old news

once again months have passed and we have been terrible keepers of a blog. the good news is, it's not for a lack of exciting stuff. the bad news is, the people reading this already know everything i'm about to write.

in short, janie is on the move, the holidays were great, and in may there will be 4 of us!

amazingly, we captured janie's first steps on video, making it only about the 6th video we've taken of her since she was born. luckily, grandparents are really great at documenting their grandkids lives and so we have plenty of photos. for christmas janie got a tricycle that she loves. it looks like a rocket ship, complete with a phone, sun shade and handle for us to push until her feet reach the pedals (although by then she will probably be ready for a 2-wheeler).

we are expecting simonds baby #2 in may and it's a boy! we were both really surprised to hear it (both that i was pregnant, and that is was a boy). for some reason we really thought it was another girl. i felt exactly the same as i did when i was pregnant with janie, craved all the same things, and this baby's heart rate was exactly the same as janie's was at every appointment we'd had until the ultrasound, so we just assumed that it must be a girl. we are so excited about having a little man around and are quickly accumulating boy things. we probably need to start thinking about replacing the super girly chandeliers and crystals in the nursery with manly things like lanterns and metal.

next week janie will be 1! i can't believe that it's been a whole year. that sweet little girl has brought us more joy in 358 days than i ever could have imagined experiencing in my life. everyday her personality is a little bit more hilarious, adventurous and feisty. she has no fears, except for the vacuum cleaner, and is smarter than we often think. we are so grateful that we get to be her parents.

the beach

i love the beach. i could spend every day there. luckily, janie seems to share the same affinity for sun and sand. we have been able to get out to the beach a number of times in the past month and it has been so great. we used to travel to the beach with a towel, a few bottles of water, and a book. things are slightly more complicated since the arrival of janie. now we pack most of our house into the back of the car for a two hour beach day. this is just one of the two cars that we took to the beach loaded with gear for four adults and two babies. we forgot water bottles, remembered one towel and i can assure you that reading books at the beach is a thing of the past and we did not waste any space transporting them in this trip.

the husbands headed out early to do a little fishing before we arrived with the chaos. it is a new kind of adventure going to the beach with babies, but it is so much fun. janie could happily play in the sand and water all day without food or naps. we usually conclude the day with an early dinner at JB's or a stop at frozen gold for some ice cream. this weekend we chose the filthy, but wonderful JB's and it was perfect. even with an extra hour of packing and unpacking in order to make it a beach day, i'm already anticipating our next trip back.

on the home front things are good. janie is crawling, standing, waving, clapping (perhaps on accident), has at least one tooth (she won't open her mouth long enough for us to see if there is a second), is eating all sorts of finger food and getting into everything. it's crazy that in just 8 months she has learned all of these tricks. she is great. we are blessed.

tonight!!

Join us tonight for an open house at Hunter Vision. Eat good food. Enjoy watermelon lemonade. Talk with great people. Ask questions. Tour the office. Schedule your appointment. It will be so much fun. Come check it out!

nashville

last weekend andy and i took a trip to nashville to celebrate our second anniversary. it's crazy how fast two years can fly by! it has really been an awesome 730 days. i am still just as glad i married andy as i was the day i said "i do". he is a fantastic husband and dad. to celebrate the fantasticness, we flew to atlanta and dropped janie off with my parents and drove to nashville. andy finished college at belmont and spent a few additional years there after he graduated, and many of our friends have lived in nashville at some point in their lives so we started the trip with a long list of restaurants, venues, coffee shops and stores that we had to check out. a few friends have asked what we did while we were there. i'm not even exaggerating when i tell you that we ate. the whole time.

we started with lunch on friday afternoon at satco (san antonio taco company). according to andy, nothing much about it had changed since he was there 12 years ago and that was a good thing. the tacos were great, the queso was even better and we left feeling happy. after much deliberation, we ended up staying at the hutton hotel, and it was great. our room was on the 15th floor overlooking vanderbilt. i would definitely stay there again.

