Four Years of Wedded Bliss

Today is our 4th anniversary. We were going to have a nice romantic picnic in a park, but a bad thunderstorm shattered that plan. So we just had a nice romantic picnic in our dining room. We had KFC. (Try not to be jealous.) There is a KFC/A&W not far from our house, so I picked up dinner there. A&W has this new fruit smoothie, so I got 2 of those also (1 banana/berry, and 1 strawberry). They are really good.

Jeff got me the movie Emma (Jane Austen). It is the one done by A&E with Kate Beckinsale. I like it better than the one with Gwyneth Paltrow.

I got for Jeff a micro SD card to expand the memory in his MP3 player.

So I had a couple of piano students over today, and while I was teaching one little boy, his mom and sister did Rachel's hair in ponytails. While I readily admit that she is cuter than anything, I can't do her hair like that. When I try it she is moving her head from side to side, trying to look behind her (at me), and as incompetent as I am in the doing of hair, I can't function with the additional handicap of a wiggly, squirmy client. I may have to get professional help.

Here are some more cute pictures I took of Rachel over the past few days.

"I'm going in. If I'm not back in 10 minutes, call the police."

Rachel's Nine-Month-Old Check-up

So yesterday Rachel had her 9-month-old check-up. First of all, can you believe she is 9 months old? She seems so grown up.

So here are her vital statistics:

weight: 23 lbs. 0.5 oz 97%
height: 28¾ inches 90%

As Jeff pointed out, 97% and 90%, that's an A. Otherwise Rachel got a clean bill of health. The doctor said that based on where she is currently on her developmental time line, he thinks she will be walking before she turns 1 year old. I don't know if that's good or bad.

The winners of the poll are Jeff, Anne and Marlene. Congratulations. You win the satisfaction of being right.

Last night we went to a baseball game. We saw the Bats play the Rochester Red Wings. Bats lost big (5-8), but the weather was beautiful and we had a lot of fun. Andrea brought her camera and took a bunch of pictures.

Nine Months Old Today

Today Rachel turned 9 months old. I gotta tell you that this past month has been eventful to say the very least!

On the day she turned 8 months old Rachel started crawling. It was actually scooting on her tummy, but she covered distance pretty well that way. A few days later she grew her first tooth. A week after that she started pulling herself up onto her feet. A week later she started crawling actually on her hands and knees. (The hands and knees method is still a bit slow, so when she has a sense of urgency, like getting into Scout's water dish, she is a scooting fiend.) Last Tuesday she started crawling up the stairs. She could only master one step at that time, but last night she managed to get all the up the stairs with no help at all. I admit that I helped in that I stood behind her and prevented her from falling when she got a little distracted, but I didn't help her get to the next step.

Is next month going to be this eventful? I don't think my nerves can stand any more.

Tomorrow is Rachel's nine-month check-up. Tune in for her vital statistics tomorrow.

The Battle of the Diaper Change

Lately changing Rachel's diaper has been rather a challenge. I have moved the entire operation to the twin bed in Rachel's room, because the changing table offers too many temptations for her. She pulls the diapers down off the shelf, she reaches for anything and everything. So now I change her diaper on the bed. It is still quite a challenge, because she is such a wiggle bug.

Of course, I do have a powerful weapon at my disposal - blowing a razzberry on her belly. Not to be outdone, Rachel has her own counter weapon - grabbing my hair. But in the end, I always prevail.

(Rachel elbows her mommy aside to tell her side of the story.)

Dat whole wazzbewwy bizness is so unfair. When Mommy bwows a wazzbewwy, I must stop and waf. I can't help myself. You twy it, you'll see what I mean. But never fear, with my wightening fast hands, I gwab her hair. But Mommy is wight, she always gets my diaper on me, in spite of my bwave battle. But today, I had a wittle twick up my sweeve, or wather my diaper (hahaha - sinister wafter).

