Dear Sabine: 4 Years Old

Dear Sabine,

Dear Sabine, Dear Sabine.....  Of my three kids, I have the most trouble buckling down to write about you.  You have such a dynamic personality.  Not to say your siblings don't, but there's just something...something...you change so fast from one minute to the next.  I have an idea of how I'm going to start, but by the time I make it to the computer, the dominating force has become something completely new.  I don't even know if that makes sense, or if it will even make sense to me five minute from now.  Maybe it's your age, maybe it's because you're the middle child, maybe it's just You.

I've said a lot lately that you have a Jeckle & Hyde personality, and that is certainly true.  You'll be this completely sweet creature, so loving and charming, a switch goes off, and you're a creature of another nature.  I think maybe you take after Daddy with your moods.  You each have two moods, one is preferable, and I have no idea how to access them.  You look like me though.  And I really like that.  All you kids look a lot alike, but Jacob and Summer definitely resemble each other, while you are a mini-mommy.

At this point in time you have a favorite person in the world, and it is not me.  That is crushing to me.  It is Daddy.  It's been like that for a long time, and I'm sure you guys will always have this special bond, but I remain hopeful that it's an age thing.  I remember when Jacob was your age, there was a time period when he wanted very little to do with me.  He outgrew it, and I don't remember much beyond that.  So I hope you outgrow it someday and come back to me a little.

It's scary for me though, because you are, like I said, a middle child.  I spent a lot of energy this past year (and even before Summer was born) feeling guilty about that.  By watching you kids I can start to see just how the dynamic with my brother and sister was formed, and I can see that the way I react in certain situations is because of my experiences in my family of origin.  I consider this a phenomenon of sorts.

I find it exciting and so very interesting that I get to watch your dynamics and relationships form, and through watching it, I gain so much insight into my own place in the family, and in the greater community.  This is something that is really important to me, something I look forward to experiencing more in the future.  I feel lucky that I've been able to bring this level of awareness to my parenting experience, because based on conversations with other parents I know, I don't think this is something very many of them have consciously voiced like that.

Up until this point in my post I haven't really written too much about you.  I guess I find it easier to warm up by talking about the ways you have changed me.  I used to read these posts back to myself before I wrote another one so that I could 'keep track' of things I've said or 'pick up' where I left off.  I know better now though.  I know I'll be more honest in my writing, and if things are unknowingly repeated then it will serve to emphasize that part of your being.  See there I am writing about myself again.

Dear Sabine:  You are a maelstrom of energy.  Be it good or bad, your energy, your moods, your words come out loud and resonate long.  You have a strong, stubborn spirit that gets you in to trouble in our house, but will serve you well in the world.  You've always been maternal, like a little caretaker.  I can remember saying that about you before Summer was born.  You'd do little things for Jacob to take care of him, or look out for him.  You'd report on what he was doing, maybe boss him a little bit, as if you weren't five years younger than him.  Now you tell him you're going to put him in time out if he does such-and-such a thing to you!

All you kids are stubborn, just as me and my siblings are, but I have to say that as this point it's looking like you may be the most stubborn.  If I have to discipline you in some way, say you have to sit in time out for a few minutes, when I go to get you out of there, you won't talk to me, you won't move, you just stay there on the step like that's where you wanted to be all along.  Sometimes you'll be in a mood, and maybe we know what it is you want (but we need you to say it aloud), or maybe we don't know what it is, but if you don't feel like talking, then you're not making a peep.  This is in stark contrast to your Other Mood, the one where you Don't Stop Talking For Anything.  Or if we're eating dinner, and there's some kind of after-meal treat.  Well if you don't want to eat any more of your food, there's no tempting you with ice cream or whatever.  You just sit there watching everyone else enjoying it, and act like you never wanted it to begin with.

You do eat a ton of food.  Mostly you eat a lot in the morning, and then you eat a 'second breakfast', and then you're hungry again before lunch.  But then at dinner time we can hardly get you to eat a few bites.  You're really skinny, to the point where Daddy and I are getting a little worried.  But you are so, so active.  You take gymnastics class all year long, and after about a six week pause for summer vacation, you've just started to tell me you really miss it and can't wait to go back.  So we'll do a few classes in the remaining weeks of summer.  You've watched a lot of the olympics with us these past couple weeks.  We let you stay up late to watch the gymnastics because we think, you never know...

