what are you smiling at?

After a lot of effort to get her started, Hallie has been smiling a lot lately. Sometimes she smiles at me, or Erin, or Will, or one of her grandparents or the cats or anyone else. She also likes to smile at the zebra we hang from her carseat. And sometimes she smiles at strange things.

Here we are at Grandma Brenda's and Grandpa Paul's house. Hallie is having a happy time in Don, looking at something that obviously is making her very happy...

Is it the refrigerator? That would be understandable, it can make daddy smile...

No, she is just very happy to see Grandpa's soccer schedule. Aww.

She looked at this for several minutes while we had a good laugh watching her and seeing how entertaining it was for her. Maybe she will be a soccer player. Or someone who works with schedules.

my Father's Day gifts

Hey everyone, we're back from our fantastic 2-week vacation visiting our family. We have lots of pictures which I will post/blog about soon after I get caught up a bit. In the meantime and to get the blog ball rolling, I wanted to share about the great father's day presents I got.

First, when we were at the Lodge, Will made Grandpa Mike and I some very nice pictures of the three of us riding in the back of Grandpa's Mario kart. These were made in secret while Grandpa and I were out running errands and playing, and it was a bit mysterious later in the day that Will had all kinds of paint and glitter on his face and in his hair.



I also got a really special present last night when we finally arrived home in Ann Arbor after 13+ hours in the car. Will and Hallie (and Erin) got me a Rubik's cube - one of my favorite puzzle toys - where the stickers on each face are made up of some of my favorite pictures of my two children - like this one and this one.

Erin also gave me a card, in which she wrote verbatim Will's response to the question of why he liked his daddy: "I yike my daddy because he pay Marna Race and bean bags and he yike to pay football wiff me and he make happy birfdays."

Hallie's bath pictures: 2 months

Hello from Wisconsin! We are on vacation visiting Grandmas and Grandpas - Hallie's first major trip. This week has been visiting Grandma Brenda and Grandpa Paul, Uncle Jeff and Aunt Sara in Madison, and tomorrow we're heading up North to the Lincoln Lodge to see Grandpa Mike, Grandma Susie, and AJ. Hallie was 2 months old on Wednesday so we took her bath pictures as she was bathed in the kitchen sink.

With children this little they don't do much that can be reported but the big story from the past month was that Hallie started smiling. And as long as she's fed and not sleepy she smiles quite a lot now, it is the best thing in the world to see. She is such a sweetheart. The other thing worth reporting is that Hallie is really good to her mom & dad with her sleep schedule. Most nights she only wakes up one time to be changed and fed, and (usually) she is not very hard to coax back to sleep. In that regard, Erin and I both agree that she has been much easier than her wigglemonster big brother.

We owe a lot of her sweetness to the bouncy chair, which we have named "Don Bouncy" for some reason I can no longer recall but had something to do with Will's infant utterances when he sat in it. The ultimate weapon for cheering Hallie up when she's mad is to put her in Don, turn on the chair's vibration, plug her with a sucker, and start bouncing her. Works every time.

Her hair sticks up in back perpetually, it's pretty funny to see Erin try to style it because it doesn't cooperate. I think it's really cute. You can see that even when her hair is wet it still wants to mohawk a little bit.

Even though she has her own look, you can see a lot of similarities with this guy.

here's a happy girl

Erin and Grandma worked very hard over the past few weeks and got some excellent smile pictures from Hallie. Enjoy!

In case you forgot her usual demeanor, I'll throw in one of these gems:

Hallie smiles at daddy

She did it! I am working from my laptop and bouncing Hallie in her chair with my foot - trying to get her to nap. Suddenly, I look down and she has spit out her sucker and gave me a huge grin. We had a little conversation and she gave me several huge smiles, what a sweetheart.

It's about time! She has been smiling at everyone but me lately. Grandma Brenda came to visit this week so I could run experiments all day every day (thanks Grandma!!!) and the other day Hallie smiled at her for about 20 minutes, but when I stuck my face in front of her, the smile vanished. Oh well, I finally got one and it was great.

Hallie, can you smile at me?

It is still a very rare occurrence, but Hallie has started smiling. In fact I witnessed one time when she smiled at Erin, it was beautiful. I don't have one yet but mom, Will, and Clementine the cat have all gotten smiles. I'm trying hard to get one, I think we're close. These pictures were taken when she was unusually calm, and we were trying to get her to smile.




It didn't work... before too long, we had this again:




I'm trying everything. Mom's suggestion to get her to smile: pretty shoes

Will reads Hallie a bedtime story

No kidding, Will can actually read some words - he at least knows that "W-I-L-L" spells Will - and he can recognize it in a pararaph of text. He also knows the words "wet" and "fish" from the two waterproof books he reads every night in the bath. But he also has the uncanny ability to memorize a story if you read it to him a few times, and then he can "read" it back to himself.

Well, here he is reading "Day Out with Daddy" to Hallie right before bed. Hallie doesn't like the part where the boy runs outside before he gets dressed ("he didn't have clothes on!"). But some brotherly help with the sucker calms her down (he tried, at least). By the time Will finishes the story she's pretty mellow and ready for bed.