Recently in ludi Category

Today the weather was so amazing that I could no longer put off a small project I have long wanted to embark on: finding family gravestones at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis.

Ludi has a runny nose, and had a slight fever. This certainly isn't as bad as some other bouts we've had over the years. But it's amazing how just a little sick goes a loooooooong way with these girls.

At the end of January we took a trip to the Magic House. It was our first outing somewhere in a while with the girls. They had a blast, but of course it couldn't last long enough for them.

Some recent development milestones:

• Jadzia can read and write! Last week she made up some valentines that we mailed out to family and handed to our neighbors. I spelled the names, and she wrote them out.

• Ludi is singing really well, and she has quite a few songs memorized.

• Josie is walking, and doing some talking and signing. Best of all, she is sleeping through the night -- and she has moved into the girls' room.

A couple years ago, one of our neighbors gave us her old Fischer-Price Molly cow, much like the one in the photo above.

We tied some yarn to its neck so Jadzia could pull it around. After a while she began to call the cow her "Lassie" (the dog from the TV show). She would lose and regain interest in it over time.

Recently we watched the Wizard of Oz twice with Jadzia and Ludi. Ludi seems to have been especially captivated by it. She asks me daily (or more than once a day) to recount the story for her. I tell various versions, depending on how much time I feel like spending sitting down and talking.

And lately Ludi has begun taking the cow and calling it "Toto." She, of course, is Dorothy. (Sometimes Josie is the Wicked Witch of the West.)

So Molly the Cow has become a stand-in for famous TV and movie dogs.

We've been tired lately, Yoli especially. Mostly it's Josie who wakes up early and such.

But Ludi has also been waking up in the night. Sometimes it's just that she doesn't want to go to sleep, so we have issues with her getting out of her bed.

A couple nights ago, I came home and found Ludi sleeping on the couch. She had snuck out of her room while Yoli was washing dishes, and fell asleep there. Last night, Yoli heard her crying in the night. She was on the potty!

We are very thankful for that latter development!

In any event, these girls wear us out.

Speaking of recipes, Yoli has some recipes she's been saving for almost 20 years. Many of them are hand-written or cut-and-pasted into a little notebook.

Last night she decided to try a recipe that she had wanted to make for a long time. The recipe was written in Portuguese, and it was called "Torta de Chocolate," although it really looked more like a pie than a cake. She had found the recipe on the street back in Bolivia and had always wondered how it might taste. Now was her chance to find out.

(And yes, Yoli knows enough Portuguese to be able to prepare this recipe)

But there are always some monkeys to throw wrenches into things. In this case, the monkeys were named Jadzia, Ludi, and Josie.

All the girls wanted to be in the kitchen watching Yoli as she cooked. Ludi was standing on our step ladder, Jadzia brought in a stepstool from the bathroom, and Josie was just crawling and doing whatever.

When Yoli went to fetch a pan from the basement, Ludi sprang into action. She took Yoli's good vanilla, and poured all of it into the mixture for the torta's filling. The cap fell to the floor, where Josie eagerly picked it up and began licking it. Jadzia the eager spectator didn't bother to call for help.

Suffice it to say that Yoli threw all three out of the kitchen, cleaned the mess, and continued cooking.

I got to taste the torta last night. It was very mousse-pie-like, but the crust was like a very firm cake rather than a pie crust. Very tasty, but it had enough vanilla flavor that it almost had an alcohol taste.

Reason #82 I don't want kids to grow up:
In their eyes, my "dancing" is on par with Baryshnikov's.

Reason #139 I want the kids to grow up:
The Terrible Twos have arrived for Ludi.

Beautiful weather left me with no excuse to avoid raking leaves today.

The girls offered their "help" which lasted for a while. Mostly they wanted me to make piles that they could play in.

Ludi was the best helper, probably, grabbing small handfuls and putting them into the yard waste bag. But she's not quite tall enough to reach in, so she would have to pull the bag down.

Jadzia, on the other hand, could grab a nice big clump of leaves, and she was plenty tall. But she wasn't all that interested in working.

(Josie offered moral support, and mostly just enjoyed being outside)

I finished the front yard, but the side yards and back yard remain. I also have 4 ornamental grasses that I need to trim for the winter.

And, as usual, the tree in the front yard is still loaded with leaves. It's going to be a loooong fall.

Here are some photos of Ludi from our session with Elie.

Here are some photos of the three girls together from our session with Elie.

For nearly eight months I have been laboring on and off to finish (that is: apply stain and polyurethane) a set of bunk beds for the girls. At long last the project reached completion.

I did make a few mistakes during assembly that led to disassembly and reassembly of certain parts (and 2 or 3 broken dowels that had to be drilled out). Also, I almost broke Yoli's foot.

