My dad babysat on August 23rd, and here are the fruits of his labor and his new digital camera. Here she is looking a bit disheveled and sweaty, probably from playing so hard with papa.

hey, what's that?!

Grandpa, my hair's a mess!

Reading a book. Probably for the hundredth time.

Hugging her "weeda!"

Lilli has a cousin as of approximately 1:30 pm this afternoon! A little girl: Eloise. We are having a sort of baby renaissance in our family! I don't have many details yet, but am waiting for the data stream to begin. . .

In Lilli news, last week we had an exciting episode in a parking lot. She was emitting these little fake coughs from her car seat, so I turned around to ask if she'd like a drink of water. The next thing I know: puke all over. It was mostly applesauce, and so not terribly disgusting, but it was awful to have to take her out of the pukey carseat, strip her down in the parking lot, and then try to clean up the carseat as well as possible in order to put her back in it. Lilli's declaration: "pukey!" And all those of you who have ever wrestled with a convertible carseat know the joy of trying to get all the padding off for cleaning and then back on again. We practically had to disassemble the carseat. I say, if you need the manual to clean you carseat, then that carseat is too hard to clean! I would have left it too, if I could have stood the puke smell pervading the minivan.

Anywho, why she puked will forever be a mystery, as she has since eaten from that same jar of applesauce with nary a problem and later that evening, wearing a t-shirt of her dad's, she managed to eat a huge bowl of scalloped potatoes and vegetables. Such is the joy of parenting a toddler.

It IS a pretty joyful time however. I am trying to enjoy every minute of it, knowing that when the twins come I will have less time to cuddle Lilli and devote every doting second upon her. She is so much fun and so affectionate. Her language acquisition never ceases to amaze me. These little people are amazing! She just repeats everything we say, and most of it sticks. She now carries on little pretend telephone conversations, and they are so cute. Eg: "For me? Oh! Hi papa! Hi Papa! How you doin'? How are you? Bye bye papa! Goodbye!" She's constantly laughing and amusing herself, and giving us kisses and hugs. She loves to hide under a blanket and exclaim, "hey, where did Lilli go?" and put things in the garbage can for me and "go upside down" with her daddy.

I feel like I want her to be this age forever, and at the same time, I can't wait to see what she's going to do next.

And now we have a new baby in the family who will be learning all this stuff for the first time, and we get to watch the process again!