Mom wrote

How about a picture of the huge
grin that must be on your
face?

and I would very much like
too, however we had a sad incident yesterday. I turned on the
camera and IT DOESN’T WORK! I get the data display (flash
setting, pic count, etc.) but no display. Just a black screen,
like the cover is on it, but it’s not. I checked. Many times! I
even took a picture to see if maybe that did anything, but I
just got a lovely picture of black. I’m so bummed. And,
ironically (or just annoyingly) the only camera store in the
phone book closed last week! So I don’t even know where to take
it for service. I just don’t have much faith in the handy tech
guys at Best Buy (not sure they deal with anything other than
computers anyway). Soo… we will work on acquiring a new
camera and in the meantime you’re all going to have to rely on
my excellent writing abilities. Or perhaps our low quality cell
phone cameras. The kids were extra cute today and I found
myself reaching for the camera many times. I’m not sure if
that’s unusual or if I was just conscious of it today because
the camera didn’t work.

We are actually
having bad luck with pictures lately. Due to a hard drive
failure (or something) we lost a bunch of our digital photos,
the most important being all photos from the last 6 months.
Luckily I have some of them on my Picasa site, like Eve’s
newborn pics, and lots of good pics are on the blog, but many
more are lost. *sniff*

After many long years, Alan’s patent has
been approved and issued! Yay!! He got a fancy document in the
mail from the USPTO yesterday with a seal and everything. The
patent is for a Mechanical-thermal solar power system. US
Patent number 7,281,381. Check it out!

Ha! Who needs naps?! He kept her up for awhile,
so I brought her down and put him in the crib where he
proceeded to entertain himself until a bit past 3pm. Meanwhile
baby and I took a rest on the couch. She slept, I read. She’s
too big to leave alone on the couch now (what with all that
rolling!), so we cuddled. It was rough ;) When 3pm came and
went and he was still wide awake I decided to get him up and
let her nap in the crib. So we made baby food, sweet potato
chips (didn’t turn out quite as I’d expected) and cut up the
cantaloupe. Lex LOVES cantaloupe and picked up 1/4 of the melon
and said “want to eat it like a watermelon.” Then Eve woke up
and we went outside to play with the new toy we bought at Home Depot
yesterday. (and while getting the link I
came across a $10 cash back offer. sweet!!) My leaf
woes may be over!! Then he ended up in bed at 6:30pm, cried for
about 5 minutes and fell asleep. She happily went to bed 1/2
hour later. Now I have to go finish making baby food and clean
the kitchen.

How quickly they go from sweet and
adorable to totally frustrating :( Particularly on days when I
really need to accomplish something while they sleep, such as
paying bills. He’s still up, no longer calm, jumping around,
climbing on stuff, NOT SLEEPING! Grrr…. I’m going to read my
past posts a few times to remind myself that just 10 minutes
ago he was sweet and adorable :)

I wish I could have a recorder going 24/7.
These kids are so wonderful. Now he is sitting in his bed
singing the “banana fanana fo fanana” song. What is that
called? I was singing in on the way home today and he asked for
it over and over. “Sing the mommy song. Sing the Eve song.” I
even did Tessa and Alan. Now he’s sitting up there singing “the
Alan song” over and over. I love him!

It’s nap time and lex is sitting in his
bed reading stories to his toys. He has stuffed animals lined
up in his bed all along the wall and he is reading books, even
holding the books so they can see the pictures. So cute.
Hopefully he ends up falling asleep, not getting up to play.
We’ll see.

I think the Fountain of Eve may be coming
to an end. In the last week or two she has been getting much
better at keeping things down and we don’t go through nearly as
many bibs and clothes (for both of us!) as we have been in the
past. Of course, I’ve been thinking about posting this all of
afternoon and tonight she is uber-fussy (dunno why) and we’ve
gone through several bibs and two changes of clothes. That’ll
teach me to even think about an end in sight :) Seriously
though, I think she’s just having a bad night, but improving
overall.

On another note, they say that
babies look to their caregivers for guidance in uncertain
situations (I think everyone does really) and I’ve been
noticing a lot lately that with Eve lately. When she seems
uneasy or unsure of what’s going on, she looks over to see how
I’m reacting. It’s kind of cool. Alan and Lex were roughhousing
earlier today and Eve was sitting on the floor watching them.
She kept giving them little, hesitant smiles, but also kept
looking at me to see how I was reacting. When she saw that I
was ok or laughing along with them, then she gave big, happy
smiles. She’s so sweet!

‘Cause she deserves to have her picture on
the blog ;)


PS. Love the new hair
cut!