Terrific Two

Our Pearly Girl turned two recently. We can hardly believe she's grown into such a big girl already! Here she is almost a year ago (notice the short locks):

...and here she was this summer. She loves her girly stuff, like having her now LONG hair brushed and accessorizing with shoes and scarves, but she LOVES being outside and getting active (and usually dirty. Even eating dirt)! 

In our first substantial snowfall this fall, she and I ventured out into the white stuff. Even when her hands were freezing (and most of the rest of her was, too), every time I asked if she wanted to go in, she'd say, "No!"

A few weeks before her birthday, I finally took her in for a trim. I've learned to have no expectations when the kids go to the dentist or the hair stylist, and Pearly Girl surprised me even so. She sat very still and wasn't bothered in the least by the scissors close to her head (Sam, who cut her hair, was very nice and gentle, so that probably had a lot to do with it. Thanks, Sam!). Her trim looks great, too!

Her birthday fell the day before our annual open house, so she spent most of the day helping me bake. She's a big helper in that department! We enjoyed a nice chicken dinner later and a Ree Drummond chocolate cake just for her, too, along with some snazzy gifts.

Just a little help from Mommy with the candles
(and her brothers, who were blowing from across the table).

With three little boys in the house, we really cherish our little girl! We look forward to watching her grow even more in the days and months and years ahead. 

(Nearly) One-Year-Old Sweetie

Well, our Baby Girl is fast approaching her big one-year mark, so I thought I'd compile some fairly recent pictures of her before that milestone is long gone.

C starting taking steps by herself on Saturday, November 3. She'd been standing by herself (randomly standing up in the middle of the room with no assistance) and creeping (holding on to furniture and walking) everywhere, so we knew she could do it. Papa and I were sitting downstairs while the kids played, and she crawled over to the coffee table. Except she didn't make it. Instead, she stopped, stood up, and took two steps to reach it. We think she forgot that she wasn't crawling. In the last week, she's gone from three or four steps at a time to ten or twelve. So now it's onward-ho to staggering, running, and general speediness for little C! Happy early birthday, Sweetheart.

 

 

And to think: just yesterday (it seems), she was only this big!

Old, Gold Friends

Growing up, I always wanted a bosom friendship like Anne Shirley and Diana Barry shared. I was blessed with a twin sister--a topic worthy of not just a blog post but an entire book. Probably a series!--but I guess I was attracted to the allure of finding a female kindred spirit that didn't happen to come from the same parents and share the same uterus as I did. I made a few good friends in high school and never lacked for people to run around with, but especially my senior year I felt lonely a lot. I'd made some really great friends over the summer at Lutheran Summer Music the prior summer, and those four girls gave me a wonderful blessing of deep, if quickly made, friendship. I hoped I found a hint of that bond in college.

Well, God was gracious, and He gave me a dear, wonderful friend in Monica, who was my roommate throughout college, excepting the year I studied abroad and she took a turn as an RA. To this day she and I are great friends, and words can't express how thankful I am for her. Funnily enough, she grew up in the same area as Papa, and they attended the same Lutheran grade school, though not at the same time. (I've learned that I really like blond, stoically Lutheran, super awesome Milwaukee-area-bred people. Call me a wannabe-Wisconsinite.) Anyway, Monica and I made friends in other contexts at school, and through a long and circuitous route we befriended and were friended by a group of terrific girls. Our senior year we all tried to live together in a ramshackle house just a block from campus, but the house could hold six, and we were seven. So Monica and I roomed together in an apartment with two other awesome ladies and popped over to the Green House throughout the year to hang out and visit.

Fast-forward eight years to now. Some of us have married; some of us have traveled; some of us have lived rural and some of us have lived urban. All of us have completed master's degrees; all of us are still trying to live the lives that God has set before us in the ways He would see fit. We've never been together again, all of us, since graduation, until late in May. After kicking around a 30th-birthday-year get-together for almost a year, we finally settled on having a reunion here over Memorial Day weekend.

I wish I could adequately express how logistically perfect everyone's travel, job schedules, and life events generally had to coalesce to make this happen. Suffice it to say that we managed to get all of us together in rural Minnesota (which was amazing by itself!), when just weeks earlier three--I think--of us had been overseas (China, France, Switzerland/England) and Monica and I were between babies (C nearly six months old, Monica's babe about a month from birth). On paper, we didn't do much: ate a LOT, took walks, visited the Monument, went to church together. It was perfect. We laughed a lot and cried a lot and didn't stop talking for forty-eight hours (with a few winks for sleep in there). And I can say that just thinking about those precious days together make my eyes water and my heart swell. These women are incredible. We have our differences, as everyone does, but we support each other and love each other. "Keep the old," the saying goes about friends. They are gold. They are priceless, and their friendship is priceless.

I could go on and on about this, but I'll leave with this: thank you, thank you to Monica, Julie, Gretchen, Sarah M., Katie, and Sarah S.--to all the Green House girls. You are old, gold friends--bosom sister-friends!--and I pray we will have many, many other reunions as we age.

Jules brought some decorations!

Together after church. So incredibly special.

Girls are Sugar and Spice and Special!

In honor of a few special girls in our lives, here's a special shout-out. As my mom likes to say, "You go, girl!"

We are so blessed to have a very special girl come over to our house about once a week. K plays with the boys, helps me around the house, and especially likes to cuddle with C. K even helps change diapers and rock C to sleep (one of K--and C's--favorite things). They're good pals! K gives C some girl time that she just doesn't get in a house full of boys!

Of course, our little seven-month-old C gets a big mention here. Here's some recent-ish pictures of her that you'll enjoy. Please note that she's going after her brothers' toys (watch those cars, guys!) now that she's eating baby food two to three times a day, "talking" to us by saying "Ba-ba" or "Ma-ma," and crawling. Talking about go-ing, Girl!

 

Our last little-but-BIG-news! girl we have to mention is our beautiful niece, little lady A, who arrived just last Friday. So our little ones have a COUSIN! And C, especially, will love having a girl cousin to commiserate with! We are so excited to meet her and hold her and give her kisses! Because girls are just so sweet, aren't they?

What a doll! The preciousness cannot be contained!

So go and give the girls in your life a special squeeze!