3 years, 1 month, and only 11 days left

3 Years

First up, today is Matt and my 3rd wedding anniversary. Ah, how time flies (especially when you've spent most of that time growing and taking care of little babies!). I'm so lucky to have my hubby-doo, even though I don't deserve him!

There's no one around to take pictures of us together, so I'll have to get one later.

Matt brought me THREE beautiful pink roses this evening. AND lots of chocolate covered strawberries!

1 Month

In addition, today is also Miss Natalie's 1 month anniversary of her birth! In some ways I can't believe she is already one month old. In other ways it seems like she's been with us forever. It certainly seems like forever ago that I was pregnant.
Joanna didn't have to start work until she was 6 weeks old. Poor Natalie had to start at 3 weeks! Fortunately she only has to work part-time. :)

A nice work pic -- she doesn't actually enjoy sitting like this on my legs, but she humored me for a minute to get a picture. Fortunately right now there is basically an extra office that I'm able to use on Wednesday and Thursday mornings. That way we can just close the door to nurse, and I can change her diaper on the desk! Otherwise we'd be stuck in the open in the workroom, having to head to the parlor or something come time to eat... that would be harder, for sure.

I took a TON of pictures today. You only get to see a few, but you might just consider yourselves lucky. :)
I need to grab Joanna's 1 month pictures off the external hard drive and post them too. Sisters for sure, I say.

I LOVE tiny baby feet!

More cute feet pictures!

Daddy and Natalie.

I think Natalie is cracking a little smile here!

Mommy and Natalie

Only 11 days left!

Joanna will be 2 years old in only 11 days! Oh my goodness! I've really got to get cracking on the birthday party business. Yikes!

The other day I was picking up Joanna's room and decided to take a picture of her babies. I think the only one missing here is Bath Baby, and that's because she's naked and mostly hangs out in the bathroom. Joanna LOVES her babies. She rocks them, swaddles them, nurses them, hugs them, kisses them, holds them by their hair frequently, talks to them, and sends them to time-out. She is so cute! She favors different ones on different days.

Random cute pic. She wasn't sad here, I think she was just covering her eyes because I was taking her picture. When she sees this picture though, she says, "Sad Joanna."

This afternoon Matt came home a little early (you know, with my roses and strawberries!) and he and Joanna had a little play time outside.

It's a bird; it's a plane...

Silly girl

So cute!

I'm such a lucky lady. I have two beautiful girls and a marvelous husband. Happy Anniversary, Matt! I love you!!

Monkey, milk

I went in to Joanna's room this morning after she woke up. She told me, "Monkey, milk." And I looked and she was nursing her little sock monkey. She'd gone to sleep with her arm tight around him last night. Technically this monkey was a gift for Natalie, but Joanna's keeping him company until Natalie is big enough for him. I just think it's funny that nursing was the first thing on her mind when she woke up.

It IS just like riding a bike!

I've gotten out the playmat and started laying Natalie down on it occasionally. She's not a huge fan of just laying around, but sometimes one of the cute critters on here catches her eye.

And Joanna thinks it's FABULOUS! Joanna and I got to go to the grocery store by ourselves yesterday. It was very fun! She even helped me carry in the groceries.
Random pic of Natalie yesterday -- Matt was playing with her while I was fixing dinner.

I was holding Natalie last evening and thought her mouth was just so beautiful and perfect that I had to take a picture! It's fuzzy cause I didn't use the flash so close to her face.

Joanna is at school today. Natalie is asleep in her bouncer. I'm running the dishwasher, washing machine, and dryer. I've gotten some filing and work done. I'm feeling good! I hear my little one stirring -- better get those clothes out of the dryer fast!

Just Stuff

A cute pic of Matt and Natalie chillin' last night. This morning -- a little "happy awake time" in the boppy.
Close-up of the shirt!

Silly face from Joanna. She didn't really want her picture taken -- has it started so soon?!

Awwww... sweet sisters!

Not too much going on around here. Here are a few recent random things I've done/been thinking about...whatever:

• Last Sunday I almost walked out the door in a dress. I seemed to have forgotten for a moment that that would have been disastrous come feeding time.
• Last Sunday right after church we came home, fed the girls, and put them down for naps. Then, I went to the grocery store ALL BY MYSELF. Honestly, I felt a little naked.
• I miss parking in the stork spot at Kroger. It is the best stinkin' spot in the parking lot (and it should be!) But that is probably the only thing I miss about being pregnant.
• Tonight I was leaving a party with Natalie. I put her in the carseat and she fussed. My friends asked if she was like Joanna -- cried every single time she was in the carseat for the entire duration of the ride. I said basically no that she'd calm down once we got moving. Well, I had to eat my words. She screamed THE WHOLE WAY HOME. Poor poor baby -- she was hungry and tired... a terrible combination. She is taking really short, not deeply sleeping-ish kinds of naps lately...not good. She is however asleep right now. So should I be!
• I have discovered a few ways to get Joanna to eat veggies lately. I can mix pureed sweet potato into applesauce and she thinks it's wonderful. Messy, but wonderful. I can also spread pureed sweet potato on our "homemade" tortilla pizzas with the pizza sauce and she thinks it's great. We've eaten a couple of frozen pizzas lately (we do eat other things, too) that are the kind with all kinds of toppings on them. Normally I don't buy these (cause I don't like veggies on my pizza), but Joanna will eat the veggies on the pizza! No more cheese pizza for this kid! She's pretty good about eating raw spinach on her sandwiches (unless she just pulls the whole thing apart to get to the cheese.) She also likes scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese mixed in. Maybe there's hope for her yet!

