Christmas Part II

The second leg of our Christmas journey took us home to Chattanooga. There we got to see just about everybody. The girls were thrilled to see Nanna and Pop.

As well as their Grandad and Great Grandmother.... (and if you look really closely you will notice that my magical clavicle ball came to grandad's house as well

And we even got a chance to spend some time with Mary Jane's Great-Grandfather (that's the girls' great-Great-grandfather!!) He turned 100 and it was exciting to have FIVE generations all together (Pop, Granny, Nanna, Mary Jane, and the girls).

And of course there we saw everybody else as well...

..and there were presents......lots...

...and lots of presents.

I know what all of you are thinking. You're worried that with all this visiting and presents and there very cornucopia of adventures which await one when they travel to Chattanooga, that Mary Jane would not getting any brother sister bonding time with Mark. Well never fear....

...there was plenty of time for that too.

(you almost can't tell he's struggling to get away from her hug ;)

hanging out

"Hide and Seek" or "Don't call DFS"

Turns out the girls are getting quick. I was out of the room for a minute. Okay...it is possible that I was out of the room for 62 seconds. I actually think it was closer to 47.5 seconds, but I will give you 62.23 seconds at the most. Anyway, I left the room Parker was on one side of it, when I walked back in there was Emma Jane clapping her hands, laughing and excited to see me, and there was no Parker. Now anyone who has gone through this type of experience knows exactly what happened next...I went into immediate cardiac arrest. After giving myself CPR I began looking around the room, but not moving. My first thought was that clearly aliens had taken my baby, but realizing this was highly unlikely, my second thought was that she must be in the room somewhere. There is only one way in the room and I didn't pass her in the hall way. This meant I had somehow gone selectively blind. I could see everything in the world except Parker. Further reflection led me to realize this was just silly...clearly Parker had the power to turn invisible....or teleport. In the off hand chance it was invisibility I was not going to step anywhere until I was certain that I was not stepping on Parker. As I carefully scanned the room for an invisible telported alien abducted baby, I was startled to hear a slapping sound coming from behind me. Spinning about I found ...Parker...under the couchy chair. Or rather, I should say I found Parker's smiling head, the rest of her body was hidden under the chair. She was grinning away and slapping the ground having a grand ole time. When she realized she had my attention she too began laughing. It appears the whole thing was a joke on dad. I had thought Emma Jane was clapping and laughing because she was happy to see me, but really she just thought Parker's joke was hilarious.

Silly monkeys

A peek into what makes Emma Jane tick

So this pretty much sums it up right here. This is Emma Jane.


From day one she has been the stubborn-alpha-determined one. Somehow people got the impression that was going to be Parker....but no we never thought she would be. Parker is the monkey. She is the one who likes to fling herself upside down. She is the one who will run across the street without looking first. Emma Jane will be the one who tells her to.
Here is Emma Jane in a nut shell. The girl will be lying there, pounding her feet on the ground (something she likes to do) while sucking quite contentedly on her pacifier when suddenly she will look to her right. And what will she see? Parker, right next to her, also sucking on a pacifier. Suddenly Emma Jane's pacifier is not quite as tasty as it was just a moment ago. So Emma Jane will begin to stare at Parker. After a while she will reach out towards Parker. Finding that she cannot reach her she will begin to butt-scoot her way over until she gets close to Parker. Then she will reach out, grab the pacifier. Emma Jane will then take the pacifier out of her mouth, put Parker's in her mouth, and hold her pacifier next to her mouth...you know...just in case. At about this moment Parker begins to notice she is no longer sucking on anything (it sometimes takes her a couple of minutes. She's a happy baby and spends the first few minutes without the pacifier being amazed that her tongue is suddenly hitting the roof of her mouth. Once this novelty wears off Parker remembers how much fun the pacifier was and begins to fuss. As Parker begins to fuss, Emma Jane gets worried. She's about to be found out. She'll get in trouble. So Emma Jane takes her free hand, reaches over, and puts it into Parker's mouth so that Parker can chew on that instead. Suddenly everybody is happy. Parker just wants something to chew on, and Emma Jane just wants all the pacifiers (binky hog).


