Hello World!

On November 15, our little Millie came screaming into the world. In the interest of actually getting this blog done sometime before she is five, I'm not going to go into as much detail as I did when Evie was born (sorry Millie, but, as you already know, this is your lot in life as the second child. But it doesn't mean we love you less)!

After a night of labor, which suddenly just stopped, the doctor advised that Jim and I go for a walk, get some breakfast and see if things started up again. When this picture was taken, I was halfway through my oatmeal and totally in labor again. I got my epidural as soon as I could when we got back to the hospital.
And a couple of hours later, covered in meconium and making her entrance into the world before the doctor could even get there (thanks to the midwife!) Millie joined us.
Unlike her sister, she has reddish hair, blue eyes (at this point) and fair skin. Even though she and Evie look a lot alike in a lot of ways, Millie definitely has her own style and is very determined to be heard at all hours of the night and day. You can't tell from these early pictures, but she is feisty! When she screams her face turns bright red and her blonde eyebrows stand out on her forehead like someone has drawn them on with white chalk. It would be funny if we weren't so sleep deprived around here.

One of Millie's first challenges in life has been avoiding getting the chicken pox and, unfortunately, we're still not sure she has succeeded. First Evie had them just before Millie was born and then Jim got them when Millie was about a week old. She has definitely been exposed, but time will only tell whether or not my antibodies are still protecting her. Once Evie was cleared and we could come home, she was thrilled to welcome her new little sister:
And Jim is, clearly, a proud Daddy with his two beautiful girls:



When she was 3 days old, Millie had her first walk in Hampstead Heath:


And, like Evie, she hates taking a bath. Luckily, Evie is there to help her get through her bath and to sooth her after she's out (although I'm not sure Millie is too keen on Evie's affections at this point. Usually after Evie "soothes" there is hysteria).


She's a cutie pie and we are lucky to have such beautiful and sweet daughters to get us through the days! Welcome to the world, Millie!

Winter Sports

Still no time for a real blog with pictures, but here's a video of Evie's first adventure in winter sports: sledding!!!

Unfortunately, it was too cold to take Millie out in the snow, too, so she stayed home with Lala (who is leaving on Sunday. BOOHOO!!!).

New Millie

I haven't been able to blog because we have a NEW BABY!!! Millie was born a couple of weeks ago and since then Evie has recovered from chicken pox and Jim has come down with chicken pox and everything has been wild and chaotic. So, on top of little sleep and adjusting to a new baby in the house, we've also had to quarantine Jim and call for extra support from the grandmothers. Things are calming down now and hopefully Millie won't get sick, too. I have every intention of blogging about her grand entrance (with less detail than before, admittedly), but until then, here are a few videos of life since her arrival.

What not to do just before nap time: hot chocolate.


My attempt to video Millie sweetly snoring...


A new obsession is the Nutcracker Ballet (and yes, I realize these dance moves are very similar to the post-hot chocolate ones):


Millie mostly sleeps these days, but once she starts getting a little more interesting to other people besides us, I'll do some videoing of her in action.

VIDEOS AGAIN!!!

Finally, after a super long time, Jim spent two weekends backing up our pictures and everything else on our computer and installing new software so that we could get the videos off of my camera and onto our Mac. And so I now give you lots of Evie videos from the past few months!

First, Evie and the Crawfish, who we met when we were walking in Hampstead Heath one rainy morning. I was impressed by the size of these crawfish (or crayfish as they call them here) and never really considered England a crawfish kind of place. But there you go. Evie was not so impressed...


Evie was thrilled to be at the beach during our Cornwall trip in September. I thought it was ridiculously cold, but Jim and Evie displayed their adopted English-ness and braved the not exactly beachy weather.


I was very surprised when Evie came flying down this giant slide a few weeks ago...


Pasta dance party:


And finally, the nightly ritual (although now she has gotten really bossy and makes us get down on the floor and be sleeping/hopping bunnies, too. She won't take no for an answer!): frenzied sleeping bunny in her bunny towel. Yes, she really is this fast and yes, she really does have this much energy pretty much all of the time.


