Cordelia and Estella are seven months old!

I'm finding that life with a toddler, two infants, and a dissertation to defend is BUSY! Something has to be put on the back-burner for a while, and recently it has been posting to the blog. But our babies turned seven months old recently (yay!) and I didn't want to get too far behind in chronicling their development, so here is a recent picture of our beautiful little girls. Cordelia is on the left and Estella is on the right.


Both Estella and Cordelia have grown up so much in the past month! Just a few days after they turned six months old, both babies mastered new skills: Cordelia learned to sit up well by herself, and Estella learned to army crawl! Interestingly, one month after they mastered these skills, Estella still can't sit up by herself and Cordelia still can't army crawl. I am reminded every day that these are two different babies who are developing differently and that there is no one "right" way for a child to develop.

Cordelia is loud. She has a loud cry, a loud (and wonderful!) laugh, and generally loud vocalizations. We almost have to wear earplugs when we feed Cordelia because, mere seconds after one bite of food is in her mouth, she is loudly squealing for another bite! More than anything else, Cordelia loves to "talk" to Adelaida. Whenever she sees her big sister, Cordelia makes a loud, happy noise that Adelaida loves to hear!

Since Estella has become mobile, nothing stops her from getting what she wants -- and more often that not, that is a foot! When we lay her down on the floor, she immediately looks around to find Cordelia, then makes a bee-line for Cordelia's feet. They must taste really good, because both of the babies like to chew on Cordelia's feet! If Cordelia isn't on the floor with her, she'll crawl toward my feet, Dale's feet, Adelaida's feet, or any shoes she can find -- we've recently started putting our shoes on top of the coffee table or TV stand to keep them out of Estella's mouth.

Here are pictures from the first seven months of the girls' lives:

one-month-old Estella


one-month-old Cordelia


three-month-old Estella


three-month-old Cordelia


five-month-old Estella


five-month-old Cordelia


seven-month-old Estella


seven-month-old Cordelia


And here is a bonus picture of my three beautiful girls together -- Estella, Adelaida, and Cordelia.

Adelaida's first haircut

A few days after Adelaida's third birthday, she had her first haircut.


I cut Dale's hair regularly, so we made a big deal out of Dale getting a haircut and told Adelaida that she could get a haircut too if she wanted. She wanted Dale to go first, so he sat down in the chair, I draped the towel around his shoulders, -- and suddenly Adelaida wanted it to be her turn!

So I sat Adelaida down in the barstool and handed the camera to Dale . My intention was to cut about one inch off. Since her hair has never been cut before, it was pretty scraggly at the bottom and I wanted to even it up. Of course, she was very squirmy and I'm not a great hairstylist, so when I was done with the first set of cuts, I had to take another half inch off to make it somewhat even.


Her hair is still not perfectly straight, but it is so much better than it used to be! Just getting rid of her scraggly ends was a great benefit. And despite cutting about an inch and a half off, her hair is still pretty long. I'm not sure when we'll cut it again, but we probably won't wait another three years!

A busy Momma and a wonderful Daddy

I will start this post by acknowledging that I haven't posted much lately and, to those who look forward to watching my kiddos grow over this blog, I'm sorry! And to further disappoint you all, I'm not planning to post much in the next month or so. But we are still taking pictures of the kids and I have an ever-growing list of subjects for the blog, and I promise that I will catch up with it eventually.

There is a reason for my negligence -- I am finishing my dissertation and will be defending it on February 29th! This semester, after twelve long years (including a four-year break from grad school, changing schools and concentrations, and three kids), I will finally finish my PhD! But I am going to be working like crazy over the next month, preparing for my defense, so am going to be ignoring all non-essential things like blog posts (and cleaning the house, and starting the garden, and cooking dinners, and anything else I can think of to set aside for another month).

Adelaida, Cordelia, and Estella, of course, can't just be ignored for a month until I'm done with my dissertation. Fortunately, Dale has been wonderful about being the primary care person for them when he is home and has provided me with several hours of uninterrupted time to work this month. And, this being January and the kids (all three of them!) being in school, we've seen our fair share of illnesses recently. The kids have had five unanticipated stay-at-home days in the past two weeks, and I suspect we'll have another tomorrow. Dale has stayed home with them two full days so that I could go to work, and he's already trying to rearrange his schedule to stay home part of the day tomorrow. Thank you Dale!

Last weekend, I walked downstairs to get something and found Dale cuddling with all three of his little girls on the sofa, watching football (or was it a "soccer-ball" game? I don't remember). He was holding both Estella (on the left) and Cordelia, and also had an orange bucket full of legos that Adelaida insisted he hold. He was keeping all three kids happy so I could work. What a super-Daddy!