Elliott enjoys crepes for breakfast	taking a nice dip with Dad	Whoopee!
our long-legged girl	Elliott is very excited to "help clean babe"	Yeah, I could get used to this..
pouring washcloth water onto Lorelei (the floor was soaked when we were done)	clean babe	Hey bro, don't forget between the toes, ok?
clean babe, asleep once again..	clematis is out in force	ahh..
Lilies.. summertime!	can you just smell it?	Elliott and Grandma play the kissing game
After reading some bunny books, we decide to take Basil out for a visit	cute bun bun bun	Bunnies can't eat fig newtons, right?
Here, have this! I'm a nice boy!	aww..	Easy kiddo! (how not to hold a bunny)
That's better	only Elliott can make "snuggling" an aerobic activity	At Jamie's 9th birthday party, Elliott takes a swing at the pinata
Meanwhile, Heidi graciously offers to hold sleeping Lorelei	After the party, Elliott falls asleep on the couch for the first time ever!	Making slime (with Rachel's slime kit)
Elliott enthusiastically stirs the glop	Little, big	Elliott on the floor
Lorelei on the floor	Elliott can't stop touching her - "I love babe" he says, as he envelopes her arm in his and wiggles until she cries
Dairy Day at our local farmer's market - Lorelei and Elliott wear cow costumes	Elliott pets Vermontica 2005	Vermontica is 2 months old (same as Lorelei) and shy
Elliott asks Vermontica's keeper questions	skeptical cow	We retired to the river for some rock throwing and wading
Orin, Elliott's good friend, comes along	After a change of clothes, the kids warm up on the playground - whoosh!
Mike is the tickle troll	hey, wrong way spidey!

Random notes from the trenches:

Lorelei's face rash has completely cleared up, finally. It's funny how easy it is to get used to.. I hardly remember she had a rash unless I look back at the pictures.

She's really talking now - she can say "ng-uhh" and "eoww" and loves to tell people stories when they hold her face to face. She'll almost always smile if smiled to. She loves lying on her back and looking at things, like the high contrast mobile, shadows, fans, the pooh wall border in Elliott's room.. anything, really.

She had her 2 month checkup this week - 14 lbs and 24.5" long - 97th percentile in both height and weight. She seems perfectly healthy. She tolerated the shots SO much better than Elliott. I gave her a little grape tylenol, which she drooled out but didn't gag on. She screamed, of course, but calmed down within a minute or two, nursed and fell asleep. She seems fine now. The bandaids are attached with crazy glue, I swear. Next time I'm taking them off in the parking lot. I think taking the bandaids off is the worst part of getting shots. She still has a strange coloration on her legs below the knees - a very slight change in pinkness. The ped decided to refer her to a dermatologist for a look, because he'd never seen anything like it. We're not concerned.

The nurses both called her "Lorel-ee", and an acquaintance in the waiting room called her Laura. Oh well. So much for trying to pick a name that was easy to spell and pronounce - we failed on both counts, but we still like the name. For the record, it's "lore-uh-lye" when pronounced (ironically, if it was spelled "lie" it would be pronounced "lee" - it's a german thing, where the last letter in the vowel combination of ie is the one that it sounds like - so "ie" sounds like saying the letter "e" and "ei" sounds like saying the letter "i"). Just remember that it rhymes with pie and cry, which makes it great for making songs up (a favorite is "Lorelei, Lorelei, you are as sweet as apple pie, please be happy and do not cry, and we will call you Lorelei").

Everything is so much mellower this time around. At around 3 weeks, Elliott got a weird lump on his neck behind his ear. I noticed it on Saturday night, of course, and freaked out. I called Tracy, afraid he was getting cancer and going to die or something, and she said, "uh Jess, it's probably a lymph node, I think that's pretty normal". We brought him in, and sure enough it was. Turned out he had minor torticollis though, so it was a good thing we brought him in anyway.

My point though, is that I felt Lorelei's lymph nodes a bit in her neck around 1 month old too, and thought, "oh, that again" and it was no big deal. So many things that alarmed me about him, just don't get me too worried with her. Perhaps it has something to do with me getting twice as much sleep with her too. She's much bigger too, so I have no fears of her starving to death and disappearing.

Lorelei's settled into a nice routine of awake around 9am (because of Elliott), asleep around 10:30-1:30, awake until about 3, then both kids nap at 3, and she sleeps until around 6 (Elliott sleeps 60-90 minutes most days) off and on.. then she's up until about 9 except for a short catnap. Sometimes she'll wake up again around 11 when we go to bed, but she's easy to settle most nights (and hysterically overtired other nights).

Elliott on the other hand, is going through a very whiny weepy stage. I almost think he's fighting an illness. He doesn't show any outward animosity toward "babe", as he calls her, but he just breaks into tears at any little thing, like not being able to find the money to his cash register, or dropping his spoon while eating, or the sudden realization that we have no more watermelon in the house (major catastrophe). The number of times I have one kid on each hip.. it's a good thing Lorelei has some head control and is an easy going baby.

When things are going his way though, he's a charmer. He loves going outside. We made cow costumes and dressed up as cows for the Dairy Day at our local farmer's market. He enjoyed his cow cat, and got a prize of a little toy cow and some stickers. He got to pet Vermontica the cow. She's the same age as Lorelei, though a bit bigger. :-) Then we met Orin and went for a dip in the river, followed by some drying time on at the school playground. We finally dragged ourselves home at almost 9pm for a late supper.