2+1=3

We've been asked a couple of times now what the girls think of Hannah Kate. Well, maybe more than a couple of times at this point. The problem here is that the very people who have been asking this question are likely the very readers this blog retains. At this point in time they have all been given a blow for blow answer making this blog entry entirely superfluous...and yet I am going to write it anyway, and hopefully you will follow along, if for no other reason than...the pictures.

For weeks now we have been working on prepping the girls about the immanent arrival of their "baby sissy." They know what babies are. They knew Hannah Kate was going to be their baby sissy, and they knew that baby sissy was in mommy's tummy. They also knew that mommy was going to the doctor and he was going to be taking Hannah Kate out of mommy's tummy so we could bring her home and let her sleep in her crib and play with her toys and...well, you get the idea. For a while I spent some time totally mesmerized by how well they took all of this. They didn't seem phased at all by the idea that there was a baby in mommy's tummy and soon she would be coming home to live with us. My mom's a lamaze teacher, I grew up with this notion, talking and learning about it, and I have to admit that whenever I would watch Hannah Kate rub her arm across the inside of her womb I would think...yep...totally weird. It seemed like the very idea should blow their little 2 and a half year old minds. And yet...never phased.

Of course, the more I thought about it the more I realized, there's really no good reason why they should be amazed. Their world is full of crazy impossibilities that we tell them are reality every day. Hey look at that metal box, it's different then other metal boxes in that if you get in it it will take you some place else. This metal box over here flies in the sky, and this one shows magic pictures. So sure, why not, babies live in mommy's tummies and then get taken out.

Wednesday was too hectic to try and add the little beautifuls into the mix, so we waited until Thursday to have Nana bring them up. Evidently they were good and ready to see us by Thursday. Thursday morning at 4 in the morning Emma Jane woke up screaming for mommy. She whined and begged to see us (along with Parker) all morning until they arrived. When they got here we could hear them squealing with delight the whole way down the hall. Parker came bounding in. So excited I am pretty sure she actually did pee her pants. She just started giggling madly, running around the room, unsure of whether to stop and stay with mommy, daddy, or baby sissy. I think she spent the entirety of that trip and every subsequent trip to the hospital, giggling.

Parker couldn't be happier with the situation. As I am writing this blog I am now sitting at home, and the sheer joy has yet to dissipate. Parker has always been a little high on life, and right now it couldn't be better. Mommy and daddy are home and they have brought a baby with them. What could be better? Oh, Nana is still here? Oh yeah, life is a amazing.

Emma Jane's attitude on the other hand has proven to be...a little different

As I mentioned, Emma Jane was the one who woke up at 4 in the morning screaming for mommy, you could hear her in the hall calling out for mommy, you would think she would come running in and bounce right into Mary Jane's lap. You would be wrong. Instead Emma Jane refused to acknowledge Mary Jane at all. She gave her the cold...cold..."arcticly" cold shoulder. She wouldn't give her a hug, or a kiss, she barely acknowledged me, and any time we asked her anything she would scream and cry and say "No, Nana do it." You wouldn't think someone so small could rip your heart out, and cut it into little pieces so easily, but she can. When it comes to Hannah Kate, Emma Jane was a extremely excited to see her and to hold her. (Not as excited as Parker, but frankly, I don't think anyone could ever be as excited as she was/is). When things started to get a little crowded in the room and I took Parker and Emma Jane out for a walk the first thing Emma Jane did when the door closed was to start crying for mommy, so I know she cares, but Emma Jane was determined to punish us, especially Mary Jane. And she did.

Friday's visit was better and worse. Parker was the same screw ball high energy this is wonderful bundle of joy. Emma Jane was warmer to Mary Jane, but significantly meaner to me. I guess she decided to pick on the guy who hadn't been sliced into, and I guess that's fair. Although....I miss my Emma Jane. Daddy's little girl decided not to be daddy's little girl on Friday or Saturday (as mentioned above we are home today--more about that later--and she is being a bit better today).

All that said, we're pretty happy with how well they seem to be handling the change thus far. It is clear they are both excited about Hannah Kate.

Hannah Kate, on the other hand, seems pretty bored with the girls. She just slept through all of it.

T Minus 2 and Counting: or How 4 Ear Infections, 2 Cases of Strep Throat and a Whole lot of Medicine Can change your Day

So this is it, or, that is, this is almost it. The week "of".... On Wednesday the doctors are going in after Hannah Kate, cause at this point in time she is showing absolutely NO signs of coming on her own. The girl is holed up in there like the last spoonful of peanut butter clinging to the sides of the jar. Seriously, have you ever tried to get all the peanut butter out of the jar before throwing away. I mean ALL the peanut butter. Impossible. They design those containers to be so deep, and so wide, with such a narrow opening that it is not possible to get it all. You just end up cramming your hand uncomfortably in there and getting it all peanut buttery, and then you take it out and find that all you have to show for it is a sandwich with not enough peanut butter on it and a sticky hand that you don't have time to clean well enough before rushing out the door and off to work, then you spend the rest of the day wondering why everything smells like peanut butter. All this is to say....she doesn't seem to want to come out at all.

