Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Life by the lake
My brother, his bride, and The Twins were in town this weekend to meet their new nephew (the SIL's sister recently gave birth to her third boy), but we were also taking the opportunity to get together and catch up, since I hadn’t seen Scott in months, and the girls in nearly as long, so I drove South to a town just outside of Lake Placid for a little fam time. Lake Placid, Florida, not to be confused with Lake Placid, New York, is one in a series of lakes in Southern/Central Florida situated a few miles North of Sebring. Surrounding Lake Placid are a group of smaller lakes, including, Lake Henry, Lake June, and Lake Carrie, among others. Lake Carrie is a small "satellite" to June, and is now host to a vacation home belonging to the SIL's parents.
The last time I saw Ava and Evelyn, Evelyn was getting up on all-fours, but failing in her efforts to generate forward motion, while Ava was still figuring out the mechanics of raising herself up on her hands and knees at the same time. A couple of months on and Evelyn is a full-on crawler. She's still working out the kinks in her technique, but her brand of babydom has gone mobile. She is even pulling herself up into a standing position, sometimes with gravity verifying results. Ava is still working out the mechanics of crawling, but has become fairly adept at rolling or military crawling (elbows only) short distances to get where/what she wants.
To say these girls are cute would be like saying that Mother Teresa was nice. They smile, coo, and gesture with their hands, often times in active response to what is going on around them. Evelyn will sit and clap, her near toothless(more on this in a second) smile spreading ear to ear. Ava will watch you intently, a huge smile across her face, and a baby laugh on her lips. I'm not at all ashamed to say that these two babies are the cutest things I have ever seen! Even when Ava’s flatulence is ringing in the air, her cuteness is undiminished. Evelyn’s smile would melt the hardest of hearts…the power of such cuteness cannot be denied!
Of course, things are not always cheesy baby smiles and goofy people faces. The first night we gathered, I arrived at the babies’ bed time, and just after Evelyn had projectile vomited all over her flight weary mother. At the same time, the SIL’s new nephew was screaming bloody murder, as he’s suffering through a bout of colic. The sound of infant cries came on like a wave as the front door of the extended family’s house swept opened. Sunday night we were all at the Lake Carrie house when Evelyn’s eye teeth began their journey through her gums, which meant lots of crying and little sleep for mom and dad. Scott and Laura spent most of the night trying various methods of calming her, none of which seemed to work. She would eventually fall asleep. At times like those, but I am convinced that parenthood is for the brave, the crazy, or the masochistic.
Aside from those few glitches, things went really well. Evelyn loves having the wind through her hair on a boat, and Ava was comfortable enough to nap, despite the noise and some jostling from crossing other boats’ wakes. The sun was out, the water was cool, and we did not have any run-ins with people or wildlife. The babies had a great time, though they did leave mom and dad a little worse for wear. Everyone flies home today, but the immediate family and I are heading up to the bluegrass state for Thanksgiving, so it won’t be long before we get to see the little munchkins again. I fully expect them both to be walking by then, which will be amazing to see. I’ll post some pics from this past weekend after the SIL has some time to recover and get them online.
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