Here's Desert Girl asleep in her high chair. The thing that cracks me up the most is her hands.
How many people sleep with their hands flexed?
She sleeps best when someone's holding her, but sometimes we have to settle for second best, especially when it's time to make dinner!
We recently decided we needed some new family wheels. I didn't want to take a photo in the driveway, so I stopped and took a photo on the way back from feeding the bummer calves. This is a much nicer background!
You can see we've already managed to find some dirt and dust!
One of the best things about it is all the space. Like some of our friends mentioned, it's hard to go wrong with the space, especially when we sometimes stock up on groceries only once a month.
And it's great for when it's our turn to carpool to preschool. Here we are with four car seats (Desert Girl's is in the middle and backward facing). We have room for one more in the back with Desert Boy. We can seat up to eight people. Ready for road tripping!
We went to playgroup on Saturday, and the weather was thankfully nice enough to go outside and play. The three little munchkins had lots of fun hanging out and chasing each other while Supermom Nomi looked on.
They were testing all the different ways they could go down and up the slides. It was funny seeing how creative they could get.
Meanwhile Jenny and I had our babies out in the grass. Isaac is just two months older than Desert Girl, but he is already so much bigger! I didn't manage to capture it in these photos, but he has the biggest, most beautiful eyes. 
It's hard to imagine that Desert Girl will soon be that much bigger.
We had success feeding the bummer calves. Desert Boy thought it was pretty neat to go back and visit the calves. They didn't seem to mind his company. They didn't even mind Henry, although Henry was more interested in chasing the ducks in the pond than spending time with the calves. 
A happy calf. Don't you love all that milk drool?
Desert Boy posing next to the calf. I'm not sure if it has a name yet--the main caretaker gets to name the calves. And often they become quite attached to whomever feeds them and will follow that person around or leave a group of cows to come say hi when they're older. Cows might not be all that intelligent, but they can be cute.
It's that time of year again when a few calves need to be fed by hand because they don't have mama cows to feed from for one reason or another. This year Cynthia is going to do most of it, but we tagged along for the training session because we'll be backup feeders. 
Then he measured out the milk replacer. "Milk replacer" is a nice, simple, descriptive name. How come none of the baby formula manufacturers use it?
Next is the explanation about the nipples, with smaller holes for the younger calves and bigger ones for the older ones. 
Finally, put the nipple on and shake it all up!
Desert Boy decides he wanted to get in on the action. He volunteered to carry the giant bottle out to the calf pen. He had to be told a couple of times that the bottle wasn't for him, no matter how much he wanted to give it a try!
Then Dave put the bottle in a holder to feed to this two-week old calf. She's a twin, and her mom only took one of her calves, so now she's growing up in the bummer calf pen. Our dog Henry is about the same size.
She's quickly adapted to her alternate feeding and is happy to eat.
This four-week old calf's mom died, so that's why he ended up here.
He's also a really good eater. There are several more pens, so as the calving season proceeds, probably a few more will be abandoned and brought in. It's sad to see them without their moms, but at the same time it's nice they have a second chance.
Desert Girl turned one month on Monday. Yeah, she can't believe it either!
She says, "Hey, Mama, make sure you photograph my good side. And photoshop out all that baby acne."
Needless to say, the "feeding" didn't last long!
I was napping when I heard some heavy footsteps outside the bedroom window. I figured I was hearing cows, because they've been in the meadow below our house. They are heifers (first time mama cows), recently arrived with their new calves. I hoped that they were outside the fence, but when I peeked out the window, I saw one in the yard. And then another. And then I went to the kitchen and saw the view above out the window.
I grabbed the camera, because cows in the yard are usually a fun subject to photograph, and sure enough, this was no exception. This heifer went up to Henry's water dish for a drink.
Another heifer thought that might be a good idea. 
Hello, cow! It took her a moment to realize that she wasn't being invited in. Then she raced off the front steps and back into the driveway.
