Chomping Nature

Benjamin's recent nicknames for Lily are "Chompish" and "Chomping Nature". When she's not chomping on the monkey box or sucking on paci, she's been chewing/sucking on her fingers. This is how I found her after her nap this afternoon:

Mama Don't Sleep

We had a rough night last night. I lost count of how many times Lily woke up. Or she could have just been awake all night and I just wasn't conscious enough to know the difference. Anyway, we ended up just putting her in the bed with us because as long as she can press her face against my arm or something she'll sleep, which means that I don't really sleep because I have to constantly make sure she's positioned ok. Crazy kid.

Anyway, maybe she couldn't sleep because of all of yesterday's excitement. Yesterday afternoon I had to run to the post office and WalMart (ugh) and was gone for less than an hour, maybe 45 minutes. When I walked in the door I heard water running in the basement. I dropped Peanut (still in her carseat) on the kitchen floor and ran down to check it out thinking "oh no, the water heater finally gave out" but no, it wasn't the water heater. It was a pipe that had burst and water was shooting out from the basement ceiling (not in the carpeted part but back near the "tool bench" area) and there was maybe 6 inches of water that had flooded that whole area of the basement. So I'm panicking trying to find some valve or something to shut the water off to make this stop, all while hearing the baby crying in her carseat upstairs in the kitchen. I was on the phone with Benjamin trying to find out how I could shut this off and he had me turn the water off above the pump. I do this, and the pump is doing this crazy on-and-off thing and I start to smell something burning. I called Josh and he was on his way over. Peanut is still crying upstairs. :( I'm so stressed I feel like I could just vomit or something. I turn the water back on to keep the pump motor from burning out. I call my mom who answers "I'm in class I'll call you back!" so I start yelling into the phone that a pipe burst how can I shut the water off w/out killing the pump, etc. Fortunately she hadn't hung up on me yet and told me to hit the breaker. I found the breaker and the water and pump went silent. Peanut did not. So I go get the baby, while calling Josh again, who I think had had to get Megan up from her nap because they showed up a few minutes later and poor Meg was totally disoriented and barefoot with messy hair. :) Anyway, Josh saved the day by cleaning up all the water (the sump pump was also dead so he had to use a shop vac and suck up a million tanks full of water, poor guy). He went to Home Depot and got some parts and fixed the pipe. At some point Benjamin came home, and then (Lisa, Josh, the girls, us) we all ate some Thai food.

Anyway, here's Lily's new sound, I think I'll call it the frog bird:

Finally, the Egg Hunt Post

I didn't get many pictures, because I was so awfully busy the whole day, but here are our egg hunt day photos:
Mom showed up to help hide eggs right before everyone showed up. This seems like the millionth time she's put Lily in a laundry basket but I think it's really only the 3rd. Lily never seems to mind.

We painted about 3 dozen eggs, and then the girls hunted for about 150 eggs all over the yard. Here is excited Meg:
I think this one is Dad helping Maya and Zinnia find some eggs. Please excuse the diaper laundry...
And somehow the camera lens ended up totally smudged so my pictures of Lily's little basket egg hunt she had after everyone left turned out really smudgy. Anyway, here she is in her egg pit:
And yes, that's a butter box sitting on the floor. She played with that thing almost all day. I'm not sure why she loved it, other than the red on it. The girl still loves red.

Egg Hunt

I'll try to post more later, but we had an Easter egg hunt today. After everyone left my mom helped Lily with her own little egg hunt in the laundry basket:

Lily of the Day

Here is your Lily of the day:
And your Lily of yesterday:
I think there's a similarity between these pictures: fish mouth. :)

Family Retreat

We had our family retreat at Sandy Cove. It was awesome of Lindy to put it all together, and Benjamin said it felt like a free vacation, so thanks Lindy!!! We had rainy weather most of the weekend, but the bay area was still beautiful:

My mom and Lindy made an agenda for the weekend that was packed with activities. Some activities, like a walk to the lighthouse, were canceled because of the weather. But that was fine because craft time was a big hit:
Some family members painted a still life of fruit with watercolor. Others painted whatever came to mind. Apparently the things that come to mind are scary fish with giant teeth and lots of owls. Zinnia was, if nothing else, seasonally appropriate in her choice to paint a bunny.
Maya was especially proud of her work, though she did keep claiming Dayna's painting as her own. (Seriously... Dayna's is the blue/purple background still life right above Maya's painting. Maya kept changing her mind about which painting was hers.)
I was especially impressed with Willow's owl:
And Anna makes the best collages:
Saturday night we had the pool to ourselves for "Family Olympics". We all had to sign up for various events. I won the floating contest (thank you, babyweight!)
Anyway, here is Lily's first pool experience. This was 7:30 at night, a time of day when she usually either naps or goes to sleep for the night. So she wasn't really feeling up for adventure. But she looked great in her suit, at least. :)

The air in the poolhouse was really warm but the water was a little cool, so she didn't spend much time in the water.
Meg, however, spent the entire evening jumping off the side of the pool into the arms of whoever was willing to catch her. First it was Lisa, then Anna, then me, then Benjamin, then Anna again. It was a lot of jumping. She kept cheering "Myself!" which is her "I'm going to do this because I'm an awesome big kid" exclamation. (Anna and I even have a "Myself!" victory dance we do with Meg.)
After Lily spent a few minutes in the pool she passed out and slept through most of Family Olympics.
After some time in the pool we had a belated birthday party for Anna.
Lindy made some delicious cupcakes. I think Meg ate several.
Sunday morning we had breakfast, packed up our rooms, and headed outside for a family photo by the pier.
On Friday night we got to meet Lindy's new friend Mike. Unfortunately by the end of the weekend Mike was no longer with us. Poor Lindy. :( But that's a story for another day...

My Mind is Blown

Lily rolled over back to tummy to back this morning! Yay!

I have a super long post to work on about the family retreat we had over the weekend. I've also got errands to run, so in the meantime, read this:
http://ydr.inyork.com/ci_12024729?source=most_viewed
That is our neighborhood. I am just so thankful that no one was hurt. And I am amazed that we escaped the madness with just one dent in Benjamin's car. I think had we not been through last summer's hailstorm when both cars looked like some kind of swiss cheese we would be more upset about a dent in his car, but as it is we just feel very blessed. :)