Cousins

Frederick got to meet his birth-month-sharing-cousin Maeve last week. Here's the very first picture of them together. They were both sleepy. 

 Liz and I were excited to meet each other's babies. This is our first attempt at a picture with all 5 cousins.

 We were gathered in Deerfield for a baby open-house. Clara was more interested in carrying her cousin Vivian around.

 Frederick and Maeve slept for the 3 hours or so that visitors were around. But they woke for a bit of together time afterwards.

 Maeve was born 12 days before Frederick. It's going to be interesting to watch them develop over these first couple of years.

 The cousins all seem to like each other so far.

A few days later was Henry's birthday. We had a fun breakfast at Walker Brothers before Pete had to go to work. He came home early and Henry was very excited to open his 'big' gift from us. It was a remote control car. That night we went to Barnaby's and met up with Grandma, Bampa, Liz and the two little cousins. 

Henry had requested a mohawk for the celebration. He then spent the whole evening pouting at me for asking him to put his book away. 

The next day was Thanksgiving. Frederick dressed up.

 The girls helped Grandma in the kitchen...mostly by eating the breads they were supposed to be putting on the tray.

 The turkey was on the table.

 Frederick hung out with Bampa, waiting for dinner.

 Henry and Clara assembled some sort of tent city in the basement.

 I'm including this photo just because I think Pete looks so cute in it.

 The following several photos show the progression of trying to get a nice picture of all 5 cousins together:

 We ended up with a pretty nice one. You'll also notice Vivian's broccoli lovie in the picture. Yes- we bought her that.

 Again we tried for some pictures of al 5 kids.

 Here's my favorite from the day:

Thanksgiving night we drove to Iowa City so we could catch Will and Sandy before they left for Colorado. It was their first time meeting Frederick. We also wanted to go to a football game, even with the terrible season the Hawks have had. It was very very cold. 

 Henry was at the game with his Grandpa, but their seats were in the endzone in the shade with the wind in their faces. Dad called me during the first quarter to say Henry was pretty miserable. We brought him down to our seats (Mom's seats) to try and find some warmth between us. It worked for a bit. We were all pretty frozen by the last quarter and we did leave a little early.

We had dinner at Dad and Kathie's that night to celebrate Henry's birthday (and also to eat some yummy ham and Thanksgiving leftovers). Dad picked out this book, all about gross stuff, for Henry. They both got quite a kick out of such sections as "ways to say you have to go to the bathroom". But I like this photo best for Clara and Eleanor.