friday night we met up with my friend natalie and her boyfriend. natalie and i became friends when my family moved to california and my mom had connected with a lady who had a daughter my age. i had no friends, and wanted some so i boldly arrived at her doorstep unannounced, introduced myself and asked if she wanted to play tennis. she kindly agreed, and our friendship began. she now lives in nashville, so she took us to one of her favorite places, patterson house. it was a great little bar/small plate restaurant, clearly catering to the locals and not tourists. we were glad we had some regulars with us because otherwise we may have been thrown out. there were a serious list of rules in the foyer, which you were required to follow if you wanted to cross the teal velvet curtains to the bar. this place makes EVERYTHING from scratch, including their own cola! if you're ever in nashville, you have got to check this place out...just don't use your cell phone or try to peek behind the blue curtain, or you'll be black listed.

sadly, andy's two favorite restaurants in nashville, rotier's and barbara's were closed for the weekend! our plan for lunch on saturday was to hit one of those places, but instead we took a friends recommendation and went to burger up. the burgers were awesome and the atmosphere was really fun, and the best part of it all was that it was located right next to las paletas. a few weeks ago on the food network bobby flay challenged to owner to las paletas to a throwdown. las paletas serves only popsicles. amazing popsicles. the flavors are ridiculous: hot chocolate chili pepper, avocado, hibiscus honeydew, pineapple-strawberry-banana, and lots more. we headed over there for dessert and enjoyed a blueberry-peach and pineapple-strawberry-banana popsicle. they were so good, especially since it was 106 degrees. (next year we will celebrate our anniversary in alaska, or in january).

i won't bore you with any more detailed descriptions of where and what we ate, because i could go on for a while longer. some of the other places we went were bongo java, eastland cafe, pancake pantry, 1808 grille, marche. every single one of them was great. some conclusions from the weekend: i love the city of nashville, we can eat way more than normal people can, we would have far too much time on our hands if it weren't for janie, and we have a lot of fun together.

while we were packing on the pounds eating our way through nashville, janie was burning major calories learning to crawl, stand, and swim at my parents house in atlanta. by the time we got back she was chasing my parents dog, rascal, all over the house and standing up in her crib. she is completely mobile and so much fun. i noticed when i was getting her ready for bed last night that a pair of pajamas that were getting snug around her chubby little thighs are now loose. i'm kissing her cheeks more than ever now, because i know that pretty soon they'll be history too! her personality is becoming a little more clear every day. that little girl is confident, feisty and well aware of her cuteness. not a day goes by that i don't thank god that he picked me to be her mom.

better than 20/20

for the first time since third grade, i can see better than the perfect eye. it's amazing. in the third grade my friend jenna got glasses. she was really cool and i wanted to be like her, so when i went to the nurses office for the annual vision and hearing test, i lied. and then i got some pretty awesome tortoise shell plastic framed specs. from that day on, i've been wearing some form of corrective lenses to see pretty well. yesterday at 2:00 this is what i saw when i looked at the eye chart without glasses or contacts:

at 2:30 i underwent SBK, the next generation of LASIK, at Hunter Vision. Dr. Hunter and all of his techs were so wonderful. Dr. Hunter explained everything he was doing, and what i would hear, feel, smell and see the entire time. it really can't believe how easy it was. the whole procedure took about 15 minutes and by 7:00 last night i was seeing as well as i did with contacts. for the rest of the night things got progressively clearer and less foggy. this morning i woke up at 6:30 wearing the most awesome goggles ever, and instinctively rolled over to grab my glasses off of the bedside table. i don't think i will ever forget that zephyrhills water is made only from the carefully selected natural springs. those were the first words i read with my new eyes this morning and it nearly made me cry. even with contacts i would have squinted a whole bunch and still struggled to see what that water bottle said. i got in the car to drive to my post-op appointment and realized that this little logo on my dashboard that i thought read "dsc" in fact says compact disc mp3 text. it means equally as little to me now as it did when i thought it said dsc, but man, is it incredible that i've been driving that car for over a year now and have never known what it said! at my appointment this morning i was reading the 20/15 line already, and it should only get better from here. i never realized what i was missing out on all these years. everything is so crisp and clear, and colors are even brighter. i could go on about this for the rest of my life and probably will. everyone should check out Hunter Vision. you will not be disappointed.