We have a theory about this. It is a simple theory. It goes like this. Hannah Kate has ears, and with those ears she hears...everything and she thinks...that place is loud. I think I'll stay in here, where it's warm, and muffled.

Whatever the reason, she's still in there and all indications are the doctors are going to have to go in and pull her out. Which while the same as last time is amazingly different at the same time.

In all seriousness, we're pretty excited. We feel incredibly blessed to be here. That said it's also kind of surreal. We keep waiting for it to sink in that we are less than 48 hours from the C-section.

As it drew a bit closer we (read Mary Jane) suddenly realized that we were running out of days where it would just be the four of us (Mary Jane, Jason, Parker, and Emma Jane). In fact today (Monday) is it. The last one. So we set up these grandiose plans that I would come home from work early and we would go do a bunch of fun stuff with the girls and make the most of it.

Little did we know that today would start a couple hours early with the girls (who have been oozing snot for almost a week--and I mean oozing...the stuff has been coming out of their nose, their mouth and their eyes....ick) crying and complaining their ears hurt. So we spent the wee hours of the morning bonding...the four of us....on the couch...watching the monkey show while they sobbed pathetic sad tears half mixed with snot until the doctor's office opened and we could get them in for an appointment. Luckily we got one pretty much first thing this morning. And do you know what? We must be pretty good parents, because our kids got a 10 out of 10 on their ear exams. Which is to say that on a scale of 1-10 she said their ear infections were a 10. All four little beautiful ears were full of...welll...you get the idea.

After that Jason headed to work and Mary Jane headed over to the doctor's office for a last check before Wednesday's fun adventure. Mary Jane has been sick the last few days as well and as she related her symptoms the doctor he decided, almost on a whim, to do a strep test and guess what...she has strep. Then she mentioned to him that Jason has had a sore throat for a couple of weeks and has had strep throat a bunch this last year and the doctor, in his ever friendly manner, suggested that Jason needed to get his hiney (hiny? hinney? how do you spell hiney?) over to a doctor's office and get a strep test. Soooo rather than get home real early to begin the family shenanigans Jason stopped at a Walgreens Clinic place thing and wouldn't you know it...he has strep throat too.

By the time Jason got home Mary Jane had despaired of us doing any of our fun adventure activities, so Jason ignored her and packed the fam in the car anyway. They headed to Oberweis where they proceeded to stuff themselves with milkshakes.

Once hopped up on sugar and able to ignore the extreme fatigue caused by their various illnesses they hopped back into the car and went to a playground, where, because Jason and Mary Jane are wise parents, they spun their girls around on a merry-go-round. (clearly nothing bad can happen when two sick two year olds are filled with milk shakes and spun on a merry-go-round....please don't call DFS).

Fun was had by all. We then came home, took baths, ate a late dinner, read books, said prayers, sang songs, gave squeezes, kisses, eskimos, butterflies and a blessing (don't even pretend to skip any one of those) said goodnight and then Mary Jane and Jason proceeded to clean the house. Why did they clean the house you ask? Well, obviously because family is coming into town to help out tomorrow and it is important we get all the work done before they get here.

Anyway. Baby coming real real soon (as the girls might say). While I will be the first to admit that we haven't always been prompt with the updates, I think it is safe to say we will have something to say in the very near future, so feel free to head on back.

(oops...gotta go, Parker is coughing right now)

Christmas

Christmas has come and gone again (sort of...lasts 12 days you know). Hard to believe. This was the girls' third Christmas and I can now say that each Christmas has been better than the one before (a trend I am hoping to keep up for the next umpteen years).

We began the season by taking our last pre-Hannah Kate trip. We headed to Chattanooga the week before Christmas which was particularly exciting with a new niece to see. Mark and Teela's daughter Lily was born on November 1 and this was the first time we got to see her. The girls were excited by the new baby but getting her confused with this "baby sissy" person they've been hearing a lot about. All in all it was a fun trip.

We came home on Christmas Eve and met my parents here in St. Louis. They had been up in Wisconsin visiting my sister (who also just had a baby --October 31) and then came down to spend this week with us. Again, a good time was had by all.

