Visit from Baby Beatrice

This picture is from a few weeks ago, but I just figured out how to get pictures from my phone onto the computer. Its a monumental event: Rosemary finally conquered her fear of carousels. I have tried at least 15 times on many different carousels in many different zoos and finally the one at the Lincoln Park Zoo did it! She cried piteously when we got on it but I didn't let her off the hook right away -- when it started moving she finally said, "this is not scary!" She surprised herself!
























One of the nicest things about Hyde park is that there is a playground on every corner, and our apartment is in a great location -- after dinner, rather than just sitting around waiting for our precious few minutes of adult-time to commence, we can walk outside and enjoy a nice spring evening in the park. Rosemary is very sweet with her brother lately -- above are some pictures of Louis's first few times in the swing, with Rosemary pushing him. This is all right after a week of horrible illness (croup) where James and I really didn't sleep. Whew!We just had a wonderful week with Dev, Summer, and Beatrice in Chicago. Rosemary was nothing short of ecstatic to see Summer (though she did wonder why Shackleton and Cromwell didn't come) and she actually played a little with Beatrice. Beatrice had her first flaming cheese at the Parthenon and we celebrated her first birthday (a few weeks early).

Rosemary reading to Beatrice before bedtime. They successfully shared a room since they are both great night time sleepers. In one instance, our babysitter had to turn on the light and search for Rosemary's "kiki" (she had no idea what she was looking for) and Beatrice didn't wake up! Unfortunately the room is quite light in the morning so Rosemary has been getting up at the crack of dawn, but Dolly made a brilliant, life-changing suggestion: aluminum foil on the windows. Bingo!
Dev got some great pictures at the Peggy Notebaert Nature museum (above Beatrice is pointing to a polar bear paw!), where we saw turtles, snakes (including one that can spray the scent of a fox to ward off enemies -- Rosemary reminded me that we saw a snake that smelled like a fox several days later!), and a beautiful butterfly exhibit. And just to prove that it's spring, the park outside the museum (all of Chicago is one huge park -- its so lovely) was full of goslings.

Summer and Beatrice, looking lovely, at the Lincoln Park zoo
Beatrice's first mini birthday cake -- the same kind I made for Rosemary's first birthday (chocolate "dump-it" cake from Katie, though this kind I tried to make salted caramel buttercream frosting and it failed, so I used the overly-runny frosting as a filling between the layers and it ended up pretty good -- like caramel tres leches). Some cute cousin interactions, including riding cars on the Bixler Playlot, teaching Beatrice how to jump in the crib (btw, this is the crib that James used to sleep in! An antique!), and giving her hugs. I hope they grow up to be close, like Sandy and me.