We had lots of fun over the three day holiday. Some of these pictures are from the Kirkland 4th of July Parade, in which they let the children march the parade route. Elsa made the trip on her scooter, and Sonja made it in the front pack.

We also spent a lot of time on the deck, grilling, watching fireworks, and hanging out. As you will see, Elsa wanted to hold Sonja but soon dropped her…

In the last month since we took these pictures, Sonja has grown a lot bigger… I will try to post some more up-to-date photos soon!

Fourth of July

She is gaining weight steadily and slowly getting used to life on the outside. Although her eyes are in that dark “no color yet” mode, both Lynne and I think she’ll have brown eyes. You can almost see a hint of brown when you look at them in bright light. (Wheras Elsa’s always looked to be blue from the very beginning.)

Sonja loves to be held and is least squirmy when being carried around by one of us, although she also enjoys lying on her back on the floor for a few minutes (something Elsa never cared much for.)

Here is a week-old set of pictures from a trip to Crossroads Park. There are some new pictures of Sonja, and a bunch of Elsa running around and riding on her scooter.

Sonja’s First Outing

In contrast to the complications and worry of the pregnancy, the birth was natural, quick, and straightforward. In fact, things progressed so quickly at the end that the doctor didn’t make it to the hospital on time, and the on-call doctor barely got gloves on in time to catch Sonja!

Shortly after birth, we spent four hours in the NICU with Sonja while she recovered from low blood sugar and temperature. After a few quick feedings, Sonja was toasty warm and stable, and we were ready to come back to our room. They kept us for observation that night, but by late Saturday afternoon, we were at home.

Elsa and Lynne’s family came to visit us Friday night. Sonja had prepared a “big sister gift” for Elsa—a long, twirly, flowing pink dress of the type Elsa adores. We let her open it at the hospital, and it as a big hit.

So far Elsa has adjusted to the change really well. She is fond of kissing her baby sister, and is very interested in her “tiny little fingers,” “tiny little ears,” “tiny little eyes,” etc.

Sonja has been pretty mellow over the first few days. She has handled everything with aplomb so far—adjusting well to being in the car seat, being weighed, sleeping, feeding, and being carried in various positions. Even in these first few hours together, we can tell she has a different personality than Elsa.

Here are a few pictures from our first days with Sonja. Thank you to everyone for the kind wishes and congratulations. We are so happy to have her as part of our family!

Sonja’s Birth

Elsa quickly found some caramel-chocolate eggs and starting carrying them around, strings of gooey caramel attached to her chin.

The day before, Elsa colored some eggs, and so this was an opportunity for her to find them again. Once she found them all, she wanted to hide them, so we waited in the living room while she found good hiding places for every egg. Finding them again was quite easy, because as soon as they were all hidden, she ran over to show us where they all were!

Here are a few pictures from the day:

Easter 2011

So, this year, we left nothing to chance, and took Elsa to Samena’s Easter egg hunt, which was an entire week before Easter!

Here are some pictures we took during the hunt. Elsa kept wanting to grab an egg with a slug on it; we kept having to appeal to her OCD “it’s dirty” sensibility to convince her to leave it behind.

Easter Egg Hunt

We went to Cle Elum and hiked, swam, and ate our way through three fun days.

Here are a few pictures we snapped along the way:

Cle Elum Weekend

It is amazing to think that in a few short weeks we’ll have two daughters instead of just one!

The first one was taken on Christmas morning. Elsa comes down the stairs and sees her new dollhouse for the first time and plays with it for a while. It is a pretty long movie, but Elsa says a few funny things so I wasn’t sure where to edit it. I thought about putting subtitles in, but hopefully you can decipher most of what she is saying.

The second video is from after dinner, when we were celebrating Elsa’s birthday. We put her in her highchair and she figured out what was coming, and started singing Happy Birthday to herself. Then, we did the “official” singing and she blew out the candles.

Hope everyone is having a Happy New Year!

In the morning, we celebrated Christmas, opening presents together under the tree. Then, around 1 o’clock, Elsa took a nap and when she woke up, we started her birthday celebration!

She got many great presents–in fact, so many, that she can’t always decide which one to concentrate on at any given moment.

Elsa is very much “dress-obsessed” right now. She loves wearing dresses more than anything, and often when she wakes up in the morning, the first thing she says is “I want to put on my pink dress!” or “Put on the red dress with the snowman and I will spin around and around!” So, she went through at least three different dresses on Christmas day, as you will see in the pictures below.

Lynne’s parents brought over a box of dresses from the early 1980s when Lynne was Elsa’s age, and Elsa loves wearing these vintage dresses. In the pictures below, you may notice the white one doesn’t exactly look like it’s from the 2010s…

Anyway, here are some of the pictures we took. A few of them are from the birthday party Elsa hosted a week before her birthday, and the rest are from the day itself.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Christmas and Elsa’s Birthday 2010

But there’s something that Elsa likes even more than riding in the shopping cart–pushing it. A few months ago, we took Elsa to the Seattle Children’s Museum. One of the attractions was a kid-size grocery store with plastic food and miniature carts. Elsa loved pushing her carts around; now, she often demands to push the normal-sized cart at the real grocery store.

She also likes to stop and put things in the cart. Lynne or I have to follow behind her, putting back on the shelves the things she’s piled in the cart. When she has put enough items in the cart, she often exclaims “buy it! buy it!”

Here is some video I took a few months ago with my phone at a Von’s in San Diego. In it, Elsa is pushing the cart by herself and piling the cart high with croutons, almonds, and guacamole mix. People in the store thought it was very funny to see an 18-month old baby pushing a full-size shopping cart!

Elsa got to play in the ocean and go swimming in the pools; we also visited the aquarium, the San Diego Zoo, Sea World, and all the other usual local attractions.

She handled the plane rides quite well, although we had to bring a bunch of new toys from the dollar store on the flight to keep her entertained.

Here are some pictures from the trip:

San Diego

I thought I would start posting them over a couple of days, starting with a few sets of pictures from early in the summer. They start with Elsa’s one-and-a-half year birthday celebration in June, and include pictures through the end of July.

Most of the pictures were taken at our house, but a few are from downtown Seattle, the aquarium, and a local farm.

Elsa – June 2010

Elsa – July 2010

This was the first time the girls have spent time together since they have both become mobile and talking, so we couldn’t wait to see what they thought of one another.

We had a great time, and the girls played together really well! By the end of the first day, Amelia would say “Elsa, Elsa” whenever Elsa would leave the room, and within a few days, Elsa was saying Amelia’s name as well (although the diction left something to be desired.)

Below are two sets of pictures from the trip. The first set are pictures of Elsa and Amelia together on various day trips. We took the ferry to Bainbridge Island to visit the Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island and walked around for a few hours; this was the first boat trip for both girls. Some of the pictures are from a visit to the Bellevue Botanical Garden.

The second set of pictures is just Elsa (although Carr appears in a few of them as well.) We stayed a bit later at the Botanical Garden to let Elsa romp around in the grass.

It was so much fun seeing everyone together!

Elsa and Amelia – May 2010

Elsa at the Botanical Garden