The heifers had come in through an open gate, but they didn't want to leave by it. So I opened another gate and gave them some room (and made sure Henry was with me). These heifers had come to visit because they were bored, but now they wanted to get back to their calves, so they didn't waste any time leaving through the gate and heading back to the meadow.
Watching the Olympics has our competitive juices flowing. Plus Desert Boy got a cute athletic outfit from his great-aunt and the weather has been better. Mix all that together, and we are raring to go outside! We offered Desert Boy the sled for his Olympic practice, but he declined. I guess he didn't think we had enough snow to make it work. 
I don't have too many deep thoughts on this blog, but I figured it would be totally okay if Desert Boy was practicing for the Summer Olympics in winter, because after all it is summer on half the earth right now. And the sport he's practicing for is biking. It's still not apparent what kind of biking he'll be doing, but for now he's working on being king of the training wheel bicycle competition.
On this particular day we forgot his helmet, but ever since then we've made sure he has it because he crashes so much. He's got a plethora of bumps and bruises to show off, and he proudly shares them as badges of his riding dedication. He's got strong little legs; the first day we took him out he rode nearly two miles. (He also walked a mile when he got stuck with Daddy in the South Meadow. Needless to say, he slept well that night!)
We've been without Internet all week and it's driving me crazy!
We've been continuing to have some Internet issues, so I wasn't able to post this yesterday. But better late than never--Happy Valentine's Day! I was craving some iced cookies (thanks to Faberlicious mentioning them a couple days ago!). Desert Boy loves to help in the kitchen, so I mentally prepared for a huge mess and we began. He unwrapped the butter so we could melt it (since I never get it out hours ahead of time to soften), poured in the sugar and flour, and operated the mixer. Then he took charge of the cookie cutter. After we had baked a couple batches and had little bits of dough left over, I let him give it a try by himself.
He tried rolling out the dough and doing the cookie cutter all by himself.
The mess grew, but that was okay. It always does with cutout cookies!
Here's his end result. I managed not to laugh at the interesting shapes and tried to explain that we really didn't need to dump flour on the cookie sheet.
Next came the decorating phase. Having had nieces and nephews help me in the past I knew that the most important thing about decorating is putting limits on the decorations. So I poured the different sprinkles into the lids, and told Desert Boy he had to use his fingers to do the sprinkling.
He showed great restraint--much more than I anticipated. Usually one cookie ends up drenched in sprinkles and then there's nothing left for the rest. These cookies ended up tastefully decorated.
His attention span lasted to decorate all the cookies, another surprise. Although he did start eating the cinnamon hearts part way through the second cookie sheet.
And here's our end result! Yum, they looked and tasted delicious. I'm sad to report that they're nearly gone.
Desert Boy is slowly getting used to the idea that he has a little sister. It's not been the easiest concept for him to grasp, especially leaving his only child status behind.
He's had to try out his old baby swing again. Fortunately it didn't collapse!
He makes the bouncer seat look positively tiny. He also had to try out Desert Girl's car seat and pacifier.
We've been trying to give him some extra attention, and when some friends brought over a wonderful dinner for us (thank you!), it included a colorfully sprinkled cake. It was perfect for celebrating it as Desert Boy's cake. He likes to think every cake is his birthday cake, regardless if it's his birthday or not. So we humored him, stuck in a couple candles, and sang to him.
Then he blew out the candles and was very happy. What's not to like about blowing out candles on your birthday cake. 
One of the things that's jumped to our attention is just how much Desert Boy has grown in 2 3/4 years. When we put Desert Girl next to him, it's obvious that he isn't a baby anymore (despite what he thinks at times!).
Although they do tend to have some of the same moves. Some of their shared expressions and body movements cracked us up.
Desert Boy likes to pose for the camera, so taking lots of photos is a way to make him happy!
And maybe having a little sister is okay--or at least it will be in a few months when she can do what he says.
