Happy Birthday Ellie!

Ellie is now three - I can't believe how fast the time has flown! We went to Pennsylvania for her birthday, and visited Dutch Wonderland in Lancaster and Hershey Park in Hershey. She loved the bumper cars, the carousel, the big bumpy slides, and the excellent play area in the hotel. We had a birthday party at playgroup this week, including a pinata that Ellie helped make herself. Watching toddlers and preschoolers try to break a pinata is great. Even when we put it on the floor and let them hammer it, most blows ended up more like golf swings and bounced off it without a dent. A four-year-old finally got the technique and power right to break it open, and Ellie grabbed as many lollipops as she could get - her current favorite candy.

Current favorites:
Ellie loves role-playing. She's always suggesting that we "change our names," and the current favorite characters are Bob and Larry (from VeggieTales), Cinderella, St. Nicholas, Sts. Benedict and Scholastica, and being a doctor. She loves dressing up and reading books with "my own words." I need to get on top of teaching her other words! Her other big entertainment at home is playing with clay, but I need to get her to do more of it herself rather than simply directing me to make various things.

Skill development:
Kudos to her Sunday School teacher who taught her her first word she can really read: God. She can find it on a page full of other words now. We're also learning lots of good life skills, including making her bed, putting on and buttoning her coat, and going to the bathroom almost by herself. She likes getting our toothbrushes out and putting both her own and my toothpaste on. And the other night she cubed a whole block of tofu (a good starting point, since it can be done with a plastic knife). She also rolled some pretty serviceable rounds of pita bread dough out to be baked. My favorite is her flour measurement - for the non-bakers, you're supposed to level flour and sugar to make sure the quantities are correct. She always asks "is it time to do the 'whoop' yet?" and then runs a knife or the scoop across the top, saying "Whoop!" She knows to mix the wet ingredients together and then add dry ones (for most recipes). I encourage anyone with kids this age to involve them in cooking projects - it takes a bit longer, but she loves being able to help on real things and I'm getting time with her combined with actually getting something done.

Here's a couple photos of her in her Christmas dress and at a recent party at the Supreme Court. She's painfully cute, but she hates it when people tell her so!

Halloween and first camping trip

We spent Halloween weekend and election day in California visiting family and on a work trip for Roger. Here's some cute photos of Ellie in her Cinderella dress - nowadays we're either acting out fairy tales or a superhero. Papa usually gets to be her prince, and I'm the resident fairy godmother, always re-doing her dress after it disappears at midnight.




While in California we got to Joshua Tree National Park, where we camped and hiked. Ellie loves camping, and keeps asking to do it again. She had her first s'more by the campfire, which she also liked, except the marshmallow oddly enough. She was quite impressed by the desert, which she keeps calling "Egypt". :)






We also took the rotating tram to the top of one of the mountains near Palm Springs. It was very cold and sunny at the top. Great trip if you're into hiking in the cold - which Ellie decidedly was not.

Thomas' Ultrasound Photos

Finally I figured out the scanner! Here is an ultrasound shot of Thomas, now several months old. I'm almost at 28 weeks now, and he's very active - more so than I remember Ellie being even though I was convinced she was a very active baby. We're making the rounds of family visits in the next few weeks since we'll be grounded for Christmas and avoiding the Thanksgiving weekend traffic. So hopefully more pictures of Ellie coming soon. She is out of her lobster phase (the unused parts of her potential lobster costume are in the closet) and is all princesses and ballerinas. She'll be Cinderella/Cenicenta for Halloween and thankfully we'll have warmer weather to trick-or-treat in California because she never wants to wear anything under her short-sleeved dress and it's getting really cold here! She wants to wear either that dress or her ballerina tutu all the time, and we're running into more and more resistance getting her dressed for church because we don't have many other dresses that reach the floor (as all princess' dresses should). I'm either going to have to start sewing myself or find a local Muslim childrens' store - I have had no luck with finding little girls' dresses that are longer than knee-length! Any leads welcome... and have a great end to October, everyone!

Big news!

It's been a while, I know, but I'm starting to get in the swing of being at home and getting things done. My clerkship ended in July, and we've been pretty much on the move ever since. We were traveling most of August, first visiting the Severinos in California for Mina Marie's baptism and lots of quality cousin time, and then visiting the Campbells in Michigan for a great reunion of high school / middle school friends and more family time. I'll get photos of both up soon.

But our biggest news is that we're now expecting again! Baby Thomas (no middle name yet - email with your suggestions!) is due January 28 and the whole family is very excited. We have ultrasound photos that I will scan as soon as I can figure the scanner out, and they even threw in some 3-D ones for fun. Ellie is a wonderful big sister already. She talks to the baby all the time and has felt him kick once while she was sitting on my lap. The first thing she does when Roger gets home from work is to insist that he give the baby (my stomach) a kiss too, and it's all I can do to keep her from pulling my shirt up anywhere and in front of anyone to tickle him or give him a kiss.

