End of July

Ella and Alexis went and spent a week at Grandma Susan's house when Caleb was just a couple of weeks old. It was great for all of us- they had lots of summer swimming adventures with Grandma, and I got to stay home & "lounge" on the couch with a baby. At one of the pool's they went to, the staff was handing out leis, and the girls picked up about 10 of them. There was only one multi-colored one and they decided it would be for Caleb. So we had to make sure to get a photo of him wearing his lei.

At the end of July, we had Grandma Cope come visit for a week.  (Grandpa joined us later in the week.)  She got some good cuddle time with 3 week old Caleb.  She helped me take the girls to see the Winnie the Pooh movie, treated us to lunch at Dinosaur BBQ, made some of my favorite dinners & did some more bonding with the girls.

One day we ventured downtown to visit the NYC Police Musuem. I've always wanted to visit it, some friends of ours were going, and I was getting a little antsy being in our 700 square foot apartment with 5 other people.  I'm accustomed to taking the girls out basically every day, so being home with them for several days on end can get me a little worked up sometimes.  The birth of our third child has definitely amplified the siren call of suburbia.

Anyway, we headed down to the Financial District/South Street Seaport area to check out the museum.  I thought it was interesting, and I loved that it was pretty small making it a fairly quick visit as museums go.  It also had a kids room where they could dress up and play around, which is always a hit, even for 7 year olds.

Caleb behaved himself very well- just chilling in his stroller much of the time.

Yes, my seven year old is nearly five feet tall.

And my four year old is over four feet tall.

Grandpa Cope flew out later in the week and also spent some time with us.  He and Matt did a couple of projects around the apartment, the most important of which was building more storage shelves above a door.
And here he is reading a story to the girls (& Ella was so wiped out she fell asleep on his shoulder).