Sweetest Things

Every stage that the girls hit is my favorite. Every time I think it can't get better, it does. These are some phrases heard around our house lately:
*"Ooohhh! It's a clean baby!" upon seeing Mr. T bring Baby Mouse out after a bath this weekend. Apparently she was extraordinarily dirty before the bath???
*"Where are you? Where are you, Baby?" anytime her sister is not in her line of sight.
*"The newspastor tells us what the weather is like" emphasis on the "p" there.
*"There's a snowflake! And another! And another! And another! And another!" as we drove on a Christmas-light-decorated street Friday night.

The highlight of it all was last night putting her to bed. I always sing three songs of her choice; last night she asked me to lay by her to sing. I complied, and she looked me in the eyes and said "tonight, I will sing to you". Okay, sure. She proceeds to sing, to the best of her ability, I Love to Tell the Story. Then she says, "I will sing the Mama, Mama song." Not being sure what that was, I got curious. Apparently it is "Mama, Mama is beautiful" over and over to the tune of Jesus Loves Me. Life doesn't get much better.

Waving and Other Noteworthy Accomplishments

Showing Mr. Food her clean plate.
Happy Birthday, Mommy. That's right. One of the accomplishments around here has been turning 30....an accomplishment for one of us, anyway.

Pulling herself up for the first time. It was great having the camera ready! Since then she pulls herself up all over the place and then proceeds to flop down. If she flops on her bum, she's okay unless she flops hard which seems to irritate her gums (that's how hard she flops). If she flops on her shoulder or back, we have tears. Learning to crawl and learning to stand are so hard on the body (and on the mommy!).

One of the favorite places to do pull-ups is the front door. Baby Mouse loves spying on Ken and Carroll. I have a feeling this is going to get really entrenched now, too, since I saw Ken putting up his Christmas lights today. There's not much better than pulling-up and looking at Christmas lights!

Baby Mouse crawled her way over to a plant yesterday, looked at it as if to contemplate taking a big bite, and then waved at it. Just like Miss Mouse and I have been teaching her! Oh, what a proud Mommy and what a proud older sister we were! Miss Mouse shrieked, "See's waving, Mommy! See's waving at de plant!!" Fun stuff around these parts!

In other news, Baby Mouse weighs 17 pounds, 5 ounces now at 9 months and is 28.5 inches long. She's on track to be a string bean like her older sister.

Happy Halloween!

The pumpkin on the left is Baby Mouse's. It has teeth to match hers. The pumpkin on the right is the creation of Miss Mouse. She picked the shapes for Daddy to cut into the pumpkin. Hence, the angst-ridden look. The tiny one Miss Mouse is examining was created for yours truly! It has a heart followed by M - O - M. My heart melted.

Winnie the Pooh and our toddler-pumpkin. The poor toddler, for the second year in a row, wound up with a rotten pumpkin. Last year, we just told her that hers was the one we had already carved. At 18 months, she didn't really care, other than that she thought it was pretty funny the pumpkin was "peeewwwy". This year, she insisted that we carve a pumpkin for Baby Mouse first, so we did. When Mr. T cut into Miss Mouse's pumpkin and found it was, again, "peewwwy", he just couldn't take it. Off to the grocery store he drove. Unfortunately, between 3:30, when I bought the two initial pumpkins, and 7:30, when he was after the replacement pumpkin, they had sold out. He called me from way down south at a different grocery store and said if they didn't have one there, he would work his way north and find one. He was one determined Daddy! Thankfully, his second stop had this lop-sided beast, but he picked up the tiny one as backup in case the beast was rotten, too. That's how I ended up getting a pumpkin in my honor. I heard giggles coming from the kitchen as they carved Miss Mouse's shape choices into her beast of a pumpkin (I was feeding Baby Mouse for the night), and then I heard some hushed voices which must have been the carving of the Momkin.

Mmmm.....squishy! From three pumpkins we harvested two cups of seeds. Not great, but it was a fun endeavor!

Our little toothy baby.

The beginning of the top teeth.

This probably shows how funny it is right now to see Baby Mouse with that one big front tooth hanging down! The ones next to it on either side are in as well, but they aren't really visible yet.

