It's Independence Day

I was wrong. Utterly and dismally wrong. And I have never been so thrilled. I thought that with Boo's new-found mobility my life would get a lot harder. Imagine my surprise that it has turned out to be just the opposite!

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Boo has been a model baby. She is always smiling, rarely fussy, and generally content. But in the past few weeks she took a shift for the worst. A couple of weeks ago we went to Panda for dinner and she threw a fit. I mean a FIT. Screaming her head off, arching her back, kicking her legs, and all because I took a plastic-wrapped fortune cookie away from her. I looked at her in astonishment wondering where my little angel went.

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Her frustration levels appeared to be mounting and I could only hope that the 7 months of blissful babyhood we have been enjoying were not coming to a screeching halt. Much to my delight, other than a behavior-altering state of mind it seems that all her frustration was directly related to her quest for mobility.

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Now that she is crawling she is back to being that happy, content, sweet baby that we brought home from the hospital. Instead of crawling making things harder for me, it has made things drastically easier!

Now I can just plop her down on the carpet and she will happily crawl from toy to toy and play, quite contentedly, on her own. She has discovered a spirit of independence and I'm loving it! No more of the carrying her around for hours on end as I have been for the past few grueling weeks. (Along with the fits came a desire to be carted along wherever her sister and I were going.)

Now she will play for 30 minutes to an hour by herself...yes an hour! She has discovered that we have bins of toys in the entertainment center and even better, that she can get into them. She will crawl over and pull herself up on them to see what treasures await.

So proud of herself!

Needless to say I am happy as a clam to discover that as we move into the 8th month of Boo's little life we are not only getting back to normal, our "normal" is actually a happier place to be which means that for both Boo AND Mommy, it's Independence Day!

Wordless Wednesday

*Photo and arrangement by K

Koala Baby

I don't think I have ever officially introduced Koala to this blog. As I was putting up these pictures I was trying to remember when he became such a big part of our lives. He was given to K when she was born, but it's only been since May that he has played such an important role in our family.

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K has never had a special blanket or toy that she is very attached to...until a few months ago that is. She had just started carrying a little stuffed dog around and she left it at our friend Linda's house (the only reason I can pinpoint the dramatic entrance of Koala) and since I really didn't feel like driving an hour to get the dog back I picked the thing that was most similar for her to sleep with that night, and it just happened to be Koala.

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They have been inseparable ever since. We MUST have Koala with us at ALL times. The other night we actually left him at Red Lobster when we went out to dinner with some family that was visiting. Those few minutes of backtracking were quite tense. Thankfully we had only gone about half a mile before his disappearance was discovered. It was a good object lesson about how if you don't stay near your mommy you might get lost and left behind. It made more of an impression than any lecturing I have been doing on the subject. :)

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So for fun I was looking back through the pictures of our summer to see if I could find Koala...a Where's Waldo if you will. There were too many pictures to show but here is a random selection.

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Koala enjoying a baseball game.

Koala wishing me a Happy Birthday.

Koala on an outing to the city gardens.

Koala at the lake.

And Koala in Canada.

(he didn't need a passport)

So with all the traveling he does you can understand that he gets a mite haggard looking every now and then. Periodically we have to have a "special" day for Koala where he gets to go swimming...in the washing machine that is. We have to make a big production of it.

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Last week when it was time for a bath K said, "Koala doesn't want to go swimming. He just wants his Mommy." It wasn't easy to convince her that we had put it off long enough and Koala was indeed going swimming. He needed it!

After two swimming trips, with much exclamations of "Whee, he's going around and around!" and "Oh, now the water is going to come back up so he can dive way down!" and "Look how much fun he is having!" He finally came out looking more like an orange Koala and less like a ball of grime.

And, yes, he was very happy to be back with his Mommy.

P.S. K and I were looking back through some of the old blog posts and spotted Koala's foot in this picture of K when she was only 14 months old. Love that little face. :)

P.P.S. K has been sick for the past three days so I think Koala is going to have to have another swimming trip. If I can pry him out of her fevered little hands that is. I hate to think of how many germs are lurking on his soft, orange fur.

*shudder*

Shimmy and Shake

This video is also from when we were at my parents. Since we don't have TV I let Bug watch Sesame Street whenever we are there in the mornings. I was sitting on the couch, reading my book, and when some music came on she got up and started shaking it. It was so cute I had to grab my camera. I thought she looked like a flapper with the new hat I had just bought her. So funny. :)

Teeth, Teeth, and More Teeth

We now officially have 6 teeth! 5 and 6 came in really close together with hardly any warning at all. It's kind of hard to see them, but it's the top ones on the left and right of the front teeth. You can also see that the rest of her gums are pretty swollen. I can see the ridges of her bottom side teeth just under the gums so I think those ones will be coming through soon too. But for now we have 6 teeth at 7 months old.

