Ready for her first ballet class.

First day of first grade (almost)...

She doesn't start until tomorrow, but we tried everything on one last time to make sure everything still fit, and I figured I'd post a pre-first-day picture today in case I run out of time tomorrow.

The long awaited snow day!

It took almost an hour to gather all necessary clothing, and dress them up, but alas, they were ready! Norah was not so thrilled with all the layers.


Georgie wasted no time before he dove right in and started eating the snow from the ground.


Norah immediately turned right around and begged to go back inside. She spent the rest of the afternoon looking out from the inside, watching her big brother and sister frolic in the repulsive white stuff on the ground.


Abby was so happy, she hugged all the trees in the yard. I have no explanation for this.




Later, some friends came to play!


After we spent hours outside, we all came in to drink hot chocolate and eat valentine cakes. To get even warmer, we gathered together in the family room around the fireplace where we watched movies the rest of the afternoon. It was a good day...

There's Something About Mary Norah

The tooth fairy is coming tonight!

My baby lost her first tooth today during her sleepover at Grandma's house! I haven't seen it for myself yet, but here's the picture they sent me! Her new saccharine smile makes me gushy and proud!

My proud hunter.

Apparently we will be mounting the head of this poor creature in our home once it has been properly preserved. Because my husband must feel that nothing is more comforting than lounging around on a Sunday morning being stared at by the glassy, lifeless eyes of a deer carcass.

My baby boy is two

Happy birthday my baby boy. You're two years old today. I kissed your sweet face tonight while you slept and thought back on these past two years. Seeing everything through your eyes has changed my world forever. How could I have ever known that one day "messy" and "loud" would be the two best words to describe my most treasured moments? How could I have imagined that the birth of my son would open my heart and mind, and fill me with such simple joys? I thank God every day for the silly hopeful grin that never seems to leave your face, and for the endless supply of hugs that bring me so much comfort when I am down-hearted and weary. And for your eyes. How could I forget those beautiful eyes that will eternally tug at my heartstrings. No matter how bad the tantrum, or however big the mess, a simple bat of those long black lashes, and the slate is wiped clean. Tonight you are nestled beside me, and as I listen to your every breath, I think about how you're changing, how you're growing up so fast, and for that, I never want to leave this moment.

Baby #3 is a girl!

It's a girl!! (Abby is relieved!) And Norah is her name-o. She was born on Tuesday morning after only 5 minutes of pushing... 6 pounds 5.8 ounces of dimples and soft, warm skin.

This is Norah on day one:

Baby #3

Baby #3 on 12/22/04 (head is on the right) 

An update for the month

Well, hooray, hooray!! School ended last month for me until next September!! I'm not taking any classes this semester due to the circumstance of pregnancy! Classes end too close to my due date. I was a little worried about my English final. I had to write a five-hundred word essay from memory - no notes or outlines allowed during the final- on one of three controversial topics. The first topic was about anti-Semitism and why Jew-haters hate Jews, which I was not about to even attempt, being that my teacher is Jewish. The second was on the differences between the Protestant and Catholic religions, and the beef between the two groups. The third was about what blacks and whites hate about each other, and the long time battle between the two races. Eesh! I wrote mine on the latter of the three. Anywho, it turns out I was worried over nothing! My grades came in the mail... turns out I got an A in Sociology and an A in English, leaving my current GPA intact at a 4.0!! Hip hip hooray for me!

Christmas was fun this year! Abby was so much more involved this year, more than any other year and was so excited. We emailed Santa her wishlist, and she even put one together for Georgie! (I know, emailing Santa! Who knew?) Anyway, she got her exercise Care Bear, and many other toys... Georgie got the train set that Abby said he wanted. She left cookies and chocolate milk for Santa, which I'm sure he enjoyed very much... no regular milk at this house!

Georgie is talking more... his current words are: dad(dy), mom(my), Abby, baby, ba-ba, yea!, yeah, no, eat, go, ball, football, yum, hello, bye-bye, and during Sunday's Eagles game, he kept saying: "Go, go Eagles!" (if I think of any more, I will add them in later.)

