The Mouse Family Blog

This Monday, my mom's group headed to Homer Glen to an apple orchard. The fall weather certainly had arrived...the night before Homer Glen had tornado warnings. It was a windy and chilly day, but we still had fun picking apples. This orchard was low frills, but they had a huge selection of "you pick" produce including eggplants, all kinds of peppers, raspberries, tomatoes of all kinds and cabbages. Thanks Leslie for the pics and for your hospitality!

On the way back from walking to the grocery store, some bongo drummers
were taking lessons in the band shell at Welles Park. We stopped for a
free concert. Lauren tapped along on her lap as they played.

Leslie and Saundra are in town, so we had breakfast in the square by
our house. Afterward, Lauren danced to the performer in the square.

Grace is such a joy! She is smiling at us now, and cooing and making some baby babble sounds. She loves to watch her big sister. She can see across the room and follows mom with her eyes. She loves to be held, but unlike Lauren never did take to being swaddled, so she sleeps with arms stretched out above her head. And when it comes to sleeping...

Grace hasn't had the same experience that Lauren did at her age, where, as new parents, we were reading tons of baby books and trying very hard to get everything right when it comes to how often you feed the baby and keep the baby awake and get the baby down to sleep. Grace is our 'roll with the punches' baby. She has been eating and sleeping on the go since her first week. She made the transition from sleeping in just a diaper in sunny Florida to sleeping in a footy pj's and down comforters in chilly Chicago. She (and Lauren too) sleep through every kind of construction noise you can imagine. And Grace is enjoying being babied...she hasn't yet made the move into her own room for sleeping...she thinks mom and dad's room is pretty cozy, and mom likes not having to travel down the hallway to feed her.

As far as eating, Grace is a nursing champ. As far as taking a bottle...which box has the bottles packed in it? And which box has the breast pump packed in it? We'll be getting to that soon.

We went to Grace's two month check up and here are her stats:
Weight: 14lb 4 oz
Length: 24.5in

Both are in the 95th+ percentile. In other words, get Grace in a room with 100 babies her age, and she'd be bigger than all of them. We see it happen in the church nursery every Sunday (just kidding, they haven't quite made it to 100 kids in the nursery...yet).

Labels: Monthly Photos

Since we currently have no kitchen, we took Lauren to the German
restaurant here in Lincoln Square.

Earlier in the week, we braved the midday heat to try out Sarasota's Bayfront Park. We packed a picnic lunch, the stroller and Lauren's swimsuit. She loved the fountain, which had tons of other kids running around in it. It featured too many water jets to count and some nice sea creatures to climb on like this sea turtle. There layout was genius...as you can see in the background of this picture, there are stadium like concrete risers that ring the area and keep kids concentreated in the water area. The whole thing is ringed with a fence. One side looks out over the bay - beautiful! Lauren had a blast and Grace was asleep in the stroller most of the time. The only bad part was that it doesn't open until noon - which is why we won't be going back this trip. It's just too darn hot and dangerous to be out in the sun that time of day.

I hope you like the video, but be warned... I apologize for the haphazard filming. I had a hard time looking down at the camera and keeping up with Lauren while at the same time not tripping over other kids, or sea creatures or walking straight into a water jet.

First we have dinner at a picnic table under the giant pine trees by the beach...


Then Grace puts on her bikini and lays out in the sun...


Then Lauren puts Grace in a strangle hold...

And lastly, we wear out Lauren by making her run all over the big beach...

(Warning: This post is wantonly boastful and long.)

For those whom we've not told, we closed on our house! The old place in Wicker Park sold without a hitch and we closed on a new place in the Lincoln Square neighborhood.

It's not much to look at now, but Liz and I have big plans. These are the pictures from before we closed, in all its shag carpet, plastic brick and wood paneled glory. It's going to be a lot of work and a lot of stress -- and that's just choosing the contractors -- but it's a big house in an awesome neighborhood.










We may not be a block from the supermarket anymore, but we're still within walking distance of both major train systems, a big selection of restaurants, a massive park, a huge library (makes Wicker Park's feel like a convenience store) and a neighborhood square with a fountain where people and performers gather. We feel very blessed.

Plans for updates to the Leavitt House are starting to take shape, though never as fast as you'd hope. As Clark and I spend more time on the house, it's become clear that someone spent a ton of time, attention, and money on the house in the 70's. This house would have looked awesome back then. The house hasn't had as much TLC in the last 20 years, but we're thankful that the house mainly needs cosmetic renovations and not major repairs or movement of walls. The project still feels daunting while we work to get our contractors in place and prioritize our list of improvements, but we're happy that it's not a gut rehab -- that never would have worked for us at this stage of life. One of the biggest sellings points of this house is the large family room addition that was added in the 70's, which is rougly the same size as our entire first floor in our old condo, so that gives us a lot of extra space to "cordon" ourselves into while we rennovate.

Our main plans include two new bathrooms, a new kitchen, new hardwood floors (the old ones were wrecked beyond repair by thousands of carpet staples), new drywall to replace the wood paneling, and a whole lot of cosmetic updates. Longer term, we'll probably open up into the unfinished attic to build an awesome master suite and we may tackle the "finished" 70's basement at some point.

At Jace's request, here's a video of Lauren in the pool. She was so engaged in her "toddler work" that Liz had to coax her with questions.

Lots to see here, including a bit of toddler assertiveness, showing Lauren's burgeoning desire to have some control and independence in her world. You can also hear Lauren refer to her "Leavitt House," which she'll come home to in ten days.

At Jace's request, here's a video for Grace hanging out.

Note: It's probably too mundane for most readers, but the Mouse Family junkies should eat it up.

Lauren loves trains and trucks, and any piece of big construction equipment. She was thrilled when the tree trimmers came to Grandma Ann's house to take out a palm tree and trim back some oak branches. They even fished out the coconuts from the tree first and gave them to Lauren. In the top picture, Lauren is sitting at her play table pretending to eating her coconut. Most of the rest of the time she's been calling them "baby coconut"s and treating them as such.

Grace managed to handcuff herself to her carseat on the way home from the Sarasota Public Library today. Lauren posted bail for her and they are both on the lamb.

Grandma Ann and Papa grow some strange cactus at their Florida house.
Here's a night blooming one (fist sized bloom on a person height stalk):


And a big bloom on a small plant (oh and Lauren for perspective):