In the past few months you've started to express a strong liking for the color pink.  I am not so happy about this.  For maybe the past year we've been clashing over the clothes you wear.  It's not that I don't like the things you wear, but I want you to wear all the clothes you have in your closest, and you would prefer to wear the same favorites day after day.  This is just like your brother was and still is and I think to myself, "Again??"  I would love to have a kid who just lets me dress them.  And the accessories!  You've always loved accessories.  Currently you wear your watch, your soccer band and your silly bands.  Sometimes you like to wear sunglasses, but not so much a hat lately.  You used to always love to wear your John Deere baseball hat.

You can't wait to start playing soccer and t-ball.  You're very good at mini-golf for a four year old.  Pretty much any sport you play, we realize you're awesome at.  You've got a six-pack of abs that I am so jealous of.  You come up with the funniest things to say, without even trying to be funny.  You really impress MamMa and Papa with the things you say.  I don't have any great sound bites at my disposal right now...I'll have to think of some and put them in the comments section later.

You have certain routines and things you like to make sure to see when we're on the road.  When Daddy leaves for work in the morning, you like to give him "A hug, a kiss and a high five."  It's the only proper start to your day.  In the car, you love to always spot horses.  You've got to see some horses at some point on our ride.  You coined the phrase Cars On Top for the big car carriers that we see headed to dealerships.  OJ and yogurt are still your favorite drink and food, respectively. 

Of all your favorite things, music is your favorite favorite thing.  If you could, you'd have music on all day long.  Thanks to Sabine, we all have every single current country song committed to memory.  This was one of the first things I learned about you when you were a baby, that music calmed you, or just in general that you loved music.

At some point early this year, I developed the tantrum deposit box and placed it at the front door.  For a while I'd say it worked, and for a bit we were without huge tantrums.  Then the tantrums came back, and they last a long time and it really sucks.  The only good thing I can say about the tantrums is that when you're not having one, I don't really think about them that much.  And boy do I wish you could stop napping.  You'd love to stop napping, I would really love to stop having you nap, but there's just no way we can get away from it on most days.  Without a nap, that Other Mood comes around.  The mood where everything turns to eggshells and everyone's main goal in life is to not step on one of Your Eggshells.  It takes you between one and three hours for you to fall asleep for a nap, or to fall asleep for the night.  Even when you're exhausted.  When I have some spare time (ha) I will try to fix your sleeping problem.

For all your stubbornness and bravado, you are a little softy inside.  There's lots of things that you're afraid of and lots of ways your a so sweet.  Soon we'll be selling this house, the one that you kids were born into.  I'm afraid you're not going to remember the place where all of your life up until this point has happened.  That's a subject for another post.

 A couple weeks ago I was laying next to you in bed, reflecting on the time gone by and thinking about the day you were born.  My most clear memory of that day was when they handed you to me.  I looked in your eyes and I thought, oh, I know you; you're the one I was waiting for all this time.  I hope no matter how much times goes by, that I can still have those moments where I look in your eyes and know you belong to me.  And I hope you know that I'll always wait for you.


Love,

Mommy

Dear Sabine: 3 Years

Dear Sabine,

      You are three years old!  I can't believe it!  And I'm writing this letter just one short month since you've turned three.  Last year it took me two months after your birthday to take official '2 year old' photos, so I think this is an improvement.  Plus we've got a lot going on in our family life right now.  We are, of course, about the become a party of five.  This baby waiting period has been a very long wait for you because you are just so super excited about the "baby coming over."  That is how you put it and how you've been saying ever since you found out.  It literally will be any day now, so it's hard to think about anything in our lives without thinking of it in terms of the baby, but I'll try.

So you are three, and three is proving to be harder than two was.  You love to have you some major tantrums these days.  Major Tantrums.  They last and they are mean.  And then you are done and you apologize and things are back to normal.  I'm finding it easier to ride them out than I may have if you were my first child.  I know a little more about what I'm doing this time.