We had about a foot of snow come down over the weekend, which Abby loved! (Georgie, not so much.) I spent the longest two-and-a-half hours of my life freezing in the cold while she played in the snow, making snow angels, snow pillows to sleep on(?), and she was digging and digging forever. The pictures are on our photo website, if you're interested.
sleeping in the snow?! 
That's all for updating now... I have to make something for dinner. Hopefully the only thing I will be making is a phone call for take-out. I'm too tired to cook!

By the way, here's a picture of the ultrsound we had done three days before x-mas (and no, we still don't know if it's a boy/girl! I'm looking forward to being surprised!)
"Baby #3" (head is on the right) 

number 3 

Still here.

I'm still here. Sorry for the lack of communication!!! I'll try to get you up to date:

Starting with a little test I took. About two weeks ago I peed on a little "magic wand" and after 3 minutes: two blue lines appeared!! Much to my surprise: we're having another baby! I was a little taken-aback, so I didn't tell George right away... he got the news just a few days ago. When I finally got around to telling him, he was really excited! I didn't doubt that he would be, but I knew we were definitely not planning on baby #3 for quite some time. But he reassured me, "I love being a dad, and I love the two we have already, so why wouldn't I be excited?"
I went for an ultrasound yesterday. and have the pictures to prove it. I won't find out my exact due date until November 10th, when I return to the doctor.

Cravings so far: orange juice, calamari, avocados, nachos w/ extra extra artificial cheese product, frosted mini-wheats, bean soup and I have the urge to put mayonaisse on everything. As with all my pregnancies I also have a hankering for lemonade... but not just any lemonade - I am dying for an icy cup of boardwalk lemonade! I guess George will be driving me to the shore during the very off-season to buy me my treat!!

I've been feeling pretty nauseous to the point where I can't eat my first meal until about 4 o'clock in the afternoon... thus the life of an incubator. But I'm starting to wonder if the whole 'morning sickness' bit was all in my head. I've been fairly stressed about this pregnancy so far... especially since the doctor handed me the script for an ultrasound. But since I have seen my healthy little one, the morning sickness has vanished - literally overnight!! I have come to the conclusion that it was mostly related to stress. Once you have gone for an ultrasound and they don't find the baby's heartbeat, you panic that they won't find a heartbeat for the next baby, and the next, and the next. It's such a sickening feeling. Luckily, we are so blessed that in yesterday's U/S, the heart rate was present, and beating at a perfect pace. The size of the fetus showed that I am 11 weeks along... only 29 weeks to go! Eek! According to BabyCenter, the little one is a teeny-tiny 1 and 1/2 inches long - the size of a "fig."


Baby #3 (the head is on the left)


number 3

Abby came with us to see "her baby" yesterday. We passed time in the waiting room looking at pictures of the development of babies in-utero, from one of the magazines they give you with your "welcome to pregnancy" care-package at the OB office. She loved looking at the baby develop month after month, and when I showed her the picture of what our baby looks like at this point, she laughed. "It looks like a fish!" she exclaimed. She's right.

We went on vacation with my parents from September 25 - October 2. We drove to the Outer Banks and stayed in a posh, yet child friendly, 6 bedroom house right off the beach. Abby and Georgie had a great time, though we didn't do very much once we unpacked our bags... the perfect vacation, I say. But by the end of the week, we did venture out - far out. Lol. We went on a wild horse hunt... lucky for the SUV because, to find the horses, we had to drive 8 miles on the beach. Once you get off the beach at this point, the roads are all unpaved, sand roads... so needless to say, not for the 4-wheel-driveless. Abby was in her glory!!! She made a friend almost immediately. She named him "Spirit" from her favorite movie. He was an uncommonly friendly horse (according to the locals, anyway), who really took an immediate liking to Abby. Actually, one local said that in all the years he had been on the island he had never seen a horse come that close to a human. But this horse followed Abby everywhere she went. He must have sensed her love of horses. We have a bazillion pictures. Here are just a few:






I swear, in none of the above photos does Abby have anything in her hands to eat... I don't know what it was about her, but that horse was hooked! We all said it must have been the "Herbal Essences" shampoo she used in her hair that morning.