Mary Jane even worked up the courage to make cookies with the girls

To say they loved it would be the understatement of a lifetime. I think it's safe to say "decorating" was their favorite part. I use the term "decorating" somewhat loosely here. What I mean is that Mary Jane put frosting on all the cookies and the girls licked all the cookies while they put equal amounts of sprinkles on the floor, and themselves, somehow magically missing the cookies.....messy yes, fun yes, edible?...ehhh

Saying "cheese"

Here's a picture of the girls with their baby cousin. They took to her really fast which gives us hope for the upcoming arrival this March.

It took the girls a while to get into the whole unwrapping thing but this is the first year where they clearly got it. Emma Jane in particular really took off. She got to the point where she just started tearing into gifts regardless of where they were or who they were for.

The girls also got their first tricycles...they loooooooove them

They also really love ornaments...especially when they are hung on low branches...and can be gotten off. We eventually gave up on trying to stop them from taking ornaments off the tree and just got out the hot glue gun and glued all our ornaments to the tree. No really. Do you have any idea how bad melting fake tree limbs smell? Pretty bad. We aren't going to get that stink out of our house till next Christmas. Oh well...good excuse to buy new ornaments.

(you do know I'm joking right....Mary Jane thinks you might not...but I think you're smarter than that)

P: Yes, I need sleep...but this book is just too good to put down

P: They may be magnets...but they sure look like cookies....I wonder....

So...huh.....the words are blue down here. Guess they are just sad all the fun is over. Don't worry words...there is more fun coming, 2011 is just days away and we have all sorts of crazy good times planned for you...you will get to talk about a whole other child...a girl by the way...I'll let you guess the name.

Merry Christmas

Water

The girls are funny.

Well, that almost goes without saying.

But specifically they are funny about water.

Oh, they like water, but they like it in significantly different ways. Both of them like bath time, but when it comes to various outdoor water activities they are night and day. We ran into a perfect example of this the other day at the kids park in the botanical gardens. Somewhere in the midst of the labyrinth that is the kids area is a sort of splash fountain.

Now I am sure the rest of you in America know what this thing is actually called, and have seen a million of them. But being that this is the first summer where we can go places and explore with the girls, I really haven't seen this sort of thing before and have absolutely no idea what it is called--hence the term "splash fountain" Basically this is a big area for kids to run through and every so often water will splurt up out of nowhere and get the kids wet. It kind of reminds me of the fireswamp in the Princess Bride--but, you know, without the fire and death.

Anyway. The girls ran in to check it out. At first both of them seemed fairly delighted by the sudden spurts of water. But it didn't take Emma Jane long to rethink her decision. Before we knew it she was climbing up the walls to get away.
Meanwhile Parker was taking the "soak me" approach, choosing to run up to each of the splurts and try to get wet.


The funniest part was when Parker would try to get a drink out of the splurt. She would see one come up and run up to it with her mouth open, but ineveitably get there too late to drink. The water would dissapear at the exact moment she thought her thirst was about to be quenched. She would begin to look around dejected and confused, stepping forward just a little bit, and then, of course, the next splurt would come right up her....

well...

it was funny.

All this might give you the impression Emma Jane really doesn't like water, except that at swim lessons its pretty different. She's the one floating along and kicking, while Parker is holding on for dear life like we are going to let her go and see if she drifts off to the grey havens......not going to happen.

This is the point of the blog post where one might expect to discover the point of all this babble. If you are one of those people I have some sad news for you. No point. Just some observations

blessings

outings

The other day Jason went to the Botanical Gardens with some friends from school (Mary Jane was at work). George brought along his camera and while most of the shots he took were botanical in nature (fitting) he snapped these shots of the girls.

"Yes, I'm standing here...what ya gonna do about it?"

Parker "helping"

Emma Jane with Kobsy

snack time: emma jane is having "see"food; the monkey is eating a banana

Easter at the Broges Part .75

What would Easter be without an egg hunt?

Just like every other easter I've ever had.

But this one was different

because

we had an egg hunt

or rather our church had its annual Easter "Eggstravaganza" the day before Easter, and this was the first year we had little ones who could participate. And as you can see, participate they did.

Where am I supposed to put it?

No, bring it to me

Okay....I've got some, now what am I supposed to do with it?

this one really doesn't need a caption

Easter at the Broges Part I

Happy Easter everyone!

Time for us to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. Time for us to celebrate with friends from across the country. Time for....Easter at the Broges. This year marks the fifth year in a row that we have gathered together a ridiculous number of people in a small space after church to eat, laugh, and play together. Much fun was had by all. This is going to take a few posts to cover so keep coming back this week because there will be a few posts. For starters we just want to highlight the cuteness which was the little beautifuls in their Easter dresses.

We begin with a rare glimpse of the family as a whole (something we were unable to get last Easter)

Emma Jane: Is this for me?

Parker: Here you can have this piece

= adorable

Scott and Heather Sexton came down from Chicago once again to celebrate Easter with us. As always, it was wonderful to get a chance to see them.