1 year pics

I'm late, again. Whatever. Here she is leaping off her loveseat we always (try to) take her pics on...

These other two I just love her facial expressions... :)

First steps

First you have to pull yourself up, since silly mom prolly put you in the crib lying down.

Strrreeeettccchhhh for the rail on the other side.


Let go and make a break for the other side!



Safe on the other side, she's so proud of herself!

Cute and Cranky...

So the cute first: This afternoon, I took Ru upstairs and stood her in her crib. She's really enjoying her crib right now. Not for sleep (of course!) but she's discovered she can hold on to one side, stretch out towards the other, then....LET GO! and take a step or two and grab the other side without falling! So she was bouncing from one side to the other all over the place practicing her walking skills.

Then we went downstairs because I realized _I_ was cranky, because I didn't really eat enough lunch. So I finished off my mac and cheese and let her run around in the walker a bit. When she got tired of that I pulled her out and could tell she was poopy...and she was leaking thru the side again. (grrr, dunno what's up with this new trend, maybe the walking/crawling is stretching the diaper differently?) Anyways, I took her upstairs and put her on the changing table and she immediately started to fuss and wiggle. I told her she needed to hold very still so I could change her. I got the diaper off and had her messy bottom dangling and she started to wiggle (the onesie was a goner already so I wasn't too concerned about it really, but didn't feel like changing every linen in the bedroom) then she flat out rolled over while I was attempting to keep her suspended by one leg. So I told her to STOP. Then I told her wiggly babies have cold showers and flipped her back over. She thought it was funny when I told her firmly to stop. She rolled over again, still giggling, so I picked her up (dirty onesie and all) and headed for the shower. I turned it about to where it should be, and went ahead and hosed her back off while it was still cold. She didn't care for that one bit!! I told her over and over it's the only way to get clean if you won't hold still in the changing table. Of course, I moved the water away and got it adjusted appropriately and then finished the impromptu shower and got her dressed and everything afterwards, and she was fairly calm after that. Now she's in her crib, supposed to be napping (I actually thought she was) but now I hear her chattering away in there. Is it 5 yet?

Mama's got a new set of wheels!

I finally got the stroller I've been drooling over for a year now! It's an expensive one, but we're getting a decent tax return, and more importantly I'm not happy with my current stroller. It gets the job done, but after being parked on the front porch on a somewhat regular basis this winter it has started to mildew. So I finally was able to justify my new jogging stroller.

I got a Phil & Teds brand sport buggy. The really cool thing about this stroller is it easily converts to a double, and as a double doesn't take up any more space than it did before. And when I say easy, I mean in less time than it takes to count to ten. The hardest part will be remembering where we put the doubles kit. You can read a review of the stroller here, with pics of how you can arrange it, two different ways to ride doubles:

http://www.bobbysbest.com/phil-and-teds-sport-buggy-stroller-double-review.html

I bought mine slightly used on ebay, and it came with the travel bag and some extra parts, there's an extra main seat with a tear in it (apparently it started tearing shortly after they got the stroller, and Phil and Teds sent them a new one.) and two extra tires, and one extra inner tube. It also came with the doubles kit. Brand new the stroller would cost $450, the doubles kit another $90, and the travel bag around $60. I got it all (plus extra seat I'll never need, and the tube and tires) for $355. It's in great shape, and I'm looking forward to a test drive with Ru tomorrow! (she was with Auntie Judy today, who is keeping the old stroller at her house now so we don't have to move it back and forth between our cars all the time.)


Here it is with the doubles attachment, which we'll keep handy for when we are out with friends, too! :)

Baby is One!!

I skipped the traditional cake and went with cupcakes. I made chocolate (Brian said it would make better photos) and used a cute little frosting gun I bought on Easter clearance to decorate them. I really like how they turned out, and you could choose the level of sugar overload you wanted. The metal stand and silicon flower cupcake wrapper thingies were an impulse buy at Joannes, but I think we will get a lot of mileage out of them, I think this turned out really cute!

We didn't have a big crowd, we only invited family. John (my brother) and Misty had to work, as did Kelly, our brother in law. Larry (aka Papa, Brian's dad) was sick. So Nana and Leslie came in one car with Aurora and Zachy. Mom and Marvin came, and Auntie Judy also attended. Zachy wasn't really up for hanging out with a crowd, so poor Leslie had to hang out upstairs with him for most of the party. They left pretty soon after we finished with the cake and such, too. Mom, Marv, and Judy stuck around for another hour or so and watched Ru play with her new toys.