This past year has been very full.  You started gymnastics in September and you really hit the ground running with that.  You absolutely love it and have always been happy to go to class.  And you are absolutely talented in the sport.  Miss Beth has taken you on as her class pet, and other people sometimes joke that they'll look for you in the Olympics in a decade or so.  At home you're constantly practicing handstands and cartwheels, or showing your various jumps on our bed.

Another thing you spend a lot of time doing is swinging on the swings in the backyard.  You like your daddy to push you on the swings whenever he is home.  He says that you could spend hours just swinging away without wanting to stop.  I tried to take photos of you swinging with him one day, and I found that I could not capture the essence of this activity.  It's a silent, serene activity, with only the creek of the swing making noise, and it is so peaceful to watch you guys out there in your spots.  Daddy's spent so much time in his position behind your swing that he's worn foot marks into the lawn.

Then there's the talking.  The Talking and the Asking of Questions.  It doesn't stop.  You don't stop talking - until we're out of the house and around other people.  They don't believe you can even talk.  One little girl at Playschool asked me at the end of the school year if you speak Spanish.  I asked her why she wanted to know that and she explained that she didn't think you spoke our language since she'd never heard you talk!  

I'm all for having kids ask questions to learn things, and I'm a big believer in the philosophy that there are no dumb questions, but I believe with you, in one year, I have reached my lifetime quota of answering questions.  You always want to know what time it is.  I don't think the time on a clock is even a thing to a three year old yet, but for some reason you always want to know what time it is.  So I've taken to using these as teaching moments, "Well, it's dark out and we're getting ready for bed," or, "You know that number right there, and this one is a seven, so what time do you think it is?" or, "Since you just asked that question 30 seconds ago and I told you it was 8:32, then what time do you think it is now?"

You also want to know how things got their names.  I don't mean proper names, I just mean words of things.  "Why's it called a broom?", "Why's it called grass?"  Etc, etc, etc.  I tell you I don't know and suggest that when you grow up you should become a linguist.  I feel very bad that I can't answer these questions.

In addition to asking questions, you love to talk about what you'll do for the new baby when it comes over.  You'll let it wear this, you'll help it do that, you'll love it so much.  

You tell 'tall tales' already.  How does this happen?  How does a three year old know how to lie already?  It makes it very hard for me when you are Jacob are each telling me something different.  Now that both of you know how to fabricate stories and play around with words, I can never figure out who to believe.  I know I should just let the two of you duke it out yourselves, but I feel like there's still too much of an age difference to leave you to fend for yourselves when it comes to sibling rivalry.  Jacob is too much bigger than you that he could really do some damage, and you're young enough that you're still learning the rules of sharing and other forms of proper behavior.

It's hard to talk or think about you or Jacob, without including the other because you are so close with each other that there's really no aspects of your lives that the other isn't intimately involved with or at least effected by.  I like it this way, I like that you are so close to each other.  Though I have to admit that it has been very hard these past few weeks since Jacob's been out of school because you always want to be right there with each other.  It's not often that you can be found doing separate activities.  And you play so much together that the fights just don't seem to end.  So I find that I've learned something very valuable about myself as a mother recently:  I realize that I experience boundless highs by observing you two interact and be loving to each other, but I think I like you better when I'm spending one-on-one time with either you or your brother.  This is an ironic revelation to have as we're about to add a third child to our family because now it will be even harder to get this one-on-one time, but I guess it is important to know and will also help as our family grows.

Oh, Sabine, Sabine...it seems I have hardly touched the surface of who you are.  I haven't gotten into any specifics of how we spend our days, or what your favorites are, or funny things you've said, but I guess I'm going to have to start trusting that these things that make up the essence of you won't disappear just because I haven't put them in writing.  I'll have to start trusting more people to remember these things for me, and hope that all the pictures I take have captured our day-to-day goings on sufficiently. There are some pictures I'm putting in here, in no particular order (because I don't have the time to mess around with it), which are some of my favorites of you this past year.  You are beautiful - a 23 lb ball of hilarious, compassionate energy.  You're very good at observing people and anticipating their needs.  You love to go get stuff for us and you know what you like.  Your favorites still seem to be orange juice and yogurt, along with anything sweet like cotton candy and ice cream.  And I love you to death.

