April in the Attic

As Addie approaches her half-birthday, she's all raspberries, smiles, squeaks, and chewing anything that comes near. April showers? No matter - we've got a nearly-finished attic now and every square inch is sacred to us in such a tiny house. Jeff's still working on it, but Addie's got a place to sleep, there's a big table for art projects, and carpet for Kaia to roll around on. Here are some quick peeks into this small, weird world at the top of our house, Addie happily perched in the midst.

kaia sings...and sings some more

What a gift it's been to have our daughter raised from the sick abyss she's been in. Here she is singing to kill time before Daddy comes home and then singing her way up to bedtime.

Long cold winter

What a long cold winter it's been and we've only begun. Everyone's in varying stages of sick, but we survived Christmas and a lot of terrible-two-ness (we'll spare you from those videos). Instead here are some happier times, here, there (TX), and freshly home from the hospital.

Starting with the most recent, today. Kaia adding color to an otherwise dreary day:

Christmas at Mimi's, an exploration of the fun places you can store a newborn:

Weeee. Ride'em Cowgirl! The squeaky old horse at Uncle Erik's house:

Beautiful Rockefeller State Park near our house in late autumn:

Adelie, three days old, and some French film for l'ambience:

Adelie June, after the full moon

She's here! A second daughter we'll likely be just as bad about keeping-up-with-the-blogging-about... But we'll try. Here's a good start: the video of the first meeting of Kaia "Big Sister" Madsen with her new little cohort, Adelie June. Kaia's been sweet, if a little too eager and excitable, but that's to be expected when Mom's big belly suddenly morphs into a real live (screaming and terribly unfun) baby that she can't play with, feed apples to, or smother with blankets.

It was a beautiful day to be born: autumn foliage in full effect, the Hudson River view out of our hospital room offering up brilliant sunset and fireworks. The night prior we enjoyed the town Halloween parade, pumpkin ale, and a full moon. Kaia as Mummy, me as Mommy. Now all our ducks are in a row - a house of four with July, Aug, Sept and Oct birthdays. We are all home feeling great, if sleepy and overwhelmed, and very blessed. More videos of baby to come, when she starts performing and stops sleeping.

And for old times sake, back when we were young and "three", a video of Kaia and Daddy dancing on our new kitchen floor. My apologies for not being able to stop the video camera when the dancing is done (or edit it out later)...

playing the blues

Kaia demonstrating her multi-tasking skills: stomping, twirling and making some mean music -- all mixed in with the hiccups.

Blizzard 2010

Seems a world away now that we're gardening, but only some weeks ago it was full-on blizzarding here. Kaia got to romp around -- or try to -- in snowboots for the first time, and roll ball+ball+ball=snowman.

walking

Just a few weeks into walking when this was filmed before Christmas...unfortunately we never captured her all out Frankenstein moves, but this gives a taste (against the sound of what I think is the latest Star Trek movie going in the background on our new TV, adds to the drama).