We'll Miss You

Our family lost a very special someone on Monday.

My grandfather -- Lily and Eve's great-grandfather -- passed away at a hospital on Long Island. He was 87 years old. When I think of Grandpa, the very first thing that comes to mind is how he'd have us cousins lining up every Christmas for that photo session at the kitchen table. Year after year, we'd all stand in our spots. (Or in the early years, sit on the table...) I also think of the videos. The big old camera set up on the stairs. Each person opening their present and showing it to the camera. I recall being rather ... impatient as a child. But those were good times and we'll always have the memories -- and the photos and videos -- to remember them by.

I also distinctly recall a swimming tube ... on Grandpa's head. At Tupper Lake. For those of you who don't remember, or never met or saw him ... this would be the tube in question. On his head. And if memory serves me, there were other funny head-pieces that he sported over the years. I only have the picture of the one. Looks like he ought to be steering a boat down a canal in Venice or something, doesn't it?

Before he was a grandfather, or a great-grandfather, Grandpa was a soldier. My father and brother followed in his footsteps and served in the armed forces as well. My brother is currently in the Marines. The three of them got together last year before my brother shipped out to Iraq and chatted about many things, but the one that will always stick out in my mind was ... them chatting about an old firearm.

We are going to miss Grandpa, especially around Christmas. But I am immensely glad that he got the chance to meet Lily and Eve and that we captured the moments on camera. Here he is with one of the girls, and Grandma with the other. And yes, I'm admitting it, I have no idea who they are holding...

We know he's in a great place now and someday we'll all meet again. For now, we'll have to content ourselves with memories, photographs and stories.

Ice storm and Ice cream

They're calling it the worst ice storm the Capital Region has seen in 21 years, and I would have to agree with that assessment. We got pretty lucky, I guess, since they projected up to 1 1/4 inches of ice for our region and I think we came out with at most one inch. Albany got blasted with closer to two inches. Here are a few pictures the day after the storm:

First, I have to do my artsy ice coating pictures. The first, a leaf and the surrounding grass. Each blade of grass was encased in ice and you could pick up the leaves like mini-ice sculptures.

I thought the dog leash encased in ice was another neat picture...

This is our driveway, covered in downed pine tree branches. More came down to the right and blocked half the road in front of our neighbors' house. A tree also fell across the street in the park and landed on a power line and there was a downed line right across from our house.

These branches snapped off our neighbors' tree and if the fence hadn't been there, might have landed on Eric's car. We were pretty lucky that they didn't actually hit it, you can see how close they got though...

In the backyard, five or six branches came off another pine tree and landed on the back of the garage and the pool. Thankfully, the pool isn't in use nor will it ever be in use, so it isn't really damage we are unhappy about. We're going to eventually take it down anyway.

And now, for the "ice cream" partof the post. I put up the video of the girls eating their ice cream. Here is the happy aftermath: First up is Lily and second is Eve.

We did it!

I'm a little short on time, but I wanted to post this video I took tonight.

The girls finally figured it out -- how to feed themselves with a spoon. Okay, okay, so it was only ice cream and when we give them a spoon and "real food" they just give up on the spoon and eat with their fingers. But this was too cute to pass up!

Enjoy!

A few pics and an update

First, the update. Evie's neurology appointment was fine. She actually only went from 50 to 50 1/4 cm in the 6 weeks since the last appointment, and is still on "her" curve -- albeit way over the normal curves. We go back in 3 months for another check. The appointment would have been fine, if we didn't have to wait 45 minutes. I had both girls, by myself, and they played like angels for the first like 35 minutes. Evie would take her two balls to the nearest other patient and hand one to them. Then take it back and hand them the other. And keep doing it. And doing it. And yeh, doing it again. One old man was having a great time. Lily sat at the little table and chairs nearly the whole time and played with the same toy, over and over again. Then, they got tired. And cranky. And by the time we were called in, Evie was rolling around on the ground yelling and Lily was climbing everything in sight -- the chair, the stool, the other chair, crawling under the desk. It was nuts.

Ok, enough of that. Some pictures!!!

I don't exactly remember what the heck had them laughing so hard, but I THINK it was the cats when we first got them and the girls weren't used to seeing them running around.

NOW, they are quite used to them and Blue will sleep anywhere. Lily didn't seem to mind. She just pet her a little and the cat was in kitty heaven. I'm glad the girls know not to grab and smack the cats.

AND Evie. What can you say about her? She climbed into that toy basket all by herself and was just happily watching Pooh entirely too close to the television. I don't know HOW that could be remotely comfortable with all those hard toys in there, but she was content.

New trick...

I was making the girls grilled cheese, and apparently Evie knew it was time to eat.

She pushed a box over to her highchair and proceeded to climb into it. I went in to put them in their chairs and saw her sitting there, not buckled in, and asked Eric if he had put her in. Nope. She'd done it all herself. Evie was obviously happy with herself, sitting there swinging her legs and looking at me. I put the tray on and then Lily, using the same box, decided I wasn't quick enough and SHE climbed into HER chair too. LOVELY. At least they like them, right?

New words/actions

"Buh" means "bye" -- at least to Evie.

Today she started waving and saying "buh" "buh" and it was very cute! It's pretty consistent too, she did it a number of times. Not always in response to the first FIVE times you say "bye bye", but eventually, she usually does say it and wave. She also learned a new, not-so-nice trick today -- climbing onto a kitchen chair and then climbing onto the kitchen table! She did it again and again, no matter how many times you pulled her off. She can also climb on the end of the recliner, and will if you are sitting in it. Oh, and Evie loves to make a loud, drawn out "oooohhh" sound now too. I almost think she was trying to say "more" the other day, but not sure about that. We're still working on "mama" and "dada" too. No go there.

As for Lily, well, she MIGHT now understand what you want when you say, "Give me a kiss." She sometimes leans her head in toward your face. She doesn't actually kiss or anything, but it's a start. She's great at climbing into recliners too. At home, she'll climb on the recliner and then nosedive across the arm onto the couch and climb across that too. At Grandma and Grandpa's, she climbs on the fireplace hearth and then into the rocking chair recliner and then stands on that to turn the light switch on and off. She isn't doing the "buh" "buh" thing, but she is making all sorts of other noises.

They are both making a lot more noise than they used to so I guess the next step is to get the noises to become words and real sounds!

On another note, we'll be going to the new pediatrician Friday. Finally... and Evie has another neurology appointment on the 19th. We'll hope that is just another in and out appointment. She's gone up .5 cm in weeks. And Lily has gone up the same...sooo....yeh.

Halloween

Here are a few pictures of the girls in their Halloween costumes. We aren't going OUT this Halloween, but my mother brought these from Florida so we put them on and the girls ran around in them. I don't have time to post much else, so hopefully this will hold you all over for a bit.