Love, 

Mommy

 

 

Day 19: The Little Potty

I'm going to try to be on the lookout for signs of spring - even though it's 15 degrees below the normal temperatures for this time of year, and snow can still be found on the ground in many places.  In the meantime, here's Sabine's potty as of a couple weeks ago.  Earlier in the year I had a wave of inspiration about the whole potty issue (I was not having much luck getting Sabine to use it).  I'd been trying to bribe her with various things, yet none of them appealed to her. 

Finally I realized it had to be something that could be measured so she could see her progress over time.  She went for the sticker idea, which is great because I have millions of stickers.  I give her one each time she goes pee on the little potty and she gets to put it on the potty.  I think for some reason it matters that it goes on the actual potty and not like, her getting to wear it on her shirt or something.

It's been a few weeks since this picture has been taken and by now it's covered with stickers.  She's still wearing diapers a lot of the time, but more and more of them are staying dry.  I am just so ready to be done washing diapers, and they really stink now so it will great when they're eliminated completely. 

Day 17: The Two-Straw Method

I bet you felt so sorry for Sabine in that last photo, so sad looking, waiting for her taste.  So I have to offer some resolution with this next post.  Eventually the fighting over whose turn it was become so bad, that I had to go get another straw and adopt the two-straw method.  They look like they belong on Happy Days.  Aww.

Seriously though, those shakes were four bucks a pop and I wasn't about to get them each one of their own.  Once you establish the "I want my own" precedent, there's no going back.  I hope this doesn't turn them to a life of anti-sharing when they grow up.  Forced into years of only getting half a serving, my adult children will go through life hoarding their food and hiding away stashes of goodies.

Day 16: Longing for a Sip

After West Virginia we hit Hershey, Pennsylvania and took a tour of Hershey Park.  Jacob got a milk shake in the food court and Sabine was sitting there patiently awaiting her turn.  They were so darn cute I couldn't help but take a bunch of pictures.

Day 15: Welcome to West Virginia

Later in the day, after leaving Virginia, we made a pit stop at the teeny, tiny West Virginia Welcome Center.  While we were there, I realized that it was a new state for Sabine.  Since it was her first time there, I decided we needed a good photo op.  I let the kids run around and stretch their legs; here they are climbing the rocks.

Day 14: Goodbye Pictures

Before we left on Saturday morning for our long journey home, we took come cousin pictures.  Here is everybody under 10 sitting on the front steps.

Day 13: All Done

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We made ice cream later that night and when Sabine was finished, this is what she had to say.  She's using the sign for 'all done'.

Day 8: A Donut, a Mug and a Smile

I think that's how Dave put it when he was standing there observing Sabine.  We had just made donuts as our first big activity when we all got up for our day in Virginia.  My mom, Jacob, Sabine and myself made a trip to visit and meet my cousin Jenny's new baby, Emma.  We didn't get there until very late the night before because the drive took 10 hours, but the kids were remarkably good in the car so it actually wasn't the hell that it could have been.  Our visit was nice; I'll post more pictures as the days go on.

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.

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.

 

Dear Sabine: January 28, 2011

Dear Sabine,

You are something else these days.  You still won't talk much around people who aren't in your immediate circle, yet at home you won't shut up.  You long ago had the phase where you picked up a new word each day.  Now you're repeating everything you hear, and as soon as you've heard a word once, that's all it takes for it to become part of your vocabulary.

A while back, maybe six months ago or so, we joked about you having a few catch phrases so that if you were once of those dolls who had a pull cord, you'd go through a cycle of about four or five phrases each time the string was pulled.  You said, "Red, stop!  Green, bo!"; When you pulled your shirt over your head you'd says, "I con't seeeee."  If you were eating something and one of the dogs came near you, you claimed that, "A puppy tried a eat my ood."

