Family Resemblance

The last two pictures were both taken on September 9, too--2004 and 2009. Now you can see why our answer to who Alice looks like is always JACK!

ConservaStory

Today Jay didn't have to work or go out of town, so we took a little trip downtown to the ConservaStory exhibit.

This book greets you when you come in.

You enter the garden through a castle door!

The Black Orchid

A huge dragon

Gnomes are hidden throughout the garden.

We also spied a few fairies.

Afterward, we headed out to lunch!

Three Months

Today Alice is three months old. As usual, she was dragged around town doing things five year olds enjoy. She's usually a pretty good sport about it, and even seems to enjoy it. She always wants to sit on my lap and face the action.

This is where Alice can usually be found if she's not sleeping. And sometimes even when she is sleeping. They don't stay babies for very long, so I'm not too concerned about it. She also likes her bouncy seat. When you make the bird play music, she gets this huge grin on her face as if she's thinking, "You're playing that for me?!" It's downright adorable.

She can laugh now, and if she could just figure out how to move her arm out of the way, she could roll over. I love those thighs.

She also enjoys chewing on her fingers. Last night she found her thumb and almost soothed herself to sleep with it while I was in the shower.

Next week Alice gets to take her first out-of-state trip, and by the time she is four months old, we will have moved. It's going to be quite a month for all of us!

Wet Cement

This week they poured the cement for our shed. We need a shed for a giant lawnmower. For some reason, Jay doesn't think he can tackle five acres with the push mower.

Too bad Jack didn't have any boots, or he could have helped out!

Smoothing it all out

Aargh. The rotating trolls strike again. Anyway, you can tell what happened next.

Even Alice got to take part!

I was glad that we happened to be there and that the kids could do this. When they poured the foundation for the house this spring, we weren't in town, but this worked out better since now Alice is here!

Laughter

Alice laughed for the first time today! For maybe a week or so she's been doing kind of a smirky one syllable laugh, but today I was trying to nibble her toes in the WalMart parking lot and she let out a real laugh. I couldn't get her to do it again, but Jay was able to get another laugh this evening.

Last night she wore jeans for the first time.

And here's some gratuitous cuteness in the bouncy chair...

It's hard to believe she'll be three months old on Saturday!

Reality Check

In addition to the shows I talked about before, I caught a few episodes of A Baby Story and Bringing Home Baby the last time I was at my parents' house. These shows made me feel like a big slacker while simultaneously making me wonder why on earth people do all this stuff. So here is my reality baby show!

Above, you see Jack in his car seat, ready to come home. This was about as far as we had prepared for having a baby. The first night he was home, bedtime rolled around and we weren't sure where we were going to put him while we slept.

Eventually he was living in high style. These plastic crates from my classroom became his dresser.

And you can't forget his luxury queen-sized crib.*

He had the laundry room as his closet.

When Alice was born, we had a few clean outfits and lots of diapers and some books. So far, both kids seem to be okay. That's the kind of fancy stuff you get when you're born while your parents are planning a move, which happened with both kids. So now when I watch shows where people are picking out nursery art and coordinated bedding, I am genuinely surprised that people actually do things like that. I never even considered a nursery for Alice, and if we had a third child, who knows what the poor thing would end up with, though I'm pretty sure it wouldn't matter too much.

While watching these shows, I saw tons of commercials for Toddlers & Tiaras. This is the one reality show I have been dying to see, and I just found out there are episodes online, so guess what I'll be doing when the kids are sleeping and Jay is out of town! I have a feeling it will be similar to seeing a car wreck on the side of the turnpike, but I am fascinated every time I see those commercials. How do you even get a kid to sit still long enough to put on all that makeup? I'll let you know after I've watched, because I know you'll want to know, too!

*When this picture was taken, we were in the process of packing and moving, so please don't think I'm always that bad of a housekeeper!

Don't Tell My Grandma...

...but tonight I met an online friend in real life. I have been reading Amber's blog for well over a year now and have gotten to know her there and on Facebook and the FIAR boards. She was in town and we got to go to dinner tonight.

Several times she talked about something she'd read on my blog and then added that she didn't want to sound like a stalker. I felt the same way--when she mentioned painting her house, I could actually picture the current colors. A bit weird, huh? Kind of like the time I recognized a picture of Heather's basement on another site, even though I've never set foot in New York state. (I may just spend a teensy bit of time reading blogs.)

Anyway, it felt like I'd known her in real life all along and we had a great time. Which is good, because we've decided that her daughter and Jack can get married, an idea he seemed mildly interested in since his first three choices (Alice, me, and Boris) aren't available.

(And if I look slightly giddy in the picture, it's because this was my first evening out in a long time. Jay and Jack spent the evening at Lowe's and Home Depot while Alice came with me and behaved quite nicely.)