portrait of a lady

cool cat

i'm one bitches.



hellie cat turned one at the beginning of december and we had a big party in our new house to celebrate. we feel so lucky that we were able to spend the day with lots of our friends, loved ones and my parents!

we had yummy food then thea and helen both got to blow out candles - thea on a cake and hellie on a cupcake. helen was a bit skeptical at first but ended up very much liking the taste of vanilla cake with raspberry frosting.





happy birthday sweet little angel. i am grateful for you and your cuddles and kisses every single day.

threeeeeee!

our princess t.t. bird turned three last month.





and what a princess she is - this phase hit hard and came quite seemingly out of nowhere about two or three months ago. now we are full-on in the thick of princess fever. thea went from a little tomboy to insisting on wearing dresses [more specifically 'twirly dresses'] every day. i'm thinking it came from school but who knows.

stage one meant she had to wear her purple dress [well, it was a dress last year but a shirt this year] at all times. purple dress to go with her purple room - does she know purple is the color of royalty? she must.



then she moved on to her yellow dress. now we're in stage three - orange dress - and this one is the twirliest dress yet.



she's also very much into dancing and spends hours spinning, high-stepping, kicking and curtsying about the house. [the dancing coupled with her accident-prone-ness results in her falling into walls or onto the floor in various dramatic ways so much so that i've started calling her mary katherine gallagher.]

our beloved nanny, lisa, gave her a book of princess bedtime stories which quickly edged out mercy watson as favorite book before bed. the most challenging part of this whole thing is she thinks she's a princess only when she has a dress and her purple shoes on so getting her dressed and undressed takes some maneuvering. my parents were here last week [we MISS YOU SO MUCH!] and my mom bought her a couple nightgowns just so that she wouldn't insist on sleeping in her frocks.

i looked back at a photo taken when she turned two last year - oddly similar to the one at the top of this post - and can't believe how much she's matured and grown in a year. she's loving, confident, hilarious, sensitive, intense, curious, full of life and smart as a whip. i love every moment we spend together and feel so lucky to call her my daughter.

i hope she loves me as much i love my mother. happy birthday mom!!

november beach day

a great way to spend thanksgiving weekend....

i'm up

hellie started standing in the middle of the room this month and lisa captured a couple great photos!

eleven months old

yikes. two months has gone by in the blink of an eye.

dear sweet little hells bells,

please don't think my lack of writing has anything to do with how i feel about you. i love you more than i thought was possible. your gentle yet tough personality continues to grow every day and it makes me happy to see that you don't take any s**t from your big sis. you are the cuddliest thing and i've become quite attached to our 5-6am snuggle time. when you want something you make it known but otherwise are pretty content to go with the flow. we've had a remarkably busy couple of months and i thank my lucky stars every day that you are easy going and cheerful. you are so happy! i look forward to coming home to you because you always reach out for a hug with a smile. a couple older ladies in the grocery store on separate occasions have called you an angel. i guess it's evident to others too.







often when i am holding hellie she will crane her neck to look at me very close up and make eye contact. it's her way of checking in and getting a read on things - at least i think so. i smile at her and she always gives me one of her huge grins back. she's also become quite funny and knows how to make us laugh - especially thea. they spend a lot of time giggling together these days and nothing warms my heart more than this. i picture them growing up together, knowing there will be fights, but ultimately loving each other completely. i'm excited for that but really i kind of just want time to stop right here, right now.

nine months old

helen turned nine months yesterday and i can't believe how quickly time has passed. every day she does something new and i marvel that she's becoming a 'real' person. her infant stage seems like such a blur.

she's pulling herself up and trying to take some steps now. she claps and mimics, she loves to hear songs and she's started dancing to music. she talks by sticking out her tongue and speaks gobbledy gook. she wants to touch everything and doesn't like missing anything. sometimes i find her in a corner with her books, already interested and turning the pages. she has the sweetest voice and i love that she says 'mama' now when she wants to be picked up. she's a cuddler and when she's tired, she'll find her blanket and lie peacefully on her tummy. she loves her family - she absolutely lights up when any of us come into the room - and we all love her so much.



she still doesn't like grass though.

ohio outtakes

i'm just now getting around to looking at the CD of photos we ordered from the shoot in ohio. the ones the photographer took are wonderful, of course, but some of my favorites were taken by her assistant. we have jpegs of all the images if anyone wants them!

love from connecticut

grama and jimbo flew in for a quick visit last week and it was so wonderful to see them. i spent the three days they were here working and being sick [poor me] but thea and helen got to enjoy their grandparents a lot which is all that matters. in the time that they were here, helen upped her talking and noise quotient significantly and is no longer our quiet little mouse.

i took a few pictures just before G and J left for the airport. although it wasn't a particularly sunny morning, we stayed and hung out by the pool at their hotel for a few hours so thea could go down the water slide a hundred times and hellie belle could kick her legs in the water.







