this is how we finger paint

We marched straight to the bath tub after this artistic adventure.

pool weather

We spent most of our afternoons in the pool this past week for Spring Break. Unfortunately, Bella has started another runny nose so we kept to the tiny blow-up pool on the balcony for Friday and Saturday. I can't get over Arabella's hair in a pony tail. Too cute.

Spring Break

All the baby left in Arabella is quickly shedding away and a little girl has been uncovered (as I post a picture with her "nana" in her mouth). She's swimming and jumping and playing right along Addie and her friends who come to play during spring break this week.

We spent four hours at the swimming pool yesterday which is the perfect Monday to start off a week break from school. The best part about Spring Break is the absence of driving back and forth from our apartment to Seafront. I don't miss sitting in traffic for an hour for pick up

I love having Addie at home all day and so does Bella. Bella walks around saying "Addie, where are you?" if she is not in her immediate line of sight. Addie's a really great big sister and I'm always impressed when she includes her sister while playing with her friends from school. I'm certain she hasn't even considered excluding her little sister. For that I am very grateful.

Four more days of spring break and from the looks of the sunshine we will be at the pool this afternoon again!

32 years

Happy Birthday to my favorite person in the world. Every year just gets better and better. You are the center of our entire universe. We love you!
Justin and I were remembering Justin's 26th birthday when he took the day off on the 17th and spent the entire day at a Irish pub in Arlington with the guys drinking themselves into oblivion. A lot has happened between 26 and 32 and Justin had to agree that he'd take these two little cherubs and their handmade Happy Birthday sign over a day of beer any day.

Baby number 3 makes a family of 5

We're having another baby! Due October 23, 2011. Please excuse my absence on the blog I have been neglectful but it's only because I feel more tired than I ever have felt before (besides the first 8 months of both girls lives-that was tired too).

I'm also sick with a sensitive stomach, nausea, food aversions (tons of those in the Philippines), vomiting, cravings (too bad no one can send me grapefruit-I just want a stinking grapefruit and maybe a box of saltines) the whole nine yards just the same as the first two pregnancies. I thought I might be spared for the third pregnancy (after paying my dues last two times) but sure enough right at 6 weeks I started to feel crummy. I just hope the next few weeks hurry by so I can start to feel a little normal albeit my growing belly (which also seems to expand faster and faster with every pregnancy).

Addie is excited and talks about having another little sister. Bella might have a rude awakening when her favorite Mommy lap starts to be overtaken with the next baby. Both girls will be exceptional big sisters. Whether they have a little bother or sister.

We are thrilled because we will be welcoming this baby into the world in America! No med-evac travel necessary, no rushing to get passports or saying goodbye to Daddy two weeks after the birth, no traveling alone around the world with an infant and two other kids. Hooray! We get to play house like a normal American family of five for a few months before our next post to Africa hits us. We are very blessed to be able to plan the next baby to arrive just at the perfect time. Perfect timing as in where we will be located. I'm guessing the timing of the birth coinciding with planning for two years in Africa will be slightly challenging; hardly perfect by any standard. I'm not one to make it easy on myself though.

I guess when life get's busy we just decide to throw another child in the mix! Yay for our little growing family of five!

trying to tire them out

Addie sleeps so restlessly sometimes. It's so aggrevating on nights that Bella sleeps like a dream. I'm up every hour responding to bad dreams, coughing, requests for water from the ELDEST child. They usually alternate sleepless nights so if it isn't one it's the other.

My plan to knock them both out...afternoons at the pool until little Bella starts shivering and her lips turn purple. The poor thing can only take about 45 minutes in the pool now that all her baby blubber has shed away. Look at those skinny thighs now!

Bella barely lets me hold on to her and low and behold when I let go of her she sucks in a gallon of water but wants to immediately try again. She floated on her tummy with her chin above the water the other day.

planes, trains and automobiles

I've never pushed gender specific toys in my house. I was a little girl who loved making mud piles with my Tonka trucks in dirt, but I also had a love affair with Barbie (still do). Adelaide seems to be joining the princess ranks without any help from us. She really loves dolls, her Barbies, dress-up, and anything pretty. Just this morning she admired herself in the mirror in her favorite pink dress for school and said to me "Mommy, when I wear my dress, I look like this (smiling in the mirror) and I think I look pretty." (LORD help us-she's not even 4). I of course explained to her that she's beautiful inside and out no matter what she's wearing; it's her heart that matters. She ran to pick out her fancy dress shoes and socks to match.

Arabella is a very different child with varying interests. She's still very young of course. On one hand she loves playing with her big sister (it's all about Addie); pushing doll strollers and rocking her baby dolls in her arms. She has also inherited a love for shoes from her mother and most of the time walks around in her panties and a pair of cool shoes. Nothing else. She is in love with Barney, Elmo and right now the big thing is Ernie from Sesame Street (Aunt Meg's favorite). Her real love is airplanes but she'll take trains or school buses too. We have a wooden train set that we got for Christmas which is probably my favorite toys to get out and build little cities with. Addie and I will build homes out of Duplos for her PlayMobil princesses that live next to the tracks. I love building bridges on the risers and letting the little trains stop to offload their cargo. Don't get me started about that little piece of track that twirls so the trains can change directions. I'm a total nerd about the train set.Yesterday Arabella's attention span reach great new lengths. We sat together for at least an hour playing with the train set. I've given up on the elaborate train tracks with overpasses and bridges and cargo stations for her. All she wants is a ramp so the trains can go up and down and a half circle of track. She's a bit of a bulldozer so I'm still reassembling the ramp and risers fifty trillion times in an hour. Towards the end of our hour she discovered that she can put the track together like a puzzle. She proceeded to build her own track until all the pieces were gone and I just undid what she had done to give her a new length of track to place at her end. She was in heaven.I love watching my daughters develop their own set of preferences. I love Addie's passionate stance on being a Mommy as what she wants to be when she grows up. And from the looks of how she bounces her baby doll on her hip she's going to be a pretty darn good one. I love that Bella can choose to love completely different things if she wants. Fighter pilot seems like a good future career path for this little girl right now. As long as the uniform is panties and shoes.

Daddy's girls

My daughters are in LOVE with their father. And who wouldn't be? He always has creative silly games to play with them and both girls love to rough and tumble with Dad. Arabella is a Mommy's girl for the most part, but in the last few months she's realized just how awesome Daddy is to play with. Justin is delighted that our youngest daughter has jumped on the Dad band wagon just as whole heartedly as Addie has.

During an elaborate make-believe play session last week, Addie announced that she was marrying her Daddy. A girl's first true love is for her Father and I can see Bella going in the same direction as she wraps her little arms around his neck and buries her face in his neck for a long hug. Justin turns to butter and melts to the floor, but not before Bella gets a good hold of his finger and wraps herself completely around it.

the pools

It was a gorgeous day on Sunday and the girls were itching to get wet so we filled up the little pool on the balcony. In the end, I took them to the real pool in the afternoon anyway. Both girls are wearing arm floats in the swimming pool but Arabella hasn't figured out that she needs to keep her head out of the water and her mouth shut. Every 5 minutes she's asking to go "pee pee" from all the water she swallows. She also jumps and propels herself in the water as if she thinks she's an Olympic swimmer already. She gets irritated I'm holding her and yet when I let go her little nose and mouth suck in another liter of pool water. Her fearlessness can be a bit unnerving around the water. On a number of occasions she's almost taken a step over the edge before I'm in the water to catch her. It should be a fun summer in the pool.