A Special Sweater and a Congratulations...

First of all - Congratulations to my friend Joanna. (she's the lovely lady in the middle). Her beautiful baby Hannah Lynn was born yesterday. Everyone is doing great and Joanna and Ben are absolutely in love with their little girl (as it should be). Two of my other friends in the picture (Charlene and Sara - the two redheads) are due in the middle of February. It's really great that we're having children all at the same time and can draw from eachother's experiences and questions and just be there for eachother in general (even though there are hundreds of miles between us now).

We had a really low-key, nice day today. It was too nice to stay inside, so we went and took a walk around WPI. There has been a lot of building there recently and the campus looks really nice. We saw WPI play Clark in Men's Soccer. Clark may have had the better team and they definetly had better hecklers (did you know that WPI stands for "Women Please Inquire?"). I haven't heard insults that good since I got to go to the Beanpot Tournaments in the late nineties. BU may have better hockey teams, but Northeastern takes the cake with heckling (hey - we have to be good at something)...


Caroline got to wear her special sweater today. My Aunt Chris and my Nanny made it for her. Nanny started a sweater (for an adult) before she passed away, but wasn't able to finish it. My Grandfather gave all Nanny's knitting to Aunt Chris and she was able to re-vamp the sweater into something that would fit a baby. It's a great neutral color, too (do you think Nanny knew something that the rest of us didn't?)...Even though it makes me a little sad every time I put in on her, I have to smile at the same time.

Friday Night...

Whew...The week is over. Not that it wasn't a good one - it's just good to have the weekend to relax and focus on family. We were able to get some good pictures today, though. =-) Just to explain - the jean jacket that she's wearing is probably the best three dollars that I ever spent at Target and Caroline learned how to do the "SO BIG" game tonight at dinner. Even with the carrots and peas smushed on her and the poofy stars all over her face it was simply adorable.

Last weekend of the regular season. The Red Sox are out - my, how the mighty have fallen. But the Twins are in and making a good go of it. That's exciting. How can you vote against a team who has a pitcher whose real name is Boof? This may have to be our next purchase from the Bat-Store. I'm thinking that we'll actually pony up the extra ten dollars to get the post season games on the Gameday Audio (since most of them will be on pay television). I just can't take listening to McCarver and that stupid ball Scooter on the Fox broadcasts.

I remember being so nervous at the end of last baseball season thinking about all the changes that were going to come in our lives before Spring Training. It's amazing how things are so different now but I can't imagine them any other way.

Enough with the babble. I know all my Dad wants to see are the pictures.

In her "cool kid" jacket...

Mmmm....Poofies

Poofies are Fun!

Good thing bathies are tonight!

SOOOO BIG!!!

Apples

We discovered that Caroline loves apples. She digs her teeth right in and goes to town...
Her heartburn is getting better (thank goodness for Mylanta and Zantac) and things are slowly getting back to normal. It's a shame that she has my tummy even at this age - I suppose she had to get something of mine, because it's certainly not her looks. =-)
We're pretty sure that Jim broke one or two toes this morning (the little ones - they really hurt), but we taped him up and sent him on his way. Besides the toes being really black and swollen and walking with a limp - he's doing okay. Don't worry - we don't post pictures of feet.

PS - We have become more aware recently of problems associated with premature birth. The statistic the one in eight babies are born premature is absolutely mind blowing. The March of Dimes has some excellent information on this.

Sunday Night...

Sunday night.
The Patriots are on, the baby is down, lunches are packed, ironing is done.
Almost bedtime. Thank goodness. I wish I could just kick this headache.
Not much to blog about - just some pictures from yesterday and today.

Mommy climbing...

Like the hat?

Exploring the wilderness underneath the dining room table

Riding the horsey with Daddy.

Catching Up

It's been a long week, but we're slowly getting our act together as the nights get better (who knew that babies could get heartburn?!?!). It was really nice to see the boys, even if we didn't get to go the Sox game on Tuesday. Too bad. Bat-Girl was there, too. I really wanted to meet her.

The Red Wings ended up losing (this is why Matt was able to come to Boston), but people have nothing but good things to say about the Minnesota farm system. That's some pretty cool stuff.

Caroline continues to be ridiculously cute. Her volume level and speed with crawling has increased exponentially this week. She was snuggling up to Junior tonight (and not pulling his fur) and he really didn't seem to mind. She is getting into the idea of expressing what she sees/wants verbally - when she is motoring after one of the cats all we hear coming out of her mouth is "dat, dat, dat, dat". "Dat", "Mama" and "Dada" pretty much make up her vocabulary, but she's got everyone in the house covered - so we're all happy.



Tonight was her first night in "big girl jammies". You know - the kind with the plastic feet that make your feet sweat terribly? She could definetly get a little more speed with the decreased friction from the fleece and the better push off the feet. She's still doing her "wounded soldier crawl", though.

