The end of a long March!

March is one of my favorite months. So many good things happen and have happened in March. It is the beginning of Spring. Most of my favorite flowers bloom in March. It is James's birthday month, as he likes to refer to it (instead of most people celebrating a birth day, he likes us to celebrate the whole month), James and I got married in March of 2003, we found out we were expecting Jake on James's birthday, March 21st, 2005. Two years later, also on James's birthday, we found out for sure that Mari was on her way! This past March Mari was christened. We became home owners in March 2007. I found out I was accepted into the McDonnell Barksdale Honors College and the Croft Institute at Ole Miss and that I had been chosen for several academic scholarships that paid for it all many years ago in the month of March 1999.
This March 28th I received notification that I have been accepted into my first choice Ph.D. program. This fall I will enter the Public Policy and Administration Ph.D. program at Mississippi State University. I am very excited. I want to research and develop social policies and if I didn't get accepted into this program I was going to have to go to law school to work at the level I want to. I have no real desire to go to law school and I can't imagine myself ever actually practicing law. I was nervous that I wouldn't get in because I do not have a masters degree or even a bachelors degree in the field of political science, although I took many political science courses for my International Studies program. However, they looked at my transcripts, read some of my written work and then called me in for an interview. After the interview I went by the main office to say goodbye to the secretary whom I had communicated with many times over the phone and she said," That was the fastest one yet!" She must have seen the horror stricken look on my face, because she then said, "Oh but I am sure it went well. They were really impressed by your GRE scores." I assumed the worst and waited an agonizing week and half for the good news. If I am lucky I can graduate in 2011 (the year I turn 30).
Mari went for her four month checkup this past week and she is 17lbs 14oz and 25 inches long! She is a big baby, but still not as big as Jake was at this age. She continues to be a sweet little girl although she can be fussy at times now that she appears to be teething. She is rolling over by herself on occasion and holding herself upright rather well. She is trying so hard to sit up by herself. She coos and talks to us quite a bit. She has discovered that there is a difference between Me, James and strangers now and so she is not to keen to be held by others. I don't mind though because she is growing up so fast that I like to hold her and cuddle her as much as possible. James and I are still undecided on if she will be our last or not and I don't know if it is the thought that she might be my last baby or that she is a little girl, but I find myself hanging on to each little moment more so than I did with Jake. Maybe, it is just realizing how fast Jake has grown up and knowing that she will never be small ever again and that soon she won't like me to cuddle her all the time. She is starting to develop a little attitude and it doesn't look like she will have much trouble fending for herself against Jake. She has started cooing in this really bossy tone of voice!
Jake is cute as ever. He uses it to his advantage very well. As you can see in the picture below, time-out and redirection do not work out so well for us these days. Depending on the severity of the offense we now occasionally smack his hand. When we do this he says we hurt his hand, "you hurted me," and demands we kiss it better. He constantly amazes me with the things he notices and remembers. Jake is quite the little back seat driver. He yells stop and go at intersections when the lights change colors. He knows that green means go and red means stop and he can be quite emphatic about it! He loves his little sister to death, but he gets to excited sometimes when he tries to play with her and we have to make him stop. He has developed a new game that we aptly call "Wake up the baby." He waits until one of us put down an asleep baby Mari and then he wakes her up. You think he would want to take advantage of his time alone with us, but it seems he would rather watch Mari cry than spend time with us. In all fairness though, Mari has woken Jake up a few times this week with her late night crying so all of us are a little short on sleep these days.

Jake occasionally does something bad and then gleefully puts himself in time out!?! Mari is definitely interacting with her toys a lot more these days. At four months old her eyes are still solid blue, no hint of brown at all. Although, I have heard they can still change anytime in the first year.