Fall Fun

Freezing temperatures brought sweet, purple carrots. I had to let her savor one fresh from the garden, er, pot.
Yes, that's right! She's a moose! Hunter extraordinaire (i.e., Mr. T) got his moose three hours into the season, two miles north of my parents place with the assistance of the state's Best Moose Guide (i.e., my Dad) . We left home at 9:54 p.m. Thursday, October 1, arriving at the farm at 5:45 a.m. Friday, October 2. Moose Hunter Extraordinaire slept for a few hours and then headed out for his hunt. Who knew it would be so short? It was great to have the availability of a tractor and trailor to haul the massive cow back to my parents' machine shed for processing. In addition to being a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Mr. T, he also has the distinction of shooting the first (legal) moose in Ambrose Township as it was just opened for moose hunting this year. Miss Mouse was super excited to see the moose, which she had been looking for through the night on our trip to the farm (yes, she was supposed to be sleeping but kept looking for the moose to "pet him"). When she got over to see Madam Moose, the reaction was as follows: "Oooohhh! Moose has an owie! Moose has a big, red owie. Moose is sleeping on the tractor. Moose will rest. Then Moose will feel better." Um, yeah. Since moose is technically (I'm told) considered venison, we have decided that the 300 pounds of meat in our freezer is definitely, certainly venison. Even the Great Hunter Himself didn't want to explain to our sweet, sensitive two-year-old that no, the moose won't feel better, we will eat her. Ugh.

We were able to spend more than a week at the farm, so Miss Mouse enjoyed many tractor rides with Grandpa, and both Mice had much fun time with Grammy, Great Grandma Muriel, Auntie Laura and her menagerie of animals (Louie the rabbit, Jewel the horse, and Baby Mew-Mew the new stray kitten....), Auntie Laura's friend Jon, Great Auntie Linda, Great Auntie Karen, and Great Uncle Bill. The Mice even got to stop at Great Auntie Karen and Great Uncle Bill's store; I love the smell of leather and animal feed, probably due to the Williston Saddlery always sort of being a magical place to me. Hey, they have a life-size horse! There aren't many more magical things than that for a small girl!!

Baby Mouse is willing to taste test some solid food.

Baby Mouse is not pleased. "What were you thinking, Mommy?!"

The girls and I had a fun visit to the lake to do fall pictures with Grandma Kathy and Grandpa Dick. We were only there about 24 hours, but we packed in an awful lot of fun, including a ride on a golf cart!

My hat models. Anyone want one? A hat, I mean. The Mice are not for sale.

The dress says, fittingly, "Daddy's Little Dear".

Good friends from Enderlin shared some of their harvest with us. We enjoyed cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, and a pumpkin.

Have I mentioned we love matching clothes around here?

The Synod's Youngest Traditionalist

On evenings when Mr. T is at work, of which there have been many lately, I sometimes use the piano as a distraction for restless Mice. The other night I was playing a "concert" with Baby Mouse cooing and squealing in the background as she usually does the moment I touch the keys. She bounces on her little hind end "dancing" so hard she sometimes tips over. Pretty cute.

That night, though, Miss Mouse added some requests. First, The God Song known to most people as How Great Thou Art. Next, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Baa Baa Black Sheep, etc. Then she asked me to start just playing random songs out of the "cranberry" hymnal. Sure. No problem. No problem, that is, until I began playing a more contemporary song with sort of a "campish" beat to it - "Stop! Stop! Stop it!!! Not that one! This one!" Miss Mouse made her preferences known clearly as she turned the page to a much more traditional old hymn. How she knew she had chosen an old hymn, I have no idea, but she definitely did not appreciate the "camp" type songs that I attempted. She does seem to like the contemporary worship at church just as well as the traditional (which we have attended the past two Sundays - she loves the organ, and though I suppose I shouldn't admit it, I love the bit of a more close-knit feel to the group.....).

Perhaps we will rule out camp counselor as a potential college summer job for that one; Baby Mouse might be another story.....

Bits & Pieces

Daddy's girl.

We've had quite the couple of weeks around here. I'll start with some cute phrases Miss Mouse has started to use. She's into a new phase of language development, too; I've noticed that she adds "ed" to almost every word now - hurt"ed", buy"ed" - she's trying to figure out the "rules", and I just think it is absolutely awesome that she figures them each out without me correcting her at all! I just repeat things like "oh, yes, we bought that at the store", and I know she'll pick up on it at some point! She picked up on the I/me distinction in the same way. Such fun stuff. Here are some of the recent sayings:

*Upon noticing that Baby Mouse was getting a bit fussy on the floor the other night, Miss Mouse translated, "She's saying 'Help me, Mommy! Please help me, Mommy!'"

*At the grocery store: "Somebody put an onion on the potatoes! That's kinda weird!"

*Ending every pretend phone call on her old phone from my parents: "Yep. You bet!" She picked that one up from Daddy and his frequent cell phone phrases.