For All the Mustard

Tonight is it. It's go to Oklahoma City or go home. After looking really, really strong in Game 3 (isn't it funny that we commented "I hope they don't use all their runs up now and don't have any for tomorrow" when listening to the game...) and totally blowing Game 4, the Red Wings have one more chance.

I hope it will be easier to listen to tonight's game than it was last nights. Turns out that the station that feeds the games through the Minor League Baseball website broadcasts high school football on Friday and Saturday nights (the website figured this out in the middle of the game) - and these preempt the baseball broadcast. We had to go in circles to listen to it off a Rochester webcast. Not that it helped...
We also put Caroline in her Red Wings jersey yesterday. We won't be doing that again. Not that I'm superstitious - it's just that you don't mess with a streak. If taking batting practice naked is making you win or an eight month old with a too-big jersey is making you lose - then it's up to you to change the situation!

In other news...one of my friends from work was nice enough to hand-us-down a bunny suit that her daughter outgrew. Jim says that she "Looks like a deranged Easter Bunny". I thought she looked adorable.

You put her in a bunny suit and she still wants that cat food!

More from Sunday

Mmmmm. Spaghetti.

Trying to climb on the horsey. Also known as trying to give Daddy and Mommy a heart attack.

Doing laps around the downstairs with Daddy and the horsey.

Ahhhh...Sunday in September. A sport lover's paradise.

Football.
Baseball.
Going to the gym.
Taking a walk (it's chilly, but it's not that bad yet).
Jim donned his Redskins jersey and I got my Bills jersey on and we settled in for a long afternoon of doing nothing but hanging out with the baby and watching sports. I was disappointed after three quarters of hoping that all the cocky Patriots fans I know would be humbled. Jim has to wait until tomorrow to see his team lose. Ummmm, I mean play.
Oh yeah, we won't be seeing them since Monday Night Football is on cable now.
Jerks.
I guess we'll have to resort to what we used to do to hear baseball games (before Gameday Audio) and rig up the radio to hear it. Oh, well.

We did have a lot of fun being with Caroline. =-) She continues to amaze. How were we blessed with such a cool kid?

She's a Monkey

Good weekend, so far. Beautiful (but cool) weather. We got up early yesterday (Caroline has the inability to sleep past 6 AM) and walked down to Tatnuck Square to breakfast at Friendly's, hit the Tatnuck Seafood Market and then we went to the Tatnuck Meat Market. We had the freshest haddock for dinner last night. It was the best fish I had ever tasted, let alone cooked myself. Oh - was it great!
Church today and just hanging around the house. Matt called and said that his glove was almost busted from catching Liriano last night. The Red Wings are really psyched and the series against Toledo starts on Tuesday at Frontier Field.
We also went through the summer clothes and rotated through the fall ones for Caroline. She is growing so quickly. She continues to be into everything. We got a great video of her being a giggle monster last night - hopefully we can put it up soon. How lucky are we that we got a baby that gets giggly when she's tired instead of whiny?!?
Okay, well at least most of the time. =-)

Can You Say...

Chick Magnet?!?!?

PS - here is a link to a scrapping page that my friend Charlene did for Caroline. She got a lot of great comments on it.

Thanks for experimenting with the picture - it looks great!

Wednesday Night Round-Up

The new shush-y face...

Isn't she just a cutie - petutie?

It's Wednesday night - this will be short (I have a date). Will put up new pics of the weekend once we get them from my Dad.

Saturday

Today was a great day. This morning I was able to get together with a group of old friends from high school for breakfast. It was so nice to be able to see everyone and feel like absolutely no time what-so-ever has passed.
Mom picked up a bunch of really cool baby toys at some garage sales and Caroline really enjoyed herself on them.



My Aunt Donna came up from Florida and tomorrow are the DCA finals. It will be fun to see some really good corps and not to get worked up about people you know that are performing.
More updates later - time for bed.

More Fun on the Swings...

From yesterday at Boynton Park. Caroline just loves the swings.
The funny part is that we went to a small gift shop in Tatnuck Square after we were done at the park and were telling the shop owner about it. Turns out her son rehabbed Boynton Park for his Eagle Scout project thirteen years ago and put up the swingset that we enjoy so much. She was so happy to hear that it was still functional and people were still enjoying it. Small world, huh?
As much as sometimes I would love to pull up and just move out of here and go somewhere exotic and mysterious, it's stuff like what happened today that will keep us here (for at least a while)...
Oh - and we watched the movie Serenity. Good movie (kind of like Star Wars and Indiana Jones combined, but Nathan Fillian is a better Hans Solo)...but the TV series was better. Now that we've seen all the episodes we can get back to normal and not spend our time in front of the television!