I got the pictures off our iPad for the first time since we bought it last November. We don't take a ton of pictures with it because is not great quality, but sometimes it's all we have with us. So here are some of the pictures from the last 9 months or so that we'll want to remember one day...
Ice cream after shots at the doctor.
At the hospital ready to go home:
Annie gets this red blotchiness around her mouth whenever she eats the cucumber ranch dressing my parents have (maybe we shouldn't let her eat it). Yesterday was the worst I've seen it, so I snapped some pictures to show the doctor. This is when the redness had started to fade, but you can still see several blotches around her mouth.
Now if I can figure out how to get the pictures off my cheap-o phone, I can be all caught up...
Annie has been really loving to Ryan lately. It is so cute. She asks to hold him and gives him hugs and brings him toys. And only hits him with the toys she's trying to share with him sometimes. And only half smothers him, instead of completely laying on him like she used to. And he loves his sisters. He gets a big smile a lot of the time when one of them comes close to him, especially to talk to him.
Aren't they cute?
Rachel and Annie got out some hats so they could head outside where it was so bright (and hot). And of course they love modeling for the camera.
Saturday morning Ryan woke up first, around 6am, and while I was in the middle of changing him and getting him dressed I heard Annie calling out, so I ran in to get her out of bed before she could wake Rachel up. It turns out Annie's diaper had leaked, but I didn't want to go back in to get her new clothes and risk waking Rachel, so she stayed in her clean diaper until Rachel woke up. She thought it was pretty funny to copy Ryan and laid down her blanket to lay on, just like he was doing.
One of Annie's favorite things when she wakes up from a nap is to have Ryan join her in her crib until she's ready to get out. We've been trying to enforce the binky staying in the crib more often lately, so often when she wakes up she's not quite ready to give it up and get out. She thinks it's the funniest thing to have Ryan lay on her pillow.
She even shares her beloved blankie with Ryan occasionally.
Laundry day:
While Rachel was at preschool the other day Annie woke up from her morning nap and I soon found her like this:
Backpack on, "reading" a book, apparently having driven to her own version of preschool on her little car.
At Ryan's 4 month doctor's appointment, which was almost a month ago, Ryan weighed in at just 12 pounds. That's just a pound and a half weight gain in 2 months, and dropped him from 30/40th percentile down to 5th percentile. He stayed in the 60th percentile for height, so he's just a real skinny boy. Not a huge concern, but the doctor does want us to go in for a weight check next week at 5 months. And she prescribed food for the hungry little boy. We started him on solids twice a day, and apparently it's finally helping him to not be such a hungry little guy because this week he FINALLY slept 3 nights in a row some good long stretches (like 8 hours) instead of waking up every 3ish hours to eat (sometimes even every 2 hours, making my sleep very fragmented and making me a very tired mom). Wednesday night none of the other kids woke up, either, so I got probably 6+ continuous hours of sleep before I had to feed him at 5am, then got another hour and a half of sleep before everyone woke up for the day. I felt more rested yesterday than I have felt probably since Ryan was born. Unfortunately last night all 3 kids were up multiple times, so I can't say the same today. :/
Anyway, the point is, Ryan started eating "real" food and loves it. So here are some obligatory messy face pictures of the baby:
And one last picture until we're caught up. Annie wanted to dress up in Rachel's favorite princess dress the other day. It was Rachel's Princess Pea (from Super Why) costume from when she was 2 and 3 years old. Rachel still wears it all the time, though it just comes to her knees now. When Annie put it on I was reminded of how it is supposed to fit, like a floor-length dress. She makes a cute princess!
Annie has really been making leaps and bounds in her communication skills lately and it is so fun to have a cute little talker around. Rachel was super advanced, speaking in complete sentences and knowing her ABCs before she was even 18 months old (like around 15 months), so even though Annie is on par, or even a little ahead of "normal" in her language development, it has felt kind of slow. But she's putting words together now and expressing herself more and more and it's a lot of fun. Except when she expresses herself in tantrum form. Here come the terrible twos!
I was cleaning out and reorganizing the garage a week or two ago and found the walker, and decided to bring it in. Ryan really likes standing up, so he's enjoyed his exersaucer, and I figured he'd like the walker, too. And he has. And so have the girls. Especially Annie. She likes it when Ryan is in it and she can push him around.
But she likes it even more when Ryan is not in it and she can climb in.
She's not always great at getting in without getting stuck. So much so that she inspired a little photo project for me: Annie stuck in/on the walker.
She's actually gotten better at getting in and doesn't get stuck near as often now, but can't get out on her own, so I hear "Mommy!! Out!! Out!! Help-ee!" when she's done with her turn.
I unloaded the cameras today and realized how much blogging I have to catch up on. Not that there has been much of significance going on, but we have pictures of our day to day, and so we blog....
Rachel has been on a pirate kick off and on lately, and got a bandanna from Grandpa night to wear when she was being a pirate. She let Ryan borrow it:
He looks like a baby terrorist.
