Happy Easter!

We had the opportunity to go to a Seder (Passover) meal at a Messianic Jewish congregation on Palm Sunday, which was a very fun experience. The whole meal throughout points to Jesus. We've participated in Seder meals before, so some of the things I knew. One new point was that the Passover lamb that was sacrificed was roasted, but not on a spit like we tend to think of today. It was upright, feet on the ground, head uppermost and a crossbeam put through its chest cavity to hold it open...just like a cross. Also, Jews today do not eat lamb at the passover meal because there isn't any temple and you can't have a lamb sacrifice.

Then we went to this congregation's service on Saturday (they stick with the original Sabbath day). Then to church on Sunday morning and then spent the day with Dave's family. It was a very enjoyable weekend. Attached pictures are me and Mirabel and Mirabel searching for Easter eggs. Her grandparents were nice enough to hide a string of orange eggs that were right on the edge of things, so she got to find 8 eggs without too much trouble. Her cousins spent the rest of the time running around finding the rest of the 70+ eggs that were hidden throughout the yard.

Also, our taxes are now filed (hooray!) and we're getting a nice refund back which will help pay for some new windows for the house.

He is Risen! He is Risen indeed!

Fun Mirabel information

Mirabel has been growing up fast! She zooms around with her stroller, has discovered her feet anew in the last few days (for example, she sits on her butt and spins around only using her feet, she knocked down a block tower I built yesterday with her feet, and she stands on on one foot and holds out the other, like a baby ballerina.)

She discovered grinning with her full face (the requisite smile where kids crunch their whole face up into their nose), which is very cute with her three (closing in on four) teeth.

She has very definite food preferences (on the absolute best list is cheese; likes a lot include squash, yogurt, avocado; touch and go is cereal and spinach, and green beans are the bottom feeders. She will eat them if mixed with cereal or if she doesn't spy any other food options.

She plays peek-a-boo back with us by hiding behind the sofa or chair and popping out, then dropping down (I have a video I'll upload later).

She absolutely loves books and will amuse herself by looking at her stack of books.

She vocalizes and makes sounds like "OOH" "Dih, dih, dih" and "AAAHHHH" along with mamamamamamamama but that doesn't appear to be connected with me (or anything else.)

She's still a really happy baby and we're glad for that. She sleeps great through the night, takes naps, amuses herself a good deal of the time when we need, travels well, and reminds us that she still suffers from original sin by intentionally ignoring our instructions to avoid pulling her cloth diapers down from the drying rack. (It makes for a good theological discussion.) :)

Our little girl is one year old in three weeks...it's hard to believe it's gone by that quickly!

Sick of Snot

Mirabel has had a snotty head cold for what seems like forever...it appears to come with new teeth for her and we now have a bottom tooth to join her top two teeth. But I've also been sneezing and snotting myself for the past few days. This experience has reminded me of the little ditty from childhood - "Don't kiss your honey when your nose is runny, you might think it's funny, but it's (s)not."

We're trying to figure out where we'd like to go for a vacation and whether or not to take or leave Mirabel or try to travel with someone else. We've wanted to go to London for a long time, and with the dollar being stronger against the pound than it has been in a long while, it seems like a good time to travel. But if we went there, I'd want it to be for at least 10 days, which seems like a long time to leave our little one behind. So then the question is how to take her, or if we go somewhere else....has anyone else had this kind of experience? If we left her, she would be in our house, with her normal care providers, and we'd probably have them care for her in the evenings along with grandparents (who she knows). Other options would be Guatemala or somewhere else in central America. I've also heard there are some babysitters that you can hire in another country (e.g. associated with the hotel) but that seems a little odd to turn over your kid to a stranger in another country.

I'm getting a little cabin fever and am looking forward to warmer weather and more sunshine.

Ok...off to exercise and then off to bed. We're doing a mini-challenge with some people at work where you set a goal (mine is to lose 5 lbs) and then have weekly goals during the week. If you meet the weekly goals, you're good. If you don't, you pay a $1 penalty. You pay $2 to participate in the challenge and whoever meets their goal at the end splits the pot. My weekly goals center around limiting sugar and exercising, and I need only one more exercise session to avoid paying $1. So...off I go!

Wedding pictures

There are two ways to interpret this post. One is that we have Tirzah and Adam's wedding pictures, which I've added below. Tirzah decided to get married in a red dress and the bridesmaids wore white. The wedding was in the evening, so Mirabel was tired and also had a cold...she spent most of the time clinging to me and generally looks like she was drugged in the photos (though she was not under the influence of any substance....) sigh...our opportunity to get a good little family shot didn't turn out so well.

The other thing is that after 5 1/2 years of being married we are finally getting our official wedding album. We took three years to get the order in and then I'm not sure what happened but we finally reconnected with the photographer and we're getting it this week. We've had our proof book with 300 pictures and now we get the fancy book with 24 pages that we selected ourselves (the pages have multiple layouts and pics on them). I'm also excited to get our disc. Our proof book has 300 pics, but he took 700 or 800, so we'll get to see a lot more photos that we haven't seen before. Even after this long, I still love my hubby and love remembering our wedding!

Life update

We've been doing the normal life stuff- eating, sleeping, working, Bible study, errands, etc. Tirzah got married a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to update some photos but we didn't take many and the official ones aren't ready yet. Mirabel was a mini-me of the bride. Welcome to the family, Adam!

I was running around today to a bunch of different places and came home and Dave made this movie this afternoon. It's Mirabel's beginnings...so it's from awhile ago but I thought it was awesome. Now I have to talk him into making one for each year....

Merry Christmas!

I believe I've just given up on sending out Christmas cards this year. We did get our family picture taken- you can see it for yourself if you go to mysmilesbywire.com. Email is polkstina at hotmail. (Fill in the symbol "at" and the com part..I'm trying to protect myself from spammers) and use Mirabel for the password.)

We had a great Christmas with my family on Christmas Eve and Dave's on Christmas Day. We got to sing Christmas carols at both events (piano by my sister, Micaiah, and guitar by brother-in-law, Bob). Lots of good family time, reading the Christmas story, and some time outside in the snow (M was not so keen on the wind nor on having us wipe her snotty nose.)

M was so excited about all the people she fought sleep as much as she could, passing out at one point in the middle of crawling across the kitchen floor. She also loves eating tissue paper and wrapping paper- a struggle to find it before she does.

We hope that your celebrations were enjoyable and that you share our joy in welcoming our Savior and remembering his birth.

Breastfeeding question

So, this is a question about how you know if the breastfed child is getting enough milk once you start on solid foods and you are at work. I know at least some moms who read this have breastfed and worked.

Without getting into tons of nitty gritty details, I pump while away at work, and I know as they get older babies eat other foods (Mirabel does really well with that) but I don't know resources about how much milk she "should" be drinking daily. She takes everything I pump, but I wonder sometimes if she's getting enough. Any wisdom from the masses?