Day 5: Stripey Jammies

Here's Sabine messing around in her jammies.  She thinks she's so funny.  These are my favorite pj's of the kids'.  They are organic cotton from Under The Nile.  Jacob wore them when he was younger, and someone else will get to wear them after Sabine.  I was planning to let Sabine wear these till they couldn't reasonably be fit on her, but now that I know they will be resurrected in a couple more years, I can let them go to storage a little sooner than I would have.

Day 4: Baby Mally

This is Jacob playing with our friend, Mallory.  Sabine calls her Baby Mally. This is the way Jacob was with Sabine when she was a baby, and I think it's so cute that he's this way with Mallory too.  He is really into babies, which is adorable.  I will be in luck come July.

Day 3: Which on doesn't belong?

Need I say much here?  This is Reggie, our one rabbit that has house bunny status.  He roams around the house, messes with the dogs, and goes to the bathroom in his cage.  Also, he doesn't chew stuff that he shouldn't, which is the main reason it makes it so much more difficult to let the others run around the house.  The other day I caught Reggie hanging out on an empty spot on the toy shelf.  Cute, huh?

Day 2: Valentines

 

So here I go with another round of pictures a day...I'm trying to decide how long I'm going to pledge to continue this stretch for.  I want to say until the new baby is born because I know that will probably be the last time I'm near the computer for a very long time, but that's almost five months away.  Maybe until I see the first flower sprout up from the ground?  We'll see.

Anyway, these are Jacob's valentines that we made for his school celebration.  No way was I going to buy them from the store. We try to make as much homemade stuff as possible.  I think they came out pretty cute.

I call this one 'Perfect Timing'

 

Sabine was struck earlier this week with the stomach but that's been going around.  She threw up four times over the course of a day or so, with each one being more severe or more hilarious than the one before.  The first two times were while she was in bed.  The first one was not so bad; I thought it could have been a fluke.  After the second, it was clear that she was ill.  This picture shows the aftermath of the third time.  She was 'home sick' for the day, but insistent upon going outside to play.  I told her she could not go outside to play because she was sick.  But she did not care, and without my blessing, began to get herself dressed for the outdoors.  

I was in the other room when I heard the suspicious sound, and came around the corner to see this.  Just as I was walking over to her, I saw Zach in the window of the front door; he was just arriving home for lunch.  I got such a kick out of his perfect timing that I had to take a picture.  I wouldn't have left her standing there like that if the camera hadn't been right nearby.  But it was just too funny because he could see for himself what it was like to be home with a puking kid.  And as an added bonus, he was there to help me clean it up.

Part of the reason I took the picture was so I could prove to Jacob that his purple lizard really did need to be thrown out (there it is in the middle of the throw up at Sabine's feet).  Anyway, her snowsuit, jacket, gloves and hat all went directly into the washer.  Her boots had a good wipedown and that mat had to be taken to the car wash.  Later in the day Sabine threw up for the last time.  She was behind the couch, but hanging off of the back of it.  Zach was right in front of her and she puked all over the back of the couch, including the back of Zach's head.  I am sorry I don't have a picture of that.

Anyway, this is day 1 of a new stretch of 'picture a day' photos.  Hope it didn't ruin anyone's lunch, but I couldn't resist.

The Haircutting Incident

I've been promising for a couple weeks that I would post these pictures of Sabine's very first self-inflicted hair cut.  The pictures actually don't do justice to her non-talent in the hair-cutting department.  It's just sort of looks like normal bangs.  They're not though; all those 'bangs' are the top part of what was Sabine's right braid when she took the scissors to her hair.  

This all happened because I tried to take a shower without locking her in the bathroom with me.  Silly Mommy, wanting time to yourself!  Jacob was nearby doing crafts at the table when Sabine cut her hair, and he's actually the one who alerted me to the fact that it was taking place.  So it's a toss-up as to whether or not I think he had anything to do with it.  Sabine definitely did it herself, I'm just not sure who originally thought up the idea.  But I'm trying to repress that idea because I wouldn't be able to live with Jacob if this was his doing.

Yeah, so anyway, she had braids in, and I didn't think there was that much damage, until we were getting her ready for bed that night.  She wanted her braids taken out; but literally, they came right out when I went to undo them.  The pictures of just hair below are her right (the bigger one) and left braids.  I held one to show the size, but the actual measurement was eight inches at the longest.

I took Sabine to get her hair 'fixed' at the salon, and so now she has official bangs, which I think are hard to pull off on a curly head of hair.  Zach and I don't like the bangs, so I try to pin them back and then do something else with the rest of her hair.  I part it on the left to even out the thinness of the right side. I can get it looking decent, it's just more involved now than simply brushing it.  Wait till summer comes though.  One word:  Humidity.

The pictures on the bottom with Ginger have nothing to do with her hair, they're just cute pictures where you can see the bangs, and I didn't have another place for them.

But I realize this is all relative, and in the scheme of things, it could be worse.  At least she's healthy.  And still cute.

