Azalea's shenanigens

Here is Azalea picking up the leaves. Not very efficient if you ask me.

Cleaning up after the picture below.

Azalea likes to be naughty while I'm nursing Naomi. Here she got into the flour.

Another time while nursing, Azalea got into my makeup and put on mascara.

Laura's first post

Hi everyone. This is the first time I am posting on our blog. I have taken over because Mike is so busy with work he doesn't have the time to blog anymore. Yes, his job is hectic. He works a lot of hours. But he comes home for lunch and dinner and can usually give Azalea a bath and put her to bed. He just gets a lot of pages and sometimes has to go back to the hospital. So I never know when he'll be home. Hopefully this won't last long. They still haven't worked out the schedule and should have a night shift person so the pages won't be so bad.
As for me, I'm hanging in there. Some days are not as good as others but mostly it's good days. I love being home with the girls. I've joined MOPS (Mothers of Pre Schoolers) and have met lots of other moms with little kids. There are about 50 women total and 8 in my small group. I went to a mother's night out last Tuesday night and had a really good time. The women are so great. We talked, and laughed, and played games. That was much needed.
We are settled in the rental house pretty well. Azalea has a play room in the basement and loves to play in the yard. She always says "Kiki, too?" Kiki loves the yard as well. The neighbor came over with her 4 year old daughter to play. We'll get together with them again, probably. She's a scrapper, too, and has a cricket machine. Sorry for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, no time to explain.
We also have found a church that we like and there are lots of moms there as well so I don't feel lonely here at all. And the best part is my family, of course. They get together for bizarre reasons like freezing a truck load of corn. :) Which is an all day process...I watched...hey, someone had to watch the toddler and hold the baby. I did make a few batches.
Well, that's all from me for now. I hope everyone is well.

Naomi 3 months old

Naomi likes to play with toys now, she can grab things and put them in her mouth.

Naomi smiles A LOT. She is especially happy after a ride in her swing.

Her hair is getting longer. It lays down a little bit now. Not as spikey.

Updates and Pics

Well I guess it's about time for some updates, and more importantly some pictures! We've been busy, so haven't been snapping many pics. We are mostly settled into our house, but still finding places for a few things, doing some decorating, and stocking up on the things we never needed while we lived in a townhome (yard tools, etc.). We have been to Target, Walmart and Menards countless times in the last 2 weeks... thankfully they're less than a mile away! Azalea really loves to play outside in the backyard, and loves to find all the "buzz" (bugs) out there. Naomi is growing quickly. She's really a good baby, doesn't cry much, sleeps well, and now has been smiling a lot which is fun to see. I've started work, and it's going OK. There's a lot to adjust to working in such a smaller hospital without all the subspecialists and fancy equipment around. Fortunately everyone at the hospital has been very friendly and willing to help me out. I think it's just going to take a while to get into a groove out here as far as work is concerned. Laura is doing well. She's busy with the girls and trying to get things squared away at the house. We just had our 6 year anniversary... it's hard to believe the years are going by so fast!

Baby Elmo

Azalea has been really loving toward her baby Elmo lately. She picks him up and hugs him, rubs her face into him, and says "Oh Elmo, Oh Elmo." She also shares her Nuk and milk with him, and pushes him in her little dolly's stroller. It's pretty cute.

Naomi!

Here's some cute ones of Naomi.

The play zone

The basement in our rental home is split lengthwise into finished and unfinished portions. The long room downstairs we have basically converted into play central. Here's a pic that shows most of it. A lot of the decor is from Ikea. They have a lot of kids' stuff that Azalea likes. One of Azalea's favorite things to do down here is run the length of the room, slapping one wall then the other.... giggling the whole way of course.

Grandpa's Little Helper?

This picture was from a day or two after we moved to Willmar. Grandpa Foster was putting together a table that we now have in our kitchen, but Azalea wanted him to play. She kept climbing up on his back, smacking him in the upper back and jumping up and down. Let's just say it made it very hard for Foster to get his work done. Azalea has that effect on many things (making them difficult). It sure was funny though.

Nice caboose

We were at Walmart a while back, looking at their selection of toddler beds. We had a shopping cart that had an area in the back for a kid to sit or stand in as you pushed. Azalea was letting us push her around, but when we were leaving the baby section we passed through the aisle that had little kids' underwear. She saw a package of Thomas the Train briefs (boys of course) and kind of went nuts. Pretty soon she had grabbed all of the packages of these "undies" off the rack (about 12 in all) and thrown them into her little section of the cart in the back. When we tried to put them back she threw a fit, so we finally caved and let her get one pack. She was really excited when we got home and wanted to put them on right away (over her diaper of course). We got some good laughs out of the whole ordeal.