Still the first week?!

That's it, guys! I'm calling it!

I'm never going to get caught up on sharing all the pictures I'm taking. And I just keep taking more. Like, eventually I have to stop taking pictures of every child holding this sweet baby every day, right? But so far I am not sure that's happened.

But so much other stuff is happening that I can hardly keep up. Today we put up the tree. Tomorrow we're blessing Phoebe. I'm still working on finals. And somehow Phoebe is two weeks old and we're getting ready to say goodbye to Grandpa (I'm a little bit scared of that because Alexander has basically been glued to him the whole time he's been here and...once that's not an option...*gulp*). We've been playing games and celebrating Thanksgiving and...I'm still working on last week's pictures.

Some games:

Some snuggles:

Some basking in the sun:

Phoebe's been trying on a lot of different hats. Someone sent this one out with Grandpa:

Look—the kids still like holding her (even though all our backs and arms are aching from holding her so much; she's still rarely ever put down):

Ending up in the comfy chair nursing Phoebe with Alexander and Zoë perched on either side of me was was a funny story...

It was November 18, so we'd only been home from the hospital for a couple of days. I was napping and Andrew was watching the little kids. Grandpa had been busy taking various children off on "adventures" (mostly they wanted to go to the bookstore and the doughnut shop), so he was out with someone. Daddy was watching the littles and had expressly prohibited them from going upstairs while Phoebe and I were resting.

But, soon there was a knock on my door and even though I didn't answer, Zoë let herself in. 

"Oh, sorry if I disturbed you," she said. "I just...am...sorry if I disturbed you...but I did really wait a long time for you to finish sleeping and I"m not sure if I can wait any longer. So if I disturbed you, I'm sorry."

Keep in mind, Phoebe and I were in bed. I had a sleeping mask on. It was fairly obvious she was disturbing us, but I appreciated her sincerity. She really couldn't wait any longer to see her baby sister. Disturbing our slumber was just an (un)intended consequence of her burning desire to cuddle that baby.

So she climbed up onto the bed with us and started singing to Phoebe: "Oh, Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe. You’re so cute! Even when mom puts you in footie jammies and we can’t see your cute toes… I don’t know why she does that. It makes no sense, does it, Phoebe?"

And then...we heard Andrew's chair scrape across the floor in his office (which is below the bedroom) and then heard his footsteps echo down the hallway.

"Oh, no!" Zoë gasped.

"What?" I asked.

"It's just...I thought I heard Dad's footsteps and I was afraid he was coming up here!"

"And why would that be bad?" I asked her.

"Oh, because he made me promise not to sneak up to your room and wake you up...but here I am...so...*gulp*...you know..."

It was so funny! I texted Andrew to let him know what she'd done and he sneaked up the stairs and spooked her. But the damage had already been done and then I ended up nursing like this...

Here's some bedtime snuggles with Grandpa:

And some bedtime snuggles with Mommy:

Phoebe likes to rest her chin on her fists. Miriam thought that was funny, so she posed along with her, both of them emulating "The Thinker."

Here's Rachel holding Phoebe. If one child holds her she usually ends up cycling through them all in rapid succession. I have the least number of pictures of my best helpers because...when I don't need to supervise the holding of the baby I tend to go off to do other things I need to do. So there are few of Rachel, few of Miriam, and almost none of Daddy and Grandpa (though I've been trying to be more mindful of that, so there should be some pictures forthcoming...and by "should be" I mean "definitely are").

Phoebe rather enjoys basking in the morning sunlight.

Did I already share this picture of a little giggle Phoebe shared with Zoë? It's one of my favourite pictures of Phoebe:

Here's Phoebe resting on my lap while I pump. I know pumping increases milk supply, but it also decreases the risk of mastitis. And my supply takes forever to regulate on its own, so we're pumping for now. Even though I swore I wasn't going to because I'd be "too busy" (that declaration occurred before my milk came in, though; once my milk was here I was singing an entirely different tune).

More sunbathing:

Hanging out...

Benjamin, you'll notice, is missing from a lot of these pictures. He's interested in his sister and he does love to hold her (I have pictures of him with her in other sets of pictures), but mostly he's been happy to have nearly unlimited Minecraft/LEGO/whatever time. He's in for quite the wake up call when we restart our school days again!

Somewhere I have a cute video of Alexander having some morning snuggles with Phoebe (the morning after the pictures above were taken) and he's giving the sweetest little eyebrow wiggle. He's so proud of his sister!

And now I'll try to catch up on some more recent pictures....