These days one of my favorite things to get you to say is "Hallo Thomas" in a British accent.  And since you're repeating a lot of things you hear us say, you've taken to using the exclamation, "Oh my od!" replacing God with od.  You love learning different signs (ASL) from me.  Currently turtle is your favorite, as well as the 'I love you' sign.  You love telling all your people that you love them as you sign it.

You're starting to really enjoy coloring in your coloring book.  You love naming the different colors and pointing them out as you see them in the world.  Right now you get very excited about green, and then go on to list "red and orange and white and black," as your favorite colors.  You like to point out when you see ABC's anywhere, and you're beginning to recognize numbers too.

You act like such a little mommy sometimes, going upstairs to 'check on Jeje' if he's been up there for too long without hearing from him.  If I tell Jacob to do something, you'll follow him around repeating what I said for him to do until he does it.  And you always make sure each of the animals has been fed or let out.

You have a deep need to make sense of things, to know why, to know the process of things.  You always want to know what each and every noise was; of passing cars, of any knocking noise that you hear.  Many things in your world are categorized into 'baby' or 'big'.  You have a baby (pinky) finger, there are baby (small) puppies (dogs).  Basically anything small is baby and anything not small is big.

Your favorite foods are still orange juice and yogurt.  You pretend a lot now, talking to yourself when you line up the Bob the Builder machines.  Lining those machines up is the activity you engage in the most.  And of course you love watching Bob videos.  You still carry Little Baby around, but just in the last couple weeks I've realized that you're asking for her a little less when she's missing.  Three or so days will go by before finding her becomes critical.  

In June you'll turn three; you're looking forward to being able to chew gum and recently you announced you want to ride a horse, so we've told you for your birthday you can ride a horse.  You're also looking forward to becoming a big sister in July.  I know you'll be an awesome helper and a great big sister.  I hope you'll always be my little girl though.

Love,

Mommy

Wann she Baby Emma

This is what Sabine says to me every day.  She wants to see Baby Emma, meaning pictures of her on the computer.  Emma lives several states away from us, so it will be a while before we get to meet her in person, but in the meantime we've been keeping up with her daily progress via photos on the internet.  Actually, it's been a couple weeks since we've had to check in daily with Emma's photo page because thanks to Emma's mother and grandparents, Sabine's gotten her very own 3D 'Baby Emma Wall'.  In the photos there's only one picture, but now we've got five of them scattered about that wall.  I've been promising to post them for Jenny for a couple weeks now, so here they are. In the third one she's 'kissing' Emma.

 

This is the life...

Laying in bed this morning, I pretended to still be asleep as Jacob and Sabine were snuggling with each other.  I had been working on teaching her to say, "I love you" and she's finally gotten the hang of it. I heard Sabine say the magic words, "I ofv ouu, JeJe." and little parts of my heart started shooting all over the place.

After a little bit they found out I was awake, or rather, they didn't care whether I was or not and just started climbing on me.  Each arm was filled with one of my kids as we laid there chatting with one another.  Hands down the best part of being a mom.  Then Jacob said aloud what I was thinking, "Ahh, this is the life!" he exclaimed.

Her Baby

I wrote this post on 10/7 (as the date above indicates), but one or another things kept it for getting published until now. As of this writing, 10/15, there have been some developments in the Baby Saga.  Stay tuned for updates.  Because I know you have nothing better to do.



This is Sabine's baby.  It's been three weeks now since she could not be without her.  I know where she came from, and it dates back to a project I had to do in school when I was a kid, but I have no idea just how Sabine got a hold of Baby.  Nor do I remember the moment when she must have pulled her from the deep recesses of some drawer.  I do remember the first day Sabine could not be without her and that was a Friday three weeks ago.  I can't think of how it actually happened that we realized Sabine couldn't be without her, but I recall Sabine bringing her to Playschool on the following Monday and I was so nervous that Sabine was going to lose her.  I remember telling people that day that Sabine had been carrying her baby around non-stop since Friday.