Here are a few more pictures from our stay at Noni and Papa's.

I think we've figured out why Boo started crawling so soon...

"Get me outta here!"

Creepy Crawly

It's official! We have a mobile baby on our hands! So fun, but my life just got a LOT harder. :) T has been out of town the last three days so the girls and I stayed at my parent's house. The funny thing is that K also started crawling when Daddy was away and we were at Noni and Papa's house. I think the main reason is that we have hardwoods and they have carpet and carpet is a lot easier to crawl on. We have been thinking that any minute now Boo was going to start crawling, and she made one little "step" uh "crawl"? on Wednesday, and on Thursday she did three in a row. Here she is just starting to get the hang of it.

Then today, when Daddy got home she decided to really show off and go for it. AND Noni just happened to get a video of it! She kind of blends into the white blanket but you can see how far she gets.

It's kind of funny but she doesn't really know that she can crawl. If she sees something she wants badly enough she will do what she needs to do to get to it, but I don't think she understands, yet, that she can get where she wants to go now. I'm sure it will dawn on her soon. :) For now we'll just have to keep practicing...in between all the babyproofing that needs to be done. It's going to be a lot harder than when K started crawling b/c we have a "helper". A helper who also happens to have lots of little toys/games/parts and pieces that she leaves lying around. We're going to have to work on that too! I'm getting tired just thinking about it. I'd better go to bed. :)

Egg Face

Boo is doing a lot better with the pureed foods, but she still prefers "big people" food so whenever we are eating something she could possibly have, we give it to her.

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K made dinner for us the other night...she was so proud. Egg salad. She got the boiled eggs out of the fridge, peeled them, washed them, used the egg cutter, stirred in the mayonaise/mustard and put the mixture on the bread. Such a big girl. :) I grabbed a few of the yolks out to give to Boo, usually I just throw a few away to cut down on the calories.

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Here is a picture of K eating egg yolks...I think she was about 9 months here.

At first Boo had a hard time picking them up...slippery little devils. :)

But she got the hang of it really quickly.

"See Mom? I don't need any of that baby food! Just give me the good stuff!"

The only downside is how hard it is to clean up that grainy, smeary egg yolk off of every surface. Oh well, at least she's eating!

Plums

The other day we got to go to Noni's house for the afternoon. When the girls woke up from their naps we went outside to pick some strawberries, carrots, tomatoes, and plums. It is so fun for K to see how things grow. She loves picking something and eating it right then.

Boo wanted to get in on the plum pickin' too. :)

I think she just liked all the purple "balls".

So fun...and so tasty!

Reach!

I think one of the best things about fall is getting to enjoy the fruits of your labor...literally! :)

J-E-L-L-O

Well, I've taken the plunge! Into homeschooling that is...as much as a 3 year old needs/wants, which for us is only about 15-30 minutes a day. We haven't been doing anything too extraordinary and in truth it's not all that different than what we would normally do other than that we have a specific time set aside that is a little more focused and we call it "playing school".

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I have been trying to think of some fun ways to learn and this one came to me last night. Bug hasn't been too interested in writing her letters. She will do it on her own every now and then but if I ask her to do it she digs her heels in. So I decided to try to do something fun to help her practice writing her letters. This is what I came up with...pudding!

We got through the entire alphabet and she listened well and cooperated! No frustration! She is not too big on sitting still so any time I can get her to sit still and focus on an activity it is a success.

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Proudly displaying "her" letter.

I would show her how to write the letter in the chocolate and then she would copy me in the vanilla. I was worried that we weren't going to have enough vanilla to make it to the end of the alphabet since she was eating so much but we made it....barely. :) After we did all 26 letters I let her play in it while I checked my e-mail.

I got through all my e-mails and looked over to find this.

Give em' an inch and they'll take a mile! :)

Who says ya shoudn' have instant puddin' with J-E-L-L-O!

P.S. I think I found a new, more organic tanning creme. After I got all that pudding off her arm it was a nice bronze-y shade. :)

Peas and Thank You

Good news! Last weekend when we were at Grandma and Grandpa's we tried the Gerber applesauce and Boo actually ate it! Half of one of those little tubs, which is about half a tub more than she's ever eaten. :) We had given her "natural" applesauce before and she didn't like it...maybe the Gerber stuff is a little more mild?

