothers of Young Children bible studies.

Turning away from feeling sorry for myself, some Laney pics. Here she is finally getting to make a pinecone bird feeder the way that Special Agent Oso taught her. We've had these pine cones since October, I think.

The finished product:

And on Saturday Elena got to do a couple of things she's been waiting for - first, I let her feed Alex a bottle. I nurse primarily, but he gets the occasional formula bottle for convenience. Also in this picture is her Build-A-Bear wearing her new Cinderella costume. Elena had purchased the outfit that day with her Christmas gift card.

We also caught up with Kayla, Elena's godmother, at last. Elena got her birthday and Christmas gifts from Kayla and we gave Kayla's son, Andrew his Christmas gift.

Kayla meets Alex.

And a Kathryn update, she brought home Honor Roll certificates for the second & third six weeks, which makes the entire first semester that she made honor roll. Right now much of her energy is focused on the Solo & Ensemble competition in 2 weeks. We'll see if she makes ones for the fifth year in a row.

6 Weeks Old

Alex turned 6 weeks old last Friday. Here are a couple of his Toby pictures:

Today I took him for professional portraits with the good folks at JCPenny. Of course, he decided last night that sleeping was something other people should do - not him or me. So by the time we got to take pictures he was sound asleep. I'm counting myself lucky because the other option with that little sleep was screaming his head off. These are some of the poses we purchased:

I loved this creation they put together, but it was a little too expensive for my taste.

The boy did open his eyes for a couple of shots - this one cracks me up - he looks like he's making faces - nyah nyah nyah nyah.

Somebody order winter?

We could break another winter record in this neck of the woods. December was colder than normal, but January has been pretty cold for us Gulf Coasters. We're due for our coldest tempatures in 10 years and single digit wind chills by Friday. We're also looking at our longest sustained freeze in decades.

Today at Preschool story time we read books about winter and the craft was making icicles out of aluminum foil and glitter. When we got home the girls made paper snow flakes to decorate our kitchen window.
On another note - can you believe it has already been a month? I've been taking milestone pictures of Alex with Toby Bear - here is his one month picture. I forgot to take the picture until my mom called last night at 9 PM so I had to take it while he was asleep. (Toby got moved back to his spot on the dresser after the picture was taken.)

Have a Happy Twelth Day of Christmas tomorrow!