I visited the Gateway Arch.

See the full gallery on Posterous

I have proof.

Easter Weekend

Jason doesn't have to work today. Nora and I started the "weekend" off Thursday night at Farm Burger. We attended their 1st anniversary celebration with a few dear friends.

 My friend Jessie asked us what we usually do for Easter. We try to attend some kind of community egg hunt on a Saturday--usually a Saturday earlier in the season, but we haven't yet this year so I guess we'll be finding something tomorrow. Easter morning, there are baskets from "the Easter Bunny"--pretty low-key 'round here. Then we attend church and afterward, a potluck luncheon at a church member's house in Druid Hills. The house is gorgeous, and looks aren't everything, but their property really is amazing. I always describe it as "like The Secret Garden." Really, really nice.

Here's a really old Easter picture!

Nora's first Easter...

Second Easter

Third

And here's last year (with a mouthful of chocolate, of course).

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

New phone

I finally joined the rest if the world and got an iPhone. My old phone had been limping along at death's door for a while. Finally, the day before I was to hop a flight to St Louis, the battery stopped working completely. There were no replacement batteries to be found because the phone was soooooo old (you know, two years old). Several hundred dollars later, I now have an iPhone, insurance for it, and supposedly the most bulky and kidproof case available. Woohoo! And now I get to update my blog from bed...

Except this program I downloaded to update the blog doesn't seem all that great. I can't add pics.

BRB. Depending on your definition of the word "right."

Spring Breakin'

I'm telling you, I have the best kids.

Nora is on Spring Break this week. I'm excited about it because she's in school 5 days a week this year. We still have our afternoons during the school year (although we try to get naps in when we can), but I welcome having this extra time to hang out and do fun stuff.

I didn't have much planned, though, and we're on a relatively tight budget. So this morning we slept in and, after waking, had eggs for breakfast. We enjoyed the breeze coming in through our open windows. Anneliese was getting cranky and I didn't have many ideas, so we decided to go for a picnic in the park in our neighborhood. The park is 1.25 miles away, which is a big of a walk for Nora, but we made it. It was so fun, I want to do it again and again. (Except for the fact that it's about to get blazing hot, and then I probably won't want to do it so much).

One of the best things about our walk was that I got to really look at a lot of the houses in our neighborhood. You know what? I really, really love our new neighborhood. It is just where I want to be. It's filled with adorable little houses circa 1940-1960. I love how the lawns are so vibrant and full of mature plants and trees, lovingly landscaped, and ranging in style from utterly expressive and funky to HGTV enviable. Curb appeal is one area our home is lacking, but we'll get there. I planted a few annual bulbs, and we really want to get a garden up and running again.

Thursday I'm going to St. Louis for the International Cesarean Awareness conference. I'm taking Anneliese and Nora is staying home with Jason. They're going to go to Fernbank and to a minor league baseball game while I'm gone. I'm a little nervous about flying with a one year old, but I've done it before and I'll have a bunch of friends there to help. There are 9 of us going from Atlanta and many of us will be on the same flights. I am sharing a hotel suite with a friend.

I became involved with ICAN when I was processing my cesarean and looking ahead to have a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean). Having a VBAC was something of a journey which began when I learned that the old adage "once a cesarean, always a cesarean" is not always true. This has actually been an exciting couple of years for VBAC. There was a big conference at the National Institute of Health affirming the safety of VBAC, and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has recently revised their position on VBAC with the aim of making it available to more women and reducing our country's cesarean rate, which is 32.9% and over double the rate that the World Health Organization recommends.

ICAN is an organization that is near and dear to my heart. Many of my friends belong to it, and still others support it even if they have not had a cesarean myself. The thing about cesareans and birth in general is that it is a very broad topic and it is so much more than a medical decision. Every woman's situation is different and every birth is different. I do think that as a culture we have become somewhat detached from the birthing process, so I am a fan of doing things as naturally as possible. Still, I had a medicalized birth myself (in that it was in a hospital, I had a high risk pregnancy, etc) and so I understand the place for certain medical interventions.

Anyway, I'm happy to be attending this conference and spending time with my friends and learning more about birth and more about myself and other women (it's that kind of conference). I love a good conference. I truly do.

Worldless Wednesday--She's one!

It is a cold, blustery day here in Atlanta. Unlike most people I know, I like the low temperatures. I don't like the damp and the gray, though, and I don't like having to choose weather-appropriate clothes for my children because I'm just not very good at that. If you see me carrying my baby and she's wearing questionable attire, just remember that I'm

a) from Florida

and

b) hot-natured

and take pity on my child. If you see Nora wearing questionable attire, well, she's 4.5, so I can't always been responsible for what she ends up wearing. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Anneliese has been sort-of crawling (scooting?) since she was 7 months old, but two days ago I looked up and she was really-for-real crawling. She's been a little more adventuresome lately. It's cute. I'm quite seriously afraid she might try to crawl through the cat door to the basement, so I suppose we should do some baby-proofing. My mom remarked that she seems really quiet compared to Nora, but I think she she says a lot, she's just much more shy. Most children will look shy compared to Nora, though. Yesterday I noticed two new teeth, but I think there are more on the way. Right about now I'm bummed that the homeopathic teething tablets we used were recalled. At 11.5 months, Anneliese says "mama,"  "dada," and "dat?" She babbles a lot of other things we don't understand. She will totally imitate our inflections as we chat or sing to her. It's super cute.

I have a neat idea about how to revitalize this blog and get Nora involved. More on that soon, I hope!

Snow days (and days and?)

It's going on three months since I've updated. We've been really busy, but I've finally run out of excuses. We're snowed in! Or rather, iced in. We had a beautiful snowfall Sunday night and now the roads are basically impassible. Most recently there was melting, but we're expecting another hard freeze, so who knows how long this could go on? Jason hasn't had to work for the past two days, but of course we're taking things one day at a time.

We have played games, snuggled, watched movies, played online (me), wrapped our socks in plastic bags, crunched in the snow, made snow cream, made a teeny tiny snow man, read books, and done laundry. Two days in and it just now occurs to me that I could have been using this time to do one million things that need to be done around the house, but, well, maybe I'll do that if we're still snowed in tomorrow.

We are sort of settled in our new house, but organizing is not my strength so we have a ways to go. Can we say work in progress? Nora is still loving preschool. Anneliese is still loving her mommy and daddy more than anything else, although she's starting to dig some of the neat toys she got for Christmas. She'll be having a birthday next month, in February. My little snow baby, born on a day just like today. Awwww.

Happy New Year!