As you can see Emma Jane is also getting really good at sitting up. She can do the whole tri-pod sit thing really well now. She can also show her support for the Auburn tigers by wearing my cap. Although, as you can see from the look on her face, she thinks the team has little chance of being great this year.

Now, I must admit that I am a little afraid I have painted Emma Jane in an overly negative light. She is brilliant and wonderful and shows determination, as well as problem solving skills. But none of these qualities have led to her main nickname. Parker is commonly called monkey. Emma Jane...cuddles. The girl loves to cuddle. She will often just raise her arms and stare at you and wait for you to pick her up, and then when you do she will put her head down on your chest.

She even likes to be all squished up to get really cuddly. Kind of like...

...this. This picture was taken last weekend. We were in Chattanooga, and cuddles (also known as whiny butt and variations there off) was refusing to nap. Yet she was exhausted. Finally dad picked her up and she immediately curled up and went to sleep. She had been doing this all the night before. We had driven through the night to get to Chattanooga, so dad was feeling pretty tired himself. This is how mom found them.


content after a nice nap

Happy Birthday Samuel

Samuel Eduardo Machado is our godson. His parents (Marcos and Hannah) are Emma Jane's godparents. Today is Samuel's birthday. Now godparents worth having would probably have called today, but us? Nope. In our defense we were a little distracted by Marcos and Hannah's goddaughter who was being a pain in the...um...neck. Anybody want a colicky baby? How about a colicky baby who won't eat? Cause we got one. I won't say which baby we're talking about...just that her name rhymes with Hemma Blane.
In all seriousness, Emma Jane has had a rough day. Yesterday wasn't great for her, but today she just decided that she wanted to cry instead of eat. Luckily Mary Jane got to come home early from work because when she got here dad was pretty near tears. He was convinced the girl was deathly ill because she wouldn't eat and usually Emma Jane is all about the food. Okay...I'm exaggerating a little, I didn't think she was deathly ill, but I did learn something else about myself. Turns out I can ignore the crying and cuddle and coo and not let it phase me, but if they seem like they are in pain it just breaks the lump of coal I have hidden away in a Tupperware container where my heart should be.
All this is a way of saying...Marcos, Hannah sorry we didn't call today. It's 10:50 your time now and we figure it's too late. But know we were thinking about you and were meaning to. Tell Samuel we said Happy Birthday.

We love you guys.





When the Machados were in town a couple of weeks ago I told Samuel he could pick out his future wife. Here we see Samuel resorting to the sniff test. Who ever has the smelliest feet is out.

And we have a winner!

If you are curious to know Samuel's thoughts on this and, well all things Samuel you should check out his blog.

Listening In

"Psst. Hey Parker"

"Whadaya want?"

"Look at this!

"Hmmm. It looks like a tongue"

"It is a tongue...moron. But I can stick it out. I've been working all day on that. Getting pretty good at it. But anyway...that's not what I wanted to talk about. Have you been keeping an eye on the 'rents?"

"Yeah, I've been keeping an eye on them. They've got me a little worried. Did you see the other day...last Friday it was. Dad was going to go into work for a meeting because he had taken a part day on Thursday in order to take us to the doctor. Then he got the bright idea of bringing his afternoon meeting over to the house so that mom can take a nap while he met and kept an eye on the kids, and you know what ma did when he asked her if she would like this idea? She broke down into tears of joy. Yep...getting worried about her."

"Oh that's nothing. Sure...mom's crazy tired, but dad...he might just be plain crazy. You should watch him during those couple hours we give him to sleep. He's been getting up and walking around in his sleep every night. He goes into our room to look for us when we're out in the living room with mom. He walks around the house patting his chest like he's burping one of us. And the other day he walked out with a bottle of Chloroseptic cradled in his arms like it was one of us. I'm telling you...the guy has gone loco!"

"Chloroseptic?!? Well if that's the sort of silly games he's going to play with the sleep time we're giving him, than I really wonder if we're giving him too much time. Tell you what, tonight let's split up the shifts. If you scream for the first 4 hours, I'll get the next six."

ug...parents...but what are you going to do...their so cute you just have to love them, flaws and all.

"Weight" till Thursday.

