Baby Girls

I got a couple of cute shots of all the little girls together over at Amanda's house on Monday (she and I have to sing on Sunday, so we had to pick a song).  Thought I'd share:)

Claire, belonging to Amanda, born 12/15.  Kylie.  Alexa, belonging to Christa, born 11/16.
Kylie and I after a night of fun over at McDermont.  She slept the whole time, but was wide awake once we got home.
Sitting on Mama's lap while Keilana and I play Candyland after Church.
Doug looked at this picture and said, "What is this? The meeting of the minds?"  Cracks me up.  Look how cheeky/jowl-y my little girl is :)

Doing better

Made some good headway today. . .

starting to feel like I live in my house. . .

feeling a bit silly for feeling so frustrated

because my life is easy

and my challenges so small

Feeling ungrateful

House tidy but not clean. . . .

closets/spare rooms disorganized and piled. . . .

counter tops, table tops, dresser tops all with piles. . .

walls and baseboards need cleaning. . .

desk needs to be overhauled from top of hutch down through every drawer. . .

carpet needs replacing (it stinks from the dang cat). . . 

toilets and bathtubs need to be scrubbed. . .

floors need to be mopped. . .

stairs need to be vacuumed. . .

papers need to be filed. . .

garage needs to be organized. . .

backyard looks like white trash, wood scraps everywhere, no grass. . .

in the mean time, lost both pacifiers. . .

baby wants to be held constantly, harder to get to sleep. . .

want candy/pasta/cookies

and fresh flowers. . .

a kiss and a hug. . .

tired and frustrated nearly to the point of swearing and tears (yes, I'm that bothered by clutter and disorder). . .

but not quite. . .

Babies!

OK, someday I'll blog about something besides babies again, but for now its what you get.  Yesterday morning I watched Claire while Amanda went to the gym, and her and Kylie took a nap together on the couch.  It was too cute to pass up.  For those who don't know Amanda (Doug's sister) and I have the twin babies:  Clayton and Keilana born almost exactly 2 months apart; Conner and Dylan, born three days apart; and Kylie and Claire, born 3 days apart.  Kylie looks massive in this photo next to her pretty, petite little cousin. :)

Keilana takes a lot of pictures.  Most of them end up being deleted before downloading (we only need so many pictures of Keilana taken by. . .Keilana), but she gets some pretty good ones, too.  Every now and then she gets one I love.  She snapped this one this morning while I was chatting with Kylie (and Kylie was very happy to be chatted at!)  She's a happy baby :)

Got one!

Ok, so I have had no pictures of Kylie smiling up til this point, because usually when she's smiley its because I'm utterly focused on her and unfortunately not thinking about pictures.  Then when I get the camera out to take pictures, she always suddenly becomes quite solemn.  We'll have to work on that.  But I remembered, my camera was in reach, so I snapped a few.  Forgive the poor framing, I was not looking at where I was pointing the lens, as I was trying to take pictures winding the camera around the other two children who were also on my lap.

Don't blink

Today as we were walking home from preschool, I was watching Keilana run down the street in front of me, with her long body so apparent in her little fitted tshirt and her long, lean legs so cute in her little jeans.  She looks so big, I thought.  Not like a little toddler girl or a little preschool girl, but just a plain ol' little girl.  She can read some very simple books and no longer calls me Mama or Mommy--just simply "Mom".  I suddenly thought, Where'd my baby go?  When did this:

Become this:

She's so beautiful and so much fun.  But I couldn't help thinking when I looked at this:

Don't blink.

Summing up the week

I got a message the other day asking, "Where'd that Becky who waxes philosophical about things go?"  Well, she's been a little wrapped up in the amour she feels for her new baby and juggling the other two kids and getting back into a regular routine.  But I promise I'll be back to that routine soon (all kinds of things rolling around my head that I'd like to get on paper.  Well, actually, I've already got them on paper--need to condense them and get them on screen).  In the meantime, a few highlights from this week:

Taking a moment after her bath to appreciate how well-insulated Kylie is.  Oh, I do so love my chubby babies (Doug made up a "chubby baby" song for Keilana when she was a few months old and now she sings it to Kylie.  They do grow up so fast. . . .)

Keilana begged for curlers two nights in a row, so here we see what's left of the ringlets after a very long day at school.

I'm not generally one to blog about food (well, not food I cook anyway), but this was just such a yummy dinner the other night.  I've made all these things before, but for some reason never all in the same meal and was delightfully surprised at what a yummy como they were (and its a super easy meal to make).  If you're interested:  salmon fillet topped with cut small sweet peppers and chopped parsley drizzled with olive oil and cooked at 425* for 15 minutes.  Fresh brocolli, steamed.  Spinach stuffed mushrooms:  remove stems, chop, set aside.  Chop fresh spinach.  Saute mushroom caps in olive oil.  Set aside.  Saute mushroom stems and spinach in olive oil, then stuff into caps.  Yum.