Other January activities

Since I've been such a slacker this month on the blog, I thought I'd better throw in a quick post of what we've done this month. We've been lucky enough to have my sis-in-law, Savannah, and my nephew, Jared, visiting for almost 3 weeks now. They came to help out with things at my parents house, helping my mom while she recovers, and making sure they eat and such. It's been nice having them here. They actually got here on the day that our congresswoman, Gabby Giffords was shot by the crazy guy that went on a shooting rampage up on the Northwest side. (Gabby's race was a really tight this last time, with her winning by just a few thousand votes. While I disagree with her politically and voted for the other guy, I'm glad she survived. That was quite a shocker of news and is still in the news here, 3 weeks later, mostly just updates about how she is doing, or updates about the legal steps with the shooter.)
Anyway, Rachel has been having fun playing with Jared while they're here. Todd came out about a week and a half ago, too, and has been working remotely. They'll be here until a week from Saturday, so we're enjoying their time visiting. (Though admittidly, some of the enjoyment comes from staying home and taking care of the total lack of housekeeping since my mom's accident.)
Last week was a crazy week for me, with 2 New Beginnings to go to and YW volleyball, along with a regional Priest-Laurel Conference that our stake was in charge of, and ward conferences. So out of 8 days, from Sunday to Sunday, I wasn't at a church building just 2 out of the 8 days. Hopefully things will slow down a little now, but camp planning is starting up, so I'm not counting on it too much.
In one of my guilty moments for abandoning Rachel so often last week, I picked up a gingerbread house kit on clearance for $2. She'd been wanting to make one, but we never got around to it before Christmas, so this was a perfect opportunity. Grandma helped her decorate it and she loved it-especially the eating of the (stale) candy.

Lately Rachel has been on a cleaning kick. She'll get a washrag wet, then come tell me to move my stuff that is on the table, and she'll wash it down, then go to the bathroom and wash her sink and counter.

In the hopes of corralling this cleaning energy and keeping it going, we pulled out a chore chart that I found at Target for $1 a while back and put those jobs she enjoys doing on there, along with teeth brushing in the morning and night, and the one job she HATES: putting her toys away. She's been loving getting star stickers, so we'll milk that for all it's worth and hopefully it'll last a while. She actually has a completely clean room right now, having put all her toys away last night so she could get another sticker. Woohoo!

Coming soon (or whenever I get around to it): pictures from our visit to the Children's Museum with Jared and Savannah.

Annie

I got out my photo album the other day to show Rachel some pictures of me when I was a little girl about her age and I came across this picture of me as a baby:

When I first looked at it I thought, "Wow. That is Annie." Except for the 70s wallpaper and the fact that my Grandma is in the picture, too.
Here are some pictures of Annie from this month for you to compare:

I put Annie semi-sitting up anywhere and Rachel has to sit next to her.

I decided to try some pigtails for Annie. She looked like a totally different little girl to me with them in. I felt a little bad, though, seeing how her hair was being held so tightly, I thought they'd give her a headache, so I only left them in for about 2 minutes. One of these days we'll try it out for real.

At the beginning of the month she had her 2 month appointment (she'll be 3 months old in a couple of days--I'm not doing so great at keeping up with the blog these days. Oh well.). She was 23.3 inches (78th percentile) and 11 lb. 9 oz (64th percentile). Rachel had her 3-year-old appointment the same day, so I got her printout of all her measurements, and at her 2 month appointment she was 4 ounces more than Annie, same as when they were born, Rachel was 4 ounces heavier than Annie-kind of funny. Annie is a great baby and is really starting to show her personality. She loves hearing her own voice and talks non-stop if there is someone there to talk back to her. She's a good sleeper and a good eater. Her hair is starting to lay flat on it's own (Jacob laments the loss of her "mad scientist hair") and Rachel comments that she looks like a boy with her hair like that, so we add little hair clips occasionally--luckily she's got plenty of hair, and it doesn't look like it's going to be falling out. (Rachel had tons of black hair when she was born, which all fell out when she was between 2 and 3 months old, then grew back in blond, so I'm hoping that we're safe with Annie's hair, since it's already blond and doesn't show any signs of falling out.)

Squealing

Annie is a crazy squealer lately. If you lie her down on her own she'll talk to you for a good long time--sometimes she'll even talk to you if you're holding her, but she has to be in a real good mood for that. It is so funny to see her enjoying her voice so much.

Rachel loves that Annie is actually beginning to interact with her sometimes and Annie loves to watch Rachel and talk to her.