Roger is at a new job since May - he's working at the Department of Justice in the Housing section of the Civil Rights division. To the non-lawyers, that means he's part of the biggest law firm in the nation - the US government. He helps enforce several different civil rights laws, including the ADA, Fair Housing Act, and Religious Land Use and Insitituionalized Persons Act. It was hard to leave the Becket Fund, but he's learning a lot at DOJ and we love the flex time: he gets every other Friday off now!

My new job is just starting, too. I have an Olin Fellowship from the Federalist Society that I'm doing at Georgetown Law this year. Basically I'll be spending the year trying to get a paper (or two) ready for publication and taking part in the academic life on campus by meeting faculty and attending workshops. The research and writing I'm planning on doing mostly from home (knock on wood) and the campus-life stuff will mean I'm gone for lunches several days a week. We have a wonderful homeschooling mother who is watching Ellie with her own two sons while I'm gone, and they've been having a great time. Her boys love having a little sister for a while, and Ellie gets to learn from them - she even does her own tracing and cutting projects when they have schoolwork to do while they're here. She's excited to learn about school!

I can't post without including a picture or two, so here are a couple recent ones of Ellie visiting the Natural History museum. She got to hold a grasshopper and a caterpillar, and was disappointed there were no slugs. I was disappointed there was no hand sanitizer.

Sad News

Early on the Monday after Easter our second child arrived earlier than we had hoped. Lucas Anastasio Severino was born at home into the loving hands of his parents at around 2 am on March 24. The Lord has been very merciful to us. He gave us eleven joyful weeks with our little one and allowed us to see his precious face which we hope to see again one day. Christ's resurrection has made joy possible even in times of deep sadness.

Thank you all for your prayers, and Happy Easter.

Happy 2008... long time no see!

After a long hiatus, here we are again. Rather than give an update on too many details (and further delay this post) I'm just going to quickly summarize. Carrie is now working at the Supreme Court for Justice Thomas and is almost done with the term - it runs from July to July and at least partially explains my lack of posting. :) Roger is still working at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty but soon will be moving to the Civil Rights/Housing division of the Department of Justice. We've had alternating grandparents living with us this year to help take care of Ellie. Right now we're on GaGa Campbell, and TaTa and NaNa Severino will be here at the end of April. Ellie is growing up so fast! She is very articulate (for a two-year old) and although she prefers English she does understand pretty much everything in Spanish and can manage well in Spanish when NaNa and TaTa are here. Now we're up to 35 3/4 inches tall, 32 pounds, brown curly hair, brown eyes. She eats nearly everything but her favorites are still eggs, avocados, hummus, and nuts. Her favorite story is Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and her favorite song is Peter and the Wolf - she loves identifying the various instruments and characters. She's also now enamored of her new little brother or sister - as she calls it her "baby in da womb." I'm due October 13 or thereabouts and so far am having an extraordinarily easy pregnancy.
Here are some pictures - enjoy!


Mama, Ellie, Uncle Scotty and Miss Heidi (Scott's girlfriend) in front of the Library of Congress







Papa, Miss Heidi, Ellie, and GaGa before their White House tour last month






Ellie and Papa flossing teeth













Hiding under the icon stand at church on Christmas









St. Patrick's Day parade with the dog show

Book Reviews in progress: what I'm reading now

When I get a chance to read or listen to audiobooks I've been enjoying a couple different things. My current recommendations that I'm not finished with yet are:

• Moby Dick - I remember it being much more boring, but as an audiobook it's working well, perhaps because I'm busy and not having to commit 100% of my time to it in between the really exciting parts. It would be interesting to go back and look at the significance of all the Biblical names of the characters.
  
• Hold on to Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld - he analyzes why many current problems with kids arise from them being attached to peers more than parents and how to keep your kids attached to you.
  
• Witness by Whittaker Chambers - I'm loving historical books lately, and this one really brings home the danger of communism while filling in some major gaps in my education about the cold war and reading like a detective story. Now Roger is getting into this one too so I may have to fight him for it! This one makes me really look forward to nap time when I get a bit of reading in as Ellie falls asleep.

So there are some mini-recommendations for you all while I'm taking a break from kids' books for a bit to wait for the last Harry Potter. I'm 43rd on the wait list at the library, but hopefully the other 42 will read it fast!

Ellie the biker

Here are some adorable photos that Dad just sent from our recent trip to Grand Rapids. We were there the first week of June for my cousin Beth's wedding shower but because of some crazy plane problems our flight was cancelled and we ended up missing the main event! :( We did get to see the family for part of the weekend, though, and gave Ellie her first (stationary) ride on a motorcycle. As far as I'm concerned, that's all the riding she'll ever need. Let's hope "Ta Ta" doesn't get any ideas about taking her on the road...

Where's my helmet?

Ellie with Grapefruit

Here's another video of Ellie playing with a grapefruit - she likes to pretend to nurse her toys by sticking them under her shirt, and that's what she was doing as I was trying to bring the groceries in one day.

Hint on the videos: you have to click on the photo below first to activate the video control, then click on play (the triangle at the lower left). If you want to see it in Google Video, click on the link.