Four Cheery Os

Bathtime with Teddy

2010-08-16T01:19:00.000-07:00

teddy is getting pretty good at sitting up on her own; I planned on taking some pics after church while she was still in her cute little dress. She had other plans and blew out her diaper, so she demonstrated her sitting up skills in the bathtub instead. This was the first bath she really enjoyed, as she was able to sit up well enough she could focus on other things, like splashing! And boy, did she splash!

Note the water droplets on the left in mid air. :)

My shirt is a bit wet on the last one there, too. We may have to start giving her baths in the shower stall soon. :)

Teddy 6 months

2010-08-08T18:35:00.000-07:00

Skills

2010-08-08T15:11:00.000-07:00

This is Teddy practicing her camouflage skills.

Here she's practicing her rolling over skills.

Here she's practicing her wizardry skills. (What? Your kid doesn't do that?)

)

My girls

2010-08-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

Just some random cute pics of the girls.

Ru wanted me to take a picture of her mouth.

Nana and papa visited and brought us some new yard toys. This is Ru's new car.

I was trying to get Ru to go to bed earlier by waking her up in the mornings. I actually have a whole series of sleepy Ru pics now, this is one of my faves.

After I got her up a bit more that morning, Ru wanted to hold baby sister. So I had her sit on her bed with her back to the wall, and I put Teddy in her 'lap.' It wouldn't have worked at all if Teddy wasn't getting better at sitting up, and as it was she gradually reclined more and more til Ru was ready to be done with her. We love sisters!

A couple more fourth pics

2010-08-08T11:29:00.000-07:00

These ones aren't as festive, but are fun all the same.

Teddy is getting better at sitting up, she's far from mastering the skill, but she's making some progress.

She loves her walker these days, and is getting good at moving the beads around.

If you think Ru rocks this outfit now, you should have seen her when she had the pony tails with blue ribbons at church. She messed them up pretty quickly after we got home tho, so we just took them out. Here she's helping Daddy make waffles for dinner.

And for lack of a better spot to post it, here is a pic of our new cat, Cocoa. She was abondonded when our neighbor behind us moved out. She managed on her own for three weeks before the new guy moved in. I had hoped he would take her in, but he didn't want her so I finally succombed and let her stay on our front porch. She does have really cool coloring, she's dark brown, with an orange 'overcoat' for lack of better word for it. It's like the fur on her back is two different colors. She also has one white 'eyebrow' and one black, so it looks like she doesn't have those whiskers over her left eye. She's quite friendly and likes Ru; she doesn't mind her petting her the wrong way and such. We also suspect she may be pregnant. No good deed goes unpunished I suppose... ;)

4th of July

2010-08-08T11:19:00.000-07:00

We bought Ru some little snap pops to play with for the fourth of July. She's not generally into loud noises so I was surprised at how well she did with them. She wasn't very successful at throwing them, but we figured out a way that worked for her. (esp since she was wearing the cowboy boots)

First you put the snap pop on the ground.

Then stomp!!

Always keep water handy when using fireworks. OK, so there's no way a snap pop would start a fire, Ru just loves playing with the squirt bottles.

Daddy wonders "what's in these things, anyway?" He didn't believe me when I said rocks and gunpowder. Anyone know?

We didn't do anything else for the fourth, our little town holds off on the fireworks for the old fashioned festival the last weekend in July (and we watch from our front porch) and we weren't invited to any picnics or anything (or inclined to try and host our own). It was nice to just hang out at home and relax.

Teddy 5 months

2010-08-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

Well the last one works, so I'll try and catch up a bit. I'm supposed to be at church right now, but G-ma Judy came and got Ru at 9:15, and Teddy almost immediatly went down for a nap and has been sleeping ever since. She sleeps SO much better when the noisy big sister isn't here. ;)

Here she is at five months old. She's discoverd her toes, a handy toy (and/or snack) that's always easy to find when you get bored.

No really, she likes her toes.

Managed to get the toes out of her mouth long enough to take some pics on the chair, but she would NOT put her legs down. Fine then, I rather like the cute little toes too, altho I'm not quite as into tasting them. ;)

Church Camp out

2010-08-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

I know, I'm way behind--again. Hopefully this program will work again (Picasa, LOVE it for organizing my pics, but the blog feature wasn't working for me earlier) and make it easier. Anyway...

