Twenty-four short of twelve

Twenty-four hours short of twelve weeks, that is. These photos were taken a day before Frances' three month birthday.


I've got her propped up on her boppy (fancy pillow for nursing) for some Tummy Time. Do you know about tummy time? Tummy time is when moms put babies on their stomachs to encourage them to do push-ups in preparation for crawling. Only, all the babies I know hate it, so the moms aren't very good about getting around to it. It's basically an exercise program you can feel guilty about ignoring from birth! Great invention.

Frances' hands are her new best friends. She sucks on them whenever possible.

Three months down! Cheers to Frances!

Mark is back at school now, so there are going to be a lot less travel photos and a lot more close-ups of Frances. Not such a bad thing, yes?

Frances meets Francis

Mark had an afternoon free a couple days ago, so we went for a little drive out to Groton School, where Frances' great-great-grandfather went to boarding school. The school puts the names of its graduates on the school room wall. Can you see the name second from the bottom on the left? It says F. C. Grant. That stands for Francis Clark Grant, who happens to be Frances' mother's father's mother's father and also an inspiration for her name.


Frances rewarded her parents' effort to show her a bit of her history by falling thoroughly asleep.

"No, no...don't wake me, please."

"I really can't be bothered."

Frances loves Philly

Here we have another Surprise Baby Shower onesie, but I can't remember who made this one. Sorry about that. My guess is Beka, Fred or Ali since they stuck with Philly the longest.


The layout of these pictures turned out a bit strange, but her cuteness is still clear.

Whatever works

Frances has a major case of Put-Me-Down-And-I-Wake-Up-itis. Mark was wearing Frances around the apartment in her Snugli, trying to get Frances to take a nap. But then our new stroller arrived in the mail and needed to be put together, immediately, so Frances got deposited on the bed. Then I took this picture. Then ten seconds elapsed and she woke up. So much for the nap, but it might have worked!

Sunday afternoon in the park

Another warm day in Massachusetts. We went walking in a dog park near Winchester, MA. Lots of pedigree dogs to admire and an observation tower.

And, then it got dark and rainy and we retired back to the couch.

The last winter beach

For our last hurrah before Mark goes back to school, we went to Crane's Beach in Ipswich, MA. It was a beautiful 47 degrees; we even passed signs for a sled dog race that had to be canceled because of the warm weather. I thought we would have the beach to ourselves but it was quite busy, including three women on horseback. Mark picked out these photos.

Mark loves, loves, loves these videos. He's watched each one about eight 28 times. He's particularly fond of the snorting sound Frances makes at the end of the second video.

Is this kid cute or what?

New Toy! New Toy! We want to say thank you to BJ, Wendy, Josh, Carrie, Collin and Carter for our new camera. Don't mind the mess in the background (Morgan wants you to know it is a "clean" mess). Just wanted to show Frances off to our Family and Friends.

The "odd" noise in this first one is, uh...not what it sounds like.

Yes, that is Arabic. We were watching a foreign film for our Saturday morning leisure activity.