half a year

janie celebrated her half birthday last week, and celebrate we did. in her honor, brianne and i had frozen yogurt from menchie's for lunch.

on the left you see healthy bri's dole pineapple whip with gummy bears and some fruit and granola. and on the right is my tasty creation/trainwreck: 1/3 chocolate-vanilla swirl topped with cookie dough & peanut butter chips, 1/3 dole pineapple whip with mango and mochi, and 1/3 mint chocolate chip with chocolate covered sunflower seeds and crushed thin mint cookies, all topped with whipped cream. contrary to popular belief, it tasted amazing.

thanks to aunt bri, janie's half birthday was remembered.

we headed to downtown sanford on monday for janie's 6 month photos with callahan photo. they are great photographers and awesome friends. it was 99 degrees out but we had a good time and they captured some really cute stuff.

today janie had her 6 month doctors appointment, and like usual she is excelling in all areas. after her 4 month appointment when our pediatrician informed us that we should not be feeding a baby heavy cream just yet, we revised janie's diet, started counting her ww points and she successfully dropped from the 95th percentile to the 60th (she started at the 10th, which is what led her doctor to kindly tell us we were overfeeding her). next on the agenda for that little lady (janie, not dr. lim) should be a tooth. we look forward to that with great anticipation and lots of baby tylenol.

refrigerator friends

over the past few days i have spent a lot of time with the guys and ladies of our summit connect group and it has reminded me of how grateful i am for those people. they make up the majority of our blog readers too, so refrigerator friends, this one goes out to you.

i had been in a number of "small groups" and bible studies in my life, and they had all been pretty good. we met once a week. we talked about the bible, god, life. we prayed for each others grandmas. and then we left and went to meet up with our real friends to have fun afterwards. i expected about the same when we joined our summit connect group, but now 2 years later i am amazed at how my perception of a small group has been changed. together we have walked through a wedding, moves, job changes, pregnancies, babies, painting projects, foreclosures, tough family situations, holidays together, and so much more. the folks in our group are the people who received text message updates, practically by the minute, on the day janie was born. they are the friends who walk straight to the refrigerator upon entering our house, because i'd be offended if they felt like they had to ask for a drink. they are the ones our kids will call aunts and uncles despite there being no blood relation. they are the people with whom we have been given an opportunity to live life together and they have done a pretty rocking job at doing just that.

as most of you know, about a week and a half ago sweet ava hunter was diagnosed with brain cancer (you can read more about that and know more specifically how you can pray for her and her family on her dad's blog). while the rest of us 'fridge friends can't possibly imagine what josh, lisa, noah and ava are going through, we will walk the long road ahead beside them, praying all the way and learning a lot in the process. i think i speak on behalf of our entire group when i say that already, we have been amazed and challenged by josh and lisa's strength, grace and faithfulness in all of this. seriously, they are absolutely incredible. we are so blessed to be a part of this community of people and i hope i never forget it.

4th of july continued

a quick addition to that 4th of july post. lindsay just sent me this photo. as you can see, i'm not lying about my family's love of this day. my grandmother gave me that hat about 10 years ago. it's awesome. if i had to guess what was happening at my parents house in atlanta right now, i'd say that my dad is lighting $200 worth of fireworks and my mom is serving every red, white and blue food you could imagine while cheerfully exclaiming, "happy birthday, america!"

happy 4th of july!

the 4th of july is without a doubt one of my top 3 favorite holidays. growing up we celebrated it really big, with red white and blue everything. my sister and i always had crazy huge american flag bows in our hair, along with stars and stripes bathing suits. maybe bostonians are more patriotic than the rest of the country, because as i write this i realize that sounds quite over the top. one year, before the days of SPF or UPV or whatever was built into clothes, lindsay's white and red striped bathing suit left her little body with striped tan lines. we thought it was hilarious and referred to her as the "little jail bird" until the tan lines faded.