Hooray for the videos! Stay tuned for more and soon we'll have videos of the new baby, too!

Bonding weekend

This could be our last weekend as a family of three and it's definitely our last weekend of just the three of us because Mom/Lala gets here on Thursday (HOORAY!!!!!HOORAY!!!), so we decided not to do our usual hanging around the house or walking on the Heath, but to actually make an effort to get out of the neighborhood since it will be a little tricky for a while once the baby gets here. I apologize in advance for the very few pictures of Jim in the last couple of blogs. He's been behind the camera a lot lately, but I will try to get more pictures of him for future blogs.

Anyway, today we went to the Tate Modern, via Borough Market (where we got some yummy salsa, but no pictures). Evie was very excited to look at the Thames and all the boats and to jump in some puddles:
Taking a stroll in front of the Globe Theater:
These days, getting Evie to look at the camera is not easy, so I have to sacrifice my dignity to try to get her to at least LOOK like she's looking at the camera. More often than not, this gets caught on film...and Evie still doesn't look at the camera. It's a good thing I'm happy to make fun of myself.

Outside the Tate Modern. At first we had this delusional idea that we were going to go to the Tate Modern and then take the boat from the Tate Modern to the Tate Britain...ummm, yeah. That didn't happen.

But we did enjoy the Tate Modern, where we weren't supposed to really be taking pictures, which is why all of these are a little blurry.

Here we are preparing to go gaze upon thousands of porcelain sunflower seeds, which were artistically placed on the floor below. I have to admit, I didn't get it.
Evie actually really enjoyed looking at the paintings and, funnily, was most interested in a 'pincushion for fetish' or something like that (a sculpture in a case with some other phallic looking artwork. We didn't get a picture, unfortunately). She also wandered into this tour group and stared fixedly at the Miro painting that the tour guide was describing just as the woman said, "...as you can see, it is quite childlike." I guess that makes it also appealing to children.
This is a window that looks down on the turbine hall or whatever the giant Tate Modern Hall is called. Windows, and looking out of them, is a new passion:
Gazing at a Monet...
and then blowing off some steam with Daddy:

It was way beyond nap time in the tube on the way home, but Evie was still happy. No one had a meltdown and we all enjoyed ourselves immensely, feeling lucky to live in London and be able to enjoy great things like the Tate Modern on a whim.

Halloween

Halloween was a kind of never ending celebration for us this year, but it was a lot of fun because Evie was in the Halloween spirit. After our rather early first Halloween parade and movie (as ladybug), we were invited to a baby Halloween party, where Evie dressed as a fairy. With so many Halloween celebrations, it was important to have several Halloween costume options.
Our hostess, Amy, really outdid herself, with great food and fun games for all the kids (about 20 of them!!!) to play. And, as they trashed her beautiful house, she remained calm and happy, which was the most impressive part. Here are Evie and I playing "Pass the Parcel," a popular English party game for kids. I don't think we have it in America, but it consists of a present or presents wrapped up in layers of wrapping paper. The music plays and the kids pass the parcel. When the music stops, whatever kid has the parcel, unwraps a layer of wrapping paper. At Amy's house, there was a present for every kid in each layer. I think normally, though, there is just one present in the middle and one lucky kid wins the prize. Evie liked her Mr. Whoever book that she won.
Arts and crafts is one of Evie's favorite things to do and she got really into making her own scary mask at the party:

Her friend Oliver was a disgruntled Bumblebee...briefly.
Here I am with some of my friends from our prenatal group. We all met when we were pregnant with our now almost 2 year olds. Time flies!

Another highlight: 8 liters of jello for the kids to put their hands in!!! Amy put bats in the bottom for them to find and fish out. What a party!

And finally...a baby (and me looking slightly possessed)! We've been talking about babies a lot around here, obviously, so it's always very exciting to actually get to hang out with one. Evie was holding hands with and kissing this baby. Not sure that the mom was so pleased, but I was happy to see her responding in a positive way to a baby since we'll have one in house very shortly.
This year, pumpkin carving was also something that Evie could help out with. Last year she just watched and looked amused and slightly confused by the whole process.

