Making it work ...

We had another successful week as a family of four, despite Matt having to work some extra hours on Monday through Thursday. We've pretty much got our morning routine down and evenings seem to be settling into a routine as well. I'm actually feeling confident enough in how things are going to encourage Matt to bike to work next week a couple of days. (That means that I'll probably have to get both girls up on my own and get them ready for dinner on my own, too ... yikes!)

One thing that has made our days work well is that we figured out how to get Kate to sleep a bit better during the day. I know Kate looks a little odd in the picture, but it really works!


First she gets swaddled to pin down those crazy flailing arms, then she gets a pacifier, and finally we put a blanket over her eyes to help her shut out the world. Now it only takes 10-15 minutes instead of 30-45 minutes for her to fall asleep during the day! Plus, once she's set up like this she'll sleep just about anywhere (bouncy seat, cradle, inside, outside ... except her car seat, it seems).

One difference we've noticed between our two girls is that Anna has been pretty sensitive to sounds from the very beginning of her life whereas Kate seems to be sensitive to sights, thus the face blanket :)

I get the feeling that Anna and I are going to be spending a lot of quality time together this summer, especially without some of the normal weekly activities that we used to have (music class, story time, Bible Study, etc.) We're working on getting play dates set up, and still have play group at church, but there's definitely more "at home" time than we'd had this winter. It's a good thing that Anna loves to do random things (like play among pillows, "pay yegos"-play legos, run circles around the house, etc.) as well as help in whatever way she can.


She loves helping get diapers for Kate, burping Kate, picking out some of Kate's clothes when Kate "makes a mess", and just about anything having to do with the garden (weeding, washing and tearing lettuce, thinning apple trees, etc.)

Speaking of our garden, thanks to Matt and my parents, everything I'd hoped to plant got planted and is up and growing. Things are even fairly well weeded right now(again thanks to Matt and my mom). The next challenge will be to pick and preserve produce as it starts to ripen and it looks like the peas will be the first big crop to come in ... maybe in the next few weeks!