Some Random Happiness

My sleep schedule is all sorts of messed up and I’ve been living off peanut-studded brownies with peanut butter frosting, but the last few days I have felt so incredibly happy.  Here’s a little bit of the random happiness I’ve been feeling:

Chris finally has two consistent days off each week again (after the short two week tease earlier in the summer) and they are actually on the weekend — who would have thought?  So this weekend we got to enjoy two beautiful sunny days with him home, during which we did absolutely nothing besides spend family time together.

We spent Saturday morning shoveling and doing clean up from Friday’s massive snow storm.  We were lucky to have avoided the tree damage that many of our neighbor’s experienced, so all we had to do was shovel and shovel to try to find our driveway and front walk…and Chris made Nora’s day by digging her a huge snow cave in one of the drifts in our front yard.

Zara even spent a little time sitting in there, and it was big enough for me to crawl in too.

There are definitely some fun things about living somewhere with so much snow, I would just prefer for it to wait for December to appear.

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Monday, the girls had their checkups so now we have official proof that they are growing, growing, growing.  Nora actually shot up above the 10th percentile for the first time since birth — she went from the 4th percentile last year to the 15th for both height and weight.  And this chunky monkey

is nearly 19lbs!  Last week we actually put away all her 6-9 month clothes and skipped over the 9 month set completely in favor of the 12 month size.  I had a good chuckle about how I kept wondering when Nora was a baby about what babies they based their size measurements on since her clothes always seemed so huge — clearly Zara is the baby for whom the clothes were made.

We decided Monday evening to take a few 9 month pictures, mostly because we thought she looked so stinkin’ cute in her little purple tutu.  The lighting wasn’t the best so I’ll probably try to take some better pictures in a couple days when I can make use of daylight, but these were fun for now.

Last week was actually a pretty big week for Zara.  She figured out how to sit herself up on Friday and with that, she is a girl on the move.  She is doing tons of pulling herself up and standing, and is basically able to crawl wherever she wants to go.  It seems she is about two months ahead of Nora in the movement department which means we could possibly see walking before her first birthday.  I’m not sure I’m ready for that!

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This week is International Babywearing Week, and in honor of that, one of my friends was kind enough to take some pictures of me and the girls in our slings.

I don’t wear Nora a lot, but I do every now and then, and she does still love it.  She is such a cuddle bug!  Since she is still on the smaller side and since I’ve worn her continuously as she’s grown, it honestly doesn’t feel awkward or uncomfortable at all.  Plus, she’s really too active to want to be worn for long periods of time, anyway, so I don’t really get tired out.  I figure I’m going to wear her as long as she’ll let me, because before I know it she’s going to be ten and off doing her own thing.

I really do love baby/toddler/preschooler wearing.  I’m not sure that I have written about it much, although I know I have posted plenty of photos of me wearing the girls (and back in the day sweet Mr. T, who first introduced me to double carrying with Nora), but I really do think a good carrier is invaluable to me as a parent.  We have a few different styles — a Moby Wrap, a Becco structured carrier, and two slings — the the ring slings are by far my favorite.  They are comfy and easy to use.  They are versatile: one minute carrying Nora, the next Zara, on the front, on my back, facing in or facing out, and are able to be worn by both me and Chris with barely any adjustment.  And, of course, they are easy to nurse in on the go.

We live in our slings.  If I had to put together a list of much needed baby items, a good sling would top the list, especially if you have other kids to chase after.

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I’ve been working on some websites so we’ll have some extra money coming in to help cover me braving a trip down to Denver on my own at the end of the month.  I am hoping to visit two charter schools to get some additional information to help our group with the giant application we have to complete.  I am super excited about this project and will definitely write more about it toward the end of the week, I promise!  But for now, I’m off to bed to get a few more hours of sleep before another jam-packed day.