Childhood Innocence

We breed Pembroke Welsh Corgis. They are a beautiful dog breed standing low to the ground with long bodies, short legs, tall ears and weighing about 25-30 lbs. You may recognize the breed because the Queen of England is a proud owner of several. Recently one of our female Corgis, Cloe, went into heat. So over the last several days we've been allowing Cloe and our male Corgi Kota to do "their business". I've kept the blinds to the back yard closed most of the time, but while I was downstairs resting between softball practice and mutual last night, Kourtney and Alyson wondered away somewhere upstairs.

A few moments later I could hear the girls laughing, and then Kourtney hollered, "Mommy, Cloe is giving Kota a piggy-back ride!" Trying not to make a big deal of it I responded, "Great, Babe. Why don't you come back downstairs with me and rest for a while."

Our Easter Egg Hunt

We traditionally hold our family Easter Egg hunt the Saturday before Easter. The Easter Bunny decided to hide the eggs inside for the second year running because it was so cold outside!

Alyson and Kourtney patiently waited to come downstairs in search of Easter eggs...

First they had to find their baskets....Then the race was on!

They searched high....They searched low...

And in the end we had two very happy girls!

Easter Portraits...

We took these pictures about a week and a half before Easter. Hope you enjoy!

Alyson Loses Her First Tooth

Alyson, Kourtney and I had dinner at some friends' house last night while Kris was out of town. I had been sitting at the dinner table while the girls were situated at the counter top when all of a sudden Alyson said, "Mommy, something really bad happened." I turned around in my seat to find Alyson with a smudge of bright red blood across her forehead and more of it oozing out of her mouth. I looked in the direction that her eyes were looking...the carpet...white carpet...none the less. Thankfully we found a clean, white baby tooth on the floor, and the clean white carpet unharmed. Now it was time to console Alyson. "You just lost your tooth, Alyson. That's great. The dentist said this could happen and it would be OK," I explained as we made our way to the bathroom. The bleeding stopped after a little pressure against the empty hole in her gums. She rinsed and then went back to eating. Wow-what a trooper, I thought as I sat back down at the table. Going from "Mommy, something really bad happened" back to eating a frosted shamrock cookie goes to show you how quickly she bounces back.

Tonight Alyson is putting her tooth under her pillow for the tooth fairy. I explained to her that I thought the tooth fairy would know by morning that she'd lost her tooth, and would be prepared to visit her the following evening while she sleeps.

Oh, yeah. One extra side note. Alyson kept this tooth in for a month and 3 days longer than most kids would...but still two days shy of school picture day!

The Wonderlab

This past week has been absolutely beautiful outside and it couldn't have come at a better time-Spring Break. A few days ago we took a family walk downtown and then up through the Sample Gates on campus. Kourtney can't get enough of the clock chimes and Alyson enjoys walking through the forest. As we walked passed the campus observatory, it occured to me that there are things that we have never done before in Bloomington. There are aslo many things here that we enjoy doing very much and will miss. That's when I decided to take advantage of the last few days of spring break to do some of these things with the girls.

The highlight of yesterday's activities was spending the afternoon at the Wonderlab, a children's museum full of fun things for the kids to explore and play with. We took lots of pictures because Kris was out of town and unable to be there with us. Here are just a few:

Alyson's Extra Tooth

Maybe you will recall that Alyson has a loose tooth due to an unfortunate accident with Kourtney's head. Well, she has managed to keep it in since the incident occured on Valentine's Day, and because we didn't want some kind of infection brewing underneath it at the gum level, we decided to take her into the dentist. After he examined her tooth with the naked eye, he decided that they had better take an x-ray of it because it looked like another tooth may actually be the primary cause of the loose one. Sure enough the x-ray revealed a tooth pushing its way through Alyson's gums....THE CATCH....it's an extra tooth!

The dentist said extra teeth are very rare especially ones that are already breaking the surface in a 4-5 year old. To make a long story short, he wants to take it out before it starts to crowd Alyson's two adult teeth that he thinks will be coming in in the next year or so. That means that she will probably loose this tooth between now and her scheduled in house surgery on April 1st, and then have two more to add to her collection because more than likely the dentist will exise the other top front tooth to get at the extra one pushing its way through the front top two. So when we went to the Library this morning, guess what kinds of books she wanted to borrow....Ones about Tooth Fairies!

Pregnancy Clothing Delemas

I got into my P.J.'s this evening which lately consist of my old medical assistant scrub pants and a t-shirt then joined Kris in the basement to watch a movie. I could tell by the way he looked at how I was dressed, the material stretching ever so thinly across my belly, that it was probably time I start wearing his t-shirts to bed. Yes, I am to that point in my pregnancy when even the drawstrings of my scrub pants are almost non-existant when I place the waist where it was meant to be worn. No, I don't feel hostile about my current physical condition-I really love being pregnant. I just can't wait until I'm holding little Ellary in my arms and can fit into my old t-shirts. Then again, a whole other wardrobe change will be order, and I can't say I feel much better about that one-nursing friendly bras, shirts and dresses that offer Ellary easy access to you know what!

New Memories and Old...Expressed in Pictures

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