10 days old

Letter H

Audrey and I still continue to learn letters, although our activities have become fewer and simpler. For letter H, we spent a lot of time tracing our hands, and we made a house full of things that start with H. I printed out a picture of a house and a bunch of clip art, and Audrey identified the objects and taped them to the house. She is quite pleased with the results!

I'm loving this baby!

Five days old, so far a sweetie!

Grandma and IanI love this baby too--she is being so sweet about a new brother. Okay, mostly.

Ian Thomas Brien

Our beautiful baby boy came Tuesday, March 17th--St. Patrick's Day! I went into labor Monday, with my water breaking that night. Ian came soon after we got into our delivery room, at 2:27 a.m. He is 7 lbs, 9 oz, and 20 1/2 inches long. He has a teeny bit of orange-blond hair, is a good nurser, and so far sleeps a lot. We got home from the hospital today and are so happy. Audrey loves her baby brother and is looking forward to Grandma arriving later tonight.

The kids' room is complete!

This is not as exciting a video as last time, but for those of you interested, I took a little video of Audrey and Ian's bedroom, now that it is complete. Ian won't actually be moving in until he has regular sleep patterns, but it's nice to have everything done. The newest additions to the room are two beautiful paintings done by Mr. B's mom. They are inspired by artwork from the children's book, Runaway Bunny. We are so impressed with Grammy's talent and generosity!

Boots

Audrey loves to watch Dora the Explorer. We do a lot of Dora pretend play around here. She often tells me, "Mommy, you Dora and I'm Boots." Boots is Dora's best friend, a boot-wearing monkey. Recently, Audrey discovered my boots and teeters around the house in them, clutching the walls, exclaiming, "I'm Boots!"

39 weeks

My cute girl

Audrey is so much fun! She says and does things that keep me laughing every day. This week we got out her old car seat to install for Ian, and she's been playing with it. She put her "Mama Bear" in a diaper, and then strapped her in the car seat and pushed it around the house. Then she stacked up a ton of toys on top of Mama Bear. This started a stacking frenzy, and for several days Audrey stacked everything she could think of in the car seat, taking it all out, doing it again.

A new dress from Grandma, in which she feels like a pretty princess (her words). But she wouldn't give up the toothbrush for a picture... This is what she wore to church last Sunday, and it started snowing during church, continuing throughout the day (our only snow this year!). So the outfit doesn't match the weather, but she sure looks cute!