A Funeral, Family, and First Foods

Things have been hectic in the M. household over the last two weeks. My Grandpa passed away, and I flew home for his funeral. A sad time, but it did give me the chance to see my family and that's always nice. The funeral was sweet, lots of kind things said about Grandpa. It brought back lots of fun memories that I have of swimming and fishing with him at my grandparents' house on the Cape, visiting him at the bank where he worked when I was little, and swimming at their house in Andover. Because Grandpa served in the military, Army representatives presented a flag to my dad and played Taps at the burial - there was not a dry eye around, it was very touching.

I flew solo, and left M. at home with the kids. It would have been nice to bring them, especially Lucy, whom most of my family hasn't met yet. But there is no such thing as traveling "light" when you travel with kids, and it just didn't make sense to bring them for such a last-minute trip.

I came home from Massachusetts, spent 4 hours at work, then had to rush home and take Finn to the doctors. Diagnosis: ear infection. The remaining ear tube in his right ear is finally working it's way out, and that's the ear that got infected. We're not sure exactly how, as he wasn't showing signs of a cold before then. He's doing much better now, but we'll be watching him like a hawk the next few months to see how he does with cold/flu season. Fingers are double and triple crossed that he won't need a new set of ear tubes.

Two days later we had a visit from my maternal grandparents, Mimi and Papa. I think they are still recovering from their exposure to the massive amounts of traffic around here, but other than that, a fun time was had by all. We ventured out to dinner the second night, and a tasty meal was capped off by the worst diaper blow-out I've ever had to deal with. I won't bore you with all the details, but it did involve a very loud rendition of Cotton Eyed Joe and a lackluster dance performance by the wait staff. I think Lucy was just showing her disapproval of the effort in the only way she really knew how.

Work has been beyond hectic for the last month, which is stressing me a bit as I haven't been able to be as "present" for the kids as I'd like. A couple of days a week I end up leaving work a little later than I'd like, and I constantly have work issues on my mind. I'm hoping things slow down a bit in a couple of weeks, but I'm not going to count on it. Oh well, at least it's not boring!

I risked killing my computer completely by uploading some more pictures on it, just so I could share them with you. Not sure how many more it will take before it just quits on me, so here goes!

Mimi and Papa came bearing gifts, including a book for Lucy about a dog named... Lucy

And matching pumpkin hats for both kids

Lucy's lunch time!

We brought the Exersaucer out of retirement, as I feared Lucy was becoming bored with just her playmat and bouncer chair to entertain her. As you can see, she is a fan.

Much of her awake time is now spent putting things in her mouth, especially her fingers.

Lucy decided to stop sleeping through the night, and has been awakening at the awkward time of ~4:30 am. We fear she is not long for being swaddled, as she has been masterfully escaping from the Miracle Blanket, a feat I thought not possible. Regardless, in an effort to try to get her to sleep a bit longer and not consume as much formula, we decided to try introducing cereal a couple of weeks earlier than planned. This is a picture from her first taste. So far, as you can see from the mess, we have not really managed to get her to eat much of it. Oh well, we'll keep practicing about once a day, she'll get there eventually. We're in no real hurry for it to become sustenance.

Finn supervised the feeding effort

As you can, Lucy was not too impressed and was pretty suspicious of this non-bottle, non-pacifier stuff we were trying to put in her mouth

Getting ready for Halloween, Grammy sent me back home with a pair of skeleton pajamas for Finn. He was a bit nervous to wear them at first, but is now loving them. I imagine we'll still be wearing them by oh, next Easter or so at least