2 years ago, tim and shannon were in malawi over the holiday and they entrusted us with their dog, lucy. as a great aunt and uncle should, we took sweet lucy to lake eola with us for the fireworks. the poor dog was terrified! she shook and hid in the bushes the entire time.

last year we spent the day at the beach and got home in time to watch the fireworks here. it was about 107 degrees out i was freezing due to the ridiculous sun burn i acquired during 6 hours in the blistering hot sun without sunscreen.

this year, weather permitting, we will attempt to walk down to the lake with janie for her first fireworks display. hopefully she doesn't have the same reaction as lucy did. at least she will be dressed for the occasion.

we missed may. and most of june.

about 3 weeks ago my friend shannon called and informed me that i had missed may and i decided i needed to get on it. so here i am, in almost july taking care of business. janie is just finishing a breakfast of pureed apples and a sippy cup of formula. she has mastered (and by mastered, i mean she gets at least half of the formula in her mouth 70% of the time), the sippy cup, which means feedings are fairly hands free for us these days.

i have really enjoyed the past 5 1/2 months of being home with janie, but recently thought it would be nice to have somewhere to get out to a few times a week. i thought that if i found a part time job it would have to be something that i really loved, with people i really loved, and a schedule that worked for our family. i thought it would be a long stretch if i found anything to do that would meet all those requirements, but would keep my ears open for something. i shared this idea with a group of ladies one evening, and within days i was in the process of joining the Hunter Vision team. i am so super excited to have the opportunity to be a part of what's starting here and could not have asked for a more perfect job. in the past few weeks i have learned more about eyes than i ever imagined possible. i saw a lady in a restaurant the other day holding the menu 6 feet away from her face (she had really long arms) and practiced great self restraint in not approaching her to tell her that i was afraid she had presbyopia. i officially start on july 6th and i can't wait.

enough about me. janie is growing like a weed. she does all sorts of tricks including, but not limited to:

rolling over both ways

sitting up for very extended periods of time

eating just about everything

reaching the 95th percentile in weight, but holding strong at the 25th for height

passing objects from one hand to the other

growing enough hair to wear a bow sans headband

scooting on the ground, mostly in circles

every time i say, "she couldn't get any cuter!", she sure does. we think she is teething because she is drooling like crazy and chewing on everything. i tried giving her a little kiss yesterday and next thing i knew she was gnawing on my cheek.

our friends are becoming famous left and right. you can see joey, lauren and henry's lovely little house featured on design sponge. another one of our friends, who must remain anonymous has gained great praise for his blog you're a grown man. there is no doubt that he will play a large part in changing 30-year old boys into grown men with the wisdom he shares each morning. and finally, sarah got to wait on the entire cast of the harry potter movies when they were in town for the grand opening of the wizarding world at universal. we are quite honored to be friends with such a crowd. our friends are awesome, celebrities or not.

today begins our spring cleaning, just a little late since it's summer. if you're in the market for lampshades, a very large box shaped tv, or a 'now that's what i call music 6' cd, stay tuned. garage sale coming soon.

lobstah in new england

we traveled up to boston/new hampshire last weekend to see all of our extended family, and especially for janie's cousin gabriella's baptism. we just kept feeding janie to keep her quiet and so the plane ride went way better than we ever could have imagined. she's a good little traveler, and i was pretty impressed with our ability to make it all the way there without forgetting anything too important. upon arriving in manchester we did realize that the wardrobe we had packed was not quite appropriate for the climate, but luckily there is someone for each of us to borrow clothes from up there.

janie got to meet her great grandparents, great aunts & uncles, and few great-great aunts & uncles (if there's such thing), cousins, friends and her dog-cousin, riley. here are a few photos of the meetings.

on friday night, 8 of us packed into the healey's sequoia and headed up to petey's in rye beach for clam strips, haddock, clam chowder, steamers and more. i rate janie's liking for things based upon her crying, so judging by her unusual silence the entire meal i'd say that she is a huge fan of new england seafood. here she is with uncle chris and auntie andrea, proof of what happens to your chins when you eat too much tartar sauce:

we went to gabriella's baptism at the church that we grew up in in massachusetts. it was exactly the same as always. same 55 people, same watered down kool-aid in the fellowship hall, same service order, even the same bibles that we circled letters in as kids when our parents weren't watching. there are lots of memories in that place and i was glad andy finally got to check it out, though i left thanking god for summit.