But the finished product looks pretty good in my opinion and the girls have loved it.

Recently, we went to a celebration of the anniversary of "Parents as Teachers" Florissant Civic Center that featured all sorts of fun activities for the girls -- including face-painting.

Here are some photos of Jadzia, Ludi, and Josie with their friend Claire in their favorite domain: the front yard.

(by which I also mean the neighbor's porch and the neighbor's driveway)

Still playing catch-up here on the blog... Someday all my websites, bunk beds, and projects will be finished and we'll be up to date.

Ah, who am I kidding?

Anyway, here are a few choice pics from our trip to San Antonio.

Nan holds Josie in her living room.

Here at the Renaud Empire, there has been no shortage of stories to tell the world at large. There has been, however, a shortage of time in which to write said stories. So, yet again, I am apologizing for a lack of updates here.

A few days ago we returned from a trip to San Antonio to visit family and relax. It was really wonderful. The weather was hot and dry, although we were thankful to see the parched land receive some rain while we were there. My Nan's pool was loads of fun, and all three of the girls greatly enjoyed it.

Yoli and the girls colored eggs on Easter Eve. They kept it simple, using regular food coloring, rubber bands, and crayons.

The eggs turned out beautifully, but the only problem was the girls wanted to eat them right away!

I am retro-dating this post, since the photos in it took place in the middle of April. Sorry for the long delay.

In this sequence, watch as the girls sit unknowingly on the neighbor's step. Quietly, a giant horse-dog approaches from behind ...

And then happy the next ...

These photos are from a trip to the Botanical Garden.

Pay no attention to the baby behind the curtain!

Yoli and Jadzia are putting together a flower arrangement. It actually has lasted quite a while and is still up on our mantle.

The warming weather has thawed an innate desire within my oldest girls: playing outside.

Now when we get home from a morning spent at the doctor or at church, they immediately run to the little playhouse in our neighbor's driveway. But I have to drag them away crying and screaming because it's nap time.

We got a stack of books from the library this week, two of which we have read before: "Three by the sea" and "Three up a tree," both of which are excellent. While we were at the library, I also noticed "Miss Nelson is Back," another book I remember from my youth, so we added that to the stack.

Ludi doesn't quite have the patience to sit through "Miss Nelson is Back" when I read it for the girls. But she likes to take all three books and "read" them aloud by herself.

Here's a quick update with some great photos of Josie and the girls. Hope you get a kick out of them!

Jadzia has been waiting all winter for us to get enough snow that she could make a snowman. Finally the moment arrived. She and Ludi came out with me and we began working on a snowman. But the fun didn't last very long.

There have quite a few bits of life that I intended to post about here, but with Christmas and work and girls and babies and everything, I never got around to it. Now I am making up for lost time, and here are some photos we took when we visited the renovated Magic House on New Year's Eve Eve with my friend John. Unfortunately the lines to get in were far longer than we expected them to be. But the girls had a lot of fun once inside (and thankfully it was totally freezing outside).

After a while I took Jadzia and Ludi to meet their new sister, Josie. We told them that Josie had arrived with gifts for them: an apron for Jadzia, and sunglasses for Ludi.

Both girls were very interested in holding Josie and touching her. Ludi especially. Ludi was giving her kisses. But she was also treating Josie more like a doll, repeatedly pushing in her nose and saying "nariz" like she would with the doll she got for Christmas.

The last few days Jadzia has been getting sick. She's had trouble sleeping, calling us at various times through the night. She isn't really running a fever, but she has a runny nose and a cough, and she isn't herself.

She still seemed excited about going to the FamilyWise service this morning. We thought we'd take her to that, but not take to her regular children's ministry class where she would be handling toys and playing closely with other kids.

But just as we were suiting up to leave, Jadzia decided she no longer wanted to go. So we ended up staying home from church. She spent the next several hours laying on the couch, moving in and out of sleep, listening to Christmas music and Bible readings.

It's always tough to watch the girls be sick. We want them to heal up soon ... and we also want to make sure they don't infect each other or us.

There may be one bright side out of all this, at least for Ludi: She's been totally free the last two days. Free to run around without her older sister bossing her, taking toys from her, pushing her, etc, etc. She seems pretty happy about it, too.

This past Sunday, Yoli bravely trekked from our house to Florissant Rd. so the girls could watch Northern Lights, Ferguson's holiday parade/festival. She did this in spite of the threat of snow.

As she tells it, everything went well until the end. Jadzia was so happy she wanted to stay forever (these days she never wants to come home, anyway, and she always tells us so. She wants to be out and about.) ... while Ludi was tired of it and screaming to go home. It was a no-win scenario, to borrow an expression from Star Trek II. Unfortunately, Spock wasn't there to resolve the scenario for Yoli, so she just went home, and dragged the screaming girls with her.

