Angry

I am more than a little annoyed. We just got a notice that they are raising our rent. Again. They raised it last year, and this year it's going up another 6.5%. As the cost of living here begins to creep toward other, much nicer apartments in town, I begin to wonder why we're living here. We're close to campus, sure, but I think I might trade that in for square footage, a dishwasher, and counter space. Isaac could handle a longer bike ride. And anyway, where is the extra money going? I doubt I'll see any real improvements. I want to file a complaint.

Sign of the Times?

Tuesday night the weather was fabulous, so I was making dinner with the kitchen window open. As I chopped my vegetables, I could hear the kids outside playing. One exuberant eight-year-old boy said to his friends, "Let's pretend we're homeless people!" They then decided to have a mountain lion cooking contest. I love living in student housing.

Kids are Funny

A three year old recited this nursery rhyme to me the other day:
"Little Miss Muppet sat on her muffin, eating her curry away. Along came a spider and took off his diaper and scared Miss Muppet away." After I laughed, she refused to repeat it.


Lizzy's best friend is named Daddy. Usually she wakes up in the morning crying, "Daddy! I want Daddy!" More than once when I have gone to get her, she has sent me back to bed. A tantrum at six o'clock in the morning because she'd rather have Daddy? Fine with me. I'm going back to bed.


She's also gotten very independent. She wants to put on and take off her clothes all by herself, buckle herself into her chair, and brush her own hair. When she got the sniffles, I caught her doing this:

Today we were reading a story with Lizzy and on one page she suddenly leaned in and gave the picture a series of kisses. Thinking she was giving the fish a kiss (she loves animals), we asked, "What are you kissing, Lizzy?" "Boys!" she immediately responded. We'll have to keep our eyes on this one.

Guess What

This is me:

This is my belly:

This is what's inside my belly:

It's a boy. You can tell he's going to be a tough guy, right? But friendly, too! He's already waving hello!

We are all very excited. :)

Little friends

Nothing makes Lizzy happier than spending time with her friends. Most mornings she wakes up asking for them. We are lucky enough to have them over regularly, since I do a little baby-sitting. Besides that, there are several kids near her age where we live, so we have play groups, and she finds friends on the playground daily. I hope she's as good with her little brother/sister as she is with her pals.

I left the kitchen for a moment, and when I came back this is what I found.

Lizzy feeding Gabe:

And Gabe feeding Lizzy:

These two kids were born about three weeks apart and are so cute together. We think they have a real solid future together. ;)

Newer Pictures

She loves books, but it's really all about the pictures right now.



Being cute:

She really cracks me up a lot. Last night, Isaac and I were sitting on the couch and she kept crawling back and forth between us, meowing. Once or twice she got to Isaac and he didn't pay attention to her right away, so she said, "Hello! Hello!" until he petted her head. Then she would crawl away again and say, "Nice kitty." Like most kids, she loves to dance. We were walking through the mall, and she ran into a store, because she liked the music they were playing. She stood just inside the entrance, getting her groove on. Life is good.

Some old pictures

I have not had the energy or the motivation to post pictures in awhile, but I feel like I can't post anything else until I do. So I finally got batteries to put in the camera, and I can download the pictures we've been taking since December. There are a lot. I'll try to only put up interesting ones. (You know you just want to see Lizzy.)

In December we had snow. Lizzy didn't really like it very much, but that might have been because she could barely move in her pink and purple Oompa Loompa suit.

My sister Amy took us to the Children's Museum in January, and we had a blast! My favorite was the bubble room and the room that was like a kaleidoscope.

This is the saddest flower I've ever seen. (It was well past nap time.)
Because sometimes, you can't wear just ONE flower in your hair. You have to wear them ALL. She insisted.