More Feb pics

I've got to figure out how to turn off the red eye reduction on my camera. All the flashing lights leave Spring looking startled in most pictures, even when just moments before, she was smiling. This is about the least startled I can get!

Cutie pie!

Spring's at the age where, if she can get ahold of something, she puts it in her mouth. It's fun to watch how hard she works at playing with toys!

Would you like some cheesy grilled bear? I don't know how this game got started, but for several days, Reed ran around with his stuffed bear and a spatula saying, "Reed makes cheesy grilled bear!"

Dueling ukuleles!

Shoot, somebody might see me drinking Starbucks! Okay, you might know I'm a coffee snob. I have long boycotted Starbucks, not only because they are a giant corporation, but also because their coffee wasn't good. They intentionally burned their beans to give them a "distinct flavor", then in order to compensate for having nasty beans, their baristas would put enough syrup in your latte to put you in a diabetic coma. But a few years ago, Starbuck's changed owners, and they made some changes. They shut down all the braches for a few days and retrained all their baristas and their beans are better now too. It's taken me this long to give them another try, and I'm not saying I've become a faithful Starbuck's drinker, I'd rather support a local business if I can, but I will say that it's nice to be able to get a consistently good drink if I do go there.

Winter warm up

As you probably gathered from Gerry's birthday post, we took a trip to Florida! Gerry's parents flew us down for his birthday and it was wonderful to get some sun, and even better to get to spend some time with them!

Gerry and I both had some reservations about flying with Spring and Reed, but they did just fine. I had to laugh though at the end of our flight to Florida, a woman asked me how our kids had done on the flight. I said that they had done really well. She said, "Oh, then that wasn't your kid I heard crying?" I laughed and replied that it might have been one of my kids... Having a good flight is a matter of perspective and it would have been unreasonable to expect no tears on the trip!

We did lots on the trip! You already know that we went boating, and we also went to the beach, to Busch Gardens and to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium (where I interned in college). Here are the photo highlights.

Reed in the back yard.

Reed spent most of the boat trip sitting on Grandpa's lap! Gerry didn't fully explain what a great boat trip we had, we literally lost count of how many dolphins we saw, some of them jumping up right beside the boat! Spring loved it too, she snoozed almost the whole time, only getting upset when we got off the boat. Apparently she inherited her daddy's love of boating!

Spring hanging out with daddy in the front yard.

Reed really enjoyed getting to play with his cousin Marina.

It was pretty warm the day we went to the beach, but it was really windy too! Eventually the wind got to be too much and we headed home. It was blowing enough that we were getting pelted with sand as we walked back the the car.

Spring LOVED Grandma Lisa. She loved sitting in her lap and cooing at her and Spring treated Grandma to lots of laughs. Grandma had found this cute little dress before we came, then found the red crocs on an outting one day while we were there and decided Spring had to have them!

Just a cute picture!

Happy Birthday Gerry!

Happy Birthday to Gerry cruise!!!

It was pretty stormy, 15 kts wind out of the north, and cold.... about 63 degrees.

Saw dolphins, drank beer.... life is good!

Tag of fourths

Awesome idea via The Wakeman Family, tag of fourths...

What you do is to go into you photos folder, open the fourth folder there, then open the next fourth folder. When you run out of folders, pick the fourth image. Here's ours.

This is a picture of a pretty funny story. In 2004, Gerry's mom and I flew to Germany to visit her sister, Nancy. Lisa and I were very rummy from the long flight and Nancy had just picked us up at the airport. Nancy was trying to pay for our parking, but not speaking or reading any German, she tried to put German coins into the bill slot, so here she is, trying to fish out the money while her sister points and laughs at her! I was doing a fair amount of laughing too!!

Hippie camouflage

We decided to dress Spring in an outfit that Reed had worn as a baby and attempt to recreate the "hippie camouflage" picture that we had taken. I thought that doing this picture with Spring would help me see how similar they look, but seeing them in the same outfit makes their differences stand out to me more. Go figure... and I was just starting to think they really looked alike too!

So can you tell who's who? (Don't scroll down too far or you'll see a picture that will give away the answer).
























Spring is in the first picture and Reed is in the second.

And of course, I couldn't resist getting a picture of all three of them in their matching tie-dye. I must admit, I felt a little left out that I didn't have a tie-dye shirt to match! Would it be lame to have family pictures where we all wore matching tie-dye? Bear in mind, that we are people who would wear tie-dye anyway and wouldn't be wearing it just for the picture. Gerry thought it would be corny, but I kind of like the idea...

Reed had a cute moment a few nights ago at dinner. We were having BLTs with avocado (or as we like to call them, BLATs). Usually when we make sandwiches, we make a simplified sandwich for Reed, but lately, he'd been eating most of our sandwiches when we did that so we asked Reed if he wanted toast or a sandwich. He replied that he wanted a sandwich so Gerry made one and gave it to Reed. Reed promptly opened the sandwich and pushing the tomato off his sandwich exclaimed, "no salad!". I'd never heard him say the word salad before. I had to laugh! Reed's not a big veggie eater. Ironically, the next day, Spring, Reed and I went out to lunch with our friend Marcia and her son Matthew where Reed proceeded to eat half of the salad I ordered with my lunch!!


Spring is doing well too. She's getting very laughy now! As is true with most people, she seems to find things funniest when she's tired so most of the laughter we've gotten so far has been right before bedtime. She also talks more when she's tired. I'll take laughter and conversation anyday over the hours of crying before bedtime that she did when she was younger!!

My cheeks hurt...

