Happy (Not Over the Hill Yet) Birthday

I made it through the first full week of Bryan going back to school with the two girls at home. Sure, he was still home at least 50% of the time and my mom came down for one day too. Still, when I was alone and babysat the girls we all did just fine.  

Daddy put Mary on Mom's shoulders

 Cute smile on some chubby cheeks

 One of my successes last week was getting everybody bathed and dressed. It's the little things in life. 

"Daddy, why did you put me in the cooler?"

My mom and Doug came down for my birthday and took me out to lunch. It took me the better part of a month to decide where I wanted to go, but I decided on a Japanese restaurant. Good choice Kathleen. Good choice.  Thanks mom for treating me to such a nice day. 

 Lucy loved it and she did great. I was grateful to make it through a meal without a scene. Thanks for the birthday present Lucy. 

Oh, and I let mom talk me into getting some ice cream for my birthday too. They had some arcade games at the ice cream shop and Lucy loved this one.

 The first thing to go when I turned 30 was my memory. And poor Lucy had to pay for it. At 5pm on my birthday I couldn't figure out why Lucy was crying so much and really cranky. I put Mary down to tend to Lucy and when I turned around I saw this. Sorry Lucy. I was out to lunch and when we got home I completely forgot to put her down for a nap. 

Pretty Mary. She's not a newborn anymore. She's such a sweet baby. And she slept for almost 8 hours last night. That was wonderful. 

I tried to get a picture of her dimple on her right cheek. 

 And in case you thought I had forgotten about Lucy when I was taking those pictures of Mary, think again. Lucy was on standby the whole time. 

Here are pictures of Mary in the pretty things my Aunt Char made her. 

The lady at the restaurant made Lucy a jumping origami frog

We got a bunch of videos of Lucy singing her favorite songs

Snowman

Popcorn

Wise Man and Foolish Man

This is a cute video of Mary smiling

I love this. The funny thing about this video is that Lucy is saying hello to "Dee-Tu". That's how she says Lucy. So she's watching herself on the computer screen and saying hello.

Go Quincy!

Today is the last day of vacation. I'm in denial that Bryan has to go back to school tomorrow and quit being my co-stay at home mom. It's been so great to have him home the first six weeks of baby Mary's arrival.

I was on the computer the other day not paying attention to Lucy when I smelled the unmistakable smell of nail polish. I left a bottle of nail polish on the table and Lucy decided to paint her nails. 

 Lucy was sitting at the table the other day and my mom heart had mixed feelings as I looked at her. She is so beautiful and darling. But she's also a little girl. She's not a baby anymore. Oh Lucy, how did you get so big so fast?

Mary has been smiling a lot more these past few days. Unfortunately I haven't had it together to get the camera out to get good pictures.  Here's a couple of pictures, but they don't do her cute face justice. She has a dimple on her right cheek that makes my heart melt. 

I took Lucy to the pet store yesterday while dad went to Best Buy. She had a great time looking at the critters. The mice scared her and she tried to lean as far from the glass as possible and said, "Bye bunny, bye bye bunny"

I couldn't resisting taking this picture. 

Lucy is obsessed with watching videos of cousin Quincy on the computer. Who knows how long she would watch if we let her (so far she's been cut off at an hour).  This is a video of her watching her cousins bowl.

Blessing Day

Today was Mary's baby blessing.  Her Dad gave her such a sweet blessing and she was perfect for the whole thing. She was blessed to have a testimony of her Savior and the gospel. She was blessed that she will be an example to others and bring others to the gospel. She was also blessed that she will go to the temple and be married and have a family of her own. (I'm practically a grandma!). You are an angel Mary and we are so happy to have you in our family. We love you. 

Our whole family could make it down to Charlottesville for the blessing, which was so wonderful.  Everybody chipped in and brought food and we had a nice lunch after church. I love family. 

