Everything is blooming right now as DC transitions from the grey, barren winter to it's lush summer.  Spring around here is beautiful.  We got brave and joined the masses on the mall so that Elodie could experience her first Cherry Blossom Festival.

Her dad really knows how to make her smile.

The festival was packed and the metro was crazy.  Elle loved her first metro ride, flirting and smiling with everyone that looked at her.  We didn't end up staying too long, but got a few pictures to prove she was there :)

Meanwhile, the trees in our neighborhood are out of control beautiful.  One neighbor's dogwoods are just gorgeous, so we make sure to go past them on our evening walks.

It's hard to believe that Elle will already be 5 months old this week.   She's getting bigger every day!

We asked for and received two large wall maps for a wedding gift (thank you Andy and Nancy!) with the intention of creating pinned maps of our travels and now, almost two years later, have finally gotten around to it!  yay!  We also have a sad plant.

The guys at home depot were nice enough to cut us pieces of pine to make the frames.  At home I lined them up with the maps to make sure my measurements were right before staining and assembling.

 I then glued cork rolls onto backing, glued the map to the cork, and screwed the backing to the frame.

^^Double checking the sizing before gluing the map to the cork board^^

 Everything magically lined up!

 Once it's finished, we got to do the most fun part of this project - putting the pins on the map.  Purple for places I've been, brown for Eric, and white for places we've been together :)

She makes me smile with my heart :)

Something bittersweet about getting married is knowing that with that person was the last time you would fall in love.  You won't get those butterflies, that crazy early infatuation, it's one of the best parts of living and you won't get to experience it again. You're trading it for something more rewarding, but there's still something sad about the thought.

Then life gives you a wonderful surprise! A head-over-heels, stare into each other's eyes, totally absorbed, shout it from the mountain tops love affair that you never saw coming. 

So now I will return to my love, my valentine, with her gifts of slobbery kisses, sweet baby breath, and constant happy smiles.

Happy Valentine's Day!

This is an Elodie post!

It's winter, and we're home together on maternity leave.  Life lately consists of lots of snuggly naps, hot tea, eating, feeding, picture books, and living room dance parties.  The girls have gotten comfortable with and protective of our newest family member, it's very cute.

Elodie is already eight weeks old.  I'm glad she's getting bigger, my constant worry about her getting sick gets better and better the older she gets, but being eight weeks old also means I only have four more weeks to be home with her.  The meltdowns about returning to work are in full swing.  She is way too tiny to be without her mom all day and it makes no sense to me to work all day just to pay for someone else to take care of my baby.  I've tried to convince Eric to move to Europe multiple times in the last couple of months.  Seriously.

Before Elodie was born, tons of people gave us insider knowledge and advice.  Most of it was complaining about the bad stuff, although we had a few friends share the good.  And some of the bad is true.  Sleep is a little rough in the beginning, your body is wrecked, and you do change a lot of diapers.  That sounded terrible to the pre-baby Katie, but then the baby comes and you honestly just don't care about the bad things.  It's so cool that you just shoved a human out of your body and you both survived, and then you get to take the cutest little human home and play with her all day long.  It's like you got the best Christmas toy of all time, an incredible toy that provides endless entertainment.  And you LOVE them on top of it, more than anything.  It's so oversimplified to say there is just good and bad to having a baby, or to just complain and say it's hard and you're tired.  Maybe it is hard, but it's also wonderful, frustrating, exciting, cool, weird, funny, fascinating, overwhelming, and magical.  It is a trip like you have never been on.

We were staring at E sleeping the other day and I told Eric it's kind of sad that she'll never love us as much as we love her.  He was like, that's not true!  So I asked if he loved his parents as much as he loves Elodie.  Nope.  And we've only known her for 2 months.

I want to throw out there how impressed I am with the female body.  First, you think you're going to pop open like in Alien, but you don't.  Then you think you're going to literally die of pain, but you don't.  Then you think you'll never recover, never look the same.  But, miraculously, you do.  We are programmed to forget the pain of childbirth, otherwise we wouldn't do it again.  I remember asking Eric exactly that during labor, "who would do this AGAIN?!"  Knowing ahead of time that all would eventually be forgotten, I made it a point to journal while in recovery to make sure to have an accurate and detailed account of what went down.  It's a very scary journal entry.  But, yeah, I'd do it again.  Blame biology.  And blame her ridiculous cuteness!!!