we concluded our trip with a stop for andy's favorite meal of all those he's had in the boston area - clam chowder and a lobster roll at atkinson cc. my theory on janie's feelings towards seafood held true, as you can see here.

of course janie couldn't leave the state without something to prove her new england blood, so gigi sent her home with a sweet little red sox onesie and a green monstah tee-shirt. she's ready for fenway this fall.

it was a great time despite the cold and rain. we're looking forward to another trip up north sometime in the near future. thanks to all of our great family for the baby gear, rides to and from the airport, beds to sleep in and especially for the 10 extra pounds we gained!

not so magical magic game

what were we thinking? bringing a 3 month old to a basketball game is a terrible idea. and an even worse idea is getting a ride home from a basketball game in a rickshaw-bicycle contraption with a 3 month old. since we think janie still has a fine sense of hearing and we all got home alive, i'd say it wasn't a total failure. we will remember janie's first magic game and that babies should always travel in car seats forever.

monica and brackston were kind enough to give us the less terrifying seats, with our backs to the traffic. that way we could just judge how much time we had left by the looks on their faces.

dinosaurs, dunes and dwight

i'm getting worse at this as time goes on. the weather has been gorgeous, which has meant tons of time outside, and very little on the computer. here's a quick update of what's been happening with us.

as you can see, we finally have a halfway decent family picture which has jazzed up our blog quite a bit. you can tell that we watched zoolander a lot while i was pregnant based on janie's facial expression.

janie, caroline and i took a trip to atlanta to see my folks a few weeks ago, but not before stopping at disney world. who knew that the turnpike exit came far before the disney ones?! it was a ton of fun, and janie was surprisingly well behaved for most of the car ride. we listened to raffi's bananaphone album on shuffle for approximately 16 hours of our round trip drive.

janie and i took a trip to dinosaur world to meet up with becky, david, and grammy. yes, the place that has a giant dinosaur under the billboard at about exit 17 on i4. if you've driven by the sign, you have seen it all. becky and i had been joking about going ever since we learned of our mutual love of the movie clifford. it was not at all like the dinosaur world in the movie, but i am glad to be able to say i've been.

we went to the beach on monday and it was probably the nicest day we've had all year. it was wonderful until it came time to fold up the special UV blocking baby tent, which according to andy is like trying to squeeze a blown up balloon into a coffee mug without popping it. after 45 minutes of wrestling with the thing, we ended up carrying the tent to the car and shoving it in the backseat in a half open/half squished form. needless to say, onlookers (possibly including myself) had a great laugh.

i have been feeling crafty, which has resulted in our kitchen sink being temporarily dyed purple, a few articles of clothing being transformed into a lovely shade of florescent yellow, and a constant pile of ribbon, fabric and paper on the dining room table.

the first time i visited summit was easter of 2005 and there were maybe a few hundred people meeting at winter park high school. it was the best easter service i had ever been to (with the exception of saddleback's sunrise service at john wayne equestrian arena, when a baby was born in the stands. i think they planned that). this easter sunday at summit was even better than that. almost 4200 people worshipped across three different venues and it was awesome.

tomorrow will mark a very memorable day in the history of janie. she will be attending her first magic game. i'm hoping if i dress her like stuff (he's the magic dragon, celtics fans) she will get some air time on the jumbotron. we will surely update you on that soon!

here's what janie thought about dinosaur world...

janie's first trip to alpharetta.

relaxed look on andy's face = pre-tent folding experience

auntie jody arrived to the easter party just in time to receive two fussy babies.

happy st. patrick's day!

today's blog is mostly for my very irish grandmother. if she had had her "druthers" (her word, not mine) my name would have been erin riley rosentrater. on monday my dad was in st. pete for some golf disguised as work, so andy, janie and i spontaneously headed over for dinner. we ate at ted peter's famous smoked fish house and ordered exactly what our friend eddie (a 30 year st. pete beach local) told us to. it was probably one of the greatest cheeseburgers and root beer i have ever had. the highlight of the trip was for sure the fact that my dad was wearing green, and we conveniently had janie's shamrock pj's in the car. we are all very in touch with our irish roots, and for that i knew my grandmother would be proud. these pictures are for you, grammy. grampa, let me know when the next german holiday is and i'll be sure to get janie her very own pair of lederhosen.