We took the girls on our annual church camp out. We were able to borrow a friends tent trailer, and Ru slept at the hotel with G-ma Judy and G-pa Don, but we STILL didn't get much sleep. Teddy didn't sleep well and there was just so much going on she apparently didn't want to miss anything. (even at 4 am. Go figure.) But we had fun and got some nice pics, too.

We shared our campsite with our friend Brenda. She was a big help with the girls, and didn't mind the crying in the middle of the night. ;)

This pic is actually zoomed in enough it's not the best quality, but I wanted to make sure you could see the string of marshmallow. ;) The Ruthie Special is Chocolate graham cracker, strawberry marshmallow, and white chocolate. It's actually pretty yummy. :)

Family pic on the beach. We were on a scavenger hunt, which included pics in certain locations. It was good as it insured we actually took some pics of the gang together. (we lost the scavenger hunt tho. Badly. ;)

Another scavenger hunt pic. Or new friend there is named 'cowboy.' There is a horse camp section of the Nehalem Bay campground.

I was pretty exhausted when we got home, and telling myself I should have just sent Brian and Ru and stayed home with Teddy myself. But a week later I'm mostly recovered and will likely be excited to go again next year. Besides, they'll have to be sleeping better by then, right? ;)

Intro to solid foods

2010-06-30T20:42:00.000-07:00

Teddy is making pretty decent progress at sitting up. She still needs a lot of support, but she's getting the balance thing figured out. She's NOT making any progress towards sleeping thru the night. For that matter, I tried transitioning her out of her swing and into her crib where she belongs, and that lasted a week since she never slept more than 90 minutes at a time in there. Ever. Usually less. So I put her back in her swing, and get excited if I get more than 2 hours at a time.
So I thought maybe it would help if I started her on solid foods, since she always falls asleep while nursing, then wakes up hungry. Ru's first solid food was squash, and let's just say it was not the highlight of her day. Ru never really did take to baby food. I decided to also start Teddy with squash, since I had some puree in the fridge that I usually add to Ru's mac and cheese.
Here's the before pic:

She loved it!

She even grabbed the spoon from me and tried to feed herself!

We'll need to work a bit on her manners, such as the 'no feet on the table' rule.

Overall she had a great time, may have actually consumed a tablespoon or two of squash, and did NOT sleep any better at night, but that's ok. It's a process. I'm sure we'll get there before she's 20.

Oh yeah, and here's your after pic:

A couple more 4 month pics

2010-06-30T20:11:00.000-07:00

I took these on Teddy's 4 month b-day as well, altho without the pretty dress. The background is actually navy blue, altho it looks black.

Love her eyes in this one. :)

Oh hey! I never posted the 4 month pics!

2010-06-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

Boy, am I a slacker! Must be that second child syndrome I've heard so much about...I've sure got my hands full these days. Maybe when Teddy sleeps thru the night I'll be more consistent. In the meantime, here's a handful of Teddy pics!

Around the house

2010-06-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

Here just some pics from our day to day life at home. There haven't really been any major events or landmarks to take pics of, but it has been a while since I've blogged so I thought I'd share these.

First, our fingerpainting fun. (Teddy was napping) After playing with the other colors, Ru kept asking for more orange, and more orange, and, well, this is what color she ended up with all over herself.

Here she's snacking on her 'bean chair' and giving Sammy the evil eye. "Not yours, Sammy! Go 'way!"

Baby sister in her little jungle gym. She's not rolling over yet, but she's making progress! She holds her head up like a champ, and is now working on torso control.

Ru asked me to move baby sister over so she could get some jungle gym action herself. She was happy to pose for some pictures, too. :)

Teddy's 3 month pics in the loveseat

2010-05-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

Can't forget the loves eat pics! She holds her head up well, and was nice enough not to lunge off the chair this time.

She was smiling at me. :)

Teddy's 3 month pics

2010-05-17T21:56:00.000-07:00

Finally posting Teddy's 3 month pictures (which I took a little late, too ;)

Gotta get the red chair pics uploaded, I couldn't do those until Daddy came home and apparently haven't dumped them off the camera yet!

