Playing Catch up....

Whoa. I am such a procrastinator. Yes, I've been promising Cierra I'd get around to writing this blog for a week now. But with two kids, a week can be over in the blink of an eye. 99.9% of my life is filled with feeding mouths and changing diapers with a side of frantically trying to encourage sleep. Throw in keeping the lawn mowed and preventing the garden from dying and I don't have enough time to rest my own eyes.

Okay first off, I promised Freeman that his visit would be covered in this edition a loooong time ago. Here it is Freeman, the one picture you get. Well, there are more but Cierra only uploaded one and I am way too lazy to go try to find them right now.
Freeman made the most of his limited time here. He's occasionally making runs up and down the East Coast delivering antiques here and there for a friend of his. When he comes through town he usually only has time to stop for an hour or so, but a couple of cancellations on this last trip enabled him to spend the afternoon with us and then stay the night. Lots of fun, this guy. Now we just need to get Aunt Kate to come down with him sometime! As you can see, Arden got along well with her uncle.


Speaking of getting on well, Cierra has gone back to work and it's the three of us at home most days now. Carter is so helpful. He tries to soothe Arden when she gets upset.

She's so alert now, and her head control is pretty perfect. Cierra and I don't even have to worry about supporting her head while we pick her up anymore.

Interesting! She's content to look at her surroundings for fifteen minutes sometimes. This is a real boon if I'm trying to clean something up or feed Carter.

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Last week we took a trip to the Columbia Zoo, because we don't have a zoo here in Charlotte. Having been to some depressing small zoos, Cierra and I were both a little ready to be underwhelmed, but it was really great! Lots of beautiful animals and the smallish habitats made for really awesome viewing. The gorillas were sleeping right against the glass and their handlike feet captured Carter's attention (and mine as well!)

We brought our cart for Carter to ride in but he decided he'd rather be free, so I mostly used it to haul bags around. Carter took it upon himself to push and he was such a good pusher, all I had to do was steer.

Here we are looking at some animal. It's weird, but Cierra says we didn't get a picture of any animals. I'm the last person you can trust to get a seemingly obvious picture, but it's just strange that we forgot to document that we were in fact at a zoo by getting a few shots of an animal or two. Perhaps as you're leaving the zoo they remote wipe your memory card of all animal related shots so you'll come back to try again.

And here's Carter holding my hand as we walk across a stone bridge through a fountain. This is in Center City Charlotte, and the little bridge had openings he had to really stretch to get across. I thought he wouldn't want to try it, but after a few minutes of watching the big kids do it, he was raring to go. I held on tight, worried that I might be the only thing keeping him from getting drenched, but he never misjudged one bit.