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The kids love to take over my camera… CareBear is getting pretty good at taking the pictures that she wants. LiliBee is still learning which way to point the camera. Here are a few pictures by LiliBee:

It’s another beautiful, spring day here in February! The weather has been fantastic lately, which is weird but it’s nice to get out of the house in the middle of winter too.

We had a very busy week! Chris got Tuesday and Friday off to make up for his very long shift last Saturday. Since I was scheduled to be snack mom at school on Tuesday, this was an extra bonus for CareBear. She loved introducing him to the new teacher and showing off for Papa’s visit. We brought bananas and blueberry muffins since CareBear insisted that was what Teacher Nancy wanted. We also made a special trip after school to get birthday party invitations to pass out to her class this week. CareBear had a very good day.

Wednesday was ultrasound day. Banjo is doing well and getting big. We’ve got about another month before we meet him/her which seems like both a very short time and a very long time. I think my abdominal muscles are starting to give up on me. Chris and I were able to go out to lunch on the Tacoma waterfront to celebrate our off year anniversary. The view was lovely, especially with the sunny day.

LiliBee is getting the hang of potty training! It’s more practice than practical at this point, but I think she’s starting to make the connection. We’re keeping it very casual, though, since I expect the transition to “middle child” in a few weeks might set us back a bit. On the other hand, she’s finally growing out of her 18 month clothes! Maybe people will start believing me that she’s two years old pretty soon.

We actually stayed home for most of the nice weekend. Chris and the girls spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the front yard (ok, they mostly watched and critiqued what he was doing) while I took advantage of the extra child supervision to be a little lazy and work on online stuff for the preschool. It was a mellow weekend but, looking back, it was also surprisingly productive!

This week we’re back to normal… and only one dr appointment! After seeing doctors on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday last week, only going once seems almost like a vacation. Of course, we have birthday party planning and flier distribution for the preschool to fit in, but I’m looking forward to a slower week

LiliBee has started acting out stories with her Little People. It’s a lot of fun to watch.

Get back here, princess!

Here comes the prince.

Awwww… poor princess.

The plot thickens!

The prince and princess are together again.

LiliBee’s work here is done.

The girls and I turned our patio door into a giant, surprise Valentine’s Day card for Chris while he was working on Saturday. It was fun and super messy.

Happy Anniversary, Hubby! I love you!

Not much to report from this last week, mostly just the regular schedule of school and playing and doctor visits! Of course, our weekend was a slightly different story.

Chris worked on Saturday since he had things to do that required taking the computer system down and his coworkers appreciate him doing that while they’re not there. (He gets to take Tuesday off instead, which is a nice trade considering the holiday weekend.) Things didn’t quite go as smoothly as he hoped and he ended up working for 22 hours straight! He finally made it home around 6am on Sunday, poor guy… he hadn’t eaten since lunch on Saturday and had been up for more than 24 hours!

Unfortunately, I was then injured in a freak Valentine’s Day accident (LiliBee poked me in the eye with a surprisingly sharp candy wrapper) and had to spend the whole morning in the ER. I have a corneal abrasion, which will heal quickly but is remarkably painful and interferes with my ability to do things like drive and read. Chris finally got to have some food and sleep Sunday afternoon.

Other than the ER trip, Valentine’s day was pretty fun around here. I got a surprise card from CareBear and some technology thing that will be handy once I figure it out from LiliBee and Chris. The girls and I painted the patio door for Chris’ valentine… they had a great time making a big mess and a “masterpiece”. He was very impressed, of course. The kids also got some candy and super exciting Hello Kitty fans from Grams and Pas. All in all, CareBear thinks Valentine’s Day is great and LiliBee is happy to go along with that.

This week is going to be a busy one. I’m “snack mom” at school tomorrow and have my monthly ultrasound on Wednesday. Thursday we’re(hopefully) going to be training Grams and Pas in the drop off/pick up routine at school so CareBear won’t miss much time while I’m out of commission in March and April. Friday is my weekly OB visit. I also have several things I need to get done in my “job” as publicity person for the preschool (if you know anyone looking for a preschool, we’ll be holding an open house on March 3rd!). And this week is Chris and my anniversary-of-sorts… it’s when we met so we use it as our anniversary on the years when there’s no Leap Day!

Greetings from another warm-ish, sunny day! Apparently, we’ve decided to swap February for April this year and it’s just weird. I’m not used to the beginning of February being “jackets optional”.

We had a fun, fairly mellow week this week. LiliBee tried to catch a cold early in the week, but it seems to have fizzled out and hasn’t spread to the rest of us so we’re lucky so far this month.

I went to school with CareBear to be the “art mom” for the day. It’s one of my favorite jobs since you basically get to play with the kids the whole class without having to leave to make food or lift heavy things. Of course, they decided that painting under the table would be a good activity for the day… I’m a little too pregnant to be able to tape paper to the underside of a preschool table gracefully! I needed a little down time in the afternoon to recover from that. Fortunately, the kids occupied themselves for awhile eating butter. (Ick!)

Our weekend was mostly used for errands and we started planning for the various things that need to take place before the end of March (when I’m out of commission for a few weeks). Chris and the girls spent some time outside, cleaning up the yard and making war on moles. Meanwhile, I tried to come up with free ways to advertise our preschool (my job as “publicity committee”)… if anyone has ideas for that or good places to post fliers, let me know.

Of course, the best part of the weekend was when Chris and the girls held “movie night” without me and let me take a nap!

Another of our “quieter” weeks this week. I don’t think we have anything out of the ordinary going on but I’m sure we’ll manage to keep busy. I hope all of our east coast friends are staying warm!

Happy February! We’re a whole month into the New Year and I’m still not sure where 2009 went!

We had a great time this week. Our field trip to the Hands On Children’s Museum in Olympia was a lot of fun. CareBear and LiliBee were a little overwhelmed by all of the kids and stuff at first (CareBear more than LiliBee, my poor little drama queen) but we soon figured out how things worked. CareBear loved the tree house, the boat and the light house especially… she’s always happy when she can climb something! LiliBee was more interested in the “trucks” that she could drive. They both agreed that the play dough area and the peg wall were good for two or three visits each. It was sad to say goodbye to our teacher, but I’m sure that the new one will be just as much fun. As an added bonus, we were able to go have lunch with Chris after the field trip. It’s always a big adventure to go see Papa at work!

We also went to a birthday party over the weekend. One of CareBear’s preschool friends had a “pajama party” complete with pillow cases to decorate, bed bug games and cupcakes with little candy pajamas on them. CareBear talked the kids into playing hide and seek for awhile before it deteriorated into a chaotic game of tag or chase… I’m not entirely sure. They had a great and noisy time. LiliBee wasn’t quite old enough to understand everything that the “big” kids were doing, but she had a lot of fun just running around after them.

My first nonstress test was uneventful… other than having to sit there strapped to a machine for about 45 minutes before they got the readings that they wanted. Banjo is cooking right along with no signs of stress. And I get to do that every week for the next 7 weeks or so. Fun.

In other news, our front yard is back together after last week’s trauma! Chris put in our new mailbox and several new fence sections so it’s almost like it never happened… other than part of the fence being new and shiny compared to the older sections and the lavender trying to recover from being run over! Still, it looks very nice I think.

I’ll be going to school Thursday to be the art mom, but otherwise I think we have a fairly normal week! (Ok, I’m not entirely sure what counts as “normal” anymore, we seem to alternate between “really busy” and “sort of busy” these days!)