Christmas is over, and it was Joah's first time knowing what presents are. He's known about toys for a year or so, but presents are a different thing. Presents are just for you and in such fancy wrappings. Once he got in the habit of opening them, of course he didn't want to stop. Turns out greed is pretty automatic. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Time with Dan's family is always fun and very sweet, though.

There was cousin time with Abraham on Monday for his fourth birthday, a little Grandpa Wayne time on Christmas Eve, Christmas Mass yesterday morning, which Joash seemed even to enjoy (he asked for, "one more time!" at the end of one of the carols), and last night he ran around with all the rest of the cousins, showing them his new toys, following them from room to room, repeating syllables that made Maggie think he was, "saying words we're not allowed to say" (she thought he was saying wee wee, but I'm pretty sure he was saying wheel, as we do not actually use that euphemism). Today I caught him sneaking chocolates, so I think he's had a pretty successful Christmas.

Baby Comparables

When Joash was born and I started making his baby book, I joked that it was like a case study. Now that Ammi was born on the same day, I find it even more so. They are eminently comparable, so I have started matching up pictures from their exact ages. I call them Baby Comparables. Here are the catch ups.


Left: August 7, 2011, Joash
Right: August 7, 2013, Amielle


Left: August, 2011, Joash
Right: August, 2013, Amielle


Left: September, 2011, Joash
Right: September, 2013, Amielle


Left: October, 2011, Joash
Right: October, 2013, Amielle

Left: October 31, 2011, Joash
Right: October 31, 2013, Amielle


Left: November, 2011, Joash
Right: November, 2013, Amielle


Left: December, 2011, Joash
Right: December, 2013, Amielle

We are back in Ohio and done with the house hunting. I think we may have shot us a good one. How does this metaphor work? Caught? But you usually hunt to kill. House fishing? Anyhow, we found one we really like, we just have to wait on paperwork. If nothing else, though, we did get approved for our first-choice apartment.



Right now Dan has the sleeping girl, and the sleeping boy is on the bed, and I am totally free to devote my whole attention to this, and, of course, I can't. Divided minds can't settle, and I keep just scrolling through my open programs trying to figure out what I'm doing. I'll post a couple more pictures and then be done, I guess.

Ohio Again

We've been back in Ohio for a couple of weeks, and we've seen a wonderfully festive amount of snow. We went out earlier this week to see the lights at the zoo with Ben, Abraham, and Annie.

Florida Again

Well, I just have a bunch of pictures and not a lot of time to talk about them. When things get more normal, things will get more normal here. We're going to look for houses in Indiana tomorrow. That's a start. We were in Florida for Thanksgiving, and right now we're back in Ohio for Christmas. Since my last post, my older baby has learned how to say things for laughs and how to assemble train tracks. My younger baby just started laughing and she's become fairly adept at holding up her upper half. Things just keep moving forward.