The ride home was long and grueling. It took us 10 hrs to drive what normally should only take about 7 hrs. Needless to say, Georgie was a mess. He cried - screamed - the entire ride! I completely understood his pain - like I said, it was a long, long ride.

Annie and Abby

annie and abby 

Tables are for glasses, not for a****

I sent George out tonight because I have alot to do around the house... So far I have accomplished nothing! Oh, well... it's nice to have things quiet for a while. I have to get back in touch with the administrations department tomorrow about my math class from the summer. Apparantly the school thinks I dropped the class. I was there every day, took every test, and the teacher gave me my grade on the last day of classes... I got a 98! I definitely want to make sure those credits are counted! I worked hard (and paid good money) in that class! Anyway, I have some stuff to do, but I just wanted to add in that Georgie is now climbing on everything!! I was cleaning the dishes earlier, and while I was in the kitchen, Abby yelled up the staris, "Mom! Georgie's on the table!! He's being so bad! But not me. I'm not bad. I'm a really good girl! Come and see!" I dried my hands and walked down the steps to find the baby on the kids table! He climbed onto one of the chairs, and then onto the table! What next? I think it;s so funny, that for a kid who's afraid to walk, for fear of falling, has no fear of climbing high onto furniture (or anything else, for that matter)!! He's a character! At first, when I came downstairs, he looked very guilty, like he knew he wasn't supposed to be where he was...

oops... am i in trouble??

So, anyway... he was so proud of himself that he made it onto the table! He was laughing & smiling like mad, and showing off his cup ...

check me out, mom!

...until Abby decided to climb up with him.

hey mom! she's in my shot!

That was a mistake! His ego was crushed that Abby too, shared this rare talent that he only recently discovered he possessed... He was so mad that she could climb onto the table too, and very upset that she stole the spotlight, even if only for a second!

crushed...

Ah, rivalry... it starts so young.

This is...

...my very first entry in my new blog! I still have my journal on blurty.com, but I plan on moving those entries to this site eventually. Probably when we get back from vacation! The kids are doing great. Georgie is still not walking... sort of. He can walk, and has in the past, but after a few bad falls, he decided that crawling is still the safest mode of transportation! Oh well, he will do it in good time. He's so funny! His personality is definitely coming through more and more every day. Abby and I worked very hard to scrub her little house clean, and get it set up on the yard for her! She and Georgie played in it all day Sunday. Nick came over for a while on Sunday afternoon, and played in the yard with us. Abby was in the tub later that night, around 7, and Nick came back over, and informed us that he was going mini-golfing with his mom and dad... and he said Abby was coming with him. I asked Abby if she wanted to go, and she jumped out of the tub, and into her clothes, as fast as she could! She was sooo excited! They left to go golfing... I put the baby to bed and George and I watched Six Feet Under... by the time the show was about half-way over, Abby was home. She was so excited to tell me everything about golfing and playing skee-ball! She had a strawberry shake, that she was more than willing to share with George and me. Apparently, she only played 9 holes at the golf course, and whenever she would swing the club, she would hit herself in the chin! :) Gerri said she did pretty well, for her first time, though.

She had a very busy weekend... on top of playing in the yard on Sunday and golfing that night, she had James' birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese's on Saturday. She had a great time there!


Chuck E. Cheese!

She played alot of games, and went on the "rides." (She played alot of skee-ball at Chuck E's and with Nick Sunday at Nifty Fifties.) James seemed to have a good time too, at his party!


abby and the birthday boy!

When we got home from party on Saturday, George wanted to get some yardwork done, so I put Abby and Georgie in the wagon, and pulled them to the playground. What a trip! It's uphill bothways! Very steeply uphill, I might add... You go down a big hill, and then as soon as you get to the bottom, you go right back up again, and on the way home it's the same: down the hill, then back up and up and up again to get home...

