Blows my mind a little...

Okay. This cute little girl in the wagon with Nate is Ella, and she is the 2 year old daughter of my oldest friend David, who I met when I was 3 and he was 2 (our mothers are friends...now they are both 'Grams'). Fast forward 31 years and he lives nearby and has a kid my age, and our children have a play date. Ella's Gram brought her over to meet Nate and Avery and we all went to the Big Park down the street. Fun!

Public Spaces

Nate spends huge amounts of time at various parks around town. There's the 'small park' right across the street, the 'big park' a few blocks away, and the 'duck park', among others. The Duck Park has some riverside trails for easy hikes and picnics, and naturally there are plenty of ducks and geese to eat your stale bread. Also some swans, which are freaky birds that scare me a little. They make diabolical grunting sounds and stare at you with their cold little eyes, as if to remind you that they could probably do a fair amount of damage in a human/swan fight.

Here's Nate eating a sandwich on the banks of the River Charles. This is not far from the Duck Park. The lump on my front is Avery in her carrier.



The Duck Park also features the steepest slide in town, and Nate recently decided that he no longer required daddy to slide down next to him. He's a big boy.



Nate likes to give me flowers. Good thing there is no shortage of them around here.

Lil' Piggy Nose Cutie Monster

Avery totally looks like me. Same flaring nostrils, unruly eyebrows, and I make this face all the time, too:



Here she is refusing to properly smile (she CAN smile), and otherwise being cute:




Oh, here is Nate wearing this same outfit two years ago, at the same age. He looks more like his dad, I think...

Shenanigans

Well, it's already May. Avery is starting to develop her likes and dislikes, which make her seem more human (brand new newborns are nearly indistinguishable from, say, apes, IMO). She likes mommy, sleeping on her side, riding in the Bjorn, her swing, and watching us while we eat dinner. She doesn't like the carseat, being swaddled, baths, and being ignored for very long. She isn't as good a napper as Nate was, but she has pretty much slept through the night since day one. She stirs when she's hungry but I swear she doesn't actually wake up when she eats...it's like she sleep-eats. I believe that this is called 'dreamfeeding' in breastfeeding circles. Anyway, I like it.

Here's Avery and Nate playing with dad:




I consider myself lucky for how well Nate sleeps and eats. The kid eats loads of whatever you put in front of him, and goes to sleep without complaint every night at the same time with minimal ritual. If I can somehow, someday, get Nate and Avery to go to sleep at night within the same time frame, I will be a very happy woman. This is my newest life-goal.

Here are my two floor monkeys before bedtime:



Bonus picture of Nate after he tossed Nick's childhood dinosaur collection on his Aunt Amanda: