Happy Easter

Hi everyone,

Happy Spring! It's Sunday morning and we just put Willow down for her mid-morning nap. The past few Sundays, Willow and I have had a routine where we wake up early and let Daddy sleep (he's a night owl and we go to bed early). We always seem to be sitting on the couch next to the window as the nearby Catholic church is ringing its bells and all the people are making their way to mass. We're not big Easter-celebrators (or church-goers for that matter) ourselves. We're not volunteering for Little Brothers today either - they get overrun with college students volunteering on Easter. Instead, we're heading out to my parents' camp on Big Traverse for dinner a little later.

Willow was happy to get an Easter card in the mail from auntie Jill. She appreciates any sort of cardboard or paper, and she played with this card for several minutes.















Willow is keeping us, and Linda, very busy these days. She is a baby on the move! No more setting her down and running into the other room to grab a cup of coffee or something. If you take your eye off of her for 5 seconds, she's getting into something. We've done a lot of babyproofing the last couple weekends, but we still have a little more to do. She can cruise around on furniture now too. She's rarely content to just sit in one place and play. Even at night, when she wakes up, she's immediately on her hands and knees trying to crawl across the bed. Luckily she sleeps between us so we'd notice if she crawled over us and off the bed. We are going to lower our bed this weekend so she'd have a shorter distance to fall though, just in case.















Last week Willow discovered her nostrils. And the fact that she can put her finger in them. What a fun thing to do! I wish I had a photo, but I haven't gotten one yet. It's pretty funny.















Dinner is a hectic time around here. We have been trying to feed Willow at the same time that we eat. Usually she'll take a few bites and then get restless. Then we give her a kitchen implement to play with to buy a minute or two while we're shoveling in our own food. Soon that thing ends up on the floor, so we grab another. If it's something she's played with a lot before, we might get 10 seconds to eat. If we manage to find something new for her, we may get up to a couple minutes. Eventually she ends up hollering, and hopefully one of us is finished by then and can get her out of her high chair. It's quite a scene. I honestly don't know how single parents do it. Here's Willow and our kitchen after a typical dinner:



















Last weekend was a milestone for both Willow and me. I brought her to the grocery store with me! I know most parents do this all the time and it's no big deal, but when Willow left the NICU, we were warned not to take her out to places like that where she would be exposed to germs. They said if she could just make it through her first winter without getting sick, she should be good to go. Well, I think it's late enough now that I can say this without jinxing it: it looks like Willow made it through her first winter. She never even got a cold or anything. I guess she did have a one-day runny nose way back in early winter, but it didn't seem to bother her at all. She's actually the healthiest baby I know. Must be all that mama's milk. :) By the way, she did great at the store and sat in the baby seat like a big girl.















Speaking of spring, we've had some crazy warm weather here - record highs last week. I think it got up to the mid-70s one day! The snow in our yard is completely gone already, which is very unusual for early April. I captured winter's last hurrah before it was gone:

















We also had a visit last from my friend Ashley and her daughter Vaeda last weekend. Vaeda is about 6 months old. It was kind of funny because Vaeda and Willow are about the same size, but Vaeda (like any 6-month old) is much more like an infant. She can't quite sit up on her own yet and acts so much like a baby, whereas Willow can do so many more things but is so tiny. Here's a picture of the two of them together.
















Here's a video to leave you with. It's a coversation Willow loves to have with anyone who will cooperate. To her, "da - xzxkzxkxxz" is a sentence. It makes perfect sense to her.