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AND the best part was that the applesauce seemed to unlock a love for the Gerber foods. The previously rejected sweet potatoes and squash were accepted later in the week! Score one for Mommy and Daddy!

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So since our food ventures have been going so well for the past 6 days we decided to bring out the peas today!

We had a good start...mouth open, nice big bite!

And...it went downhill from there.

A little bit dropped on the tray so we decided to let her explore the foreign substance in the hopes that it would awaken some pea-lovin' taste buds.

She looked like she was performing a scientific experiment.

And she quickly discovered that it wasn't any better from the fingers than it was from the spoon.

We didn't have the heart to push the issue.

I guess that would be "Peas and NO thank you!"

Big Girl

Look what I found when I went into Boo's room yesterday!

She is getting so big already! I just glanced back through our old blog and as far as I can tell K didn't pull herself up on anything until about 9 months. She also got her first top tooth at 9 months so I guess Boo is just all around ahead of the game...at least comparatively in our little family. As you can tell from the video, Boo was quite pleased with herself!

Look for a crawling post soon! I think it is literally going to be any second. She gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth, she can go backward, spin around, and go from sitting to on her tummy to back to sitting, all things that K didn't do until around 10 months so it seems early to me. She's definitely on the brink!

Weekend

We spent the weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's. I didn't get any pictures though. Guess I was just to busy enjoying the peace and quiet of the farm. We went over to Auntie Nae's on Saturday because she was having a garage sale, but other than that we just relaxed and hung out.
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Our only problem was that we lost K's shoes right before we left. Grandma and I spent half an hour looking for them but eventually we just left them behind and K had to go shoeless into Target and Panda Express on the way home.

Well, I'm going to get off here and go enjoy some time outside. The past two days have been absolutely gorgeous. Sunny and 75. Perfect. I wish the weather would stay like this for about two or three months. Is there anywhere it's like this year round? If there is I might have to move. I'm lovin' it!

Watermelon

Boo is still not excited about the baby foods. I'm not really sure what to do about it. The only thing she likes is the oatmeal, so the only way I can get her to eat any fruits or veggies is to put a couple of teaspoons in her oatmeal...any more than that and she won't eat it. I think it is partially a texture thing for her. She has started to gag on her pureed foods...even the oatmeal. However, she is loving regular food. I'm not sure why I have to give her pureed foods anyway. Isn't it basically the same thing? But when I asked the doctor they said to keep pushing the baby foods.

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We're trying, but in the meantime Boo is getting to try a lot of other things. Her favorite is bread. She loves to eat little bits of bread from our sandwiches, hamburgers, even pizza crust. She loves those carbs. :)

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I finally got out the little mesh bag we used with K and by using that we have introduced bananas, plums, and watermelon. The watermelon was her favorite. I thought it was going to be so messy and drippy but when she was done the thing was empty and there wasn't a single drop on her bib! She sucked up every bit of juice she could. :)

Yum.

A little hard to hold, but worth the effort.

Has anyone else had this problem with baby food? It seems odd to me since K loved baby foods and would eat a whole jar in one sitting. It's funny how they show such differences even at this young age.

The Cheese Stands Alone

This is a video that I took a few weeks ago and never put up. K was watching it yesterday and it made me laugh. You can really see her intense personality coming through her song. She almost sounds hostile. She had a mission to complete by golly...she was going to sing that song! So funny.

Canadian Vacation Eh?

I love the way Canadians say "Eh?" at the end of their sentences. It seems so funny to me. And the way they pronounce some things like about sounding like "ah-boot" and sorry sounding like "sore-ee". And that rubber bands are "elastics" and napkins "serviettes". I'm sure the way we talk seems funny to them since everyone we met asked where we were from. It was obvious we weren't locals. :)

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So...our vacation...traveling with kids is just not easy. Things were SO much easier when we were only two...not that I would want to go back to those times without our precious girls, but for traveling purposes it sure was a lot easier. We left on Thursday about 1:30. Since the girls always nap from 2:00 to 4:00 or 4:30 we figured we'd go then and they would sleep on the way there. Yeah. Good plan. Not so much. They finally did fall asleep but it only lasted about half an hour before they woke up again. So we stopped, got a snack, and tried again. S did fall back to sleep for the last 20 minutes or so, but they were both awake when we got to the border. Which actually worked out fine because we were stopped for a random check and had to get out of the car while they looked through our stuff. It probably looked like we were trying to immigrate to Canada since there was about 1 square inch of leftover space in the car. Traveling with kids also means bringing your entire house with you everytime you go somewhere. :P

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Thankfully, after the border we only had about 12 miles to go so we were soon at the condo checking things out. One of the families arrived just a few minutes before we did so we took a while to get settled and then headed into the town to get some dinner. It was a very touristy town so we picked a restaurant and hoped the kids would do okay. Hours and hours spent in the car with little to no naps and the excitement of being with little friends did not provide for the best behavior in a restaurant with cloth napkins. :) But they didn't do too bad and we weren't kicked out.