Well, Emma Jane has yet to get her first dose of blood pressure medication. They wrote an order to give it to her if her blood pressure went over 120. And...like magic she was going up to 117 (still way to high) but not going over 120. Then they decided to write the order for if it goes over 110 and...she shot down to 107ish. It reminds me of when I was little. When I was a kid I almost got glasses. My vision wasn't so hot and they said next time they checked me they would probably need to get me glasses, and the next time they saw me...didn't need glasses. Then there was the time they were going to take my tonsils out. I was getting tonsillitis all the time and the next time I got sick they were going to remove my tonsils...and I stopped getting sick (for a while...these days I get tonsillitis all the time and Mary Jane wants me to get my tonsils out). I guess Emma Jane is just taking after her dad. For now....
Of course Emma Jane looked like this all day, and her blood pressure was only barely under the medication stage, so there is a good chance we'll be all medicated as soon as she wakes up. Meanwhile Parker looked like this all day:

Which I think was her way of saying: Medication? What's medication? I want some medication! Why can't I have medication? I'll raise my blood pressure....watch! Where's my pacifier? Where are you? Who are you? Want to see me poop? Hey what's that? Can I hold it? Can I touch it? Does it go in my mouth? Does it go in yours? Want to change my diaper? Can I help? How about that medication? Pick me up. Put me down.....

After a couple day self imposed sabbatical, dad was back to holding kiddos. Seeking to make up for lost time he went for two at a time.

You remember the old Charlie Brown book "Happiness is"?

Happiness is...two babies asleep on your chest.

100th Post!!!

So here we are. Believe it or not this is the 100th post since we started this blog. When we started this blog I never would have believed we would have kept in running long enough to hit 100 posts, but then I never would have guessed life would have taken the turns it has either.
Well, anyway you look at it here we all are at the 100th post. So we thought we would spend this post inundating you with such an obnoxious number of pictures you will probably throw us.
Well...enjoy. We certainly have.Parker, looking and feeling a little crabby. She had been holding onto her work again.

But still...she loves her "mummy"

Emma Jane got the jackolantern clothes

Later we decided to stuff her clothes so she looked even more pumkin like. Oh, the horrible things parents do to their children for the sake of "cuteness."
Of course that was hardly the worst of it. You still haven't seen their official "costumes"

What were they?

Well...look.

We decided that for Halloween they should be what they are: 2 peas in a pod

In case you couldn't tell. Parker is on the right (note monkey) and Emma Jane is on the left (note leg of owl). Actually some these pictures are from last weekend. We put them in their costumes then because we really weren't sure whether they would fit today. We managed to get them in today, but just barely. Those stinkers are getting big!

No matter what they may tell us alter in life...they like each other

"Hey...I'm napping here. I don't care how cute you look, leave me alone or I'll give you something to wave your arms about"

So the girls might even get famous from this outfit. The BJC newspaper (yes the hospital is big enough to have a hospital based newspaper) swung by to take a picture for the next issue.

You sick of this yet? Well, just one more photo to sit through.

The annual Reformation Day family photo

A day in the life of...

It was a busy day today, but I figure, rather then tell you all about it, why don't I just show you.
But before we begin let us go back to our game from the other night, except this time for real. Below is a picture of the girls together. Can you tell them apart? To us they look drastically different and it is immediately apparent who is who. You'll have to read the whole post to find out if you're right.
Here goes:

Mom decided the girls needed some bathing. She started off with Emma Jane.
They're finally big enough to take baths in little tubs, which is kind of fun and kind of scary all at the same time. After all, babies are slippery when wet. Little babies are slipperier still, and little soapy babies are slipperiest of all.
"Ahh...this is the life"
After a bath it was time to get all spruced up in her new duds. Emma Jane had to admit, she was pretty stinking cute when it was all said and done. (So, Emma Jane was the one on the left. Okay, honestly...who got it right?)
Next it was Parker's turn for a bath:
"Oh dear Father in Heaven, save me from this horrible wetness"

"Mother, why do you do this to me? Can you not see that I am getting cold? Help me."

"Ahhh, warm...better"

After both had been bathed and dressed it was time for their photo shoot

"Psst. You think these guys have any idea what they're doing?"

"Ehh....probably not"

"Seester...I love you"

After a long hard day it was time to sleep (and poop).