Super Bowl, Super Cute

We headed over to Uncle Mark's house on Sunday for the annual Pence Family Super Bowl party (and birthday party for Uncle Mark!). Anytime we go to Uncle Mark's house, Joanna loves to play in front of this huge mirror wall in the dining room. Here she is making faces in the mirror. (I'm the one with the giant white spot for a head.) :) She did pretty well, but it sure is hard to go the whole afternoon with NO NAP! My child has not napped for me since Friday. I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet, but I'm sensing the end is near. She did take a nap for her teachers at MDO yesterday, so I'm holding out hope. It's funny though, we had a much better afternoon Monday and today with no nap than we did yesterday with the little MDO nap. That child is grumpy/clingy/needy (more than normal) after her naps. This is why my mom says she let Kathryn give up hers when she was 2. It just wasn't worth it! If this truly is the end, she'll still be having quiet time in her room for Mommy's sanity.
We played a game where you start by putting a bag on your head. Joanna wanted to play, too. If you look on the left side of the picture, you'll see that Pop is holding Natalie on his chest, asleep. She had a hugely long and wonderful Pop nap. I actually had to wake her up (yikes, I know!) because she was having such a marathon nap. She needed to eat! (I needed her to eat!)

I just thought this was cute. (And yes, you did notice a wardrobe change.) I don't remember exactly what she spilled on herself, but it was somethin'.

Playin' football with Jenny.

The annual Superbowl football pose: If you feel like it, you can look up last year's pose in my old blog posts. :)

TOUCHDOWN!

I could've taken a BUNCH of pictures, but I just wasn't feeling great. I did notice that Mindy and Mark and Allison took a few so maybe they'll pass them along. Did you read that, people?! I want pictures!!

Often I need to lay Natalie down for a few minutes when I go into Joanna's room to get her dressed or read to her or change a diaper or whatever. I have a nice soft cushy blanket for Natalie to lay on in the crib. And we've discovered that she LOVES looking at the mobile and listening to the music.

I don't have a picture of it yet, but I've discovered that she also LOVES looking at Joanna's new Valentine's giraffe. Mamma and Pop brought it over a couple of weeks ago -- it's a Beanie Baby giraffe that is white with little red hearts on it instead of spots. It's very cute, and I think Natalie likes it because of the nice contrasting colors. Joanna isn't extremely thrilled about sharing yet, but she does very well.

I know I complained a little about Natalie in my post earlier today... well I shouldn't have! She has had such amazing naps today. I don't think I've posted this, but she's been doing really well with napping NOT on me. I haven't gotten her to sleep in her little bed, but I also haven't really tried. She's been sleeping in her little pink bouncer during the day. She seems very cozy, and she sleeps very well amidst all the noise of the house. Most of the time I get her pretty much asleep in my arms, then I lay her down. Sometimes she's a little more awake, but still manages to put herself out with a little bouncing and a little paci sucking. The bouncer also has a nice soft vibrating mode that she's very fond of. I have to say that I'm extremely impressed with the battery life on that thing! We're frequently leaving it on for long periods of time. Whoa, this is a long rambley paragraph. Sorry.

Well, I've been thinking for about an hour that the child is going to wake up soon. I think she essentially started her "night" already. She's is heavy night sleep, I think. I know as soon as I go lay down she'll wake up, though!

Back to work, sort of...

This is my first week back to work since Natalie was born, and so far it's not going so well. I'm running into a lot of challenges. They are:

1. There is a new bulletin layout. This is a good thing, and I didn't have to design it (not my strength), but it's causing my computer some distress. The new bulletin has a lot of graphics in it, so the files are HUGE. My poor little computer is literally groaning. I don't have enough hard drive memory or processing speed for this. Fortunately it is still working, just slowly. And I had to clear off hundreds of Joanna pictures to make room. Also, I needed to go into the program and adjust some spacing issues -- nothing major, just a little extra work.

2. There is no MDO tomorrow due to teacher inservice. I had forgotten this (due to Joanna not being at school AT ALL last week).

3. Joanna has a rash today so could not stay in the nursery. Her very observant mother didn't notice it this morning, but her more observant teachers did about an hour into work time. So I did get an hour of work done, but that was just the tip of the iceburg. We're pretty sure it's just an allergic reaction to the antibiotic she's been on. Kathryn and I are both allergic to penicillin derivatives.

4. Natalie has been a little fussier/clingy/needy (duh, she's a newborn) these past few mornings. However, she is taking a nap RIGHT NOW in the bouncer -- what a good baby!

I know what you're all thinking -- why don't you stop blogging woman and go get some work done?!

Okay, okay...

Shoes?

On our way home from church today, I glanced back at Joanna, and her shoes caught my eye. I thought, "I don't remember Joanna's shoes having little flowers on the strap and I didn't think the sole looked like that and I'm pretty sure Joanna's were a little more scuffed than this." So I grabbed one off her foot, and they weren't her shoes! They looked quite similar -- the Wal-Mart type black dress shoes. But these were a full size bigger. Poor kid who went home with Joanna's shoes on!