a bevy of drunken doves

this was the girls playing the other afternoon, not sure what got into them but i tell you it made still having this baby on the inside seem not so terribly bad.


Untitled from Anna Thomas on Vimeo.

my dog.

hound has not left my side all day. this morning the very second ben got up hound climbed up laid his butt on ben's pillow and his head on my stomach (very gently). and that's about as far away as he's wanted to get all day. every truck that's gone by he's actually gotten up and growled in the direction of the window. normally, hound can't even be bothered to lift his head at such street noise. i'm not sure what gives here. since the addition of the pancakes hound and i have sort of been at odds - me angry with him because i'm always picking his fur out of their hair, and hound, in his own way, angry with me because sometimes (only sometimes) i forget to feed him breakfast until like 12:30. i have a lot on my mind, ok? anyway, between our frustrations with each other and the heat it's unusual he would be so clingy - trying not to read too much into it, which i've obviously already done.
he thinks i am crazy.

i think he senses i am going into labor soon, and that his sudden desire to follow me everywhere has nothing to do with the bacon in my pocket.

hilina update

i have to say, hilina's new physical therapist is just amazing and is really doing wonderful things for hilina. he and her occupational therapist (pt works with body mainly, ot works with fine motor skills but because she is so young, their work overlaps a lot) are great people and are becoming extra family members it seems which is great when someone is at your house in the evenings. lately it seems their times have been overlapping and we all sit and joke about how i can't get off the floor anymore, and saida's attitude, it's so great. but really what is great is that they are both just falling in love with hilina and taking such good care of her.
she is making great progress - she can sit on her knees now, she can feed herself, if she is on the couch she can pull herself to standing (she sort of leans into the back of the couch to do it), she can army crawl ALL OVER the place - i mean the list goes on and on. we're hoping she will be up on all fours crawling very soon. her biggest obstacle seems not to be the semi-paresis but her low muscle tone which is very very low.
her posture has improved leaps and bounds thanks to my bony fingers poking her in the back all the time, just look at that trunk rotation!

but the muscles in her legs and arms are a whole different package. so we practice standing a lot. and tucking her left leg under while she's standing so she puts her weight on the right leg. i know i've been saying this for months, but her brace should be here this week and it should really help a lot.
until then we are using some yellow rainboots to keep her ankle from turning in. she was cracking up in this picture, not sure if you can tell through the ball in her mouth.
she is really making me laugh all the time as she starts to become more mobile and take on the world a little bit. she is so easy to make laugh and willing to just go along with whatever. sometimes ben and i wonder if she really is an angel. which makes it kinda funny when she is crying because she doesn't want to have her diaper changed.

she is loving books these days, they both are actually, and this morning i peaked in the nursery and she was laying on her back holding onto her leg in the air reading.
practicing standing at the coffee table

so proud of herself!

and just for comparison here is our first picture of hilina we saw. we think she is about 3 months. gentle and sweet even then.

saida turns one!

it's hard to believe my sweet beast is one but she surely is. when i think about how much she's changed since i first met her 7 months ago - it's staggering. she was so serious and quiet - sizing us up, figuring out how in the world she ended up in new york from ethiopia. and now she is so, just, so much of everything. as her personality forms she's becoming so particular and hilarious and i absolutely cannot wait for her to start talking because i think she is really going to have some ideas to tell us how we can do things better around here. our friend said once she thinks saida will have her mba by the time she's like 17 and be ordering people around, and i can totally see it. especially now that when you give her anything to play with she pretends it's a phone. i'm pretty sure "dadadadada yeyeyeyeyeyeyeyeey HUUUUH" is baby talk for "why isn't that report on my desk i asked for it 15 minutes ago?!?!?!"


here was our first picture of her. we think she's about 2 months. we knew as soon as we saw this picture that she was going to be a pistol.

continuing with what's becoming tradition we had a casual breakfast at tom's. the girls are only mildly obsessed with pancakes and are so enthralled with the elaborate decorations that i can even bring them there by myself - it helps that everyone there is so nice and loves them so much.

in the morning the weather was kinda crummy so we opted for the brooklyn museum before a nice walk. the girls found it thrilling. they fell asleep for about 30 minutes which ended up being the only nap they took all day. when you're one you can boycott a real nap!
unfortunately we had to go to the pediatrician for their one year check ups after the museum. it took me months to get the back to back appointments and there was no other time to do it when ben would be able to help me get them there. so here is our big girl after she had to get her shots.

