While Mom Was Away

I've always appreciated my wife, but I've recently earned a greater appreciation for what she experiences on a day-to-day basis while managing our girls' lives.  This past weekend, she temporarily disregarded her motherly duties and flew to Nashville to participate in a wedding with some close friends of ours.  I was supposed to be with her, but we're not ready to unleash our girls on anyone yet, so I stayed at home for some father-daughter(s) bonding time.

Honestly, after the first couple of days, I was thinking to myself, "Hey, this staying-at-home-with-the-babies thing isn't that tough!"  And that's when it happened.  The girls sensed it--Dad getting comfortable.  I let my guard down and they let me have it.  My sweet, sweet girls disappeared, at least on the surface, and were replaced with these screaming, unhappy near-human beings.  Seriously, don't they know that crying only adds snot on top of snot that's there from the colds that all three of them shared?

In reality, it wasn't all bad.  We read a lot of books.  We shared a lot of laughs.  I laughed, they cried.  They laughed, I cried.  We cruised around the neighborhood in our choo choo wagon, while stopping to check out the fallen leaves.  It wasn't enough to experience the colorful leaves through her senses of just sight and touch, Sophie wanted to taste the chlorophyll to truly understand what leaves were.  I got puked on (several times).   But in the end, we all escaped unscathed physically and emotionally (mostly).

Meg's return was a blessing.  I truly think the girls respond to her differently than they do to me.  It's not that they don't love me, because it's obvious that they do, but there's something about Mom and the girls know it and, believe me, I do too!

The alternate title for this blog post was Where Does Snot Come From, Really?  I mean seriously, it's like there's some internal faucet in there whose handle's been broken off.  

Even with a monster cold, Maddy was pretty unfazed.  She's very proud of all of the teeth she's getting though and isn't afraid to show them off (front four on the top and front four on the bottom)!



I can't stop cracking up when I see this photo.  You should have seen the bubble slowly growing.  I actually had time to run and get my camera!  She put a lot of effort in to this one!



There's nothing like the smell of your baby's breath when they have a cold and can only breathe through their mouth.  Listerine anyone?



Even when crying, she's still beautiful.