Scenes from the Circus: While we Wait

First things first: if, dear friends, you're checking this blog hoping for news of the newest member of the circus, this post will disappoint you. At Mama's last OB appointment the doctor confirmed that Mama was nowhere near ready to have a baby. We'll check in again Monday (at 40 weeks!) and perhaps things will have changed by then.

Kathleen arrived 10 days early; Madeline was induced 10 days late (so that she could meet Daddy before he returned to Iraq). It'll be interesting to see when our little boy decides to join us. We've begun to tell people that we're just hoping to have a child before the 4th of July.

Until then, here's some of what we've been doing while we wait...

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Daddy shared some of his reading with Madeline the other night. If you can't quite make out the title, it's Mostly Harmless Econometrics.

Madeline listened quite politely for several paragraphs before deciding that econometrics (harmless or otherwise) weren't for her.

Eventually all pretense of studying was abandoned for play with Daddy.

At one point Daddy began singing "Tractor, Tractor" from Andrew Peterson's "Slugs and Bugs and Lullabies." The song has really simple lyrics, which are mixed around to be nonsensical. For example, in the beginning the lyrics are "Tractor, tractor harvesting the wheat." Later on that becomes "Tractor, tractor shooting to the moon." It repeats with a firetruck and a backhoe and a number of other things, each doing normal and then ridiculous things. The girls think this is hysterical.

Daddy began to sing "Tractor, Tractor" with the girls, substituting the girls' names and all sorts of whacky activities. Kathleen jumped up and down as she interrupted her father, "But, Daddy, I DON'T shoot to the moon!" The girls reached new heights (or would it be depths?) of hillarity when Daddy began singing "Kathleen, Kathleen walking on her knees" and "Maddie, Maddie walking on her knees."

The girls raced around the living room on their knees, singing along. If we tried to stop, Madeline pleaded for more, singing "tractor, tractor, MOON!"

At points Madeline was too amused to keep moving!

It wasn't the usual pre-bedtime activity, but we were all laughing so hard that no one minded when the girls got to bed a little later than normal.

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The girls have continued to spend their afternoons in the wading pool. They do occasionally take a break from the water play. When they do, they insist that we wrap them in their towels.

Sadly, the warm weather seems to have run its course, at least for now. The girls have loved using the wading pool, so they're disappointed by the change in weather. Mama is perhaps most disappointed, though -- the girls' love affair with "swimming" meant that Mama could spend an entire afternoon sipping iced tea and watching the girls run wild in the backyard... They were gloriously lazy afternoons.

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We also spent a morning celebrating our sweet friend Mei Mei's third birthday. We opened gifts and ate cupcakes and let the girls run around to burn off the sugar. It was a lot of fun.

And the party made for more than just a fun morning -- it made for great naps that afternoon! And a Mama awaiting a new baby especially appreciates naps!