Soaking It All In

She is seven weeks tomorrow and starting to fill out a bit.  Little by little she is losing the brand new newborn look and feel.  Her movements aren't so startled and she has a bit more head and neck control.  As far as I can plan and foresee, Greta is the end of the line of Fox babies in our family and I feel quite at peace, happy, and even somewhat relieved that the baby making phase of my life is done.  Even so, I am TREASURING every moment with her.  I stare at every detail of her face and hands and feet and want to bottle up what I feel certain is the last of my newborns here on earth.  The feel of her floppy body falling asleep on my chest.  The heavy eyelids and drooling lips after a satisfying feeding.  The sight of Abe standing and swaying and bouncing her asleep.  The little sighs and deep breaths of peaceful sleep.
AHHH!  What am I doing?  I'm making myself CRY!  I am actually shedding tears!
No, really, I must be done having babies.  My body can only take so much and I am getting a little old to continue this pattern.  I guess I am just really loving this little baby Greta and cannot get my fill of her.
How many years until we're grandparents?

What a nice smile.
This cracks me up with every picture of him these days.  He's trying so hard to smile.  He actually has a very cute dimpled smile, but I'd have to catch it without him knowing I was taking a picture.  If he knows we're taking a picture we get Pirate Pete!

At a recent family gathering Peter was unintentionally twinning with his Uncle Peter.  Notice the smile.

The girl cousins had a marvelous time with older cousin Bethany and doing hair and painting nails.

We've been enjoying the company of our wonderful Naomi from England for the past several weeks.  She was the occasion for the family gathering yesterday.  She'll be heading home this Sunday, but our time together has included a couple of runs to 7-11 for Slurpees.

More of Pirate Pete-- who, I might add, has had a couple of very good weeks now.  Small, but consistent improvement in communication-- part actual speech, part signing.  I don't care which at this point as long as it's not screaming and frantic grunting.

Cannon and I spent Saturday morning at the Cub-O-Ree.  Cannon is a Wolf scout and I am his leader.  We're having a great time together.  It helps that my fellow den leader is wonderfully organized and on top of things.  I do need all the help I can get.

Due to a time constraint, I drove Bethany to her violin lesson on Friday rather than having her ride TRAX.  Since I was going to be at the U near the zoo, I took the younger gang along with me.  We didn't have much time-- just enough for Cannon and Faith to get soaked at a little splash pad area (way to embrace life!) and to run into Brig and Naomi (totally unplanned).
It was a good little test run with Greta, before we go to the zoo for a longer time.  This was just practice.
But speaking of Bethany and her violin.  She was very happy to get 2nd chair in her high school orchestra today.  It is our understanding that 1st chair wasn't open since it is a position that is applied for and auditioned for the previous spring and we didn't know anything about that process back when she auditioned last spring.  So she got the highest chair she possibly could have.
Okay, I'll stop bragging now.