A few pictures from falltime in our backyard as winter approaches.

Trying to enjoy the last hurrah of warm fall days. I took the girls to the park again, and we had fun on the swings and the playground. Jadzia even met a new girl. I had to remind her how to introduce herself, because she said "Look, what's that girl doing?" and started yelling "Hey girl, what are you doing?" The girl's name was "Aniya" (not sure of the spelling), but Jadzia needed to be reminded many times to call her by her name. She sure wasn't shy, though. Jadzia immediately began telling her "This is my sister, Ludi" and launched into some fantasy play about making plastic things with wood chips (or something like that).

Ludi lets us know very clearly when she is enjoying some food. Her mouth gapes open wide, her way of saying "shovel in the food, now!" In the photo above she was enjoying apple pie. She really, really, really likes apple pie and would probably never stop eating it if we didn't make her stop (or run out).

Jadzia is not quite so keen on apple pie. But she does love chocolate pie, which is on the menu for today.

This month Yoli has been taking a "fondant and gum paste" class. No, that's not a chemistry course at UMSL … it's a cake-decorating class at Fischer's!

So on Thursdays I've had the girls to myself for an extra two hours.

On Saturdays when Yoli's not working, we like to walk around town. We start off by going to the Ferguson Farmer's Market and picking up some veggies. A lot of times there are food/cooking demos going on, which means free samples. And there's always good music. In this photo, Yoli's telling me not to take the picture because I'm taking it from the wrong angle (the sun is behind them).

People always seem surprised to learn that we don't have cable, high-speed internet access, cell phones or a digital camera. After all, we are a highly computer-literate family, and I am a lover of technology. Well, now you can knock one of those off the list: we got a digital camera. But I wouldn't bet on any of the othe rs changing anytime soon.

We had a mini-celebration for Ludi's first birthday earlier this week. She turned one on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, late July and so far in August has been a time of hustle and bustle. We were in Houston the two days before Wednesday, staying overnight with our friends the Zanders so that we could do a bunch of paperwork at the Bolivian consulate in that city. Fortunately we completed everything we needed to, and now we are set for our trip to Bolivia at the end of August.

So Wednesday arrived and we knew we wanted to do something for Ludi, since it was her day. We had already settled on a trip to the Whistle Stop, but I thought it would also be fun to go to the Botanical Garden first.

It had been raining, so that scared away a lot people and we got a great parking spot. (This accords well with my "Six Flags Strategy": Plan your trips to Six Flags on rainy days, that way the lines are short and you get to ride the rides more times.)

On Monday and Tuesday, we spent a 1.125-day vacation in St. James, Mo. where we visited my brother Justin and his family. His youngest son Keaton was celebrating birthday Numero Uno.

Today I finally got to play the elusive doubleheader that had been rained out twice before. It was a good day for me personally. I went 3-for-4 with 1 RBI in the two games. But my team, the Roid Ragers, still lost both games. We ended the season unvictorious.

Yoli and the girls came out for the first game. It seemed like they enjoyed it. Jadzia really got into the "picnic" aspect of it. We brought a little food she and Ludi to snack on and a blanket for the girls to sit on. It was nice to be able to come over and say hi to them between innings. Jadzia also got into the spirit of the game, yelling whenever she would hear the players yelling something. (Of course her father was probably one of the biggest yellers on the field)

But out in the field it was hot! The high temperature for the day was 99° according to the Post-Dispatch. Thankfully there were breezes much of the time, and a lot of shade behind the benches. But those same breezes kicked up a lot of dust. I was a muddy mess later in the evening when I hit the showers.

Between games I had to shuttle Yoli and the girls back home to take their naps. I had just enough time to eat a bit of peach pie before heading back to play in Game Two.

All in all I enjoyed the season. I wish it had rained less so that we wouldn't have had such an erratic schedule. I probably would have played better. But I feel like I made a lot of progress in the last few weeks: I ended the season on a 6-for-10 tear (if you count a practice game we played one of the Sundays we got rained out).

Most of all it was fun to hang out with friends, and, gasp, have some physical activity.

I can't believe I just wrote that last phrase.

The differences between siblings are a source of neverending amazement and bewilderment. Jadzia has been picky for quite some time. But Ludi? She eats almost anything. These days she is eating a ton ... probably a growth spurt.

She can be picky in her own way. If we have oatmeal for her to eat, and we are eating dinner (say, sweet and sour chicken with rice), she won't eat the oatmeal. She wants to share in whatever we're taking off our plates and putting into our mouths.

