24 weeks!

Things have been pretty quiet on this blog for the last few weeks. I've missed blogging, but I've been trying to keep my head above water at home and at work. As of yesterday, things were really looking up - I was getting some longer stretches of sleep (what a huge difference that makes!), Grammy had stopped by a few extra times to help with Rose, and I successfully worked with Mike to implement some flexibility to my daily schedule, thus helping me to get more done at work and allowing me to feel less rushed between leaving work and picking up Rose. As a result, I've been much happier, more rested, and more calm in the past week or so. My friend Amanda remarked at lunch yesterday that I seemed to be in a completely different mental place than I was when we had last gotten together about a month ago, and I think that's true! Granted, Rose had her worst night of sleep in months last night (waking almost every hour!), but I'm choosing to be optimistic that we'll take two steps forward after last night's giant step backward.

Here are her 24-week portraits. As you can see, this is the week that she fell in love with her toes! She's known she's had them for quite some time, but suddenly this week she has become infatuated with them and doesn't ever want to let them go.

Rose is also increasingly in love with Lucy and Mac. She loves that Lucy sits by her and lets Rose "pet" her (aka yank out fistfuls of her fur - Lucy is so patient with her!). She can't understand why Mac won't do the same, but it doesn't stop her from getting SO excited and reaching out whenever she sees him!

After our photo shoot this morning, we had our "Sunday morning family time."  Last Sunday we went to Westwood Hills Nature Center. Today we went to the Quaking Bog at Wirth Park, and we got to try out Rose's new backpack carrier for the first time! It was a beautiful fall day in the park.

Unfortunately, when we got back to the car, this is what we found.

Yep, someone had broken into our car to steal our TRASH BAG. Yes, that was the only thing missing. Seriously?!? I think that deserves a pretty big WTF (even though I don't normally swear). So frustrating! Thankfully Jack and Marsha let us borrow their shop vac to clean up all the glass on the seats, and thankfully Anne is letting us borrow her car for the time being. Mike is going to get some window replacement quotes tomorrow (we don't think we have glass coverage since we just have liability insurance on our old car), so I'll keep you all posted. Sigh. So with that, I'm off to bed. Hopefully Rose and I both have better sleep tonight!

Have a great week, everyone!