Ru was a champ at opening her presents! I got them started and showed her where to pull, and she tore away! Sammy wanted to help and kept getting in the pics, so we had to put him in his crate for a while. (altho I have some cute pics of him "helping", too) Ru loved all of the gifts she got, and enjoyed playing with them all afternoon. Altho, we did make her stop for her birthday cupcake...


She didn't get too horribly messy. I think the lack of great globs of frosting helped with that. she had never eaten anything quite so fragile before, and most of it ended up smooshed into crumbs and dropped on the floor. (ensuring Sammy's escape from the crate, so he could do his clean up duty) She maybe ate a third of a cupcake before she was ready to head back to her toys. She did think it was pretty tasty tho!

Happy Easter!!

We had our friends Doris & Clayton Foss from church over for Easter since they don't have any relatives in town, either. They are almost the exact same age as my grandparents (whom I miss greatly!) and are great ppl, and had a ball watching Ruthie's antics as she figured out this Easter egg hunt thing. She is army crawling like a champ, and if the skirt of her dress wasn't in the way she would have practiced it with her tummy off the ground more, too.

Walking is way better than crawling tho, and this week she has transitioned to only holding one of my hands. This makes it much easier for her to touch the wall as we walk by, or grab the chairs, etc. She also has better access to all the fun stuff on the tables, in bags, or generally in areas mom isn't used to having to protect from baby's curious hands! But most importantly today, it frees up one hand to pick up the funny colored plastic things mommy threw all over the ground and put on the chairs. :)



We had her favorite yogurt drops (freeze dried whipped yogurt made specifically for toddlers) and some fruit loops in the eggs. She much preferred the yogurt drops, which is fine with me since the fruit loops are pretty sugary. We had four new board books and some stuffed animals in her Easter basket before we got started, along with some Easter grass, which she thought was yucky. (and really, that plastic Easter grass stuff IS yucky...dunno what I was thinking when I bought it...)

The worst part about her first Easter is she's getting a cold, her poor little nose is just running and running. It's not bothering her too much when she's distracted by toys and such, but when it's nap time or really running, she's been fairly fussy. She seems to be feeling worse as the evening continues. Brian's putting her to bed right now, hopefully it will be better tomorrow and not worse!

Hope everyone had a happy Easter!

Walking??

Ru took two steps without holding my hand yesterday! We were playing in the living room and she was holding on to a chiar. I turned around to throw the ball for the dog, and when I turned back around to her she smiled, let go of the chair, and wobbled towards me! Of course, two steps was all she did before she fell forward (I did catch her of course) but she's getting there! :)

And of course, here's a couple photos for ya, just because I know you love them!


We got a bunch of cute summer dresses off ebay for dirt cheap ($40 for more than 15 dresses) and this is one of them. A long sleeved white onesie made it a bit warmer for our cool spring weather.


Ru loves her Teddy bear! She sleeps with him every night, and during naps. When we're awake, he never fails to bring a smile to her face when I offer him to her. He likes to sneak up on her and steal kisses, and pounce her for hugs. She loves to hug him tight and bury her face in his...and bite his nose. ;)

My life in words...

I took my last couple of blog posts and made a "wordle" out of them. Here's the same text with different settings.

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/733229/My_life

You should go play at www.wordle.net It's good fun.

I'm not one to brag but....

Ok, so maybe it's not the sort of thing you brag about. But I've got some HUGE dandelions in my yard! You can't really tell from pics of just the flowers, so of course I had to have something in there for size reference. I have a pretty big kid, too, but I think you get the idea... Especially on the last pic with her pudgy little hand!

Don't tell Auntie Judy!

Auntie Judy is a girlie girl. That's not a bad thing at all! But when she finds out I let Ru play in the mulch at the park, I'm sure she's gonna scold me. It's dirty! But she really, really wanted to play in it, and I was tired of walking her endlessly around the park. So when she plunked herself down, I decided to go with it. It's not like I can't wash her clothes...and she was a really good girl and didn't put any in her mouth at all! ;)


She was very focussed on what she was doing. Usually when I get out the camera she gets distracted a lot and looks up at me all the time. But the mulch was much to interesting. I could hardly get her to look up, smiles were certainly out of the question.

Not too bad for pics taken with my cell phone, huh? I need to get a good little ultra compact digicam for my diaper bag, because you never know when "cute" is gonna happen! (and the camera phone doesn't work indoors since it doesn't have a flash)