Smiles!

Mia's been smiling for almost a couple of weeks now but I haven't been able to really capture it with the camera. After she smiles she almost always opens her mouth really wide - it is so funny. She loves to sit in this bouncer chair, just like her big brother did :)

Baby Girl has arrived!

Mia Joan Anderson was born on Tuesday, July 21 at 8:30 AM. She weighed 7 lbs, 13 ounces and was 20.5 inches long. We are all doing great! Mia is a happy little baby and is a good eater and sleeper. We are so grateful to have her here safe and sound. Here are some pics.


Me the night before we went in for the C-section. As you can tell, I was SO ready!

Proud daddy

It's so fun to have a new baby!

Catching up!

We are enjoying being with our families in Utah for the summer! It was stressful getting our apartment sublet and getting out here, but all is going great now and Paul is enjoying his internship.

As an aside, if you ever are sitting around parents on a plane with a child who will NOT stop screaming, please be merciful. Darren screamed his little guts out for two whole hours straight on our flight to SLC, despite everything we tried to soothe him. After a while, everyone around us started giving us advice, like "Maybe his ears hurt - try massaging behind his ears." Believe me, we tried absolutely everything, to no avail. By the time we landed, all three of us were at our wit's end. I am trying not to think about how it will be flying back to Boston with Darren plus a newborn! nightmare! But no matter how bad it is, it is still better than driving!

Anyway, we took Darren to New York over part of Paul's spring break. This was over two months ago now, but better late than never, right? Paul's mom was nice enough to come with us, which was a total blast because she knows the city so well and could lead us around. I had never been to NYC, so didn't know what to expect, but I thought it was fantastic! Here are a few pictures.


These first few are at Central Park

Darren attempting to enjoy the Statue of Liberty ferry.

Good thing Grandma was around to help!

Times Square in the rain

He's Walking!

Belated Thanksgiving

We had a fun Thanksgiving this year - we had dinner with some friends and played games. Darren loved it because he got to share a plate with me - no baby food! Since I didn't take any pictures of Thanksgiving, I thought I'd post some pictures of our late October visit to Plymouth Rock. Very Thanksgiving-y, right? I thought so. Better late than never.

So, here's Darren (happily) hanging out at the rock. I...kind of expected it to be a little bigger, didn't you? There was a sign that I admit I didn't read, but I think it described how this is only a piece of the original Plymouth Rock.

Over the rock there's a structure with columns to give the whole thing a little more importance.

The bay at Plymouth was really pretty. Although not a whole-day's worth of things to do, it was a fun afternoon. We found a seafood shack for dinner - I tried some fried oysters, among lots of other yummy things.

Darren's First Halloween

Darren grudgingly allowed me to dress him up for Halloween. We went trick-or-treating to just a very few places on our street. Overall, I have to say that I enjoyed the whole experience way more than he did. I put his costume on and all was well for a few minutes...

Until things rapidly descended into this...

He was much happier once he could get out of the dratted costume.

Don't worry Darren! I promise you will enjoy future Halloweens much more than you did this one.

Here he comes!

Darren finally is scooting all over the place. It isn't exactly a crawl yet (well, maybe an army crawl) but we are very excited he is heading in the right direction. Check him out. All of us are enjoying the fact that he has his own little room now, too.