normally such a ham, she was sort of mortified to have everyone singing to her and looking at her. she looks like she's about to burst into tears as we encourage her to eat her ice-cream and cookie, poor thing. she was exhausted but when you're one you can stay up past your bedtime!

when you're one, you get to eat ice-cream with your hands!

her big present was.... A NEW PUPPY! isn't she so cute?!?!?! here she is helping saida open her presents.
just kidding, not even we are that crazy. that's silvia's puppy.

playing with her new blocks!

the girls playing with all their friends from the neighborhood.

a lily from ben
for those of you wondering, no benny anytime soon. only one centimeter dilated, the good doctor thinks another few weeks probably. another 2 weeks with this freaking belly!

the g says guh, the g says guh, every letter makes a sound the g says guh - like GaGa

gaga came to save me. for an entire week. it was the greatest week ever because when you are nesting without central air it's less like "why isn't my linen closet straight, i have to clean it right now!" and more like "man, i want my linen closet to be clean! why isn't it clean?! i'm so hot! wah!" but gaga swooped in and took over my kitchen and the babies and ordered me to bed and it was magnificent. i actually had a cup of coffee and watched regis and kelly. in peace. and truthfully they were kind of annoying but boy does kelly have some biceps! i digress. i wish i could say i am rested but i think it's kind of impossible to be rested at 38 weeks, but i feel mentally restored and ready to get this baby out! (everything is going great by the way, the good doctor thinks he's 8lbs give or TAKE a 1/2 pound). i blame the potential 8 pounder on all the amazingly delicious food we ate last week. i even got a thanksgiving dinner one night! i felt like the luckiest girl in the world.


fun in the laundry basket


what a ham hilina is. no matter where we are, what she's doing, anything, you pull out a camera these days and she's all "hey there! cheese!"

i have a bone to pick with you internets! no one warned me of this molar thing - that they could cut molars at one year and that the time it took for one tooth to break through would seem like an eternity. gaga told me that if an adult had to cut a molar we'd be like rolling on the ground banging our head on the floor. and i was pretty close to doing that just watching (hearing) saida go through it. bless her heart she was just miserable. thankfully, i was on vacation and so gaga was her distraction during the day, i just had to work nights! but gaga had to do overtime with a teething baby.
gaga had to give zerberts.

gaga had to hug her lots

and when that didn't work gaga had to hang up her upside down till the giggles escaped

we all want gaga to come back :(

too tired, can't write. very happy days. pictures here.

breakfast at wimbledon

what can i say? ben loves tennis. so watching the williams' final was of course a family event. and what a match! it started with homemade blueberry pancakes.
YU UM.




hilina found them tasty, too.


ben, not so secretly, cannot wait for the day when he can take the girls to the tennis court. he particularly thinks saida will be a tennis star. i wonder what she thinks about that?


serena opened the match with a beating.
come on venus!


and come on she did. all the way to the trophy. hilina was proud.


all that textbook tennis got saida in the teaching mood. so she decided to help our doula point out what birthing a baby is really like.

diagram 1: "the finer points of labor"


all those pancakes, excellent tennis, and rhythmic birth breathing, left me feelin' the spirit.

h is for happy (birthday)!

we went to tom's restaurant to celebrate hilina's birthday because what do you feed pancakes on their birthday? pancakes of course! ben's birthday was today, and i think gus over at tom's gave ben the best present he never knew he wanted - he told him our children were so well behaved and well disciplined - it was music to his ears, i think he might have even blushed a little with pride.
here i am teaching hilina how to make my coffee since now that she's one she's going to have some responsibilities around here.

now tomorrow it's your turn!

we went to the park to swing because it's hilina's favorite.

roshi, themba, and little kusha flew in all the way from malawi - i wish they had been able to stay longer, but it was the best 15 hour visit ever since the kids were instantly best friends playing/stealing everything from each other. saida met her match in kusha, and i think it's really interesting how much she backed down to him - even when he stole her bottle right out of her mouth.


hilina opened her presents!

and she tried to grab the flame while we were singing her happy birthday. btw the birthday cake ben went out for on sunday? he got her a tofu cheesecake. can you see me rolling my eyes here? don't worry, i covered it in ice-cream. made with milk. and sugar.

and then it was time to get all the tofu off in the tub. these pictures will be held against them in high school for the purpose of embarrassing the heck out of them. why? because we can. kusha sat on saida just like she sits on hilina and you know, she didn't even notice. hilina's new bath toys were a hit!


3 peas in a pod/tub