Recently

I am WAY behind on blogging - here it is March, and I still have not blogged about all our Christmas visitors. But in the meantime, here's what we've been up to lately...

The last time I blogged, we were in the middle of a quick trip to Iowa. We spent one night in Des Moines (that glorious night where Esther and I both slept 7 consecutive hours!!). The next day, Grandma joined us, and we drove up to McGregor for the weekend. The kids had a blast playing with their Moser cousins, and Esther got to meet four great grandparents (and many other extended family, as well). And it snowed!

Trace and Jonah are about 9 months apart, and they had a great time playing together. My cousin Cheri's baby, Gretel, with Esther.

 Meeting Grandma Henkes and Grandma Great :)

Cora and Gretel are just two weeks apart!

Cora with Taryn and Gretel

All the Mosers and Allemans

Me with my brood. 

Too bad Daddy couldn't make the trip with us - we still don't have a picture of the five of us!

On the way back to Des Moines, we stopped in Iowa City for Jonah's final appointment to finish up a research study we started when we lived in Iowa City. (This was the reason we had to make the trip to Iowa). We got to see Aunt Whitney and Autumn while we were in town. (No pictures)

We discovered Grandma's grocery store has these fun little kid-sized carts. The kids had a blast, but I'm sort of glad we don't have these at our local store! It was like herding cats. And I'm pretty sure Grandma ended up with two of everything on her list :)

After we got home from Iowa, I decided to give potty training a shot with Cora because she's been showing some interest, and Brandon was home for three-ish days in a row. But...

....it was pretty much a disaster. She was very diligent about telling me after she peed - "I just peed....in my undies." All day long. With Jonah, I found it worked better with no pants on for the early days of training, but with her eczema, by the end of the day, her legs looked like she had be attacked by a cat :(  We'll try again another day. 

My girls :)

Esther is getting more interactive. We get lots of smiles all day long. And she loves twisting her head all around on her play mat, looking at all the toys. She will even wiggle/scoot (unintentionally?) herself around to get close enough to bat at things. She gets really excited when something gets close enough to lick :)

We've been enjoying a very mild late-winter in Kansas and trying to get outside as much as possible. Cora is getting so big! And I just love the little person she is becoming. 

Jonah naps about 4-5 days a week. But if he has not fallen asleep by the time Cora gets up from her nap, I usually let him come out of his room. Sometimes this leads to impromptu naps on the couch :) He probably needs a nap every day. The key, apparently, is to get him to sit still long enough to actually fall asleep. He has been listening to The Chronicles of Narnia, and I guess on this day, it got him to stop moving long enough to fall asleep.

:)

We finally got a picture of Esther with Amy, one of Brandon's classmates, who was also both Esther and my doctor. She will be having her own little girl in just a few weeks! I counted up recently, and between residents and spouses, there are currently 9 pregnancies, plus 11 more babies under one, in the program!

And that's what we've been up to lately!

I'll leave you with this side-by-side comparison of Esther and Jonah. It is uncanny how much she resembles his baby pictures.