The Life of Lorelei

I've accumulated quite a few interesting pictures of Lorelei lately, so I thought I'd share. But first, Happy Valentine's Day! Thank you to our family who sent us cards--we did not have our acts together enough this year to send out anything, but we LOVE you all (y'all)! We didn't even celebrate within our own little family, although Chet cheated a little and got cards from the kids for me.

I can't wait for all of the boxed chocolate to go on sale tomorrow...

A lot of pink:

Acting like she's enrolled in Syd's preschool:

Laying on the steps at City Hall (something tells me this won't be allowed at the government buildings in D.C.):

Hanging out in the princess tent:

We converted her crib to a big girl bed last Thursday:

Sorting, her favorite pastime:

Reading in her makeshift bed (yes, that's Ford's bathtub):

Chet took her to Subway this morning for breakfast (all it took was her throwing a huge, low-blood-sugar fit in the car...and remind me to show Chet where we keep our combs so he can run one through her hair before going out in public :-)):

"This is not too big for me, Daddy!" (because she often hears that things are too big for her...stubby little legs...):

"Go under me, Daddy!" (Syd's and her favorite game):

Poor Ford--his sisters will never let let anything be just his:

1-Month Old

Can you believe Ford was a month old yesterday?  I can't.  Today (because I wasn't "with it" enough yesterday, his actual month-day, to take his picture) begins another year of monthly pictures.  Ford is ecstatic!

So the picture above is the "official" picture, but I like this one best:

Gotta love a slightly cross-eyed baby.

I know I've barely blogged since Ford was born, but there's not too much to tell about him (no offense, buddy).  He sleeps (a lot -- no, I'm not complaining), he eats, he pees and poops, and he fusses.  According to Sydney he fusses "all the time", but he's not that bad.  He doesn't really like pacifiers (Lorelei didn't either; Syd was a paci-aholic).  He nurses well; it's his favorite hobby.  He loves to be swaddled, but we only swaddle him at night (unless he's super fussy during the day, then we swaddle him to calm him down after we've tried everything else).  He does well at night, in that he wakes up to eat, and usually goes right back to sleep (occasionally he'll sleep too much during the day and want to party for a while at night, but that hasn't happened in a while).  Actually, he slept for a 6-hour stretch last night, which was amazing, and which I am calling a fluke (although he usually goes 4-hour stretches at night.  For now he sleeps next to us in bed; I'll change that when it's no longer working for us (hopefully he'll move to the Moses basket soon; he won't have a crib until we get to D.C.).  He doesn't like the swing much; like all of our babies, he likes to be held.

And most importantly, we love him!

Just so you know, these pictures were hard won.  I thought I might want to change things up (from the way I did the girls' monthly pictures) and take the pictures of him laying down with me standing over him, but that was an epic fail.  This was, by far, the best laying down shot we got:

(By the way, our "1 Month" sticker is no longer sticky on the back; the rest of the monthly pictures will look a little better, sticker-wise.)

Anyway, after much frustration, I turned to Pinterest and in less than five minutes figured out how to take the picture a better way (Ford sitting up, with natural light coming in from the window, because there is no natural light coming in from the ceiling...unless you have skylights...). 

Then his big sisters wanted in on the action:

Then I wanted to take the girls' picture, but they didn't comply:

Ragamuffins.

So there you have it!  Happy month-day, Ford!  You're the best!