Mango mango mango mango mango mangooooo!

From the folks that gave us Badger Badger, a new bit of animation to waste time with. Click here!

Luck O' The Irish

My father's grandmother was Maggie O'Shea from County Cork, Ireland. She came over on a boat when she was 13, and carried her brogue for her entire life. It is only fitting that we celebrate my great-grandmother and all our Irish ancestors who made the journey to America by throwing candy and plastic beads to small children while we drink beer from our floats, if you consider a Chevy s-10 with a magic-markered sign that reads "O'Donnell's Bar and Grille wishes you a Happy St. Pat's. $1 domestic longnecks on Wednesdays" a float. Oh, and also the Polish War Vets polka band on a flatbed trailer decorated with red and white streamers. Here are pictures from the Belleville St. Patrick's Day Parade. Erin Go Braugh!

Noah, Penny...Penny, Noah.

The picture I didn't get was Noah putting his hand out to grab Penny, and Penny putting her paw in his hand to shake.

Madeleine makes sweet(ish) music

Madeleine has a bin in her room with her musical instruments in it: a train whistle, jingle bells, a bodhran (irish drum), some maracas, and a mickey mouse keyboard and songbook. She got them out recently and told me, "I'm making music Mommy!". She sat with the songbook open across her legs, would look at the page, sing some made-up song while beating on the drum. Them she'd blow on the train whistle and shake the maracas. It was very...percussive.

Hats

I Want to Thank All the Little People...

From the Shrine Employee Appreciation dinner, which had a sort of movie/red-carpet theme:

Shrine Playground

Hanging out with the kids and Erin Hammond at the Shrine while the guys did Oddwalk business. It was warm enough for the first time in months to play outside, so we took the kids to the playground and let Madeleine run around.

We met up with the guys for lunch, then hung out in the hotel room, watching some quality children's programmin on public telelvision and trying to let Noah nap. Then at about three pm, Madeleine pushes the stroller over to the bed I'm lying on with Noah and says, "Let's get some ice cream. Mmm-hmm. Yeah. Ice cream.", nodding the entire time like she does when she wants something and is convicing you that you want it too. We thought that sounded like a good idea, and since Noah wasn't sleeping, we packed up and went back over to the Shrine restaurant for a snack. After we were seated, the waitress came over. As soon as she got to our table, before she could say anything, Madeleine stuck her finger in the air, as you do to indicate you are ordering and said, "Ice cream!"

Noah's Big Basket O' Toys

One of Noah's favorite things in the world to do is sit in front of his big basket of toys and just go nuts digging through it. He even grabs the edge and tips it over so he can reach in himself. When he finds something he likes, he chews on it voraciously until something else catches his eye.

Slobbery baby + black washable crayon = eww

Noah is semi-mobile now. He's not quite crawling, but he can move about using his toes and elbows, fingers and knees approach. Between the creeping and the rolling, he gets to where he wants to go. Evidently, he had his eye on this black washable crayon that was left on the living room floor last week. When I left him to put a load of laundry in, he was sitting up by the window and his toy basket. When I found him, he was face down in the carpet, gumming this crayon. There was blackened baby spit on my carpet and smeared all over his face and hands:

Happily, the crayon was, after all, washable, and came out of both the carpet and the baby easily.

Shaw Gardens

The Cerneka family has been on a three week sprint of work, ministry and family events, and we've finally been able to take some time and catch our collective breath. The last two weekends we've been in the Belleville/St. Louis are for Oddwalk stuff, and did some visiting while we were there, too. One of the things we did was visit the Missouri Botanical Gardens. Orin and Erin live in the Shaw neighborhood of St. Louis and have a membership to the Gardens. We had lunch and took a walk through the grounds.

Meeting Maia!

We finally got to meet Miss Maia Lauren Puckett! The Pucketts spent a week traveling and visiting family, capping the visit with Maia's baptism on Sunday March 4. I have pictures of everything but the baptism itself, of course. My batteries were dead. Same thing happened for Noah's and Madeleine's as well. Weird. Anyhoo, here are pics from that extended weekend (more pictures are posted on Maia's blog:

Madeleine first meets Maia. She's fascinated with babies. We've had a lot of new baby friends and family members this past year.

Noah seems to like Maia, too, but mostly as something to grab at and try to chew on.

Aunt Maggie on Maia's baptism day. The gown was Becca's, handmade by our mother and grandmother.

This was interesting. Getting this pic was everything you'd imagine it would be. "Smile Noah! Madeleine, look right here! No, stay put! No, don't poke Maia! Maia baby, right here! Smile, Noah-boy! Madeleine, stay put! Look up! Right here! Ma-del-eine! Stay there!"

Becca and Maia try out the sling I made them for the first time.

Half a Year!

Noah would have turned 6 months on Februrary 29. However, since this is not a leap year, there was no February 29. So, we'll have to wait until 2008 to celebrate his official 6 month birthday. Here are the things my unoffical 6 month old is doing:
-Sits up
-Rolls all over the place
-Drools insanely
-Smiles easily at everyone
-Babbles with consonant sounds (duh-duh-duh, bah!)
-Squirms on belly to move forward towards a toy
-Eats rice cereal, sweet potatoes, and peas
-Sits in big bathtub and slashes and chases floating toys
-Loves: Homer, remotes, his sister's hair, books, bouncing, music, sitting a digging through his basket of toys, baths
-Hates: being hungry, being tired (but who doesn't?)

He is 17 pounds, 8 ounces and 27 inches long. He's incredibly social and not a bit shy. He loves to be played with, but he will also sit and play by himself happily for 15-20 minutes at a time.