as you can tell, janie really enjoyed ted peters.

since janie is too young to eat green pancakes, and follow gold coin trails to gifts left by leprechauns, i made myself a fancy breakfast of oatmeal with brown sugar and then we ventured out for some st. patrick's day shopping with lauren. liberty of london just designed a whole line of things for target, and lauren and i had marked the date on our calendars months ago. janie told me that it would make her happy if i used a target gift card she received in the mail for being born on myself, which was very sweet of her. so, we got some super cute storage bins and a dress..or two. when we got home, this handsome man was waiting for us in the driveway.

laundry and other exciting things

i strategically just put a load of laundry in the washing machine on the heavy duty cycle, not because they were extra dirty, but because it will buy me a few extra minutes to waste time on the computer without feeling like there's something more important to be done. i think i forgot to mention anything about our wonderful new washer and dryer. we rang in the new year by getting rid of our 25 year old machines. we had talked about getting new ones for a while, and our decision was made when andy got to work with a giant hole in his shirt from the dryer drum made of nails.

in other news, janie is already 2 months old. her doctors appointment was a great success...she cried a lot when she got her shots, but i didn't, which came as a pleasant surprise to us all. she is growing like crazy...more horizontally than vertically. she weighed in at 11 lbs 2 oz and is 21 inches long, which puts her in the 55th percentile for weight, and 10th for height.

a few nights ago we realized that she seemed really mad at us for waking her up every night at midnight to feed her, so we decided to see what would happen if we just let her sleep. it was a miracle. she has slept 9 hours every night since. it's amazing what a full night of sleep can do.

our good friends goose and minta welcomed their second little boy, eli, into the world on thursday morning. he is a charming little fellow just like his big brother, matias. since goose is a good husband, he wouldn't even consider leaving minta home with the boys to attend a magic game. and since he is a good friend as well, he kindly gave andy and i the tickets for sunday nights game, so we went on our first real date since janie's arrival. all week i looked forward to (in this order) spending an evening with andy sans baby, enjoying a gourmet dinner of hot dogs and nachos, and watching the magic dominate the bobcats. we sat next to a nice young man celebrating his 21st birthday. from what i observed, all he really wanted was for "his man j will to know it was his birfday". despite the challenge of sharing a very limited amount of space with a highly intoxicated 7 foot tall guy, the magic's loss to the bobcats, and the shortage of nacho cheese at the concession stand, we had a really great time. we've decided that when joel and lizzy move back we should go in on a pair of season tickets. then lizzy and i can go to games and eat hot dogs while andy and joel supervise janie and luke back at home.

hello again

if you had asked me 7 weeks ago if i planned to continue updating this regularly, i would have said, "of course! do you really think a baby is going to stop me from sitting down and typing for 30 minutes every few days?". now, seven weeks into janie's life i have realized that when there are 30 spare minutes, there are far more important things to do than sit at the computer. our monitor gets really static when i'm in the office, so that is another deterrent. also, there's not nearly as much exciting stuff to write about as i imagined there would be. i mean, it's super exciting to andy and i, and janie's grandparents, but to most others the fact that she sneezed 4 times in a row is pretty boring.

that being said, here are some of the highlights of the past few weeks in no particular order, which is a great example of how my mind works these days...

janie loves to exercise her little lungs every evening from about 7:30 until midnight. if she ever takes voice lessons, we will be sure to remember that those are her optimal hours. the only cure for her screaming seems to be walking around while bouncing her up and down above your head, which is making me contemplate canceling our gym membership.

she has become a pretty good sleeper, giving us at least a 5 hour span on most nights.

she started smiling every now and then, but we have yet to really capture it on camera.

here is the best we could do at capturing a smile

we celebrated her first valentines day with our good friends the harmon's, helms' and l-t's, and lots of great food.

andy and janie on valentine's day

we have spent a significant amount of time watching the winter olympics over the past 2 weeks, though we usually change the channel when the biathlon comes on. the proctor and gamble commercials make even andy cry, and janie is fascinated by the blinking screen. i would guess her favorite event is ladies halfpipe, judging by how well behaved she has been each time it is on.