[check out these photos of thea in the exact same outfit, two years ago this week.]

sunday afternoon

this past sunday was the first sunday of the summer where both girls were healthy and we didn't have anything that we needed to do. sad, but one hundred percent true.

in the morning, thea and i set out on an adventure to spend some much needed alone time together. we stopped into a pet store because thea wanted to see the kitties but it turned out that the mice were her favorite. it took every ounce of my strength to stand in front of a cage filled with the little rodents [and above it, the rats] and pretend like i thought they were cute/funny/entertaining. i deserve a medal for that one.

we came home with a 'pool' at zack's request and after lunch and an entire family nap session, both girls spent the afternoon in it. why can't every day be like this one [minus the mice]?

eight months old

helen is full-on moving around and into everything and i am well aware that this is only the beginning but i'm already exhausted by it. the hardest part with the second child is that the first child's toys - specifically all the tiny little parts and pieces - are scattered about, as is the first child. our particular first child is finding it [a] very difficult to share and [b] annoying to have her little sister mess with her things. of course, hellie isn't interested in any of her age-appropriate toys. she only wants to play with thea's puzzles, beads, books, etc. i heard an exasperated "get out of my room!" come out of thea's mouth this morning and my heart sank. i thought we had at least five more years before that nasty phrase reared it's ugly head :(

when they get along though - which is most of the time - it makes me melt. helen is obsessed with her big sister and follows her every move. thea will often give her hugs and kisses and tell her how much she loves her, followed by a [too-tight] squeeze. i have been putting helen in thea's crib for a couple minutes before they go to sleep. they lie together and giggle and thea asks if helen can sleep in her bed. i say 'no, but how fun will it be when you two share a room soon?' and she gets excited. see how i did that??

helen said 't t' this month - or at least it sounded a lot like it :) she says 'dada' and a very occasional 'mama' and that's about it so far, though she makes proclamations [see video below] and i can tell she thinks she's talking. she has become very interested in food lately too. i gave her some of my scrambled egg this morning and she grunted and groaned for more. she loves to suck on peaches, nectarines, pears and apples; and makes a most-contented murmur while she's eating that zack loves to imitate.

she has been a great sleeper since she was born but that changed somewhat this month. she was sick with a fever for a few days in mid-july and up multiple times in the night. since then she's been waking up sporadically and crying out. she goes right back to sleep but i'm up. i keep blaming it on her teeth but so far none have made an appearance. she is also a very random napper - sometimes taking 15-30 minute naps and other times sleeping for over two hours. regardless, she's always tired [exhausted] by 7p, goes down without any fuss, and wakes up around 6:30a. we are lucky.

she is a determined little bugger and still quite happy almost all of the time. however, she knows what she wants and will yell or cry briefly in order to get it. she doesn't like being left alone and if thea or i leave the room she's in, i hear her huffing and puffing to catch up. i look back and see her trying to keep up and i want to cry. i scoop her up and she's happy once again.

sometimes i think about eating her she's just so delectable.

seal team six

the newest recruit:

ggma and grampa

we went all the way to ohio and these are the only two shots i have of zack's grandparents with either of our children. what was i thinking??

the two helens!



grampa and helen randel numero dos...



we love and miss you both!!! thanks for having us!

trucker chic

poof!

should i be worried that helen enjoys this? big sister can do no wrong.

detention

ok, a lot has happened since the beginning of june. none of which i've shared here and the guilt i feel is unbearable. i'm going to look back and wish i had record of these two very big months. i can't hope to fully recap it all in this post so i'll just start small and work backward over the next few weeks to get caught up.

thea started preschool on june 1st. we had been on the waiting lists of a couple schools since just before helen was born [better known as when i finally got my act together to focus on school, knowing i wouldn't have time once she arrived]. we got calls in the spring saying thea had been accepted by two of those schools but we went with our gut and held out for our first choice. as the months rolled on, we became agitated thinking she'd never get in. zack made a few trips to sweet talk, er, check in with the director and toyed with the idea of dropping off fresh scones to the office. luckily he didn't.

so when i got the call in late may that SHE WAS IN we were thrilled to say the least. start june 1? no problem! sign over my entire paycheck for three days a week? sure thing!! you're going to teach our child manners and discipline? you can have, oh let's see...WHATEVER YOU WANT. it's an understatement to say this school has it together and runs the tightest ship i've ever seen. i'm amazed every time i arrive and see 18 2-year-olds sitting quietly, legs crossed with hands in their laps.

thea took to school immediately. the teachers said over and over how impressed they were that she settled in like she's been there forever. she knew every one of her classmates' names after three days and talked about them non-stop when she got home. she was fully potty trained within two weeks of starting school and hasn't had an accident since.

i get the biggest kick out of her pretending to be a teacher when she's playing by herself at home as i have such vivid memories of doing this myself and also watching my sister do the same thing. could i really have a child old enough to do this now?? i often catch her reading to a circle of stuffed animals, using her 'teacher voice' and holding the book up in that way teachers do.

her inner boss has flourished, to put it mildly. tonight while i was cooking dinner, she marched downstairs and told me that her duck needed to go to the principal's office [and would i please be the principal?]. i asked her what could duck possibly have done to warrant a trip to the office? she said that he didn't sit criss-cross-applesauce on the thinking mat and was not listening to her. after a few minutes, i called her back saying duck clearly understood why his behavior wasn't acceptable and he was ready to rejoin the classroom. too late. miss thea had already called his mother who was on her way to pick him up. the girl doesn't mess around.

here is thea reading to one of her favorite students. she's not doing the whole teacher routine in this video - i'm trying to film it but it's like to trying to capture footage of the elusive mother lion with her cubs on safari in africa.

seven months old

i've been terrible about posting for the last month. there's just been so much going on i haven't had too much free time and i feel really bad about not sharing all the details of little hellie's development. we had her six month check-up in june and she weighed in at a hearty 18 pounds, 3 ounces! she's not crawling yet but she can get herself where she needs to go by rolling, shimmying and sheer determination. she is still the happiest little thing. my mom said it perfectly, she's a little piece of gold.

i gave her puffs the other day for the first time and it appears she's not quite into them yet. she loves sucking on fruit though - apple and watermelon are her current favorites!

chillin with papa