In America, from what I remember of my trick or treating days, if you're in a neighborhood, people are generally handing out candy. If their lights are off and their shades are drawn, it's a good sign that they aren't interested in handing out candy. Here, the sign that people want to participate in Halloween is whether or not they have jack o' lanterns in front of their houses. Evie was back in ladybug mode for her trick or treating debut and we started out on a posh street near our house, where there were quite a few jack o' lanterns, but no big crowds. It should be noted that she got her first piece of candy from the house where Jim Henson once lived (across the street from our NHS clinic, which used to be a Muppet warehouse. Yes, we kind of have a slight obsession with the Muppets...mostly me, actually).
It also didn't take long for Evie to figure out that all she had to say was 'trick or treat' and 'thank you' and people would give her candy. She really got into the spirit of things pretty quickly and is still holding out hope that she'll be able to eat said candy at some point in her life.
Some of the houses were really decorated and at this house, the owners were jumping out and scaring kids as they came into the yard. That's the spirit! Luckily, they saw how little Evie was and decided NOT to scare her. That probably would have ended our night prematurely, as, as previously mentioned in this blog, she has entered the 'scared' phase. Today we went to the Tate Modern and she was scared of a couple of the paintings and a black egg-like sculpture, which did look like it could have been on Dr. Who (more about that in a later blog). SO...not getting scared at Halloween was a great accomplishment!
It was a fun, if extended Halloween for all. Looking forward to next year!

Happy Birthday to me and other fall adventures

It feels like I haven't blogged in a really long time, but actually it's only been about a week. With only a little over 2 weeks left before we have a new addition to our family and the ever increasing demands of a nearly two year old, my motivation and energy for things like thinking and writing are waning, but I will do my best to stay the course and keep blogging about our mostly mundane (these days) life.

For my birthday, Jim tried to plan a fabulous surprise trip to Paris, but exorbitant half term prices and my inability to go far from the hospital without feeling paranoid messed that plan up. Then the Paris strikes started so our trip probably would have been aborted anyway. Luckily, my favorite thing to do is to hunker down with my adorable family and I had a really nice and low key birthday with Evie and Jim in London. Evie and I went to paint pottery with some of our friends (she was a super star pottery painter), had some birthday lunch and then napped until Jim got home from work. Then we had present opening, Evie went to bed (always cause for celebration at the end of a busy day) and Jim and I got take out Indian food. It was a great day and I was very happy to be 34!
Another highlight (in my pregnant, out of control, sweet tooth dominated state) were the chocolate cupcakes that Jim made for me. YUMMY!
The next day, with our new found mobility via Jim's UK license and our Streetcar membership, we drove out to a farm/kids' entertainment center to spend some time with farm animals and troop around a very muddy pumpkin patch. Evie held her first guinea pig and was charmed by the little squeaky noises he made. She also tried to touch his eyeballs. We are working on this touching eyeballs obsession...eyes are very exciting, apparently.

But the real highlight for her were the 'BABY CHICKENS!!!!!!' If she could have gotten into the cage with them, she would have.

Additionally, Evie was thrilled to squelch around in the mud and find the perfect pumpkin. In fact, she found TWO perfect pumpkins and somehow managed, with her cuteness and enthusiasm, to get away with two pumpkins when only one was included as part of her ticket. Pumpkins are a new favorite obsession during this pumpkin focused season and she is very eager to announce to anyone around who will listen that she sees one.
A pumpkin patch family picture (in which I kind of look like a pumpkin myself at 37 weeks pregnant):

She also scored a free rubber ducky (it pays to be cute and smiley), which we raced down a trough by pumping a water pump. This was cause for great happiness!

At the end of our visit, Jim and Evie went down a big slide...and then, to my surprise, Evie did it by herself! I have video footage (you can see by my jerky videoing how unprepared I was to see an elated Evie sailing down the giant slide by herself ), which I will soon be able to share on this blog because we finally bought the program we need to get the videos off my camera. Stay tuned! For now, you have this not so great picture of Jim and Evie on the slide to prepare you for the excitement of the video.
Happy fall!