Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Sweet Big Brother


Just found this picture.  It is from April.  Samuel is so tender with Maggie and can always get her to smile.  

Maggie's Stats


Maggie had her nine month check up yesterday.  She is tall (90%), weighs 19 lbs, and her head is still measuring small but is much improved.  She has moved from the 10th to the 30th percentile.  Samuel's head measured small too when he was an infant.  It is not much bigger now but it fits his slender frame quite well.  
From her eight month Maggie has been doing the army crawl, and in the past week or so she's been doing more of the real knee crawl.  Either one is so cute to watch.   

Monday, July 9, 2012

Comparison


Magdalene at 8 months in 2012

Esther at 8 months in 2008

Esther at 4. 5 in 2012

They are so similar and so different at the same time.  Esther has more hair, and Maggie has more teeth. Esther always smiled for pictures until she was one and a half, and then she became shy of the camera.  Once in a while I can steal an unforgettable moment like this. Maggie is slowly warming up to the camera.
 


The Girls


Childhood

Sun, water, granite...


Summer is in full swing.  Last Friday we had lunch with daddy and then headed to the science museum to see the New Hall of Paleontology. It is as big as a football field and is full of new dinosaur skeletons.  Most impressive was the assembled jaw of the king of sharks-the Megalodon which was twice as big as the great white!  We also saw "The Last Reef'" in 3D.  Samuel loved it, but Esther thought the music was too loud and that scared her a bit.  Next time we'll try the planetarium.  "Black Holes" or "Night of the Titanic" will be our choices.  Very exciting!


Two teeth!



Our first trip to the beach this summer, Surfside.   


Of course, everything is better with friends!!!  
We have been bringing this blue pool to the beach with us since Esther was too little to go in the ocean. It always gets occupied. :)


Samuel is to the right with his boogie board, and his friend Ethan L. in front of him.  The waves were strong and both were a little beat up, but kept on going...


And of course what is a summer without some video games.  I have to admit, they are my least favorite thing about summer, but Samuel gets a limited time playing them and only after piano, reading, workbook, and chores have been completed. 


Competition for the remote...



4th of July.  We celebrated the blessing of living in this wonderful country in the good company of dear friends.  It was a great day!  



These were the only fireworks we saw this year, the ones in our own backyard.   


We also celebrated aunt Rebekah's Birthday.  The kids helped pick out her card and cake.   Esther even helped make the cake! We are so happy that she spent her Birthday with us!    


Monday, July 2, 2012

Nora Ephron



On Saturday while driving to my next errand I heard that Norah Ephron, a journalist, writer, wife, mother, chef, and filmmaker died of leucimia last week at the age of 71. It is an understatment when I say that I was saddened by the news. I have so much respect and admiration for this woman.

I did not know much about her until I read her book "I feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Women". I loved the book and even recommended it to my book club. It is a compilation of different essays on variety of topics filled with lessons, confessions, and revelations from her life. While reading I laughed, a lot, and pondered, a lot. She helped me reevaluate my own hopes and dreams and completely grounded my expectations, for which I am grateful.

No doubt she had an incredible life and carrier, and it seems to me she did it without taking herself too seriously and by being unapologetically feminine.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from her book "I feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Women":

"Suddenly, one day, there was this thing called parenting. Parenting was serious. Parenting was fierce. Parenting was solemn. Parenting was a participle, like going and doing and crusading and worrying; it was active, it was energetic, it was unrelenting. Parenting meant playing Mozart CDs while you were pregnant, doing without the epidural, and breast-feeding your child until it was old enough to unbutton your blouse."


“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. "


“I live in New York City. I could never live anywhere else. The events of September 11 forced me to confront the fact that no matter what, I live here and always will. One of my favorite things about New York is that you can pick up the phone and order anything and someone will deliver it to you. Once I lived for a year in another city, and almost every waking hour of my life was spent going to stores, buying things, loading them into the car, bringing them home, unloading them, and carrying them into the house. How anyone gets anything done in these places is a mystery to me.”