We are getting ready to start our late summer trips soon. Our first one is this weekend coming up, to the shore with Jay and Lisa and the kids. It should be alot of fun! It'll be Georgie's first time on the beach... (with the exception of last year.. when he was a newborn)! I hope he likes it! Abby is psyched! She can't wait!

Poor Georgie... he has been so beat up lately! He had a horrible diaper rash that would not budge. He split his chin open when he was trying to walk across the room, but instead fell into the side of the toybox. He got so bit up by mosquitos, that his legs and face were so swollen and irritated... some of the bites got infected. He has so many bruises from falling. He has multiple teeth breaking through, so his mouth hurts all the time. Nothing stops his appetite, though! He is such a good eater! He loves everything you put in front of him! We call him "chicken-little" though! He's afraid of everything... toys that make noise, stuffed animals, he's afraid to stand up... hehe! He's so cute!

Abby is determined to make him walk! She grabs him by the arms and drags him around the room, yelling, "Stand up, Baby G! I am going to teach you how to walk right now!!" He finally gives into her, stands up and takes a couple steps... and then as soon as she lets go of his hands to clap for him, he sits down and crawls away as fast as he can! They play really well together. They miss each other terribly when one is away from the other too long.

Abby got a book in the mail from my grandmom the other day! She ran all over the house with the envelope, screaming, "I got mail!! I got mail!!" I finally caught up with her, and asked if she wanted to open it, and of course, she did! It's a cute little book, called "All Things Bright and Beautiful." It's about everything God created.

While we were playing in the yard Sunday, we found a grasshopper... he was missing a leg,and wasn't doing very well. We put him on a leaf, and placed him in the shade to keep him comfortable. Abby would walk him around the yard occasionally, showing him the sites, every now and then... when she was done walking him, she would put him back in her little house. At the end of the day, I was putting things away, and I found the poor little guy, squished. We think it was either Nick or George that carelessly assaulted him. Abby came up behind me, before I could hide him, and asked what happened to the grasshopper? I had no choice but to tell her the truth... so I told he that he was really, really hurt, and really sick. I asked her what we should do, and she told me that she wanted him to go to Heaven, where he wouldn't be sick anymore. She then proceeded to pray to God, and call to him to come and take her friend to Heaven where he would be happy and safe. We closed our eyes, and counted to five, and when we opened them again, the grasshopper was gone, and Abby was so happy, she kept thanking God for her friend grasshopper, thanking him for taking her grasshopper to heaven, and thanking him for her family and friends... She's too sweet! She's going to marry my grandmom when she gets big, she said!

I signed up for my fall classes last month... English and Sociology... Woohoo! I start in one month! It's still just two nights a week. Tuesday is for English, and Wednesday is Sociology (I think... but, it may be the other way around. I have to check on that). The classes are three hours long. Three hours of writing English essays... ugh! I hope (but I know I'm wrong) that there is not an overload of homework! What do you think? Highly unlikely, right?

At the marina

abby & george at the marina! 

We took the boat to the shore this weekend. We had fairly nice weather, and Abby had a great time on the ride! Annie and Sean came for the ride on the boat too, so Abby was overly excited, to say the least! I wasn't sure how Georgie would be for the length of the boat trip, so he and I stayed home, and I drove the car down later in the day on Saturday. First thing Sunday morning, we broke out Abby's swimmies and floatie, and headed for the pool. Annie and Sean were Abby's tugboats, as she had them pull her all over the pool! We threw a ball around for a while, and then Georgie took a dip. He sat in his floatie, and after the initial shock of the cold water, had a blast!

The whole weekend was an adventure, being this was the first that Abby spent any time away from home since being potty trained. She did really well! I'm so proud of her! She even did her first poopy on the potty this weekend at the boat! (sorry Abby, I have to document this for all the world to see...)