Last Friday Andrew left a few minutes early for work, saying he wanted to get home a little early.  So I went about life as usual, and was pleasantly surprised when he came home more than 4 hours early!  

Especially since Mary Claire had just had an enormous poop.

He took her from me and said, "You have half an hour to pack something nice for tonight, and something for tomorrow."

Huh?

What was he talking about?  Who was going to watch all the babies?  Where were we going?  WHAT???

Apparently 4 months ago, he arranged for my sister to be in town and my mom to come help so that we could go on a belated 5-year anniversary trip!

I suspected nothing.  He was convinced that I knew, since he had been bringing me my pump every couple of nights to stock the freezer with milk for the babies.  I just thought he was really smart and wanted me to build a stockpile for when the school year starts again...

We headed to adoration at a church on the way, went wine tasting at a couple of wineries, and ended up at a very fancy bed & breakfast (my sister gave us gift cards for Christmas 2 years ago that we still hadn't used!) where we had the absolute fanciest meal I've ever had in my life.  

Think lettuce panacotta.  That fancy.  

Aside from the lettuce custard, it was REALLY delicious.  I even ate raw beef!  Because when your dinner is that fancy, you eat every. single. thing. they serve you!

We brought the camera and then realized we had forgotten the memory card...  So all we could use was Andrew's camera, which didn't *quite* get us completely in a selfie.  But this picture reminded me a lot of this one:




From our honeymoon - you can see that I changed up my hair style a LOT since then.  Oh wait.  Not.

We had a lovely view of some cows, and got uninterrupted sleep (well, sort of...  I think we should have brought the white noise machine!).  And even though I had to wake up in the middle of the night to pump (ohhhh twins...  both kinds!), it was just so lovely to have a giant bed all to ourselves and to be able to get out of bed in a leisurely manner, not having to immediately attend to the needs of a child!

We visited friends on the way back home for Mass and a delicious breakfast, and 57 ounces of breast milk later, returned to an exhausted mother and sister and at least one baby who refused to sleep without nursing... 

I'm amazed that Andrew pulled this off without tipping me off at all!  He reminded me not to expect something like this every year.  My sister says never again unless the kids are all sleeping through the night (Elizabeth was, but she stopped!).  I say the stakes are pretty high for our 10-year anniversary!

PDA

The kids were eating lunch yesterday when Andrew hugged me in the kitchen.  Apparently this is John Paul's sign that Dad's leaving for work (I'm almost always making the kids breakfast when he leaves), so he immediately said, "Dad's going to work!  Bye Dad!  Have a good day!"  Cecilia threw in her two cents, too, "DAD A WORK!  DADDA WORK!!!"  We explained to them that Dad wasn't leaving for work, and sometimes Mom and Dad just like to hug.

John Paul was perplexed.

"Mom and Dad to hug again?"

We happily obliged, throwing in a kiss this time.

John Paul giggled wildly, "Mom and Dad to KISS???"

Sure!

"Mom and Dad to kiss AGAIN???"  This could have gone on for quite some time...

It reminded me of when I was a kid and we used to beg my parents to kiss each other, giggling wildly every time they did a "round-and-round" kiss.  I guess we need to remember that the kids actually LIKE seeing their parents being affectionate with one another!

4 years!

10 years together, 4 years of marriage, 2.5 children, and going strong!

This is the man I married with his groomsmen, hours before our wedding.  Good thing I didn't see this picture until afterwards!

Happy anniversary, Andrew :)

5 months old!

Cecilia is 5 months old today!  I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by...

She has decided this past week that instead of just rolling over and staying stationary, she's going to try to roll as far as possible.  The nice thing is, the living room floor has plenty of space for her to do that.  The not nice thing is that it means I really have to keep John Paul's toys picked up better.  She especially likes going for library books and stickers. 

She is trying VERY hard to outgrow her 6-month clothes.  Most of them she has outgrown, along with a few 6-9 months items (cloth diaper butts do that, she's not really that big).  That's her in a 9-month outfit, which seems to fit perfectly right now.  She was almost 15 lbs at her 4-month appointment, so she's probably around 16 by now.  LONG girl, lovely chunky thighs and wrist rolls, nary a tooth in sight (thank goodness!).

I've also discovered that she can sit up on her own, propping herself up with her hands.  She's not willing to stay in this position for long - it doesn't look particularly comfortable to me, and there's always a toy that she HAS to get that is just too far away...

Right now she's right on track with where John Paul was at her age - she *just* started being able to get her belly a tiny bit off the floor when she's on her tummy, she can scoot forward a teeeeeeny bit, but mostly rolls to get anywhere.  She is giggly around her brother, and not much else really makes her laugh. 

She loves story time at the bookstore and is tolerating her car seat better and better.  Her current nap schedule is *usually* 2 short naps in the morning, normally both concluded before John Paul goes down.  Then she and I play for a bit before her long afternoon nap, which gives me a nice chunk of time to make dinner.  I have no idea what her nighttime sleep is like - most of the time I don't even remember bringing her into bed with us...  It's not great, it's not terrible, and hopefully it will get better!

She loves her family more than anything.  She LOVES watching John Paul do anything, she gets super-happy to see her dad when he comes home, and she's started getting upset when other people hold her.  She calms down immediately when Andrew and I rescue her.  Hopefully this stage will pass soon - I'm always happy to hand the baby off to someone else :P

She and John Paul just started a music class together.  I'm reserving judgment on it until we're a few classes in...

And not only is it Cecilia's 5-month birthday today, it's also our 3-year anniversary!  If you had asked me in high school where I would be at this point, I would have said "Staying home with at least 2 kids."  Shocker, here we are!  I'm hoping to go back to work in the fall, but it's definitely a lot more fun staying home with the two of them than I expected.

Happy anniversary to my wonderful husband - can you believe this was already 3 years ago?