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.

Family Time

Nose kisses! Carter is such a cool big brother. Always wanting to give Arden a hug or kiss. I keep having to remind him that she needs to be treated gently though. He wants to involve her in regular play but that is not to be for a while.

Well in the past 8 days we have been very busy with visiting family. First Opa and Oma Bardonner came down for Easter (sadly Aunt Alexis was sidelined by illness and Great-grandma Treva jumped on that excuse not to board an airplane). Then Betty, Hunter's Mom, took the train down from Virginia for four days. This past weekend we hosted Greg and Deann (or Papa and Mimi to Carter). I took them to the airport on Sunday night and was just relaxing on the couch with both kids asleep thinking, "Ok, well that's all the family visiting for a while" when a text message pops up on my phone and Uncle Freeman is popping by for an hourlong visit the next morning while driving a van down to Florida for a friend. So we have lots of fun guests in these pictures, but there are just so many that I think I'll let some speak for themselves... I think most of these are in reverse chronological order. Silly blogger... why can't I reorganize them?
Greg and Deann visited last (apparently Freeman's visit missed the picture deadline, we'll get you next time Freeman) so here they are first.

Zoinks!

Smiles! Arden doesn't do it very often yet but when they come they sure are great.

Papa pushed Carter in the swings for about 4 times as long as he's ever let anyone go before.

Carter and his stable of vehicles. There's the pony bike, the retro trike, the Radio Flyer wagon, Lightning McQueen, and now a new (to us) tricycle that's actually more his size. This one even came with a helmet, which is just awesomely cute.

A new toy... It sings and you can tickle it!

Oma (April to the rest of us) Bardonner enjoys some Arden time.

My mom took this picture of Oma and Opa with the whole family. She is such a good photographer.

And our little family. Not too bad!

Carter wanted to go down backwards so I told him to hold his hands up too to increase the thrill.

A basket full of eggs on Easter.

Opa and Oma helped us dye the eggs.

Carter rides a toy at Bianca's house.

We went strawberry picking! 6 gallons of strawberries. That ought to cover us for a little while. :)

Carter was very helpful. He would take a bite out of each strawberry before putting it in the bucket just to make sure it was good.

On the road to strawberry picking.

Popping out of our overgrown shrubbery is one of Carter's favorite activities.

Crocs on the slide don't make for a very smooth trip.

Looking at the birds in Discovery Place.

Arden wants to be a dancer. Already pointing her toes.

Mom was so good with Arden. She got her to sleep every time.

Look at me! I can climb stairs all by myself!

Carter has a blue version, so it's only fair...

Mom must have snapped this picture of me trying to document our Easter egg hunt. No matter where I was, Carter turned away from me as he was picking up the egg.

And one last pic of sleepy Arden. Until next week!

Some pics from Florida

This was the view from our balcony while we were at the beach in Florida. I'm not used to getting the oceanview room. And I'm sure we wouldn't have, had we not booked late and gotten sent to the villas because the hotel was full. It was quite nice. Of course, so is a new flatscreen television, which would last longer than 3 nights. But I digress....

Mama! I can't believe you didn't pack a swimsuit for me. How am I going to lounge on the beach in style?

During a break from the conference, we explored a marshside trail. Apparently I am the tastiest member of our family. I was killing mosqsuitoes left and right while they got only a couple of bites.

Arden in mommy's arms as she watches her big bro running and playing....

This was the "bridge slide" in Carterspeak. Don't know why, we haven't gone over any covered bridges lately.

RUN! If you tell Carter you want him to run, he takes a deep breath before going anywhere so he can yell "Runnnnnnnn!" as he pounds off. This yell is puncuated by a little vibration in his voice every time he has a footfall so it's really more like RuNnNnNnNnNn!

Is this an old picture? I think so, but perhaps Cierra got out the St. Paddy's day lei once again. I wouldn't know, I've been so busy the last couple of days getting all of our tomatoes and peppers planted once again. Now everything save the watermelons and basil is in the ground out there. Cierra's been watching them both and doing really well with it, so that I could have the time to get this done.

It's too bad I didn't have the spare time to take many pictures while I was doing it, but this weekend was my first time watching them both while Cierra was in class. It went really well! The first morning I had them both, I took them out to eat for a nice breakfast. Carter tried to eat all my bacon, but other than that, he behaved very nicely. Arden snoozed through the whole thing on my chest in the ringsling. Then we went out to the grocery store and had our first shopping trip together. Arden didn't like riding in the cart, but she seems to hate being in anything with four wheels.

All right, as promised, there are our beach pics. Now I need to lie down....

Back from the Beach!

I cannot even tell you how many pictures I took trying to get this one. Carter was playing with Cierra's phone and every so often, he'd give me a big smile and say something happily. The rest of the time he had a vacant expression. I'd sit there and wait, wait, wait. Bored, I'd take a few snaps of Carter-zombie. Then, just as I'd give up, he'd flash a smile, which was gone by the time I'd yanked the camera back up for a blurry picture. Well, we've spent the last 4 days on a road trip to Florida for a conference. We drove back this afternoon and boy are we glad that is over. Turns out Arden is not a fan of the car seat. I had to sit in the far back most of the drive and attempt to keep the kids happy. If I lean way forward and dislocate my arm at the shoulder, I can let Arden suck on my finger. Fun stuff.

We'll get some beach pics up soon, but for now, enjoy these snaps of mother and daughter spending quality time together.

Arden is pretty good at just hanging out peacefully... as long as she's not in a moving vehicle. And she is full of milk.

"I don't want to put this cranberry up my nose, I just can't help myself." Just kidding, he hasn't done anything like that... yet. I wasn't there for the taking of this, so I don't know what was going on. But it must have been pretty upsetting to get him to make that face while eating one of his favorite foods.

Carter trying out his new rain boots. Now all we need is a puddle!

We'll return soon with some beachin' pics!