First up - I uploaded 115 new pictures last night in an album named 9-8-07 to 10-3-07. Enjoy! I'm working on getting more uploaded. It's slow going though.

This week has been long. I'm not getting home until 5 or 5:30pm most nights. Last night it wasn't until almost 6pm. This working late thing sucks. I want my normal 3:30pm going home time back. Hopefully it will be a little better in the coming weeks as we're moving the meeting time from 3:30-4:00pm daily to 3:00-4:00pm daily. We were always running over our time anyway so now we should hopefully get out a little earlier. I just hate not seeing my kids very much though. HATE IT. And I think they're feeling the effects too. When I get home Annika comes running to me at full speed and wraps herself around my legs while yelling "Mommy!" and James comes crawling at me as fast as he can while whimpering. I must then pick him up and hold him for a minimum 1/2 hour and sometimes close to an hour before I can put him down to play. And Annika has started crawling into our bed during the night to snuggle up and sleep by me. Why can't I win the lottery so I can be a stay at home mom? Oh, that's right - because I don't play (and something about odds).

On less whiny news - the kids are doing some really cute things now. Annika has decided that she wants to sit in my nest (in my lap when I'm sitting cross-legged) so that is how we spend most nights now after James goes to sleep and before it's Annika's bed time. I don't know where she got the nest thing from but I think it's pretty cute. She's also gotten really good at her puzzles lately. She has two big 2'x3' puzzles about 24 pieces each. And she can use the picture on the box and the pieces themselves and put them both together without any help. Maybe she'll be a puzzle lover like I am! I may need to get her another puzzle for Christmas.

And James will "walk" to you from a couple steps away if you're holding his hands. Any farther than that and he sinks down to crawl to you. And he has been gravitating to playing with balls lately. I think we might need to get more balls for him for Christmas. One night he chased a ball all around the house as it rolled around. He would swat at it and then chase it again. It was pretty cute. And he's become so giggly lately. I can tickle him and make goofy faces or noises and he busts out a laugh for me. I've tried to start reading him board books but he'd rather eat them still. I think it was around this age when we really started reading to Annika.