(Noelle here to tell the rest of the story.)

So earlier this afternoon, we went through the normal diaper change battle, and I thought that was it. Rachel took a nap, and when she woke up I went to change her diaper again. It was a poopie diaper (of course), and what did I find? During the earlier diaper change, Rachel managed to get one of her loose socks in her diaper, so there it was, covered in poop. I seriously do not know how it got there. That Rachel is a tricky one sometimes.

What is Rachel really climbing?

Jeff here... I couldn't let this perfect opportunity of a blog-jack pass by. What I really want to know is what does Rachel think she is climbing?

Oh no! Say it ain't so!

Rachel is climbing the stairs now. Now what am I supposed to do? Tuesday night I was at rehearsal for POKY and Jeff was taking care of Rachel, so he saw it first and took some pictures. Since then I saw her do it too tonight, so it is really true.


The good news (so far) is that she only goes for the stairs when we are in the lowest level of the house. We only have one baby gate, and I have been using to guard against falling down the stairs. She has not tried to go upstairs when we are on the middle level, the only level where there is access to two stairways.

I am learning (slowly)

Today I harvested my first (and rather small) crop of green beans from my garden. (Yeah!) Rachel was the proud consumer of my first produce of 2008. We had gotten a food processor for our wedding, but had not used it yet. Well, I pulled it out today, and used it to chop up Rachel's green beans, and she ate them fairly well.


I anticipate much choppage of carrots and peas and who knows what else for Rachel's consumption int he not too far distant future.

In other exciting garden news, the tomatoes are looking good. Here is a picture of one of my cherry tomato plants:


And finally here is my biggest tomato (so far). To put it into perspective for you, it is slightly larger than a golf ball.


This turned out to be a very green colored post, so to add some color, here's a little sweetie.

Fighting back

In our family's attempt to combat the evil oil companies, or the idiots in Congress who won't approve drilling for oil, or the socialist environmentalists, or whoever you feel like blaming for the ridiculously high price of gas, Jeff has been riding his bike to work nearly every day. It used to be weather permitting, but he is deciding that weather permits more often than it used to. I also am making my bike suitable for baby transport. I bought a baby carrier to attach to my bike, and bought Rachel a bike helmet. At first I didn't know how she would take to wearing the helmet, but she seems to have gotten used to it.

Those of you who know of my aversion to the color pink will plainly see that I do not seek to unduly influence Rachel. We gave the the choice of pink or yellow. She had kind of a hard time deciding. She went back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, but finally went for the pink.

One of my piano students is going out of town this next week to the beach, so they decided to get rid of some of their perishable foods. I got a bunch of fresh blueberries. Of Friday morning we enjoyed blueberries in our breakfast cereal, and on Saturday I made waffles. If you combine the best waffle maker I have ever used with the best waffle mix (no, I didn't make it from scratch), with fresh blueberries, you get some really delicious waffles.

This is an actual photograph of an actual waffle that I actually made in my very own kitchen. I know, you're jealous!

Baby Signing Time

Rachel loves Baby Signing Time. I don't know if she is learning much about how to sign yet, but she is enthralled by it. I really think it is well made.

This is Rachel watching the DVD.

Ma ma

This morning Rachel said ma-ma. I cannot say with absolute certainty that she meant "mama," but maybe she did. Jeff told me she made the same sound yesterday.

I can't keep up with her!

Rachel is just reaching one developmental milestone after another, and I can't keep up! Last Friday she pulled herself to her feet (using me for support). We were outside in the grass, and I was laying down. She crawled over to me, and was climbing over me, when all of the sudden she was standing up! She duplicated her feat yesterday when we were at great-grandma's house, but I admit that I rolled a little to help her. This morning she got to her feet using the couch for support. This time I was free to snap a picture (or two).


She was pretty proud of herself.


Last Saturday we had a little (failed) Triple Crown party. (Meaning failed Triple Crown, not failed party.) Gary, a.k.a. the mad scientist, made homemade root beer. Mmmmm!