janie and brianne share a strong affinity for the olympic games, as you can see from their team usa spirit

last saturday we drove out to new smyrna because the weather was nice, but mostly because i really wanted frozen gold. it made me look forward to warm weather and beach days with much anticipation.

this week caroline was in town and so like the good ol' days we stayed up until 2am, spent a lot of time at starbucks and the mall, and watched youtube videos galore. i'm really looking forward to the day that she moves back to orlando.

my favorite thing is how alert she's getting. she has started to focus on things more and it's so fun to be able to play with her. she loves looking at lights, which never gets old to us. had we known she'd be so easily amused, we could have saved ourselves quite a bit of money by passing on swings and exersaucers.

here she is very focused on the chandelier above our dining room table

2 weeks already!

yesterday was janie's two week birthday. we celebrated by taking her to see dr. lim and giving her her first bath. i don't think she will be a big fan of birthdays in the future is we continue to celebrate in those ways. she was actually really great at the doctor-didn't cry a bit, not even when they put a freezing cold stethoscope on her naked little body. she is going to fit into our family well, as she is big fan of eating. weighing in at 7 lbs 4 oz yesteday, she has already gained almost a pound. the doctor told us that she's absolutely perfect, which we already knew, but apparently it becomes official when someone with a phd says so.

on wednesday we had an appointment with a lactation consultant, and as i was feeding janie in this lady's office i noticed that she had remnants of poop caked onto her leg from a major disaster that had occurred at 3:00 that morning. i prayed that the milk lady didn't see and report us to social services, and decided that there was no better time for her first bath. as you can see in the photos below, she loved every minute of it.

not so happy about it coming to an end.

her first two weeks have been filled with much activity. at just 5 days old she enjoyed her first trip to starbucks with daddy. a few days later she braved the millenia mall, and it became clear that she will love shopping as much as her mom. on wednesday she spent 6 hours posed in boxes, bowls and suitcases for her first photoshoot, thanks to callahan photo. (photos should be up on their website sometime today). she wasn't loving it at the time, but she will be so glad to have great pictures of herself when she gets older. we are really fortunate that she has been such a great sleeper after all that we've put her through. she graduated from the bassinet last weekend and now sleeps in her cozy crib every night. and, we made it 15 days without a pacifier.

(aunt becky, we tried to take picture like this for your birthday as well, but the paper cuts were making her a little upset and she didn't last very long. we celebrated you both all day on tuesday!)

andy blogs

i've been trying to get andy to write for some time now, and he was worried that his material would be far too melancholy for our lighthearted blog. after janie's baptism yesterday, he was inspired to write his first blog ever, and i think it's great. so here it is, a little something from the much more intellectual third of the simonds', along with a few photos from sunday for good measure...

In the late fall of 1998 I sat down in a big leather chair in the office of the Dean of the School of Religion at Belmont University. I would be graduating in a few days with a degree bearing his signature, and I was there for my exit interview. He asked questions about my educational experience, and my answers probably more than his questions led us to a place where we were talking about why I wasn’t sure anymore about the existence of God. I told him that there was something deep inside me that just wouldn’t let me walk away from my faith either. I was still surprised by the warmth in my heart and wetness in my eyes that would well up upon hearing some old hymn or reading a story in scripture that I thought I knew well. I remember him saying that this was a good starting place for rebuilding my faith and theology, and I remember thinking that was a nice sentiment. But more than that I remember struggling with this disturbing thought: Maybe that something deep inside me isn’t some mystic connection with God, or the Holy Spirit at work… Maybe it is just stuck in my subconscious because I was brainwashed with it as a child! Maybe it became true for me before reason became part of the equation and maybe that’s why reason still couldn’t really touch it. I remember brushing all this under the rug and deciding to forget I’d left it there.

Tonight I was reading Janie’s picture Bible, and I was surprised by the warmth in my heart and the wetness in my eyes… and with a lump in my throat I became suddenly grateful for the stuff my parents told me before reason became a part of the equation.

Proverbs 22:5-6

5 In the paths of the wicked lie thorns and snares,
but he who guards his soul stays far from them.
6 Train a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not turn from it.