The Daintys

This weekend we took a little surprise road trip to Chicago so that Leah Catherine could meet her Great Grandmother, Grace Catherine. Leah proved to be a very good little travel companion. The picture below is Leah with her Mom, Grandma, and Great-Grandma!

Today Leah is two whole months old. And after many attempts and pictures in which she appears to be either frowning, grunting, or spitting up, we managed to capture a picture of the smile! We'll find out her current weight and height at her two month check-up on Monday, but she's probably around eleven and a half pounds by now. She's had no problem gaining weight!

We've had really cold weather here for the last two days, and Ryan has gotten TWO snow days! (I think they actually cancelled due to the temperature rather than the snow though.) So we have celebrated with delicious breakfasts! Yesterday we had banana-oat-wheat pancakes, and today, Ryan made what is now my new favorite breakfast. Actually, it might be my new favorite meal period. Biscuits and Gravy. Chocolate Gravy. It's delicious! We ate the entire heaping plate of biscuits and it might be one of the few meals where I can match Ryan bite for bite. I seem to have no quota when it comes to consuming chocolate. If you are not quite sure about this meal, maybe these pictures will persuade you... Here's Leah reclining contently as we ate breakfast. This is what it looks like outside! After breakfast came story time.

Today I took Miss Leah to school to meet the teachers/staff and my students.  It was quite the adventure!  Leah did really well despite being roused from her nap after the car ride there.  My students were very funny; one especially precious girl said, "Mrs. Dainty!  You're skinny again!  Now you match your name: Mrs. Dainty.  Did you know that dainty means small?"  Another boy was standing beside me sniffing Leah's head for several minutes unbeknownst to me until one of the other kids yells, "David!  Stopping smelling Mrs. Dainty's baby!"  To that he responded, "But babies smell so good!"   Ahhh , sixth graders.  It was good to see them all.  We'll be going to meet Ryan's students sometime soon.  We already got to make a quick trip to see the famous mural of Shakespeare/Tennessee Williams/J.K. Rowling on his classroom wall!

This afternoon, while Leah and Ryan had some quality daddy-daughter time, I went for a "run" with Lucy. Running in inclement weather is usually one of my favorite things, because I get the streets all to myself. However, after today, I might change my mind about that. You see, I put "run" in quotation marks because it involved frequent stops as I tried to get Lucy to heel once again after she took off after a snowman, or a passing dog, snowplow, squirrel, or snowflake. She was just a little excited to be out and about, and the inches of snow piling up here just added to her impish friskiness! (The poor puppy hasn't gone for as many walks as she should since the arrival of both Leah and Jack Frost.) Lucy only managed to wrap the leash around me on three separate occasions, and I only almost stepped on her with my spikes about five times. We avoided getting buried by a closely passing snowplow. And we found our way home. All in all, I would say it was a