Daddy and his Girls

Another Father's day has come and gone, and with it the annual trip to Fuddruckers. We go more than once a year since it's Ben's second favourite restaurant (but don't tell it that it was bumped from the #1 spot, it was there for many, many years) but we have a tradition of going there to celebrate Father's day. This year involved an even earlier wake up than last year since Adele was up for the vast majority of the hours between 11pm and 6am the night before, and when Fiona woke up around 6.30am I don't think I even remembered it was Father's day before giving Ben a (loving) poke in the ribs. In addition to that, he also had to make his own Father's Day breakfast. I'm sure Fiona helped though. She's useful like that ;-)

For nostalgia's sake, here's the photo series...

2008

2009

2010

Yes, they were taken with Ben's phone because I forgot the camera. And yes, he's wearing the same shirt as 2009, but I swear I've washed it since then. I'm not that far behind on laundry.

After lunch we also went to Best Buy, so Ben had a really nice day. Happy Father's Day!

In other news, Fiona has been being a funny goofball and a smartie pants. She has been doing a lot more pretend play, and has been putting her toys to bed, acting out little plays with them, etc., which is hilarious and adorable...

Until she decided to play at being a puppy...

At least all that doggie water isn't hurting her brain... here she is counting!

I love that she poses for a picture in the beginning of the video. She's whining at the end because she wanted me to give her the camera so she could take pictures.

Adele has been smiley and happy, but then Fiona gave her the cold and she's been pretty miserable for the last few days. She has a nasty cough and an ear infection, but hopefully the antibiotics will have her sorted out in the next few days.

Here's a video of her being happy. For some reason she loves to lie in the bathroom on the changing mat. Sometimes when I need to put her down and do something I'll put her in there and she lies there quite happily for a while. It's odd, but it's the only way the small amount of laundry I do ever gets done :-)

I'm sure there are many other important things that I am forgetting, and I know I have a lot of food experiments to share, but I'll have to try to remember them another day because it's bedtime. These girls are fun, but also completely exhausting :-)

Adele is six months old!

Adele suddenly turned six months old! I cannot believe how fast half a year has gone by. She is such a sweet baby - she giggles and smiles and loves to be tickled. It's hard to believe that such an impossibly tiny creature has grown so quickly into a beautiful baby girl with her own quirky personality.

Six months ago I could not imagine her smiling at her big sister who loves her so much and entertains her during diaper changes.

I couldn't imagine her trying her hardest to cram anything she could grab with both hands into her mouth.

I couldn't imagine us all just living our lives together, hanging out in the back garden in the sun, Adele kicking her happy little baby legs, unencumbered by tubes and wires and warmed by the sun, not the incubator. Though it was December back then, and I'm not convinced I remembered what summer felt like!

But here we are! I feel like we've been lucky to have extra time with her as a tiny snuggly little baby, and now she's becoming her own person. She's awake a lot more, and really pays attention to what's going on. She had her 6 month checkup and the doctor thinks she's ready to start eating some baby cereal, so that's exciting! We moved her out of our room into the extra bedroom because she's a party animal and keeps waking up when we go to the bathroom at 2am and wants to join the fun. She decided she was done with her pacifier and that she needed some teeth, so she's been busily working on those.

She's 11lb 8oz now, which is around the 10th percentile compared to babies who are her adjusted age of 4 months and she's 23.5 inches long (around 25th percentile). She's small, even compared to adjusted age babies, but is growing steadily, doing very well developmentally, and is healthy and happy.

You've come a long way, baby!

Happy 6 month Happy Day!

Trip to Scotland and Adele's Baptism

It's finally here! The post you've all been waiting for! Well, probably not, but I feel we couldn't just let a trip to Scotland go by without immortalizing it in blog form.

In the beginning of May (so we could get there and back before Fiona turned 2) the four of us traveled to Scotland to visit and have Adele baptised. There's a lot to cover, so I'm planning to use bullet points and pictures to get though it all.

1. Flight out.

*Checking in very stressful. Delta dreadful. Lost booking for girls. Almost missed flight.

*Flight great. No problems. Girls very good. Fiona very tired on arrival.

2. Time adjustment. Scotland 6 hours ahead of Minneapolis.

* Not awesome, but could have been worse. Had a few crabby zombie days. Fiona crabby. Me zombie. Also, crabby. Adele did much better. Good baby :-)

3. Trips to Louise's childhood parks and local beach.

* Fiona: "TRAIN!!!!!!!!"

* Fiona: "A BOAT!!!!!!!!"

* Fiona: "SWING!!!!!!" (swing not pictured).

4. Trip to Macduff Aquarium with Grandpa!

*Fiona: "FISH!! FISH! FISH! FISH! STARFISH! BLUE FISH! TINY FISH!"

*Fiona gathered all her courage and touched a starfish

* Fiona: "BOAT!!!" Yep, we found another boat! (It's out there somewhere!)

5. Going on THE BUS!!!

*Fiona loves all kinds of transportation, and her dreams came true the day Ben and I (and Adele) took her on a real live Aberdeen bus. I wish I'd found these half as exciting as she does...

6. Visiting with Family and friends!

*We spent time with some lovely people in Aberdeen, and a lot of people visited to celebrate Adele's baptism day with us. Fiona and Adele really enjoyed hanging out with you all!!

7. Adele's Baptism.

This was a really nice day. My brother Robert and my lovely friend Anna are Adele's Godparents. I wasn't able to take many pictures on the day, so I "borrowed" most of these from Uncle Michael. Hopefully he won't mind :-)

*Adele was very good and was happy and did not cry!

8. Grannie!

* Fiona loves Grannie so much! And Grannie loves tea! (And Fiona, of course). Fiona loved getting to spend so much time with Grannie, and in addition to that on this trip, she got to have her first "cuppietea" (as Fiona calls it) with her while colouring a picture of a teapot. Perfect!

There was so much more that we did, and you can see many more pictures and videos on our flickr page, but for now I should wrap up this epic holiday post extravaganza. The final part was the trip home, which went well despite having to be at the airport at 4am.

*Adele: "This sucks. I hate you. What kind of crazy time is this? Grrrrrrr"

* Fiona: "PLANE!!!!!!!!!"

The End!