*In response to our chiropractor asking her yesterday how she was doing: "I am not doing very good (she'll pick up on the correct use of well/good, too)." She probably wasn't doing well as she fell off the slide in the backyard onto her head and shoulder two weeks ago (we reference this fall often because it happened when she refused to listen to my repeated warnings against climbing the slide the wrong way....we use a lot of "you didn't listen to Mommy and got hurt, so now you should listen, right?"....I'm a stickler on the slide thing because when I was about 8 I saw a little girl fall off and get hurt very, very badly).

In the midst of developing language, she's also learning about an entirely new eating system. We found out last week that she is sensitive to a great many foods: wheat, gluten, rye, eggs, all dairy, casein, whey, and to a lesser extent peanuts, almonds, soy, citrus fruits. We've been dealing with some intenstinal issues for about a year, and we were at a loss as to what else to try. Believe me, you name it, we tried it. We're thankful that we were able to have these tests done and find these sensitivities before fighting with this problem any longer. Hopefully cutting out these foods will make a big difference for her. We're very hopeful that in six months, when she is retested for sensitivities, that her little body will have healed enough that we will be able to tell to what she is truly sensitive. We were told that it is highly unlikely that she is actually sensitive to all these food groups; instead, she is showing sensitivity because she is so inflamed and irritated right now. So, there is some hope that we will "only" have to deal with one or two or even three sensitivities in the long run instead of what we're dealing with right now. I'm learning new recipes and cooking styles, and we are really learning to eat without cheese! That's a real trick for us!

Last Sunday was "Rally Sunday" here, so the flurry of activity has started up again here. Wedding season keeps summers fairly busy, but without the two mid-week worship services and two mid-week Bible studies that Mr. T is involved with, it keeps things a little lighter. This year, they've added a third mid-week worship service; the girls and I are trying hard to adjust to this new schedule. I'm sure it's as hard for Mr. T to be away from his girls (the smaller two at least!) as it is for them to have him away. Seeing the girls for 30 minutes a day from Sunday to Sunday this week is getting pretty rough for all involved. He's hopeful that there will be some break-time on Friday and bit on Saturday, as well, but we're also mindful that he is "on call" for the weekend and has a wedding Friday, one Saturday, and a wild game feed for men on Sunday. Yipes!

I suppose this schedule is particularly hard for me to understand because I was raised on a farm where families, children and wives, were often directly involved in the careers of the fathers/husbands. It's not necessarily that my dad worked fewers hours than Mr. T; it's just that I was able to see him basically whenever I wanted - ride on the tractor, ride on the combine, ride in the truck, tag along for animal chores, take suppers to the field, etc. Growing up, I also saw rural ministry where families of pastors were also very connected to their congregations; I quickly learned things are different in larger congregations. It's not a complaint - things are just very different for pastors' families in a congregation of 10,000 members than in a congregation for 500 - sometimes that is good and sometimes that is not. Thankfully we see the wonderful work that God is doing through Mr. T's ministry and try to remember that when we're separated so much during weeks like this! Miss Mouse is already proud of her Daddy; she and Baby Mouse couldn't ask for a better one.

In the words of Miss Mouse, "There's the little mousey!"



They look good, don't they?!

Who knew a six-foot-two man and a three-foot girl could fit together in a barrel train?! They had a great ride! He tried to get out of it twice, asking Miss Mouse 'would you rather have Mommy?' The repeated, emphatic answer was "Daddy! Not Mommy!" The Mice know what they want at an early age, I guess, and in this case, Miss Mouse got exactly what she wanted - a train ride with Daddy!

Goodbye (Official) Summer!

Cousin Christina's wedding - can you tell I love matching clothes??? Thanks, Grandma K.

Our pursuits on hot days.

Baby Mouse loves her swimming suit and sitting in the kiddie "tub pool".

There's an identical picture to this one from last year at this time.


She's just giddy about chopping turkey with Grammy!


Baby Mouse enjoying the baby swing and looking surprisingly like her sister in the same hat.

Playin' at the park.

Miss Mouse on her test flight!

Having fun at the lake.

The girls both love that Baby Mouse has a highchair now. Miss Mouse questioned "Can she sit right by me?". She now, at each meal, asks "Can she join me?". We hope this attitude lasts on both their parts!

Update to a picture from when Baby Mouse was about 6 weeks.

Stroller buddies.

We've been running like mad until just as of late, enjoying the last of our 'official' summer activities....weddings, lake time, farm time, park time, stroller rides, etc. Hopefully many of these activities will continue long on into the autumn, but, as we've been hearing, this is the last official summer weekend.