From smiling at my little girl so much!! I got some great video of Spring smiling and chatting! Please ignore the cheesy mommy voice in the video... I can't help it. I believe it to be part of a complex series of hormonal changes associated with becoming a mother. These hormones activate the "cheesiness" center in the brain. With time, this area degenerates from "cheesy", to "not cool" or even "embarassing", though this subtle change may only be noticeable to the teenage offspring of the mother in question.

And how sweet is my little boy holding his sister while Daddy reads stories?!

Feeling hopeful and proud

I don't tend to talk politics much on this blog, but most of you that know us, know how we lean politically. I just wanted to say that for the first time in what feels like a long time, I am optimistic about the future of our country! Even if Obama can only live up to half of what people expect from him, he'll still be a great president. Today, I feel a bit less fear when I think about the country and environment that my children will inherit.

I really wish we could have been in DC today, but it really wouldn't have been feasible. It would have been so amazing to get to witness such an historical event. I can imagine the mood in the city was absolutely electric. I'm consoling myself that we at least we got a chance to see Obama when he was in Seattle. Even Spring was there, though we didn't know it yet!

Taken on November 4th after most of the voting had ended and an Obama victory looked definite. Maybe not the best pics, but we wanted to capture the moment!!

Squeaky clean!

Spring didn't enjoy her bath much last night, but as usual, Reed LOVED Spring's bath! Reed gets all excited and helps get Spring's bath supplies for us. He even asks excitedly, "Spring soapy night?" (We don't get Reed soapy every bath, so the nights we do, we call soapy nights.) Reed also loves Spring's naked baby time and massage, so much so that he has started insisting we give him a massage too. I wish somebody would give me a massage every night before bed!

Spring was definitely happy to get out of the bath. She absolutely LOVES it when people make eye contact with her (as I'm doing off camera), much more so than Reed did. She'll lock eyes with you and gaze and gaze and gaze. Grandma's departure yesterday was easily delayed by five minutes because Spring wouldn't break eye contact with her!


Just another fun picture.
"Psst, Spring, lean close and I'll tell you a secret. Our outfits don't actually match, Mommy just thinks they do!"

Bye bye goggy, hello boo-boo kick!

Some of our favorite baby words, have grown up. Reed used to call his blankie a goggy, his binkie a cah-key and his animals, minimohs (with the first i long, like mine). All those words have now evolved to more accurate pronunciations which is a little sad and exciting at the same time. However, Reed has added some new words to his vocabulary, some of them with cute pronunciations. For instance, his boo-boo kick might sound like a toddler accident, but in fact, it is a favorite outdoor toy... most of us would call it a bamboo stick. And in our house, we don't eat any sissy pancakes, oh no. Reed only eats mancakes!!

Laugh!

Spring laughed for the first time tonight! I was sitting on the couch and she was sitting in her bouncy seat in front of me. I had leaned forward to talk with her because she was being smiley and chatty. Reed decided that would be a great time to crawl up on my back and apparently Spring thought that was pretty funny because she gave a few wonderful belly laughs!!

Photo extravaganza!

Last October, we had a bunch of professional photos taken with my photographer friend, Kathryn. Some of me pregnant, some newborn pictures of Spring, and some pictures with all my immediate family. It's taken me a while to post these, but here are my favorites!











Bright eyes!

This one melts my mommy heart!

Asleep on Daddy's chest.

My handsome boy!


Having fun in the autumn leaves. I took pictures of Reed last year in the leaves. I think we're going to try to make an tradition out of it!

My brother had the brilliant idea to make a pile of leaves for Reed to play in!

Everything is funnier when you're on Daddy's shoulders!

All the women of the family, my mom, Gerry's mom, Spring and me.

All that modeling can wear a girl out!

Taken just a fraction of a second after Reed kissed Spring for the first time!

Just beautiful!

Catch up

It's been a while since I posted so it's time I caught up a little!! I hope you all had a wonderful New Year celebration. We stayed up late enough to celebrate 2009 coming to the east coast time zone and central time zone, but we were in bed by the time 2009 hit the mountain and pacific time zones. Spring did wake me up just after midnight for a little snack; that's as close as I come to staying up late these days!

A few days into 2009 we ventured to Pacific Beach to spend some time with our friends Dave and Sarah and their son, Robbie. The trip proved a little trying with two little ones to take care of, but we had fun all the same and it was great to see our friends! The pictures in my previous post are all from Pacific Beach. Sadly, that was the only picture we took of Spring there. I was behind the camera most of the time and I had her on my chest in the wrap, and that just doesn't make for good pictures.

My new favorite video of Reed came while we were at the beach. Who, but a northwest native toddler would be so excited about razor clam digging. Reed went on his first razor clam dig when he was only a few months old, so I guess it's in his blood!

What's the only thing harder than getting a good picture of an active toddler? Getting a picture of two active toddlers! The boys had tons of fun jumping on the beds together. :-)

"Here Robbie, if you're going to sleep, you need all the stuffed animals!"

And while we were in Pacific Beach, Reed finally cut one of his bottom eye teeth! It's a tooth that, according to the charts I found, is supposed to come in when a baby is 7 months old... Reed starting teething late, but jeez, this tooth was a year and a half late!! I was starting to think it might not be there at all!

And here are some more recent pictures.

Spring, enjoying naked baby time (and yes, we sing the naked baby time song for her!)

I know the picture is a bit dark, but here's Spring, standing (supporting most of her weight) on Daddy's chest.

Here's one of Reed's late arrival presents and perhaps his favorite. It's a ukulele, or as Reed calls it, a bitar (like guitar).

All the really cool firemen wear their hat backwards like this!

Ask...

And you shall receive! :-) I'll have more to say later, but Grandma Lisa requested some pictures, so I thought I'd hurry and post those for now.