Meeting Grandma and Grandpa

Jonathan's parents made a trip from Moses Lake to visit and meet their newest grandchild--number 10!

Love

Ellie and Peter weren't a bit excited to take a trip to the park with Grandpa. Not a bit...

Let me show you how I can make the car make really LOUD noises by pushing this little red button right here...

The Three Babies

Ellie and Peter asked to be swaddled like baby sister. Wild giggling ensued.

Turning Three

Ellie's third birthday fell on Easter Sunday this year so we decided to celebrate on Saturday with family. Ever since I showed her bits of the Nutcracker and Swan Lake ballets, she has been calling herself a dancing bird or dancing flower so I chose a pink ballerina theme. She was pretty excited to get up and see these hanging in the dining room in the morning:

Sitting with cousin Amy waiting for everyone else to arrive:

The rest of the decorations:

The dancers (including the ones over the window that are hard to see in this picture) were turned into a mobile to go over Ellie's big girl bed in the room shared with Peter. The dried roses are the ones that Jonathan has given me over the last couple of years. I'm not the only one who doesn't want to just toss them, am I?
Pink flowers for me!

Peter with Auntie Dodo:

You're so pretty, Auntie!

Playing with the cousins (minus Judah):

Yummy birthday cupcake:

This was my first experiment with Japanese cheesecake, chosen because it was light, lower in sugar than some of the other options, and gluten free (for the cousin who would doubtless be horribly disappointed to miss out on dessert). It was quite a hit--there were no leftovers.

The MOB walk of shame

I do know that there is another, less savory meaning for the phrase but it also seemed appropriate here. I mean that walk into a hair salon with your little boy whose home haircut has gone terribly, horribly wrong.

It was a perfectly legitimate idea in the beginning. I've cut Peter's hair a couple of times with scissors and had no trouble making it look just fine. For this latest round, I decided that it was time for it to be a little shorter, a little more toddler-like so it was time to bring out the trimmer for the back and around the ears. I had been asking Jonathan for a couple of weeks to show me how to use it but we hadn't gotten around to looking at it together. After a couple of online tutorials, one day I hit the point of fix-this-now-before-I-go-crazy and thought, "how hard can this be to figure out, really?"

It started out well. The trimmer was fully charged, the adjustable length guard was easy to find and install and Peter was intrigued by the sound but was reasonably cooperative with sitting on the table looking at books. The first part went just fine. But just as I pulled the trimmer away to check my work, the guard slipped a little and, woops, there was a patch that was a little shorter than the rest. No big deal, I thought, I'll just camouflage it when I do the rest and be more careful with the guard position on the trimmer. Turns out, like that first wobble of an unstable ladder that sensible people pay attention to so that they don't break their necks by continuing on, that was just the first warning from the trimmer that all might not proceed as planned. As I continued with the shearing, the guard slipped again and then again, this time leaving a bare patch that no amount of tweaking was going to minimize. In desperation, I switched to the scissors, cutting the top and sides in the previously acceptable fashion. That part wasn't too bad but I found it nearly impossible to blend with the uneven back. Finally, in tears, I had to lay down the tools and admit defeat. It wasn't just the funky-looking, yep, mom did it look, that I was willing to have as the price for the learning curve with the new technique. I didn't think that I could stand to take him out in public.

So we loaded up for the nearest salon (such a ridiculously fancy word for a simple place) and trooped off for the trim that hopefully would deal with the mess, bracing myself for the mockery of the stylists. They were nice enough about it, giving him as good a cut as they could with what I had left and waiting until after I left to laugh at me, per my request. I couldn't show the enthusiasm that I think they were hoping for but at least it did look better than before.

It really is awfully short but I have confidence that at least it will grow out evenly from this point. And we are going to be investing in a proper, fully functional, trimmer set for the future.

My sheared lamb:

Cherry Blossom Spring

We seized the opportunity to see the cherry blossoms on the UW campus on Palm Sunday. They weren't quite at their peak but we knew that Easter weekend was going to be so full that this was our chance.

Peter is still practicing walking but prefers the reassuring (?) handholding position:

When you're not sure if you want your treat dinner or ball throwing more:

Evening sunshine through the trees:

33 weeks, oh dear:

Take one:

Take two, because you can't get everyone looking at the camera at the same time--ever:

Pink dancing flower:

Climbing the tree with daddy:

Up! Up! I want to climb too!

Egg Painting

I'm not tired, really I'm not...

Peter lying on the floor next to the music book, pushing buttons to play more songs but cuddling with the blanket in his ready for bed pose.