 Like these monster feet.  Two pairs.

My "postpartum anxiety" has me convinced she has a fever at all times, so she's half dressed a lot around here.  Being half dressed also makes it easier to kiss that tummy!

 ^^She loves her dad so much^^

 ^^Beautiful baby!^^

Wishing a happy New Year to Everyone!

I've always thought these pregnancy time lapse videos were fun, so we made one of our own and decided to share.  Eric didn't cut his hair or shave for nine months while I grew my belly.

It's still hard to believe our human baby girl came from my body.  Kind of doesn't seem real.  Like there is a complete disassociation happening: we got a baby, and I had to go to the hospital for some weird thing, but do those have anything to do with each other?  Pregnancy is strange and beautiful.

Our little love is a month old today, on New Years Day, and we were so happy to ring in the new year with her all night long :)  Best midnight kiss ever.  A happy new year indeed.

She's here!  7 pounds and 10 ounces of perfect.

All I want to do for the rest of my life is kiss and smell my baby.  I never guessed how cool this would be.

Welcome to the world my little love.

oh hey, in case anybody was wondering what was going on in january and february of this year, i can tell you what was going on.  people were doing it.  and they must have been doing it a lot.  and now there are pregnant women and babies everywhere. over the last few weeks, multiple friends, a co-worker, and my own brother! have all had babies.  they were all due before me, so until now i've felt like we've had a good amount of time left.  but now... we are next.  um...WHAT DID WE DO?!  that runs through my mind about once a day when i look down at my stomach and continually ask her "wait, how will you be getting out of there again?"  because no.

sigh.

in the meantime, eric and i are trying our best to do things we won't be able to do in a few weeks.  things that are harder to do with a baby outside of your body than inside of your body.  like sleeping and going to the movies.  it's a little sad that everything we really want to do, like camping or some real traveling with diving and other fun crazy stuff, is pretty much physically impossible at this point.  it seems obvious, but i didn't realize how mentally difficult it would be to be physically limited.  right now i miss feeling normal.  and i really miss being the big spoon.

a while back we planned to take a baby-moon.  we wanted to do something easy that was still exciting and new, and realized that neither of us had ever been out to assateague island in the 6/7 years we've lived here.  so last weekend we packed up the girls and headed to the outer banks.

assateague is a barrier island that's broken up into sections managed by different groups, and we spent most of our time in the national park on the northern part of the island.  in this area, about 150 feral horses roam freely and are easily seen throughout the park from your car, on the beaches, or on trails.  we've heard that in summertime the horses will frolic in the ocean to cool off.  that's something i'd like to see!  last weekend was a bit rainy and cold, so the horses were mostly on the more protected bay side.  we think the rain must have kept away tourists.  it was like we had the park to ourselves and the horses were out everywhere.  eric kept telling me i was getting too close, but i can't help it if a horse comes my way :)

 they definitely had a wild quality about them.  messy hair and attitudes.  they kept ramming each other and showing their teeth.  it was comical and at the same time cute.

there were no horses to be found on our beach walks, but it's just not possible to ever get enough of that salt air so we kept going back for more.  as always, bella wasn't having much fun while belle couldn't resist running into the water, especially after the sun came out.

we woke up to sunshine and had two quick stops on the way back to the beach: a visit with a goat, and the dog park!  goats are just the best.  he's smiling for the picture.

 yay, the sun!  let's run and roll!

one night we made it over to ocean city and took a stroll along the board walk.  the arcade was amazing.  so much stimulation.

off the island we were just lazy.  sleeping, movies, games, snuggling the girls, and eating were about all we did.  every meal was a date.  so mission accomplished.  babymoon complete. we'll try our bests to maintain this babymoon attitude until it's go time.  

go time? wait how is this happening again? how do babies get here?!  oh crap!