botanic gardens

last week the girls and i went down to the botanic gardens to see the cherry trees blooming. i love the tulips, really, but the cherry trees are too beautiful to ignore.

it is possible to look beautiful while looking for more dirt to put in your mouth


this is hilina's thinking face, or as ben calls it, "her solving for x face"

wearing my hat

oh, brooklyn

there is a family in our neighborhood who have a few kids. their names are: kaya 2, cootie, mama-do, and baby asthma. mama-do is the only boy, and no, they aren't nicknames. i shit you not.

saida has discovered two new things these last few weeks - belly buttons and zerberts
what's under there?

thpppppppt!

moving on to her next victim

teaching her sister bad habits


i'm sure deep down benny appreciates all the attention although he pretends he doesn't because he kicks a lot when they are touching my stomach. like "hey this is my room - get off!"

sunday morning shots after which ben decides to go ahead and buy a gun. because that's what fathers do when they have pretty daughters, they defend.

saida is an intense little girl. i mean intense. intensely happy, intensely curious, intensely loud... she doesn't do anything half way. lately she's just dancing and moving and shaking and grabbing and rocking, and just constantly in motion. and she's so pleased with herself about it which you know because of an intensely loud screech she lets out when she's proud. she is so close to crawling, rocking back and forth and doing the whole army crawl thing - please pray for us because she is going to be so fast.

first things first: this is what my house looked like on sunday when we woke up.

and this morning i unpacked my last box before ben left for work. we haven't hung anything on the walls yet, but still...that makes me a total badass

although, i did not know your forearms could get sunburned by pushing a stroller

i think god knew i was as sick of the weather as you all, and so my birthday dawned sunny and ended up being the warmest day of the year since october. i wore flip flops and the girls and i went on a picnic with our friends. it was freaking perfect.

the girls were as excited as i was


p.s. thanks for all the emails about my landlord, i'm glad you all hate him as much as i do. somehow, it helps.

evil landlord strikes again

so the evil landlords aren't giving us our deposit back even after they said they would. even though we had it all worked out and he said it was fine for us to move out in the middle of the month. the apartment was so clean, i wasted so much time trying to make sure that he couldn't fault us for anything because i was stupid enough to take him at his word that he would never be "the kind of person who would do something like that." i never really understood why david was always asking god to do bad things to his enemies. but it's 12:15 am and I can't sleep because i'm just astounded that there are people this horrible in the world. people that harass a new mom with two babies when she is pregnant. i mean who steals $1,000 from a couple who spent their life savings on adoption? what's wrong with them? and can i sit outside next week when they have the open house for the apartment warning people not to move in? oh wait, you didn't know? WE FREAKING MOVED NEXT DOOOR and have to see both of them ALL THE TIME and they pretend like everything is ok. and i'm all, it's not ok! you are really bad people.

i'll post some pictures sometime soon. when i can find the usb cable.

i love this picture.

why are you awake?

the other night at about 9 hilina started singing. she's a pretty good sleeper, usually logging in about 11-12 hours at night. so it was unusual for her to be up. at first we just let her go figuring she was a weirdo and not really awake. but after about 45 minutes of her singing and laughing in her crib we decided she WAS awake and we should get her out lest she wake up her louder, less tolerant sister. this video is just a short sampling of what she was like when we brought her onto the couch, until about 11 when we decided we couldn't laugh anymore and she needed to go back in her room.

sharing can be fun!

we shot this the other day- it was a long day. not really. it's just funny how they want what ever the other has. after doing this for awhile we actually decided to ignore it instead of saying no and giving it back to the person who lost the toy. and guess what? no more tears! now the one who has lost the toy just finds something else to play with. i figure they are going to be sharing everything for a long time so the sooner they learn to work it out on their own the better. here they are fighting though, cause who wants to see a video of kids playing nicely?

elusive shot: two smiling babies

i think everyone who doesn't have kids is a little smug when they see parents making total asses out of themselves to try and get their kids to smile for a picture. and then they have their own kids and it's all rooster crows and bird whistles and in the case of hilina pretending to cough (this cracks her up). i wish there was a soundtrack to this shoot.





and this photo is for those who have wondered if indeed it looks like i swallowed a balloon. this is my belly when i was around 20 weeks.

black and white weekend shots