Hittin' the Road

Today Lena is taking her first trip outside Michigan. We are driving to Indiana. First we are going to meet her Uncle Scott, whom she has not gotten to meet yet. Then we are having dinner at Aunt Amy's house. Tomorrow she will meet her Great-Grandma Marian for the first time.

Then on Friday we are driving to Missouri. Friday night we are having dinner with some friends and spending the night in St. Louis. Then on Saturday we are driving into Central Missouri to visit my grandparents. My family is throwing a party to celebrate my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary and my grandma's 80th birthday. Lena will get to meet almost all of my mom's family on Saturday. Then on Sunday we will go to church (there is an LCMS congregation in Warsaw), then drive back to St. Louis. On Monday we come home.

We are excited that Lena gets to meet all of these new people. We hope she likes to travel! I guess we'll find out! I'll post pics when we get back.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend.

Lullaby CD

I bought Lena a lullaby CD. We have this pretty, new CD player that we got to match her room, but we didn't have any good CDs I could play when I got up in the night to feed her.

I read about this one in Parenting Magazine last summer right after I learned I was pregnant. It's called Siente - Night Songs from Around the World. It is neat because it contains lullabies in different languages. It has Basque, Irish, Russian, Indonesian, Italian, Czech, Belgian and Acadian, Brazilian, Sephardic, Guatemalan, and Mexican. It is so beautiful. Now Mama needs to do some research to find out what some of those are! Before I know it, she'll be asking, "Mama, what's "Sephardic?" Even though she's not aware of it, I think it's good to expose young babies to foreign languages as early as possible.

And it works as a lullaby CD, too. I tried it out on her this afternoon and she was asleep before we hit track 3. I kept it playing while she slept. It's almost 80 minutes of music. You have to watch out, though. It almost put me to sleep too!

Yet Another Blog!

So I just today discovered a new website. www.whatbird.com



I was looking to identify that pretty yellow bird that I posted a pic of here. It has a neat bird identifier system. Then I found out you can create your own blog and photo gallery about birds you have seen, etc. So of course, I said, "Sign me up!"



Here is the link if you're interested:



http://www.whatbird.com/forums/blogs/aseleeners_bird_sightings/default.aspx



I just realized that now makes four blogs for me! Yikes!

Maternity Testing

Does anyone know if Maury does shows on "maternity" testing? After seeing this evidence, Jim is suspicious that Lena is actually Erykah Badu's baby.

Bird Alert!!

I saw this bird at one of our feeders today. Jim guessed correctly that it's a rose-breasted grosbeak.

My First Mother's Day

Today was my first Mother's Day. It was lovely. Dad got me this beautiful orchid and rose corsage. And Lena gave me this pretty carnation. Look at her holding it!

I got the best Mother's Day gift. Two tickets to see the Cardinals play the Tigers in June! How neat! I'm so excited. I had resigned myself to the fact that this would be the first year in five that I didn't get to go to a game. But no longer! What a wonderful gift. Thanks so much to Lena (and whoever helped her buy the tickets, because I don't think she has a credit card yet:)

We didn't really do anything exciting. I got to read the entire Sunday paper uninterrupted (because Baby and Daddy both took a long nap!) We went to Hastings for a yummy treat and to buy Lena some new jammies because she has grown out of the 0-3 month ones. She's not chunky, just really long. They were pulling on her shoulders.

How blessed I am to be the mama of this beautiful little girl! She is such a happy child. I thank God for her everyday and can't wait to watch her grow up.

Happy Mother's Day to my mom and to everyone else out there!

Walking through the wildlife

We took a long walk today down the Paul Henry Trail. We walk this trail a few times a week, but today we went further than we have ever been on it. Our total walk was over 3 miles! I thought I was going to die towards the end, but I made it!

I decided to grab the camera this time, because last time we went we saw so many neat animals but no way to capture them. I'm glad I did; we saw some great stuff today and now I'm able to share it with you!

We have seen a lot of these cute little yellow birds. They are very tiny and can't sit still for anything! I'm lucky I got this shot; they flit around so much it is hard to get their picture. Anyone know what they are? They are not goldfinches; they are entirely yellow and very small birds. They have a pretty call too, but I can't remember now what it sounds like.

There are a lot of swans along this trail. They hang out in Mill Pond, next to the river. This one was floating around with one of his legs sticking straight out.

Here is one of a swan on her nest. We see several swan nests along here. Haven't seen any little baby swans yet, though.

Then we saw this little chipmunk hanging out in this tree. They are so cute!

This one might be hard to see, but it's a fish sitting on top of a log in the water. He sat like that for a very long time without moving. We think he must have been trying to catch bugs.

Here's another one that might be hard to spot. It's a wood duck. He and his girlfriend were hanging out on the banks of the river.

See this one? It's a litte bitty snake. He was slithering around right next to the pathway. Not sure what kind he is, but he's cute too.

This one's neat. It's a muskrat taking some grass to his nest. See how he carries it in his mouth as he swims?

There are always turtles to be seen along the trail. And it's common for them to be all piled up on the same log. Once we counted 24 turtles sitting on one log!

This is a little chickadee. We get chickadees at our feeders at our house too.

Here's an unidentified flower. There are several along the trail. I think they are so unique because they have three petals. You don't see that very often. Anyone know what it is?

Another unidentified plant. Big umbrella-like things.

And finally, a weird stone thingy. It's too tall to be a headstone. It says "J 72" on both sides.

We can't wait until Lena is big enough to enjoy seeing all this wildlife for herself.

Gotta love it

We went garage saling today. It was so much fun. We found lots of cute baby clothes for Lena Bean. One of the things we got was this cute hat to keep the sun out of her face. I think she likes it; what do you think?

Bassinet acrobatics

So Lena is finally sleeping in her bassinet. Since around Easter, she had only been able to sleep in her car seat. It sat next to my side of the bed. I felt guilty that she was sleeping there every night, but she just didn't want to sleep laying flat.

Well, I kept trying and finally. . .success! She sleeps in her bassinet all night and doesn't fuss a bit (unless it's eating time.) It's so great to have her sleeping in a real bed! And no more lugging the heavy, bulky car seat up and down the stairs everyday.

But I have noticed that she doesn't wake up in the position I put her down in. Every night she manages to turn herself at least 90 degrees. And always to her left.

See, now, I lay her down straight, with her head like between the teddy bears. And by morning, this is what I see. What a goof!

We've also noticed that she is sucking her thumb. While we try to discourage her from doing it, we have to admit, it's darn cute.

Tulip Time Festival

Today we went to the Tulip Time Festival in Holland, Michigan. We went with our friends, Jon and Sarah. They have a daughter, Madelyn, who is three weeks older than Lena.

It was the first time Lena and Madelyn met.

We had fun walking around and looking at the different types of tulips. We never knew there were so many!

We also saw a lot of people dressed up in Dutch outfits. I think they do a fashion show. They had Dutch dancers there today.

The girls even got to meet Benjamin Franklin!

We took lots of pictures of the girls with the tulips. To see more of them, check out my album on Picasa.

Here is a slideshow of the different types of tulips we saw.

We can't wait to go again next year!

In Memorial

We just found out today that friends of my parents, the Hoffs, lost their son, Wayne, last weekend. We are deeply shocked and saddened by this loss.

The Hoff family is in our prayers.

Wayne Hoff and me at his first birthday party, August 1980.