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After dinner we headed to the grocery store to buy all our fruits and veggies for the weekend (you can't bring them over the border) and the other family arrived. We all went back to the condo and let the kids wear each other out before bed. One of the bedrooms had two bunk beds and we made the attempt of letting K sleep in with her friends. At about 10:00pm we gave up on that idea and moved her to the bathtub in the master suite, where we ended up. Yes, we made our child sleep in the bathtub. :) And we made our other child sleep in the closet. We tried to have Boo out in the room with us but she turned over and fussed about every five seconds and in the PeaPod, which is made of tent material, it sounded like some giant rustling bear was in the room. So we moved the PeaPod to the closet and happily closed out the rustling sounds.

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The next morning the kids were even more excited to see each other. Group vacationing is really just one big sleepover! Fun for everyone. :) One of the families gave us their bumbo that their daughter has grown out of. We didn't have one and Boo loves it!

The girls playing games.

Friday was the only really nice day on the 5 day forecast so we decided to take advantage of the last real day of summer and spend it at the lake. The guys made a tee time and us girls headed to the lake with all the kids. We drove the 45 minutes to Lake Christina, where T and I visited on our Anniversary getaway in July. It is a perfect beach. The kids could walk out about 30 feet and still be only waist deep. Great for wading. I don't think I got a picture with all 6 under 6, but here are five of them. They are ages six, three and a half, three, two, one and a half, and seven months.

All girls and one boy! Poor guy. :) At least he's the oldest!
All the kids were fascinated with Boo. She wasn't so sure about them. :)

This is one of the best things about group vacationing...the kids entertain themselves! All I had to do was sit on a blanket with S and watch K playing with her friends. They had a blast!

Boo had a pretty good time herself.

I think it's time to put away all the fun summer outfits. :( They are so much cuter than winter clothes! I'm not ready for long sleeves and jeans! No fun.

Girlfriends.
That was the night that the illness began so the next morning we were pretty slow getting up and around. Boo went down for her morning nap and we went out behind the condo to the little creek. it was so pretty. There is a ski resort about half a mile from the condo so we were definitely high up in the mountains. It was a beautiful spot.

Posing.

I thought this picture was so cute! I wish it were a little clearer, but I was standing up on the bridge.

I just threw some tennis shoes on with my skirt since I didn't think we'd be gone very long. A group of us ended up going on a hike along the creek. I definitely would have done better with jeans, but it wasn't too bad. :)

After naps we went into the town. They had a really cute little toy shop there and several candy shops. We let the kids pick out a treat. K picked this lollipop. It was actually one of the smallest ones!

While we were there Boo cut BOTH of her top teeth! That would probably account for the fussy, rustly sleeping. Poor thing. At least we got them both out of the way at one time!

I didn't really take any pictures of the condo. Here's one of the main floor living room.

Saturday night was another night of sickness, so Sunday was pretty relaxed too. We packed a lunch and drove to a nearby town that was supposed to have some good shopping. The town was pretty dead on a Sunday. They even had all the stoplights blinking...like there wasn't enough traffic around to even have them on. We took a walk along the river. They had some gorgeous flowers.

It was pretty cold and windy. Boo didn't want to stop for a photo-op. "Uh, can somebody pick me back up and wrap me up in my blanket again??"

We walked around for a bit and then decided to head back since it was so cold.

We stopped at a park and let the kids play for an hour and we were going to have our picnic lunch but the wind was so chilly that we ended up going back to the condo and eating there. We had a nice relaxing day of naps, reading, playing games, eating, and we ended with some hot tub time and a movie after we got the kids to bed.

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It was Sunday night, or rather Monday morning, that T and I got sick so we literally spent almost the entire day in bed before stumbling to the car and driving home as quickly as possible. It really was a fun vacation though and I'm so glad we did it! Maybe we can do it next year and hope that nobody gets the flu!

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I think K would probably rank it right up there with one of the best vacations ever!

Sounds like a pretty good time, eh?