Playground and Nate's Big Day

Snoopy is so cute.  Here he is relaxing after an exhausting day of taking naps by laying his head down on a pillow of Karina's stuffed animals, Li-li and Lamb.

I've recently started a new schedule at work that has me working 12.5 hour shifts either 3 or 4 days per week (then sometimes they are day shifts and sometimes they are night shifts).  The end result is I am at work during 7 days every two weeks and I get the rest of the time to be at home.  We've taken advantage a couple times the last couple of weeks by going to parks when the weather was somewhat decent.  The girls love playing there.

Here's Karina going down one of the big slides all by herself.

Lydia really liked having interesting structures she could use to pull herself up.  She also enjoyed banging on all the pipes and things to hear what sounds they made, as well as watching all the excitement of bigger kids running around and playing.

Karina usually is scared to sit on the swings, but this time she got a swing with a big chair to sit in and managed to enjoy herself.  This is the first time in her nearly 3 years of life she has sat on a swing without crying. She is quite cautious by nature.

Lydia, on the other hand, is an absolute daredevil.  She loved her time in the swing set.  She didn't mind dangling in the air by herself at all.

She managed to climb up this ladder with me holding her just for balance.  All the work climbing was done by her.

This tunnel was another highlight.  Once we got up there with her, she kept going back and forth between me and Tanja.

I had another birthday this week.  The girls loved helping me open my presents.

Our house has a large bush (we believe it is holly) on the corner.  It reached up two stories and was quite overgrown.  When we bought the house, our inspector advised us to have it removed out of concern that the roots could affect the foundation or the plumbing since it is so close to the house.  I am generally opposed to removing any living plant from yards, perhaps because I have no confidence in my abilities to cultivate a living thing to replace it.  However, we decided to trim it dramatically by cutting it down to one story and removing the branches toward the bottom to make it seem less like an overgrown bush and more like a tree.  It was kind of scary when I was climbing in it trying to cut off the top without it crashing down on my head or through the window, but I managed.  You can see the big pile of branches in this picture - now I have to trim them down and bundle them up to get them out for the trash/recycling pick-up.

Lydia had her 9-month checkup earlier.  She is healthy and is now up to seven teeth.  Sadly, she no longer has a vampire smile, as her second top middle tooth has broken through.  Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Here are her statistics from her checkup:

Height: 29.75 in (98th %)

Weight: 20 lbs 1 oz (78th %)

Head Circumference: 45.8 cm (91st %)