Monday, April 30, 2018

February 2018

February brought Owen's SECOND birthday (CRAZY, I know!), more winter weather and time on the seacoast of New Hampshire. 

After a fresh, new snow, we decided to gift our chickens with our gingerbread house. We had a lot of fun watching them peck away at it. We have eight layers and one rooster.

 Ian's the chicken whisperer. Leif? Not so much.
 Someone has a mirror image around here :)
 23 weeks!!! Ian wraps an arm around you while we read and Owen is practicing by carrying a baby doll around at the library. Papa's felt you kick at night when you make your acrobatics the most known-- you are already so strong!
 We love having land to walk and enjoy as a family. The trail Jim cut over the summer is much more bare this winter, but the snow poses it's own difficulties. Owen usually opts to be carried. Here he was one week away from turning 2!
 He loves being carried and he loves his papa.
 We went for some play at the playground across the street and noticed an ice rink in the baseball field on the way home.
 And then Jim's stunt double showed up, just in time! (Google spliced this together and offered it up to me... I just love it!)
 Sometimes I look at our boys and I cannot believe we made them. That these strong, capable, intelligent, hilarious, fascinating people could have come from our very beings. This was one of those moments that I remember so clearly, watching him play int he tub and narrate the story of what his toys were doing.
 Sometimes, when the house grows completely quiet and everyone else is napping... I take a quick lap of the property with the pup. Everyone needs a little calm, a little quiet, and a while lot of fresh air. #getoutsideeveryday
 I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Our library is AMAZING! The theme of this week was "trains" and the librarian made the room into a train, complete with a train soundtrack and train tickets to be punched. The kids were enthralled. ALL of these children sat for about 15 minutes in rapt attention. It was magical.
For the first time in our married life we had access to TV for the Olympics! Ahhhh! It was so lovely while it lasted. We never keep the TV on throughout the day, but we definitely did when the Olympics were on! I hope our boys grow to love them as much as we do. This moment in the opening ceremony made me cry, thinking about the significance of North & South Korea coming together after so many years of turmoil. There's still lots of work to be done, but it was a profound moment in time.

 Our sweet Obo turned 2!!! How two years have flown by, I'm not so sure. But it also seems like he's been with us forever. To imagine life before this spunky little man seems near impossible. He's filled each of our hearts with such joy and love. I'm so grateful for the bond that he and Ian share and am hopeful that this new little baby will also nestle into our family with the same ease that Owen did two years ago.
This year he seemed to really understand that he was the reason for the celebration! That made it so special and fun. Ian helped decorate his wrapping paper with paint dots and coloring and ensured that he would have a corner to pull, by staying right by his side while he was opening each present :)

Look at his sweet face of amazement... !!!

One of his gifts from us was a set of play-dough toys that he's still quite enthralled with.

 We went to the beach for his birthday and he had a grand time, but got slightly tuckered out from all of the excitement and shenanigans :)



 His smile makes our days so much brighter!
 Walking the beach like he owns the place :)
 We received a package from Gramee & Grandpa on his birthday, making for a second round of gifts! Lucky kiddo.

 For his birthday, we walked to a restaurant downtown. He fell asleep in the stroller and so we waited to celebrate with cake until the next day. Why shouldn't birthdays last for days?!?

 February proved to be a turning point for this young man. He could finally get his own milk bottle from the fridge! But it also meant a great deal of exploration and wasted cold air, as he took much longer than needed during each retrieval. ;)



 The next day we celebrated his birthday with cake and a song and it's safe to say that he LOVED his cake. He devoured it, as did the rest of us.
 Perhaps the only reason we moved to NH was so that I could have a moose on my license plate. Totally kidding, but when I got the generic plates and then discovered that I could have gotten a moose plate when we arrived in NH, I was slightly disappointed. Then, we got our van and I had the opportunity to upgrade!! Hooray! My favorite animal is now proudly displayed on our license plate.
 Leftover cake from Owen's celebration... we ate it all week. No complaints from any of us there :)
 These brothers keep themselves so very busy!
 Owen was due on Valentine's Day, but came four days earlyOwen was due on Valentine's Day, but came four days early, and therefore we get to celebrate two holidays in one week.
 That morning the boys and I had a special breakfast with eggs, heart-shaped strawberries and nutella on homemade bread.
 My forever Valentine. This photo was from our trip back from Wyoming. We stopped at a few national parks on the way home and this was us eating dinner at The Grand Canyon. I remember what we ate that night-- alfredo pasta with broccoli. This was the night before we hiked all of the way down to the Colorado River and back out of the canyon in the same day. We were told not to do it, but we knew our abilities and Jim set a timer on his watch to ensure that we hydrated ourselves every fifteen minutes. It's still one of my favorite memories ever. It was quite the feat and we did it together.

Our adventures may not be quite as strenuous in this current season, but the mountains and physical pursuits still call to us and we are prepared to answer. We can't wait for the adventures we'll do with our children in just a few years. And sometimes it's good for me to look back and see these photos of days gone by... we are still those eager explorers, we just have a few more wrinkles and a little more life experience, and oh yea... two boys and a baby on the way! Adventure is everywhere :)

I love my valentine.
 Here's how we celebrated this year: with a charcuterie spread and some Olympics!
 We haven't taken many pictures together, but there's a family that's made this place feel more and more like home. Rod, Kate, and their two kids have been wonderful friends to us. Here's Rod, who I met at library story time back in September. He can often be found reading the boys just one more book before we leave the library.
 Here are the boys at storytime. I love how close they sit together. Partly for comfort, but also they just really seem to want to be together.
 Rainy weather snack time on the porch :)

 I loved watching the scene in our front yard change over the winter <3 It's really a great yard, far better than I realized when we purchased it.
 I was on a super arugula kick in February-- must have been a pregnancy craving. I often feed the boys and then make a yummy warm meal to enjoy once they've gone down for naps :)
 Ian was VERY into snowball fights this year!

 The start of our gigantic snowman!




Tendercrop, a local farm, has a free indoor play area for kids in the middle of winter. This was genius.
 Owen and I went on a Hike it Baby walk at Wagon Hill and these kids found ALL THE PUDDLES :)



 All winter long our yard was either covered in fresh snow or melting snow :)
 70 DEGREES! WOW, that felt amazing. Here I was almost 26 weeks and I couldn't stay inside during quiet time.
 Ian loved the warm weather, too.
 And then it snowed the next day!! Ha!

 Warm and sunny one day/Cold and snowy the next!

 Owen and I had a really rough morning during a grocery shopping outing. Trader Joe's gave me free flowers and told me I was a great mom, and then loaded all of my groceries into the car for me. I cried all of the way home thinking of how they showered me with kindness, understanding, and grace. Trader Joe's for life.

 I include this here because of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. I turned on the TV to watch the Olympics, and instead saw students streaming out of the high school with a shooter still at large. I imagined my boys in those lines of students. It was incredibly upsetting and disturbing. As a teacher, this image resonated with me as there were calls for teachers to be armed in response to shooters. ENOUGH.

 It became our little tradition for Ian to come down and watch the 3 PM Olympic coverage with me while eating a snack. I was sad when the Olympics were over.

At my 26 week appointment, Owen fell asleep before we even got to the doctor's office. I pulled him out of his carseat and carried him on my shoulder and chest throughout the ENTIRE appointment. He even lay on top of me the entire time they checked the baby's heartbeat and my other vitals! Ha! I couldn't believe it.
 Playground play date!

 Ian and his friend, June.
 Ian decided he it was time to "tap" our maple trees! We didn't actually do this during this maple season, but I do hope to do it in the future!
And that's a wrap on February 2018 :)