"A" Laughs

A sure does love her papa. I love her super cute baby sounds. Yesterday we caught her laughing on video.

David and Goliath

Last weekend was C's first soccer tournament.  He is playing "classic" soccer now and is thrilled to be playing in this new very challenging league.  I took the boys and A to Portland for the tournament.  The competition was fierce, but C played well.  He did not back down, even as he took on very tough, very large opponents...

Smiling

When A was just a couple of days old her mouth would occasionally turn up in a sort of smile.  The boys asked why she was smiling.  We told them that sometimes it could be "just gas."  For C and K who very much appreciate bathroom humor this was a fabulous explanation.  Having gas quickly earned a new nickname, "smiling."  Now there are times when I walk into my boys room and have to ask, "Whew...who smiled?"

We went to church this evening and A was asleep in her car seat.  About halfway through mass we decided to wake her up, hoping that this would lead to a better night of sleep for us.  Johan lifted her out of her car seat and we all enjoyed gazing at her as she slowly woke up.  As consciousness returned, she started to stretch, and pass gas smile...loudly.  The first smile caught C by surprise, the result was a case of the giggles.  With the next few smiles C could barely contain himself.  K missed the excitement because evening mass often makes him sleepy.  A's smiling was timed for the start of communion (the solemn time when the church is super quiet).  The families in front of us and behind us were suppressing giggles, and I was hoping that they realized that it was our little girl who was the one responsible for all of the smiling.

Wakey Wakey...

Baby A is here and we are in love.  In the past week her attention span has sky rocketed.  Ahemmmmm...genius???  She loves to hear us talk to her, and is getting more and more reliable about returning a smile.  Nightime fussiness continues, but is thankfully waning.

I absolutely love watching her wake up.  Johan got this great series of her a little over a week ago.  In these pictures she is approaching 5 weeks old.  No poker face here, you know exactly how she is feeling.

I brought her out to the kitchen as she was waking up in the morning.  She is not a morning girl...poor thing has inherited my preference for late nights.

Here she is relaxed, sleeping in...

Starting to stir...

Can you tell how A is feeling right now?

Loving that lower lip.

This mouth is in constant motion.

Oh I wish this were a video, the little grunts are so cute!

Yikes!

Good Morning Sunshine!

Baby A!!!

Johan made a video for both of the boys when they were born. Here is Ms. A's...

A Snag

Johan and I picked the boys up from camp this afternoon (because we were not at the hospital having a baby).  When I found K he quickly let me know that he was a little disappointed because while fishing he only caught a "snag."  He said he thought it must have been a "ginormous" fish because he couldn't even reel it in.  When we got to the car K proceeded to tell Johan about the giant "snag" that he had caught.  Then he turned to me and inquired, "Mama, what is a snag?"  It was at this point that burst out laughing, I realized that K must have been told by his camp counselor that he had "caught a snag."  From this K understood that a "snag" must be a really big fish, because it was so difficult to reel in.  He was disappointed because he never got to see the "snag."

C had more luck today, he caught a croaker.  Apparently it really does audibly croak.  C gives an excellent impression.  He was disappointed because although it was 13 inches long (long enough to keep) the camp was only doing catch and release fishing today.  The croaker is a bottom feeder found throughout the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast.  Today the boys were fishing on the bottom off of a pier using shrimp.  This is what the croaker looks like:

Fishing Practice

The boys are participating in "Sea-N-Sail" summer camp during their last week in Biloxi. The camp is hosted by the Maritime Museum and they get to do a variety of activities; sailing, shrimping, swimming, etc.  K went on a real working shrimp boat yesterday, C will go today (he is in the older group).  K thought that it was interesting to learn how they shrimp, he said he had never seen "shrimp that are alive."  Along with the shrimp, the boat pulled in two eels and a flounder, which was very exciting. 

At camp, the boys also get to do some fishing and cast netting.  We did not bring our fishing gear with us to Mississippi so I checked out rods for the boys from the MWR office on Keesler AFB.  These rods are a bit longer than the rods they have at home, so before we sent them off for fishing at camp we decided to do a little fishing practice yesterday evening.  Actually, I skipped the practice session.  I stayed in the condo and did some reading and more hoping that "A" will arrive.  So Johan, my mom, and Hector took the boys down to practice.

The water here is extremely shallow.  You have to wade out quite a distance to cast.  Sometimes at the beach I'll call out to the boys to come back in because they are way too far.  They might be 100 yards away, so far that they can hardly hear me.  They are usually laying down flat, so I can't tell how deep it is.  They hear me calling and stand up to get a better idea of what I am saying, and I realize that the water isn't even past their knees.

Here is K hoping for a nibble.



The headline news when the boys returned was C's fish story.  As he burst through the door he exclaimed, "Mama, I caught one!"  K was quick to add that, "It wasn't very big."  C relived the experience telling me that he was reeling in his line and he didn't feel anything, then he looked down and thought, "Hey, that little fish is following my lure."  Not until he pulled up his line did he realize he had actually caught one.  Johan pointed out that the hook couldn't have been much smaller than this fish's mouth.  That is one ambitious fish!



So today the boys are off at camp again.  C's schedule for the day is shrimping aboard the Sailfish, followed by a presentation from the Hurricane Hunters (who are based here at Keesler), and then fishing and cast netting off of Schooner Pier.  Today K will go; sailing aboard one of the Maritime museum's Schooners, fishing, see the Hurricane Hunter presentation, and finally bowling. 

I am so glad that they are at camp this week.  The boys are as ready as I am for A to arrive.  They are frequently asking, "When is A going to be here?"  Or, "Mama, when do you think A will be here?"  Their absence leaves me with plenty of time to lament the fact that I am still pregnant!  Where are you A?  We had thought that we would be leaving Mississippi with a two-week old baby girl.  Now we will be lucky if she is a couple of days old.  We are supposed to start driving one-week from today...

Johan took this shot of our condo from the beach.  We are on the 13th floor of 14, our patio is the one in the center, just below the top floor.