Milestones

2010-04-27T22:12:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to record an important milestone. Today, Ruthie counted all the way to 12! Previously she counted as high as 15...but always skipped a few numbers. (particularly 3 and 4) this time she was very slow and deliberate and included everyone. :) Of course, after 12 she went back to ten but...uh...who's counting? ;)

Teddy sorta hit a milestone too. She had her first allergic reaction today. Well, second I guess, but this time she had hives. She was lying on a mat on the floor and Sammy snuck in behind me and was licking her face (Ruthie tattled on him! "baby sister, sunshine, Sammy!") He'd done this once before, and while I'm glad he loves the baby, I'm not really into the face licking the infant thing. Last time her face got some red blotches, but I just wiped her face and they went away pretty quickly. This time the red blotches were there again, and as I wiped them I noticed she actually had some hives (white splotches) on her cheek as well. I did call the doctor, altho they didn't get back to me until HOURS later, when the blotches had already faded. (and basically told me to wash her face really good. Duh.) Hopefully as long as I am super vigilant and keep Sammy from licking her it won't be much of an issue, as Ruthie LOVES Sammy and I really don't want to have to get rid of him. (I do love him too!) I'll keep you posted on any future developments with that.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Ru!

2010-04-26T14:36:00.000-07:00

After the baptism everyone headed to our house for a pasta lunch and then Ruthie's birthday party!

Ru sat on Daddy's lap and opened her presents. She's getting pretty good at pulling the paper off. she was a little disappointed we didn't let her play with anything and instead kept moving the cool stuff away and handing her another gift. But she got into the swing of it eventually.

Gotta love the little coy look, she's started tipping her head when she knows you're going to take a picture.

Still mastering the art of blowing, right now she just makes the 'f' sound when she tries to blow.

Keep AWAY from my cake! She only ate a few bites of the frosting and was done. We don't give her sweets very often, so I'm guessing three bites of straight frosting was a bit rich for her, if she'd got to the cake itself she might have done a bit more damage. I was fine with that tho. Now if only I could have got a few more smiles out of her for the pictures!

Teddy's baptism

2010-04-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

Lutherans believe in infant baptism, and we were quite happy to have both our girls baptised. I don't know if I ever posted about Ru's, as the pics turned out awful (I didn't realize I had the flash turned off when I passed my camera off). She was baptized June 29th, 2008, and my Aunt Sharon and Uncle Keith stood in for her sponsors, my brother Chris and his wife Nikki (who live in KS). Sharon and Keith were visiting from KS so we scheduled the baptism for while they were here.

We weren't anticipating any visitors for Teddy's (Sharon and Keith were in Turkey at the time. Whatever. ;) so I had a bit more flexibility with the date. So I scheduled it to coincide with Ru's 2nd birthday party, to save the family from having to travel up twice. So Teddy was baptized April 18th, 2010. (both girls at Zion Lutheran Church here in Newberg) I asked a fellow scrapbooker to take the pics this time, so we got MUCH better pictures. :)

Teddy's sponsors were Don and Judy Kennedy (often referred to as gma Judy and gpa Don) and my brother John and his girlfriend Misty. Pastor Steve Estrem performed the baptism.

Larry and Connie (Brian's folks) were also there, but my mom and Marvin and actually Grandpa Don were not, as all three of them had the stomach flu. (crazy, as mom and marv live 5 hours away) Oh yeah, and Daddy and Ruthie were there, too. ;)

Nana bought her a dress (she bought Ruthie's too) and since you can't really see it much I took some pics at home in her crib.

Teddy's 2 months!

2010-04-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

Teddy turned 2 (months that is) the 7th, so Brian and I got out the camera and took some pics the following Sunday since she was wearing a dress for church. Unfortunately they didn't turn out really well, as she had red eye SO bad it still looks a little funky after being corrected. But it's not so bad I won't post some for you, along with one of big sister. (who did NOT want her pic taken with baby sister this time.)

She was feeling feisty; I had a REALLY hard time getting one without my hand in there as she kept throwing her head around (and the rest of her followed of course) Brian didn't manage to actually take a pic when she threw herself forward and I caught her her face with a rather audible smack! (didn't upset her tho, so it didn't hurt, just looked like it should have. :)

They don't look so bad zoomed out like this, it's when you click on them to size them up her eyes look oddly grey.

Ru's turned out really nice tho. Heh, I need to start making her sit on the other side so I can crop out the unused throw rugs hanging out behind the love seat.