Pretty much every day Baby gets lost.  We all enter crisis mode and search for her until she's found.  I think it was the day before I took these pictures that Baby actually got lost in the backyard.  It was then that I realized I needed to take some pictures of her so that we would have something for the milk cartons in case her disappearance ever became more than temporary.  On this day in the backyard (about a week after the relationship began) Sabine was far too busy taking Baby down the slide and tossing her in the air (all the time going "Woohoo, my baby!") to hold her still long enough for me to get a close-up.  I had to hold her for this top picture and Sabine stood at my legs jumping and pawing to get Baby back.

The name Baby is overly repetitive in our house these days.  We already have a 'Baby' and that's an inflatable giraffe that Sabine loves to play with.  So I tried to get her to call this new one Little Baby, but she insists on simply calling her 'My Baby', so then we just refer to it as 'Her Baby'.  We've also got a Baby Honey; Sabine refers to dogs as puppies, so actual puppies have become 'baby puppies'.  I feel like pretty soon everything is our house is going to have some name variation of Baby.

     

Day 89: Candy Bribe

At Joey's third birthday party the kids got goody bags (sorry Jen, but the noise-makers never saw the light of day) and this candy necklace was one of the goodies. I don't know how Sabine knew what that thing was, because it was my intention to give hers to Jacob, but when she saw it in the bag she went right for it. I couldn't pry it out of her mouth for anything.

The candy necklaces came with us for the car ride to Camp, but I never needed them. Then they came back home with us and it wasn't until the very last bit of the ride that I had to break out the bribe. Sabine had been crying to get out of her carseat for 10 minutes and nothing would calm her down. As a last resort, I presented the coveted candy necklace and she was game.

After we got home I thought the excitement of seeing Daddy would be enough to make her forget the candy necklace, but it was not to be. Only after 20 minutes of being home did we succeed in getting it away. Here she is staring me down as I tried to take it away on the front steps.

Day 82: Her Ball

While in Cape May, we took Jacob to the arcade. At the end of the week he cashed in his tickets for some prizes. For Sabine he got this ball. For himself he got the same thing, only the bigger version and in blue. Who could have guessed that it would become the new object of Sabine's affection? She can't be without it. When she's looking for it, she'll either say, "my Bah?" or call it "green bah".

In this picture, we were playing outside at Camp just after my brother had arrived on Sunday afternoon and I figured it was about time I take a picture of Sabine with her green ball. So I said, "Sabine, let me see your ball." Little did I know she would turn around like that with a coy look on her face and hold the ball so tenderly to show it off. The instant I snapped the picture I knew it would be a classic Sabine photo. Everyone seems to agree that this is the award-winning photo from the week at Camp. Unless, of course, you count the picture (to come) of my sister falling out of the boat in the middle of the lake, but we're talking composition here, not hilarity.

Day 79: For Jenny

We got back home last night from a week at Camp. The kids and I left the house in order for Zach to take on the huge project of redoing our hardwood floors. Needless to say, because he's a perfectionist, Zach turned the project into something way bigger than originally planned. He tore down all this wood paneling we had in one room, and put up sheet rock in it's place. So now he still needs to tape and spackle, sand that down, and then paint. The floor boards have all been rewoven so that they face the same direction, and some odd-looking patch boards that Zach had put in a few years back were taken out. So for that project he still needs to sand the floors down and do three coats of poly (24 hours in between each) on the wood. And now we're back home. All the furnishings of the house are crammed into half the space we're used to, and pretty soon we're not going to be able to walk on the floors because they'll be in various stages of drying. Yikes!

But that's not what this picture is about. This picture is Sabine on my mom's lap at Camp with my Uncle Bill (who is practicing very hard for his about-to-become-a-grandfather status). Jenny gave this book to Sabine, and it is her favorite book right now. She was rapt when Uncle Bill was reading it to her that night, and I thought jenny would like to see this photo because Uncle Bill is her father.

Day 78: The After Picture

.Because I'm running out of pictures to post, here's the after picture. I'd taken the before pictures, told the lady that I would need a lock of the hair and then stayed glued to the whole process. And in the end, the hairdresser had to scrape together little bits of hair to put in an envelope, and when she put the hair in the palm of my hand, I looked down at it and said, "Boy, I feel pretty silly now."