Big Brown didn't win, but it was fun to hang out with friends and family.

The root beer was the highlight of the party.

After almost everyone left Jeff and I played croquet with his mom and dad. We played two times, and I came in 3rd and 4th out of four. I'm not very good at croquet, even with home court advantage!

I am not the lady in the pink dress (in case you were wondering). I'll bet you thought that picture was us, but it's not.

Summer

Yesterday was a beautiful summer day, and Rachel and I decided to go ahead and live it up. We had a delicious breakfast of formula with cereal, and applesauce.


We went to visit great-grandma and great-grandpa so I could tune their piano. We took a walk while we were there to visit some friends I used to work with. They gave us a water bottle and a cozy (you know the thing you put a soda can in to keep it cold).

I filled up Rachel's swimming pool early in the afternoon, and while she took her afternoon nap I left it in the sun to warm up the water a little bit, then late in the afternoon we went swimming.


For supper we had formula with cereal (that's a favorite around here), some tiny cut up cooked carrots, some sweet potato puffs, and for desert a Popsicle. (I made some little Popsicles out of lemonade.)

Let there be tomatoes!

So I was puttering around in my garden, removing the succors from my tomatoes, when I was delighted (meaning happy, not meaning that the light was removed from me) to see that I have two tomatoes of the cherry tomato variety. Isn't that awesome?!



I decided to go ahead and take some other pictures of my garden to show its progress.

The green beans in the back right corner are flourishing.


My other garden box.


My burning bushes look nice, but they're not burning yet.


I have blackberries. (Technically they are greenberries still, but I have high hopes, even faith!)


But the most beautiful thing growing in my garden:

More Vacation Stuff

We're back from the beach, and I got kind of behind on my blogging, so this is a catch-up.

Last Wednesday was the only day we had bad weather when we were on vacation, so we decided to go to Kitty Hawk to the Wright Brothers' Museum. It was not bad, but a lot of the things to see were outside, and we didn't come prepared for the cold and rain (which there was both), so we mostly just stayed inside.

Because of the stormy weather, the surf was pretty big. We went down to the beach to take pictures. Jeff let the waves overtake him a little, and he had to walk home with his jeans wet up to his thighs. He didn't seem to mind, though.

On Thursday the weather was much better. I spent the day in the pool and reading. I got sunburned. Later that afternoon the whole family went to the beach for some family pictures. We took about 300 pictures. We figured that at least 3 or 4 would turn out.


On Friday we drove around seeing other sites. We went to the Lost Colony museum and Bodie Island Lighthouse.


On Saturday morning Jeff and I got up at 5:15 so we could go to the beach and watch the sun rise over the ocean. Before we left we heard Paul and Andrea's alarm going off, so I figured they wanted to go too. They didn't seem to hear the alarm, so I knocked (lightly) just to finish waking them up, and all four of us walked down to the beach to watch the sun rise. We saw a whole bunch of dolphins. I couldn't take pictures because we only saw them when they jumped, and they didn't bother to send me any kind of signal or anything to tell me they were about to jump, so I had absolutely no chance to get a picture. We did see a crab and some bird diving into the ocean to catch a fish. Another bird tried to steal it, but couldn't. The sun rose around 5:45. It was really pretty.


We spent Saturday morning getting everything packed and out of the house. We had to check out by 10:00 a.m. Then we spent all day Saturday driving home. We had lunch at a really delicious BBQ place outside of Williamsburg, and supper at McDonalds. We pulled into Jeff's parents house at 1:03 a.m., and we arrived at our house at 1:38. Rachel was a pretty good traveler, but I'm pretty sure she could do with a vacation from her car seat. We let her sleep with us so that we wouldn't have to get up for her if she needed anything. We managed (Rachel and I) to sleep until 8:00. Jeff got up just a bit later.