 

October 2010 - December 2010

It's been quite a while since I've caught up with things in a long-term kind of way, so I decided to back-track a little bit in order to keep track of our memories.  It looked like October was the month where I started to lose hold of recording the days.  So I'll start in October and finish up the year in pictures. 

 

 Jacob turned 7 at the end of the month.  I made his cake again this year and stuck with the baseball theme, but this time I think I got it right.  The year before he'd asked for a baseball cake, so I made it in the shape of a giant baseball.  Jacob explained to me that when he asked for a baseball cake, he's wanted a baseball themed cake.  So I waited a whole year to redeem myself, and this was the result.

 We asked again that people not bring presents for Jacob's birthday, but instead could bring a donation for the animal sanctuary.  After his birthday we took our annual trip to the sanctuary and turned in our donations.  We took a tour and Jacob sponsored a rabbit named Harvey.

 For Halloween, Jacob wanted to be Jorge Posada.  I found a decently priced jersey at Target, and then had a hell of a time getting the letters and numbers on the back the right way.  But it was worth it, I think he looked pretty cool.

I always try to match the kids up somehow for Halloween.  Since Jacob was a catcher for the Yankees, Sabine became a baseball.  I found a used homemade baseball costume on ebay for six or seven dollars, and it was just the right size.  It was a nice, warm outfit for another frigid and rainy Halloween.

 My brother and his girlfriend, Katie, got engaged.  Congratulations!  More family drama to come, I'm sure!

 Jacob and Sabine are both still taking gymnastics lessons.  Sabine takes a class on her own now (no longer parent and tot).  She's awesome; taking classes with four year-olds but doing just as well, or better.

In November we hosted Ace, a black lab puppy, but huge nevertheless.  We pet-sat for the better part of a week and it was chaos.  Zach and I decided that we were definitely at our max with kids and pets; we were full-up at two kids and six animals.  It was just a few days later that I found out I'm pregnant.

  

We also played host to a number of the kids' fantasies.  Little Baby (in the foreground) started joining us at the dinner table on most nights, as well as certain Lucky members of Bob the Builder's crew (Roley, Dizzy, Muck and Party Muck can be seen in the background).

 Years after his obsession with his animal friends began, Jacob is still enjoying setting up dinner parties and luncheons for his crew.

 

Sabine provided me with many photo opportunities.  Here she had just gotten into my makeup and discovered the enhancing effect of lipstick. 

Just being a ham.

  

Little Baby got the thrill of her life when she was asked to be a stand-in for Baby Jesus at Christmastime.  I find that her pose is actually quite conducive to filling that role.

 Sabine got to spend lots of time with her cousins around Christmas.  Here she is finally coming out of her shell and warming up to twins, Nicholos and Christopher, respectively.

 I attempted a from-scratch gingerbread house.  While our efforts started out strong...

...The final result ended in disaster.

 For Christmas gifts this year, we use all home-made wrapping paper.  My favorite design was Jacob's reindeer.

And then it snowed and snowed, and snowed some more.  The end.

Another Six Weeks...

 Well it's been a couple weeks since Punxsutawney Phil declared six more weeks of winter weather.  At least I think he did?  I figure it's pretty hard to pop your head out of a hole in the ground when that hole is covered with three feet of dense snow.  So I'm just going to assume that by the presence of snow on the ground that he made his decision remotely this year.

I've lived in the northeast my whole life and this is the first winter like this that I can remember.  There have been many, many storms and they've been big storms, often with a foot of snow falling over the course of the day.  Jacob's had three school cancellations (unless it was 4.  We lost count) and at least three 2-hour delays.

 I'm sure I've lived through winters like this before, but I don't remember them like I'll remember this one.  Usually snow falls, then it melts, more snow falls, that melts to reveal the still-green grass, and the cycle goes on for a few months.  When I was a kid, adults were always telling me I hadn't experienced a 'real winter' because you don't usually see the green grass in between snowfalls.  Well now at least my kids have experienced a real upstate winter.

12/22/10 - the first accumulation, though you can see it wasn't really enough to cover the unraked leaves.

 

12/27/10- now that's some snow

 

All covered up - it's been a COLD winter too!

1/1/11 - sleigh riding on New Year's Day

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Cast-Offs

Remember back in December when Jacob had a loose tooth and a cast on his leg at the same time?  I never followed up with that post, so I will now that I'm trying to get back into posting more regularly.  At the time I wrote about three big things happening in that one week.  I wrote about Jacob's tooth being the third thing, but it was really just a cover for my finding out I was pregnant.  Anyway, that's sort of the reason why I stopped posting, there hasn't been much time or energy to spend on the computer.

So here's some pictures of Jacob in his cast, and then a picture of him the day his tooth fell out.  His tooth did not fall out the same day as Christmas, but it did fall out the same day that he got his cast off.  So I thought that was kind of funny that both those things happened within a couple hours of each other.  I sent him off to school on a Monday morning with all of his teeth intact and then picked him up a few hours later to get his cast off, but there was no longer a loose tooth.