The Hill Girls

As soon as a new baby is born, the "who do they look like?" game begins. To make it easier on everyone, I finally got around to putting all the girl's baby pictures side by side. They are in order here, Sierra, Sedona, then Secora. They are all 1-2 days old in these pics too. For the record, everyone (us included) thought Sierra looked like Josh as a baby and she's now a carbon copy of me.

I think Secora looks more like Sierra. The biggest difference though is that she has a lot less hair and A LOT lighter hair than the girls did. She's also more pale than they are. I think she may end up being even more blonde than Sedona.

Baby's First Thanksgiving

I'm behind on posting and there's quite a lot to report, so we'll back up and start at the beginning.

Things worked out so that we were set to start our trip back last Friday. That means we got to spend Thanksgiving with my parents. They were kind enough to cook dinner and have the crazy Hill girls invade their house for the day. They even kept the big girls so Josh and I could go see Harry Potter after dinner.

Secora's first order of business was sneaking a turkey leg off the table:
We shouldn't have been surprised, Sierra tried the same thing at her first Thanksgiving (she was a month older at Thanksgiving than Secora was):

After dinner, my parents asked the girls if they wanted to pull the wishbone. I'm a slacker mom...my kids had no idea what a wishbone was or why they would want to pull it apart. Further more, the wishbone was already broken, so we had to rig the contest and give Sedona the broken side (because let's face it, she's still too young to really "get it" anyway). They seemed excited and ready to go:
But it turns out Sedona didn't understand the concept, so she just kept letting go when Sierra pulled: And Sierra thought she had to say her wish out loud, so she shouted "I wish for my own house! I wish for my own house!" (and yes, she meant HER own house, without parents around...)

All in all, it was a fun day!

3 Weeks, 7 States

This precious little girl is not quite 3 weeks old and has already seen 7 states. She passed her inaugural road trip with flying colors. That might have a little something to do with the fact that we've got this parenting thing down. Or, at least, parenting babies. I'm not bragging or anything, it's simple fact...third time's a charm. We were flailing idiots when poor Sierra was born. Sedona had a little easier time and benefited from what Sierra taught us. But Secora? She has no worries, and it shows. I think I've heard the child cry about 10 times in the last 3 weeks. She hangs out with mom all day and I enjoy it rather than trying to get away from her because I truly appreciate how fast this time will fly. She merely has to open her mouth and if it's been more than an hour since her last nursing, she gets fed (less than an hour? It's the pacifier for you! Because I now understand about non-nutritive sucking and that my baby that is gaining half a pound a week really is getting plenty to eat and needs more sucking time, not more calories). We can spot (or, rather, smell) a dirty diaper from a mile away and change it without getting peed or pooped on. Waking up every 3 hours is no biggie (because we've done the waking up every hour thing and also, frankly, because we're so sleep deprived from the last 6 years that it just seems like our natural state now). All in all, this baby thing is a breeze now and should we ever start to forget that, there's always some other kid throwing a fit to remind us that this really is the easiest stage of parenting.

Back in the Land of Snow and Ice

I can't believe so much time has passed since I posted. Since the last post, we stayed in Houston (without internet) for a week, then spent a week driving back to Montana. We arrived back at our "old new house" (as Sedona calls it) last night and we're trying to get unpacked, cleaned up, back into a routine, and ready for Christmas. It's a little weird, we will be on our own for Christmas this year, but I definitely feel like we need to go all out...the girls are old enough to enjoy it and it will be their first "white Christmas". So I will be putting up the tree, decorating, wrapping their presents all pretty (complete with ribbons and bows, which I never do), helping them with gingerbread houses, making cookies for Santa, and cooking a full on Christmas dinner, plus cinnamon rolls for breakfast. My husband just read this and groaned because he isn't yet aware of all of my plans.

And now that I'm back, I will be updating regularly again. There wasn't much to report when I was just sitting around waiting to have a baby, but now that I have a lot to do and a precious new baby to show off, look for daily (or, at least, near daily) posts again!