My College Girls

Laura V described our 10 hour reunion well when she wrote that it was "surreal."  The first planning email was sent on November 20 when Laura T announced her engagement and summoned us all back to Madison - yes, convenient for me - for a June 23 wedding.  She also proposed a Christmas-time gathering for those who could make it.  I volunteered our home as a gathering place after most everyone else vetoed my idea for gathering at an indoor water park.  Of course, now I see how ridiculous that would have been.  Maybe when our kids are pre-teens?

Hear: "JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS!"

Take 1 (I thought taking one of just the girls would be easy...)

Take 2

Take 3

Okay, forget it.  Give us back our kids. We see you up there, Edan!

I think our reunion felt surreal because some of us have only seen each other once a year since finishing college in 2004, 2005 and 2006 and now all of the sudden there are little blond children everywhere.  Crazy.  It was a blast though and now we have some photos to recreate each time we're all lucky enough to be in the same room.  Megan and Bethany - we missed you dearly!  Adding Anderson and Carter to the mix would make nine very young children in one house, so next time it probably would be best if we had a doctor around :)

Discovering Her Voice

Warning: turn your volume down before playing this video - this girl can screech!

Crawling?

We call it the army crawl and it's a surprisingly fast way to get around. I used to put Lou on the kitchen floor while I cooked, but she has already been caught with dog food in her mouth twice and in a puddle of water spilled from the dog dish once. She will just be sitting there one moment and then into Ries' food and water the next. I took this video tonight around 8:30, when I was wishing she was tired. Why? Because I was (am) tired. She ended up falling fast asleep about 15 minutes later. What a sweet child :)

Christmas Tree Shopping

So many choices

Louisa like 'em all

Especially the way they taste

A lovely tree

The Advent season begins

Tasty Little Cheerios

It's funny being a mom and a dietitian. Every time Lou eats, it seems like an opportunity to put everything I've learned about infant feeding into practice. But the funny thing is that other than picking out what she eats and staying calm and positive while she eats it, I'm actually not practicing anything...she's doing it all. The first day I gave her Cheerios, Nate found his newest hobby: giving Loubear cheerios. That's sort of a joke, but sort of not. He does seem to get lots of joy out of watching her focus so hard on those little dissolvable, multigrain o's. And it's not that I don't experience that same joy, it's just the dietitian on my shoulder is saying, "aren't those just processed carbohydrates? couldn't you do better?" But then the mom part of me chimes in and quiets that orthorexic voice saying, "she likes 'em, Nate loves giving them to her, she still gets 99% of her nutrition from breast milk anyways..."


(sorry about sideways filming half-way through the video...I need to remember to start it horizontally in the first place!)

Lou's newest menu items include apple-squash-oat combo meal and turkey-potato-thanksgiving puree. As long as she's hungry, she pretty much likes anything we give her. If she is tired when eating, she will grab the spoon, getting food all over her little fists, and then rub her eyes. That's always fun. I should know better than to try feeding her when she's tired. Loubear, you're my favorite :)