Bubbles!
Annie got a special treat from Daddy when he gave blood (since all the post-donation snacks had gluten he brought them home to share since he couldn't eat them).
Annie showing some love to Ryan. He's a pretty good sport and puts up with her love pretty well most of the time.
Ryan had this reverse male-pattern-baldness going on. Most of his baby hair along the sides has fallen out and is growing in light blond, and the roots of his mohawk are coming in blond, but it looked really funny with the tips being so much darker than the rest of his hair, so we decided a 2nd haircut was in order when he was 4 months old.
Post haircut:
Showing off his yoga skillz with a downward dog.
Monsoon season has been pretty great this year with some good storms blowing through, though we've been missing them the last few days. The best one yet was a week or two ago and it rained so hard we had a stream in our front yard, and a river running in the street. The water in the street was almost up to the top of the curbs. We had some great puddle jumping afterwards, and had a nice picnic in our garage to watch enjoy the much cooler air post-rain.
We got to go to the temple a couple of Saturdays ago for the first time since Ryan was born. He took a bottle just fine the week before, but apparently he decided to give bottles up after that. Maybe because he threw up from eating the formula. He has a hypoallergenic formula now that doesn't seem to give him any problems, though we haven't been able to get him to drink a bottle of it, but when he eats it mixed in with his rice cereal and is fine after. Anyway, we went to the temple and my parents were nice enough to watch the kids for us (and clean our house, for an extra bonus--blessings for attending the temple?). They ended up feeding Ryan lots of rice cereal loaded with formula and he survived the 7 hours we were gone without starving or crying the whole time despite refusing a bottle. The girls had a great time and got some new books and stickers, which Annie was nice enough to share with me all over my face the next day.
Whenever Ryan is fussy and nothing else will calm him down we take him outside and he calms right down. He is content to just sit outside and look around for a good long while. Annie is getting more clingy with me lately, so when I go somewhere she wants to come with. If I sit in the hammock/swing with Ryan, she wants to be in my lap, too. (Notice the jungle grass--apparently when the monsoons come, it makes grass grow. I guess that means we need to cut the grass. For the second time this summer.)
And will wrap up this edition of blog update with a picture of Annie in her teeth brushing position: feet in the sink, sucking the toothpaste off the brush.
This summer we decided to be busier than we normally were during the school year. Which I quickly realized was a bad idea. Having somewhere to be every day of the week was a bit much. Rachel had gymnastics and Annie had a little Movers and Shakers class on Mondays, then Tuesday thru Friday they had swim lessons. For the first two weeks of summer. I made a token effort to sign up for the next session of swim lessons, but it didn't work out and I wasn't too disappointed to have our schedule be much lighter. Rachel really enjoyed her gymnastics class.
When I told her that gymnastics would be over at the end of July and dance class would be starting she told me she would rather do gymnastics. I'm glad she enjoyed herself, but dance is a lot closer to home and cheaper, so I managed to convince her this time, and said we'll do gymnastics again after dance is done.
The last day of class they showed off all their skillz. I stayed with Annie and Ryan and my mom got to go watch her (though I'd seen most of it through the window every week) and took pictures for me.
Here's Rachel's turn showing off her "floor routine" which mostly involved a somersault (which she can finally do on her own without going sideways) and a donkey kick. We have our own little gymnast. Almost Olympics quality. ;)
Annie also loved her Movers and Shakers class, spending most of her time on the slide over and over and over, occasionally doing a somersault or playing on the obstacle course or with the balls. We only got her to class maybe half of the time because of sickness or other things that came up, but she enjoyed when we did make it. I decided it was a waste of time and money, though and we won't be doing it again. Rachel loved those classes when she was Annie's age, but I think Annie gets in enough climbing at home just carrying around her stool everywhere in the house to help her reach whatever she wants to climb on, and a lot more social interaction than Rachel got being the only child at that age. Annie has plenty of chances to play with other kids, particularly Rachel, but also friends we have playdates with, so I think we'll forego any of these classes in the future.
For the last session of the summer I decided to sign Rachel up for swimming lessons, knowing that she'd miss half of the classes since preschool had started (and it costing $2 for the session, I didn't have to worry about getting my money's worth). I had tried to do some one on one lessons with her myself and she is just the kind of kid that does better with a teacher other than mom. With me she is perfectly willing to throw a fit and get mad or refuse to do something she doesn't like (like putting her face in the water, which is kind of a big part of learning to swim). But with a "real" teacher she'll do what they ask her to do even if she doesn't want to. She actually was sick with a cold for part of the session, so instead of attending 4 out of 8 lessons, she only got in 3, including the last one that turned in to just a free play time in the pool.
But in those 3 lessons she really did make some progress and was willing to put her whole head under the water on her own several times that last day. Woohoo! Now if I can just make sure I take her occasionally between now and next summer maybe we won't have to completely start over at the beginning of next summer. :)
