Your Great Grandpa

Before I was born, your true Great Grandfather on my Dad's side passed away from a heart attack. My Grandmother remarried a very sweet man named Joe. He is only man I ever remember calling Grandfather. They lived in the Pennsylvania Dutch country, home of the Amish. What I remember about visiting them is meatballs, fireflies and horse drawn carriages.

Summer evenings visiting them were magical. I would lay in the grass of their front lawn, fireflies dancing through my fingers watching the Amish carriages trot by. I would hear the clop, clop, clop a mile away and run out to the grass to wait for them to pass. They always had the most beautiful horses, dark black with sun glinting off their coats.

Your Great Grandfather had a shop behind the house where he would build tiny wooden houses. They had perfect little windows and doors and they were all different, bright colors. He used to give me one every time I would visit. I have one coming soon to place in your nursery so you have a piece of him.

I got the call about his death from my Dad, who told me that he had a picture of you hanging on his wall. I really wish you could have met him, but I am glad he loved you regardless.

Summer is still not here...

We will probably always live in Washington. There are some great things you can look forward to: snowboarding, the beach & being stuck in the house with me because of the rain (ok the last one you will NOT like when you are 13).

However, summer is short and sweet. And by short I mean that it is JULY in two days and you ate your evening oatmeal in your snow suit.

That doesn't mean we cannot buy cute summer clothes though.

And dress you up in girly bows.

Then hop into our pjs and snuggle while I tell you about your Great Grandfather who passed away today. I will tell you about him in the next post.

Bubble Toes

I love your feet.

You love them too.

You love your pup

You have just started noticing Reilly. Your dad & I have had her since she was 5 weeks old. We got her when I was 17 and he was 18. Just this past May, she turned 8. I know she will not be around for much of your childhood. But she loves you and you love her.

Yellow Dress

When I was pregnant with you, I made a promise to buy you cute clothes. Nobody wants a frumpy baby. But what makes this hard is that your dad & I are very picky about what you wear. We just cannot get behind clothes that say, "Diva!" or "Darling, angel, sweetie!". Well, aparently everyone in this town only purchases infant clothes adorned with these obnoxious phrases, leaving your dad & I with very few places to shop.

Last week your aunt came over and I causually mentioned that I needed to clean your small clothes out the drawers so while she was watching you see took it upon herself to box up everything under 6 months. Super helpful except she seemed to forget that you are midget size and when I came home you had four outfits left.... .... .....

So I dug through the box a bit to retrieve some still-fitting items but I mostly used this as an excuse to buy some new clothes. But buy them wear? Well, we had buy to wipes at Target and I thought I would take a spin around the infant section and low and behold I found this super cute dress:

for $2.99. One point mom, no point ugly infant clothing.

Flower Girl

I always said I would never put huge flowers in your hair. But you are too cute NOT to have big flowers in your hair. I also said I would never dress you in pink.... well that was a fail.

You are sitting!

You have been able to sit for about 3 seconds at a time until now. Tonight you sat long enough for me to get two pictures. You are getting so strong!

Before I know it, you will be crawling. That makes me a bit nervous.

Under the Tree

You love the tree outside our front door. In the evenings, I bring your quilt out and we lay together looking up in the branches. You coo and coo, so much that when we head inside, your baby voice is scratchy.

You practice sitting up in the spotty evening sun.

And I try to capture your speedy, baby feet.

Our tree is the best thing, by far, about summer.

Goodbye my friends

As of about 2.5 months of age, you loved three things in this world. You loved your Papa and me. You loved eating. And you loved your paci. Well, a week ago, I had to take away your paci. You are getting a tooth and so to ease the pain of that tooth, you would chew on the end of your paci causing it to not just fall out of your mouth, but shoot across the room at mach speed. Mama got tired of retrieving it for you, popping it back in your mouth and repeating the game 7,000 times. The first day was rough, you made your “Give me paci” sound, which is like a aahhuu! Ahhhuu! And then a couple AHHUUU!!!!!!!!!!!.

But you made it through and you actually seem happier not to be bothered by it. So then a couple of days later we had to break you from your swaddle. Here is your swaddle story: ever since emerging as a wee babe, you loved to be swaddled to sleep. I am not talking wrapped up in blanket, I am talking military precision, straight jacket swaddle that we had to find instruction for on youtube. At about 4 months, you began breaking out of the swaddle despite our youtube techniques and I should have taken it as a cue that you were done with it, but I did not want to hear you cry, cause it makes the mama sad, so I kept reswaddling you, even if it meant getting up in the middle of the night 7 times to do it.

Then it got hot out and you were really fussy being so buddle up so I knew the swaddle had to go. The first night, you screamed for an hour and fourty five minutes and I wanted to stab myself in the eye. But finally you fell asleep and slept all night! Naps the next day were a nightmare but a week later, things are much better. Some people say that letting a baby cry at your age causes them not to trust you, so you will have to let me know cause you are saying much these days.

Chomp, Chomp, Cry

A tooth is coming through your gum. You are very angry about it. You eat your hands all day long and when you get a hold of my hand, you take my finger and you put it right on the tooth. And then you chomp down and look up at me your eyes saying, "Here is where there is a little knife poking though my gum and I would like you to fix it, PLEASE!".

I am sorry bean, I cannot fix it. But I will be there for snuggles when you need them.