Archive for the ‘grandma karen’ tag
Weekend fun
This past weekend, we went to Heritage Square in downtown Phoenix and had lunch at a Victorian tearoom and then toured a Victorian house built in 1895. The girly grandchildren had “Children’s Tea” – they loved it! I had a chai latte (which I haven’t had since prepregnancy) and *delicious* veggie sandwhich. Yummmmm.
The tour was wonderful – it was supposed to be a 30 minute guided tour, but took an hour because the kids were so engaged and had a kabillion questions.
Here’s Jake, playing airplane with Mira…
Grandma so happy to see her baby! In the two months since she last saw him he went from barely creeping and rolling over to mobile, into EVERYTHING baby. She’s amazed at the changes!
Grandma Karen left yesterday. What fun, but a whirlwind! She’s back next month for a week – we’ll miss her in the meantime.
Here are a few pictures that I snagged off HER camera, which is cool because she caught some shots I would usually not get!
Here are a few from the Sunday afternoon tea party:
Waiting for the tea, was getting boring. I love this shot LOL – it shows perfectly how restless they were getting. (The littlest one is their three year old cousin, my SIL’s daughter)…
Ah, now they have “tea” (which was, in fact, hot cocoa lol)…
I was looking at Bailey at the “chldren’s table” that day and thinking how close she is to outgrowing that. This was probably one of the last occasions where she’s going to be one of the Little Girls. And HM is right on her heels. Wahhhhhh.
Not a fabulous pic, but a RARE candid of Scott, me AND Jake!
Here we are sitting down to dinner…
I love this photo of me and my boy. 
His silly side shows through a little here – he’s wearing Jake’s hat… Jake is technically in the photo, too – he’s on my back! 
And the gratuitous baby shot! He’s cruising around the outside of his walker (brakes engaged!)
Baby Jake bear
Grandma brought a teddy bear home today for Jake. Everyone wanted to be part of the cuddle action:
We miss Grandma Karen :*-(
Scott's mom left yesterday evening, so the babymoon is officially over. It was wonderful having her with us – she's so supportive in every way. She prepared most of the meals for us every day for three weeks! For three weeks I mostly had my breakfasts in BED!
She helped the girls get ready for school and for bed. A retired grade school teacher, she helped them with their homework. She walked them to catch the bus. She drove them to school when they missed the bus. She helped create a (messy!) (labor intensive!) papier mache dragon for a 4th grader's book report. She deep cleaned a 15 year old's bedroom!
She consoled the baby when he seemed inconsolable. She almost got the puzzle done! She did laundry and dishes and packed school lunches and helped take care of the dogs and kept me company and just generally spoiled us ALL. I could go on and on and on.
I know this heavenly little interlude lasted longer than what most women get and that I'm lucky to have been so totally pampered for more than three weeks (not to mention the week before Jake's arrival!) . Everyone is sad, except Jake who doesn't know any better yet. HM and I both cried before falling asleep last night. We got so attached. And now we're so sad!
I don't know HOW we're going to manage this crazy household plus baby all by ourselves. Ackkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.
Thank you again for EVERYTHING, Karen – we miss you!! (Thank you to Ron, too, for letting us have her for so long. 
I don’t want to jinx myself…
…but I think I have the EASIEST babe, omg. Of course, it helps that by this point I have totally realistic expectations about life with a newborn (i.e., I have no life – complete surrender to Operation Chubbify the Baby).
Still, although I wouldn't say he has anything yet resembling a routine, he is remarkably organized for a one week old babe. So far he SLEEPS at night (between nursings). And he sleeps in big enough chunks that I feel like I'm getting adequate sleep to function by day.
He wakes up perky and ready to start his day at 5:30 am. That's when he poops. I told Scott, WOW, he is SO perfect! And he said, Why, because he poops? I said, Because he poops in the MORNING (and all throughout the day, of course).
Now, once he's up, he commences to nurse about 3-4 hours straight, with some tiny intermissions. He does that again in the afternoon and again in the evening. That's a little inhibiting for me – I can't get much done at ALL (except sit around while nursing and obsess about all within my sight that needs to be done, which means according to Scot and my kids that I'm a little, um, bossy right now), but hey, the boy has got to get his chubs on sometime! It's like he understands the concept of normal mommy-business hours.
Scott just went back to work today for a half day. Tomorrow he's back to fulltime. In the meantime his mom is here through the end of the month. Between them, I am completely pampered. They barely let me out of my bed last week and are still watching me closely to make sure I don't overdo it. It's almost enough to make a girl willing to have another one.
KIDDING. I kid.
One question – when do baby boys stop randomly peeing on the their parents during diaper changes?
Mom to 4 kids and 2 stepkids, I am a writer writing in the heart of chaos. I am the co-founder and former editor of 