I just had a nice little photo shoot with Teddy basking in the sunshine, so I should get another post or two out this week for sure. (maybe even today, but I also may be overly optimistic there as I'm supposed to finish the chicken coop today with some help from John and his girlfriend Misty. But they aren't here yet.... ;)

2010-04-08T15:46:00.000-07:00

Easter is a rather low key holiday around here. Church service is generally the highlight of the day (as it should be :) But we have been at a loss to do afterward since we don't have any local family. Last year we invited an older couple over for lunch, but their health is not as good this year so their daughter came up this year. So we were quite pleased when Judy's sister Joni invited us to join them for their family dinner.

But first, Ruthie invited Grandma Judy over to our house to see the baby chickens. :)

After the chickens we showed Ru that the Easter bunny had came and left her a basket of presents. She got a new video, a Chutes and Ladders game, and some other misc goodies like sidewalk chalk and stickers.

Ru and gma Judy posed for a quick pic before Judy left and we fed Ru lunch, and attempted (unsuccessfully) to get her to take a nap.

And so we headed off to the Ka'uhani's for Dinner.

Joni's daughter Mahealani hid eggs for Ruthie, so she was able to have her own little Easter egg hunt. She didn't look up at the camera for any of the pics, but at least we got a couple where you can see her cute little Easter dress. She did NOT appriciate Joni's hubby Michael trying to play and stealing her eggs. She was confused at first, then started crying. She wouldn't even take them out of his hands when he tried to give them to her. I guess she doesn't understand that sort of teasing yet, as she wanted nothing to do with the poor guy for the rest of the afternoon. At least she recovered enough to get back to her egg hunt.

After playing with the eggs and chasing their kitty around, Ru was a good girl and ate dinner at the table with us. After wards Judy put her down for a nap (she has some magical talent at getting Ru to nap) and we played a board game. Teddy slept most of the time, and Mahaelani got some good practice handling a baby. We had a great time, and look forward to next year as they've already said they'd love to make a tradition out of it! :)

Teddy's Easter Dress

2010-04-08T14:16:00.000-07:00

Since Grandma Judy comes and takes Ru to praise team practice with her before church, I had some time to get Teddy all dressed up and ready for church, AND some time to snap a couple of pictures of her all gussied up, too. While this dress is technically a hand me down from Ruthie, she never wore it and it still had the tags on. Since I expect poor Teddy will always have to live with Ru's hand me downs, I promised her she could always have her own brand new dress for Easter if she wanted one. She didn't seem to mind this year. ;) I did buy her the sweater and the shoes tho.

I do think Teddy is starting to look like her own self now, rather than just like a little Ruthie clone. I think her facial features are all about the same as Ru's, but her face itself is longer, more oval than round like Ru's. She certainly is her own personality as well. She is more laid back than Ru. She doesn't cry as often or as intensely as Ruthie did. She also is already sleeping for 3-4 hour stretches at least once or even twice a night. It will be interesting to see how that all plays out as she gets older and her personality develops more. :)

Decorating Easter eggs

2010-04-06T10:50:00.000-07:00

Even tho we had Nana and Papa visit most of the day Saturday (yay!) we decided to go ahead and decorate eggs after they left. It's not like Ru goes to bed early anyway.

We used crayons to color on the eggs. (I did the one above, Ru did the rest ;) Daddy took the pictures.

You shouldn't decorate Easter eggs with an almost 2 yr old without thinking things thru first. I did the dying, while Ru looked on. She didn't protest this arrangement at all, which kinda surprised me since she's all about doing things herself these days.

(and don't fall off your chair or anything, but yes, I AM wearing a skirt. :)

After I dried the eggs off, I let Ru put stickers on them. I think she was trying to give this sticker to Daddy in this pic, I'm not sure what's up with the aggressive facial expression, but it wouldn't surprise me if she was growling, too. She's been into that recently, she thinks it's funny. :)

We only had one egg casualty, which Daddy happily ate. It was a pretty satisfying activity (helps that Teddy slept thru it) as we didn't make any messes and everyone was happy the entire time. Three cheers for happy art activities! :)

Let's get this party started!

2010-04-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

I seem to have some sort of writers block in starting this blog, and I really need to get posting again. So I'll just jump right into it rather than trying to play catch up or anything.