I have to point out, this fills her mom with joy.

Parades, markets, softball games … It's been an eventful weekend here in the Renaud Empire.

My friend Casey got married Saturday out in Waverly, Illinois. Since it was okay for us to take the girls to the reception, Yoli and I thought we might as well make a whole day trip out of it.

We packed up the girls and set out around 8:40 a.m. Saturday for the distant city of Springfield.

Daddies are nothing if not problem-solvers. So it was that I faced a dilemma on Friday …

Goal: Mow the yard on Friday afternoon before work, since I won't have another chance to do it until Tuesday.

Problem: Ludi is awake, but Yoli is at work, so I can't leave Ludi alone.

Solution: Mow the lawn with Ludi in the baby carrier!

Keep reading to find out how it went.

Last week Ludi said her first word. It was "Pa."

But if I hadn't been there to hear it myself, I don't know if that's how it would have gone down in the record books. :)

See, not long after she said "Pa," she started saying "pa" and "ma" and "mama" all together. Yoli and I were both there are she made these babbling noises. Truth be told, she probably said "ma" a lot more. But the very *first* word was "Pa."

I am very pleased.

Ludi tries a cracker. She doesn't really have the knack of it yet. But she has come to love eating cheerios.

Click the link below for more photos.

Any Calvin & Hobbes fans out there? Some of my favorite storylines in that comic involve Calvin's battles with his babysitter, Rosalyn.

I bring this up because we are fast-approaching a major milestone... For the first time, leaving our girls with a non-family-member babysitter.

It almost goes without saying that I have been looking forward to this for a long time.

I have loved my beautiful baby girls from the day Jadzia first arrived. But I lost a lot of freedom that day. I'll never be like I was before, that's certain. But I am really looking forward to being able to take out Yoli for a date every once in a while.

I'm just hoping my girls don't act like Calvin while we're away.

Yes, Ludi can do push-ups. Better than me, too. Keep reading to see a video.

A few photos for your enjoyment. This is Jadzia at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo.

Jadzia and Ludi sure are playful. Here's some recent photos showing the girls doing their thing.

The world is winding down from the tumultous but transcendent celebrations that marked International Josh Week. Here in St. Louis, the festivities were more low-key than usual, but all in all they were good.

The morning of International Josh Day, I got my first present: a new waffle iron. We immediately put it to work. My first attempt was okay, but not breath-taking.

The next day, we tried again. This time, Yoli handled the batter. The waffles turned out much better. Since this was Tuesday, I had the day off, and my parents agreed to watch Jadzia and Ludi. This freed Yoli and I to spend an afternoon together. We decided to tour two institutions that are quintessential to St. Louis: the church and the brewery.

We started at the Cathedral Basilica.

Jadzia likes playing with her sister's car seat.

Jadzia helps Josh assembling the cradle for Ludi before she is born.

You can see a couple photos taken at the hospital by visiting Ludi's page at growingfamily.com.

All four of us are now back at Renaud Manor in Ferguson. The hospital stay was nice, but now we're in for the real grind... The baby is eating, sleeping, pooping, and crying all day long. So far Jadzia has been nice with her, and we haven't seen any huge problems. Hopefully it will stay that way. It's good I can be home to tackle Jadzia while Yoli tackles the baby.

Click the link below to see one final video we took at the hospital.

Yeah, so we took our time and left folks on the edge of their seats for a bit. But it's now (almost) official: our newest daughter is Ludivine Mercedes Renaud.

Our newest baby has arrived, and she's a girl!

Right off the top, let me say that she remains nameless for the moment, but we hope to have settled on a name by the end of today.

Here's her vitals:

* Born July 30, at 2:23 a.m.
* Weighed 7 pounds
* 20.5 inches long

If you click below to continue reading this entry, you'll be able to watch a short video of the new baby and read the story of our adventure.

This morning Yoli and I awakened at 4:45 a.m. We were preparing to get her and Jadzia to the airport for their trip to Bolivia. I will be joining them next week. That's an early morning for someone who works until at least 11:30 p.m. every night. On the bright side, it gave me some extra time after I dropped them off to scan some in some recent ultrasound pictures of our next baby (see below)!

This is not a "traveling light" trip, my preferred modus operandi. Yoli will be making a wedding cake and also teaching a cake-decorating class at El Jordán during this trip, so she took all the pots and pans, etc.

Yoli and Jadzia's trip will last three weeks; I will join them next Sunday, so I'll be there for two weeks. During this week, Yoli will post a few entries on our Bolivia weblog. Once I join her, I will be posting stuff there as well, so please check often!

Anyway, I know what you really want to see are the ultrasound photos. Here they are: