Swing Love

Frankie loves the swings at the park.


And I mean looooves the swings.

Zoe

Meet Zoe, our neighbor Merideth's new puppy. She's almost 8 weeks old, and is a Golden Doodle (Golden Retriever Poodle mix). She is adorable, and Maisy likes to play with her. We are helping to take care of Zoe during the day while her mom's at work!

Big dog, little dog.

Tickle me Frankie

Frankie was like a Tickle me Elmo doll the other day when Kiran was playing with her on her mat - every time Kiran pulled the little bug down, Frankie giggled.

A family hike

We went hiking two weeks ago with Michael (Frankie's Uncle) and his girlfriend, Masha. We hiked the Welch-Dickie trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a 4-mile loop up a 3500+ peak. Frankie enjoyed the ride, and Chris got a good workout. Maisy, as always, was in her element, and even had a friend this trip - Lincoln, the dog Masha was dog-sitting for.



Masha and Mikes


Karate Kid and baby


Seriously saw this on the trail - snake eating a toad.

The yard sale

We hit an awesome yard sale this past weekend, and got a serious haul for Frankie. No need to buy any toys for the next 4 years. Kiran was over on Sunday and helped me sort and clean the toys. Now that's a great friend.

The haul:


Frankie as a fairy princess (we got her a whole bag of dress-up clothes for $1):

6 Months!

This post is woefully overdue, since Frankie turned 6 months 5 days ago!

Here's what's going on at 6 months for Frankie:

• She weighs 15lbs 15oz (sooo close to 16 lbs), and is 25.5" long. That puts her in 50th percentile for weight, and 75th for height for those who care about such metrics (me, in other words).
• She takes 2-3 naps during the day: a 90-120 minute nap at 9:00, a 90-120 minute nap at 1:00, and usually a 20-40 minute nap around 5:30. She goes to bed between 7 and 7:30, and usually wakes us between 6 and 7 (recently it's been much more like 6).
• I am still nursing her 4 times a day - early morning, late afternoon, bedtime, and a dream feed at 10pm.
• She loves to drink from a sippy cup! This is great news for us, since she still hates the bottle. She will drink milk (formula) and water from a sippy cup. We can usually get about 5-6 ounces of milk in her during the day, which is a vast improvement from the 1-2 ounces she was drinking from the bottle. This has allowed me to ween her of the mid-morning nurse, which means I don't pump at work any more.
  
• She is offered solids three times a day. Melanie, thank you for talking sense into me, and I am no longer tricking her into eating or forcing her to open her mouth for "one more bite", but allowing her to decide if she wants to eat, which has made both of our lives much more pleasant during meal time. She loves avocados, sweet potatoes, pears (finally, a fruit she seems to like!), and oatmeal. We've had to switch to oatmeal from rice cereal due to some, err, digestive trouble of the constipating sort. I give her water during meals from her cup, which she gets so excited about. I put her cup on the table next to her chair, and she'll look at it, "asking" for it. It's fun to be able to communicate with her this way.
• She's not quite sitting up unassisted yet, but we practice every day. She loves to stand, and has been picking at tags and other small objects with her thumb and forefinger. She has mastered the rolling, and now rolls to get to toys that are out of her reach (we have started the baby-proofing process!).
  
• She smiles readily at people, and loves, loves, loves Elizabeth (her babysitter Heather's three-year-old). Every morning when she sees her she gets really excited, and will giggle more for Elizabeth than anyone else.
• She loves to go for walks, swing at the park, and watch Maisy dog.

6 months is fun!

Attack!





My tired girl

Why?

Why did the Giraffe cross the road?


...to get to the other side!

New camera!

The new camera is here!

Nanners Face

Frankie tried bananas for the first time yesterday, and seemed to like them at first, but lost steam after a while. She did this funny little shake after she ate them - almost like they were tart? that I managed to catch on video.



For those of you with dial-up, sorry about all the video as of late, but our camera flash died and we haven't been able to take many photos without it. We ordered a new one, it should be here early next week. Kristen, we're going to have to put little stickers or something on our cameras, because we ordered the same one you have!

Hanging out on the porch

We live right around the corner from our good friends, Jeff and Sarah, who happen to have a baby, Hannah, only 7 weeks younger than Frankie.
Chris and Jeff chatting on the porch:

Hannah takes her first ride on Maisy dog.

Maisy helps Frankie clean up after dinner

Street Urchins

There is a group of kids on our street that play together. They range in age from about 3 to 12, and have been out almost constantly since the weather has been warm and school isn't in session. I have mixed feelings about these children - they are endearing and generally polite to us, and I like that they are outside playing, using their imaginations rather than inside playing video games or watching TV all day. For example, one day I saw them playing a version of street hockey with a rock and some golf clubs they found discarded from a neighbor on trash day, another day we were serenaded by one of the little girls with a song on her recorder (When the Saints Come Marching in -- it's the ONLY song she knows!), and another day were asked to share in their excitement as they rescued a baby bird. They are sweet to Frankie, and are always interested in talking with us.

They also tend to be loud, most have no discernible bedtime, and there is a distinct lack of parental guidance, discipline, and supervision for most of the kids. This is particularly true for our immediate neighbor, a 10 year-old boy who also happens to be the mob boss for this little pack of street urchins (which include his younger sisters). Some of his exploits seem downright Dennis-the-Menace-ish, although some have become somewhat concerning considering he's only about 10.

For example, one day we noticed some blue spray paint on our tree out front. We began to notice this art work up and down the street, and were pretty sure who the culprit was. When we asked said child if he'd seen who did the spray painting (after we'd been told by his oh-so-loyal pack of street urchins that it was him), he told us he was pretty sure it had been robbers who'd done the spray painting. Or maybe gangsters.

Another day Chris and I were eating dinner on the back porch, and the mob boss came into our backyard with a bike he didn't have previously. When questioned why he was in our yard with a bike, he told us he needed a safe place to keep it, where it couldn't been seen from the street. Fishy. Chris thought it wise to allow him to keep the bike in the back so we knew where it was in case someone came looking for it. He only had the bike for a few days, and then "someone stole it" from him.

Speaking of stealing, we caught him and his sister red-handed stealing grapes from our backyard. Not just a few for the road - they had a bowl with them. We're also pretty sure we know where my iPod nano ended up that got stolen off our back porch last year. The mob boss recently started sporting a white iPod nano matching the description. When asked where he got it, he couldn't really remember.

He also was recently caught jumping from his roof to our roof. That's right, we live in a three-story building with about a three-foot gap between them. The neighbors behind us caught him doing this one.

Where are the parents you ask? We don't see his dad much, but his mom can often be found on the porch smoking and yelling in Portuguese. Oh yes, and last night when we came home from dinner with Kiran and Rahul, he was still hanging out on the street at 11:00 pm.

A quilt for Howie

I made a rodeo-themed quilt for my nephew Howie, who lives in the wild-wild-mid-west. Here's how it turned out:


ps. the man in the background is my brother-in-law, Michael.

Squash love

4 generations