Heavy Sleeper

Leah has turned into a pretty heavy sleeper. She sleeps through pretty much everything including Daisy barking, WallE (our roomba vacuum cleaner) roaming around the house, the opening and closing of her dresser drawers as we put away her clean clothes and even the sound of me cheering for the Tar Heels during the NCAA Tournament.

She has even started sleeping through the night pretty regularly although she's been waking up a bit too early lately. I've gotten better about getting up in the morning, but 6 a.m. is still practically the middle of the night.

-Sefton

Superwoman

So it's been a while since I updated this blog and I can only tell you that I was sick the last week and the illness kept me in bed for the better part of my two days off. There was a time in my life where 48 hours in bed with a television and an assortment of ice cream treats would have been about the best thing I could think of. But these days it's hard for me to be unproductive, especially when I see all that Darcey does on her "days off".

When I come home from work on the weekend the house is clean, the laundry fairy has come, the bed is made, the week's meals have been planned and the groceries have been bought. Leah is happy, fed, bathed and sometimes already put down for the night. Darcey usually finds time to do schoolwork too.

I've been amazed with everything that she gets done and often wondered how she does it all. Then I came home for lunch today and peeked behind the curtain.

Apparently Leah is not as much of a burden when it comes to all of the housework as I had thought. In fact, Darcey has apparently developed a system to include her in some of the chores. Lets just hope that Leah has as much fun cleaning when she is a teenager as she does now.

-Sefton

Six Months Old

Leah turned six months old at the end of February and Darcey and I decided we needed to mark the occasion by getting a good picture of her at this stage of her life. It took a while to find the time to turn the den into a studio, but we finally got the chance on Sunday morning. We had a great time and got some great photos as well. The image above is my favorite, but watch your mailboxes because we will be sending out prints of a different one later this week.

I put together a short video of the shoot for everyone to enjoy as well. This is obviously a two-person job and I think Darcey got the more difficult task: keeping Leah happy and upright.

Hope you all enjoy it.

-Sefton

Well Hello There

I walked in to Leah's room the other morning and was surprised to see her looking at me over the top of the crib.

I was sure that she had learned to sit up on her own and yelled for Darcey to come and see. It turns out my excitement was a little premature. It turns out that Leah has gotten strong enough to lift her upper body while lying on her belly.

While this means that she hasn't quite learned how to get from her back to her butt, she has come just a little bit closer to learning how to crawl.

That's good enough for me.

-Sefton

Snow Day

Last night we got several inches of snow from a storm that stretched from Alabama to Virginia. Not only is it rare to get snow in the South, it is rare to get snow in the South in March. The storm was also unique in that it included a thunderstorm.

You can imagine the chaos. Power was out all over the area. The newspaper lost power for a few hours, but we still got a paper out this morning. We also lost power at home and had a cold night in our drafty house.

After the lights went out, Darcey and I talked about finding a friend who still had power that wouldn't mind us crashing for the night. I was pretty confident that the power would be back on in a couple of hours. Needless to say, I was wrong.

Sometime around 3 a.m. the temperature inside was in the 50's. We put Leah in bed with us to keep her warm, but she was a little congested and her breathing kept us awake. We realized that she didn't have any problems breathing when she was sitting up so she and I slept in my chair in the living room so Darcey could get some sleep. At about 6 a.m. I was awakened by the television after our power was restored.

Leah and I later woke up together as the sun was rising outside of the living room window. All of the trees and branches were bent under the weight of the snow and the everything was just white. I looked down at Leah and as she smiled at me I told her that we were going to go have a little fun.

The picture above is from our early morning walk in the snow together. It was Leah's first snow, but surely not her last. We were out there in the clothes we had slept in to try to keep warm overnight. That's right, Leah slept in her bear outfit with the hood up.

Afterwords, Leah and I had a snow day together. There was no point in her going to school even if it was open because I had the day off. She napped almost all morning and I got to take a nap later in the afternoon. By the end of the day, most of the snow had melted and our house was warm again. Hopefully Leah and I will both be able to sleep through the night in our own beds tonight.

-Sefton