Lots of pictures

I've been a bit delinquent in posting this month, so I'm going to play catch up a bit!

Spring listens in rapt wonder as Reed tells her a story. There are actually several books that he has memorized that he likes to "read" to her!

Spring really likes to get on her hands and knees now. Not much forward motion yet, but soon I think.

It's hard to get a picture of your baby on the floor...

...when you've got a helper on your back!

Reed using his bubble mower. Every time he plays with his bubble mower, he asks me to take a picture of him. Seriously, I must have 100 pictures of Reed running with his bubble mower.

I try to be good about taking pictures of Spring when I take pictures of Reed, even if she's just hanging out watching brother, like we were doing here.

Photo evidence of Spring's very first bite of solid food! Mmmm.... mashed bananas...

All done!

Another Spring milestone occurred last week when she pulled herself up to standing!

Mini-me? I suspect that Spring will look a lot like me, and I feel like our resemblance is especially striking in this picture (which I made Gerry take because I love the jammies she's wearing and she's about to outgrow them).

When the weather was so nice, we went for a picnic to Belfair State Park.

I think Spring might need some cool shades too!

And after our picnic dinner, we went oyster hunting. It all started out fine.

But it wasn't long before Reed got stuck in the mud. In fact, the only person that didn't get really muddy was Spring!

Reed playing at our favorite local park. Check out the view!

Outdoor snack time at home, enjoying the nice weather.

Reed lounging.

What a difference a week makes!

You wouldn't know it by the wonderful weather this weekend, but Monday we had fresh snow. (ok, it was actually hail, but it stuck around until mid-day tuesday).

Here's Spring in front of the bulbs that grandma Lisa planted last fall right after she was born!

This weekend, it's been great, and we've been outside a lot working in the yard. Got the onions and lettuce planted, and Gerry's started attacking all the hedges with his new high powered trimmer. It's not quite as cool as the weed dragon, but is a close second.

Just pics today

I have lots to say, but no energy for writing anything, so tonight, just a few pictures! In case I don't get around to updating the blog for a while, I suppose I should add for posterity, that Spring is now mobile. She gets up on her hands and knees, the scoots herself backwards and back on to her belly (though tonight she managed to scoot forward to get a toy)!

Giddyup!

At the Pike Place Market on Saturday.

Spring's first food

Well, I was going to wait until she was six months old to introduce foods to Spring, but it just so happens, that she got her first taste of solid food today. Was it mashed bananas as I had planned? No. Was it what I gave Reed when he first had solid food, rice cereal? No. It was a sunbutter and raspberry jam sandwich on whole wheat bread... It was supposed to be for Reed!

We went to a playdate today and I had packed a sandwich for Reed. It was a VERY busy playdate. I had Spring in my lap, the sandwich in my hand, and Reed was in Grandma's lap right next to me. Spring started to wiggle and leaned to try to bite the sandwich and without thinking, I put it in her mouth!! My mom pointed out what I was doing and I immediately took it away, but as long as she could see the sandwich, she had her eyes locked on it. I just lost track of which child I had in my lap for a moment and thought I was feeding Reed a bite. Oops! Thank goodness she hasn't had any allergy issues so far!! In a couple more weeks, we'll give the mashed bananas a try! :-)

Reed has really been getting into is role as a big brother lately. He plays with Spring as he's doing here, he gives toys to her and even helps with her evening massage. Spring absolutely LOVES watching him and laughs at him all the time!

Firsts

We've had a lot of firsts these last few weeks! It's hard to know which one to post about first!

Tonight, Spring got up on her hands and knees for the first time. Initially I put her on her hands and knees and she rocked back and forth for a few seconds. Then, she decided that she liked hands and knees so much, she worked hard to get off her belly and do it herself!

Spring has been sitting up on her own for the last few weeks. She can't do it for very long and often supports herself with one hand, but it seems like everyday, she can sit for a little longer.

Spring had her four month check up a few weeks ago. She was right around the 75th percentile for height and weight and somewhere between the 75th to 90th for head circumference. It's quite a change for me to have a baby who is not on the bottom of the growth curve!

Reed had a big first over this past weekend. Gerry took him to Lake Chelan for two nights. This was his first overnight trip without Mommy!! It was a little lonely around the house without Gerry and Reed, though it was also nice to have some one on one time with Spring. Reed had a good time at Lake Chelan. We talked to him about it for a few weeks before he left so he was really excited to go!

And it only took one of our snowiest winters ever, but Reed finally played in the snow for the first time!

Cutting a rug

I took this picture to send ot Gerry's aunt Nancy to say thank you for the lovely rug that Reed and Spring are sitting on, but the picture turned out so good, that I thought I'd post it here too!

In other news, Reed has refused to nap for the last three days.I lay him down, then he just babbles for the next few hours. I fear he's going to stop napping and I'm not ready for that!!

I can't believe

I forgot to share about my two favorite plane moments from our trip to Florida!

We flew down there on Valentine's Day. We were well into our second flight, Spring asleep in my lap, and Reed asleep in Gerry's lap, when I nudged Gerry and said quietly, "Happy Valentine's Day". Gerry started laughing! In all the stress of traveling with the kiddos, Valentine's Day had been the last thing on our minds! I lamented that we had not left our mp3 players out since neither Gerry nor I could get into our bags to get them. So Gerry began to sing to me :-) I joined in and it was way better than listening to mp3s. Honestly, I think it has to be one of my sweetest Valentine's Day memories ever!!

My other favorite moment occured on our trip home. We were about to begin the second flight of our journey. I had just changed Spring's diaper and returned to our seats to find Reed at the plane window yelling something with a lot of excitement. I couldn't quite understand what Reed was saying so I gave Gerry a questioning look. Gerry said, "holy crab." As we had been landing in Dallas, Gerry had spotted a huge mega-church with a seven story parking garage out the plane window and had exclaimed "holy crap!" Now, Reed was giving us his best imitation of Gerry, only Reed, fortunately, saying the more polite, "holy crab!" LOL!

West Sound Sailing race #1

This was a picture I had to share (Gerry Here). It's from last saturday's WSSA sailling race. The course took us about 16 miles from the North end of Bainbridge island, up to Jefferson Head, then across to Magnolia, back over to Eagle Harbor at the south end of bainbridge, and back to the start. It's a pretty fun course, because it takes us into an area that we normally don't sail much. It also passes though a major shipping lane.

The sailboat is "Carpe Diem", who I've had the pleasure of crewing on a couple of times over the past year. It's a pretty nice IOR 32', and Rob has done some awesome interior work on it. I can't imagine what the view was like, from where they were. There were well clear of it, but... 'yikes'...

BTW, photo credit goes to Jason, our other crew, who was smart enough to have a camera.

We've done this race twice in the past, and both times it was pretty miserable. Being the first race of the season, there are always plenty of bugs to shake out. This year turned out to be a great race. Winds were good, the tide was slack, and the sun even came out for a bit.

Also different this year, is Cody has a new boat, "Aldebaran" a Catalina 30 that he bought from another guy, Ole, who I also sail with when I can. In case you were wondering, 'Aldebaran' is the star that makes up the eye of the constellation Taurus.

The Bull. (insert sailing joke here)

We've taken her out a couple of times over the winter to check her out, but this was her first race, as well as our first time trying to flying the spinnaker on this boat. Luckly, there were no major disasters, and we had a great race.

Literally?

I love how literal kids are. Reed had the hiccups yesterday. Grandpa, joking around, asked Reed, "Where did you get the hiccups?" Without skipping a beat, Reed replied, "In my mouth!" LOL!!

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!!