Mary in her dress that 7 other Jones baby girls have worn. Great Grandma Gail made it almost 30 years ago for Aunt Natalie. 

Cora has a camera and sent me some pictures that she took. 

She got a good picture of Pierce

We came to the Law School after church to eat. Thankfully school hasn't started yet, because this worked out perfectly. We never would have fit 28 people in our apartment.

The wonderful Joneses.

The wonderful Cannon side. 

 We made it through the whole day with the bow in the hair until the last minute when the camera came out. I'm glad Lucy decided to put it on me instead .

My beautiful family. I love these people more than I can say. 

1 Month

Mary is one month old. That went fast. She is growing so much. We went to her doctor's appointment and she weighs 10 lbs 4oz and is 21.5 inches long. That puts her at 75% and 73% respectively for her size. She's already getting so strong and can hold her head up.  Lucy got to have a play date with my visiting teacher and the report back was that she was an angel. She is a good girl. 

I finally got to use this cute body suit. Grandma Jones got this for Lucy but it was too warm outside to use it for Lucy. It was the first thing I had ever gotten/held for my baby. I remember thinking it was the cutest thing I had ever seen and I couldn't wait to hold my baby girl. Mary looks absolutely adorable in it. 

Mary is spending a lot of her young life in close proximity to her sister. 

 I was cleaning the kitchen and I thought Lucy was just eating the bagel I gave her. Turns out she got into the bagel bagel bag and decided she needed a chocolate chip bagel for each hand. 

It's good for you Mary...

We finally sold our old table yesterday and got to put up our new fancy one from the Baylys. Doug and Bryan were putting it together and Lucy was a big help.

Merry Christmas

We had a great two week visit to Stafford and King George. It was nice getting so much help with the girls. Lucy had the time of her life too. I got pretty sick on Christmas Eve for couple of days, so I didn't get as many pictures of the holidays as I would have liked. But we did have a great time. We're home now and I don't know if I'm ready for real life to start back up again. 

(Picture overload coming right up. I guess that's what happens when you have two kids and you don't post pictures for a few weeks.)

I took this picture of Mary when we were hanging out in the middle of the night. She was less than two weeks old. 

Cousin Wendy being a good cousin and holding Mary. 

  Lauren wanted to hold Mary really bad, but she was too scared to ask me. She asked Aunt Lise and Grandma, but couldn't ask me. I told her she could hold her anyway. It was sweet. 

These are the grown up cousins 

 Here's a snap shot of Jacob's 5th birthday party. Lucy was happy about all the cake they had.

 Lucy on the Sunday before Christmas. I wanted to get a picture of her in her pretty dress in front of the tree. As you can see, I wasn't very successful. 

Making gingerbread houses. Grandpa did the decorating and Lucy did the eating. 

Autumn was so nice to Mary and was good at holding her. 

Opening Christmas Eve Jammies. Thanks to some doting Aunts for getting the girls adorable matching pj's. 

 Christmas morning. Lucy hasn't quite gotten the vision of Christmas yet. She got candy in her stocking and was happy to leave it that. 

The only time in her life Mary can wear this onesie and I blew it. I didn't get a picture where you can see that her onesie says, "My first Christmas". 

Cute cousins

This is the Rappahannock river near where my mom lives. It was pretty out there. Minus the feral cats. They were fighting in the woods and sounded so creepy. 

There's a restaurant name Horne's? Who knew?

I forgot to pack Lucy's hat and gloves...

Oh this vacuum. She borrowed this from Aunt Mel. We couldn't pry it out of her hands for a couple of days. 

Sisters

The girls were left alone for 2 minutes and I find Mary with two porcelain ducks in her bed. 

Lucy wanted to hold Mary so bad this morning. Lucy had a great time. Not sure what was going on in Mary's head though. 

 Then all of a sudden Mary couldn't keep her eyes open any longer. Bryan said it was her defense mechanism. 

Lucy has figured out how to get into my closet.