It's hard to believe it has been 2 weeks since my last posting. Time flies when everyone in your family is taking turns getting sick. Apparently the Easter flu was only the first in a string of illnesses to attack our household. Fraser developed some strange viral infection that gave him hives all over his body, then he contracted some ugly stomach bug which he passed to his brother and mother (he loves to share). I think, however, we may finally be healthy here (knock on wood) aside from some residual hives, and I am not at all sorry to see this winter coming to a close!

The above picture is from our trip to the New England Aquarium on Saturday, which was so much fun! Fraser's God father and his wife met us there, and Fraser had a blast checking out all the fish and turtles and watching the ferry come in. It turned out to be a beautiful day, so after the Aquarium we walked to lunch and then wandered down the shoreline until we came to a little playground where Fraser again had a great time. The sandbox is, without a doubt, still his favorite, but he did try out the slide too (with much encouragement).

Fraser's speech seems to really be improving. He is trying out lots of new words and starting to (finally) mimic things that we say. In the past week alone he has said (among other things I can't remember)- doctor, fruit, backhoe, trucks (which for some reason sounds like "dots"), and dog doo. It's really exciting to hear him trying to communicate more, though at the same time it can be very frustrating for him and for us when he keeps saying the same thing over and over and we can't figure out what he means (Andy figured out what "dots" was, I was clueless.)

Hammie and I are currently engaged in lengthy and totally unproductive negotiations concerning his sleep. He now gets up, on average, every 2 to 3 hours all night long. On Friday night, however, he got up every half hour to 45 minutes and would not go back to sleep unless I nursed him. By morning my nipples were so sore I was pretty much ready to switch him cold turkey to formula, or feed him to passing wolves. So now I am getting out all those sleep manuals (that were totally useless with Fraser) and hoping to run across some pearls of wisdom to help me get more than 6 or so hours of a sleep a night. (I realize, in case you are wondering, that there are many people who function just fine when they get 6 hours of sleep a night on a regular basis. I am, however, not one of those people. I am one of those people who, after many months of 6 hours of sleep a night or less, leaves the house in mismatched shoes, drives halfway to somewhere before she realizes she doesn't remember where she is going, finally makes it to the grocery store only to realize she has forgotten the list, does all her improvised grocery shopping without realizing that her left boob is hanging out of her nursing top, gets home and unpacks the car but leaves the milk in the back seat, realizes her boob has been hanging out, realizes she doesn't actually care anymore, curls up in the fetal position on the couch while the baby screams and the toddler runs with scissors. (This hasn't actually happened, but it could).