Paulamontage

Ramona recently declared that she wished Paula would stay little forever. While I often share this sentiment, I also find great satisfaction in watching my little ones grow, gradually transforming into the people they were meant to become.

Paula, like most babies, has changed so much in her first first three months. I believe all of the veteran parents who tell me: "She'll be a teenager before you know it." The past few weeks have gone by so quickly that when people stop to ask me the frequently-asked-question: "How old is your baby?"--I realize that quite often I am not even sure. I had to sit down with a calendar to figure out exactly how old Paula was when each of these photos was taken.

Two weeks old:

3 weeks old:

Here she is trying out one of her first voluntary smiles:

4 weeks old:

5 weeks old:

6 weeks old:

 7 weeks old:

8 weeks old:

9 weeks old:

10 weeks old:

(At some point in here she rolled over for the first time, belly to back.)

11 weeks old:

 12 weeks old:

13 weeks old:

 

I know she won't always be a doll-sized bundle, but she will probably still keep her nickname "Paula Doll," no matter how big she gets. And we will likely continue to sing this little song to her, too (whether she appreciates it or not):

Baby Paula's song, sung to the tune of "This Old Man:"

Paula Doll, Paula Doll
She is not quite two feet tall
With a fuzzy head and a tiny little nose
She is pretty as a rose.

I like it best when Ramona and Mika sing it to her. We love you, Paula Doll!

the Month of Forest

March is definitely Forest's month. It includes his birthday, NCAA March Madness, and availability of Cadbury Creme Eggs in most stores. If I had my act together, I'd bake him an apple pie for 

Pi Day every year to add even more special-ness to his month, but at least we made green pancakes for St. Patrick's Day. Making "yummy delicious" pancakes (of any color) is one of Forest's many talents.

The girls of the house greatly enjoyed celebrating his 34th birthday. He came home from work for lunch, presents, and cake.

 

 

 

 

In the evening I got Forest all to myself--a sitter came over to watch the kids while we picked out some manly shoes for him and went to a restaurant for dinner. The birthday boy scored us a free chocolate souffle for dessert.

I hope he had fun celebrating another year. 

St. Patrick's Day came next in our Month of Forest festivities. We are not very Irish and generally don't give too much thought to this holiday, but this year Ramona was so excited about leprechauns, rainbows, gold, and the color green, I put just a little effort into the green part. And I dug up a rainbow-y onesie for Paula.

Green pancakes for lunch, green clam chowder for dinner.

Green angel food cake with green whipping cream for dessert.

This week it was time to tackle our brackets for March Madness. Lately Ramona has a hard time with anything that involves decision-making, so she got a little overwhelmed by all of the choices at first. But eventually she got into a groove and made her picks.

Her champion: The somewhat obscure NCCU Eagles.

Mika seemed a lot less stressed about filling out her bracket. I think she enjoyed sorting through all of the team logos.

For a while it looked as though she was going to choose Oregon (Donald Duck) or Florida (Gator = fire-breathing dragon) for her champion, but in the end she opted for the Massachusetts Minutemen. Naturally, they would beat the ducks and the dragons, because they have "shooters" (guns). I love two-year-old logic.

This year marked Paula's very first bracket. We have never filled out a bracket for a child this age, so in the beginning we weren't certain what method to use for determining her picks. With Ramona in utero, we pressed on my belly and felt for kicks. When Mika was six months old, she was old enough to reach out and grab cards with her preferred team logos. For our barely-toddler-aged girls, we used bribery and set snacks on the cards to help designate chosen winners.

Paula missed out on an in utero bracket, and she is still too little to intentionally grab cards, much less snatch food off of them, either. So we decided to watch her eye and head movement for cues to complete her bracket.

 

It ended up working quite well--most of the time she would turn to focus on one logo before the other with two cards held up in front of her.

After two sessions of eye-movement picks, she made her final decision: UNC is her chosen champion.

Because of all the effort expended on filling out brackets for our daughters, Forest only spent about five minutes on his own bracket. And I didn't even bother. But we had fun keeping up our family tradition for this time of year--all a part of celebrating the Month of Forest.

A name and a blessing

Last weekend, Paca came to visit--just in time for Paula's baby blessing at church. It was a quick trip, but he still shared some quality time with the girls. There was synchronized napping with the baby:

 

. . . cuddling on the couch:

 

 . . . making faces at the baby:

 . . . and reviewing old baby photos:

Sunday morning, we tried to take a few pictures before church. Right when it was time to start snapping photos, we saw Mika had rubbed a red stamp all over her face. Since I had my camera ready, I snapped a photo of that, first.

Then we got some pictures of baby Paula to help us remember her special day. This first one reminds me so much of Ramona on her blessing day:

 

 

Finally, we took turns getting pictures of ourselves with the baby:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is such a happy, well-behaved baby. In fact, during the actual blessing, Paula was much quieter than her sisters were. Ramona and Mika were climbing and clamoring, causing a fair stir from our little pew as they excitedly watched Daddy bless their baby sister.
Happy Blessing Day, Baby Paula!