8 Months Old

Haley turned eight months old last week! She is doing a great job feeding herself puffs and Cheerios, has waved goodbye a couple of times, and just started giving big sloppy kisses. So sweet! It was a gorgeous day on Saturday, so we took a few pictures outside to mark her big day.


Yeah, she doesn’t look like JT or anything…

Baseball

One evening after dinner, we took a walk to our local elementary school playground and the boys played a little baseball. JT has to have baseball in his blood: Jim and my brother were both high school all stars, and my dad played well into his fifties. JT got a baseball tee, ball, and bat for Christmas from his Grandpa and Grandma Keene, so we tested them out in a real diamond.

Slider got some much-needed off leash exercise in, too.

Haley and I were the cheering section.

For the first twenty minutes, JT was happy to throw, wander, look at stuff, drag his bat in the dirt, and other mundane activities. In the last five minutes, he got serious. He hit the ball off the tee, threw the bat, and ran to first base with a look of absolute glee. (Okay, maybe because I was standing on first base cheering him on.) We ended on that high note and went home to watch the Mariners play on television. Good stuff.

Puzzles and Clocks

JT got a couple of new puzzles from his older friend Eli and he loves them. One is a Thomas puzzle and it has 25 pieces. JT can do the entire thing by himself. I think that’s pretty awesome!

The other puzzle is an alphabet train. This is perfect because JT knows about half of his letters by sight and is learning more all the time. He loves to get the whole train together and then sing the alphabet song.

He is now fascinated with clocks. I think maybe Grandma Cole taught him to look at the clock in our kitchen because I came home one day and when it was bed time he said, “because the big hand is pointing to the top?” Way to go, Grandma Cole! I got him a book about time with a moveable clock in the back and he’s started making the hands point to different times.

JT is getting pretty good at writing his name. I have to remember that he is TWO after all, and not get on him for putting it in the wrong order or backwards. Here you can see at the tail of the helicopter his T and to the right of it his backwards J. He does write them in order J, T but he puts the T on the left. Today we worked on dot-to-dot letters and he made a very nice A.

JT loves to carry things around in his Harley with him. The other day, I said to him, “You need some saddle bags.” Jim had a great idea to attach the small part of his Harley rig pack to JT’s bike, and now he has his own rig pack. Non-motorcycle people may call it a trunk, but we know what it really is. I find all sorts of things in JT’s rig pack now. 🙂

Friend-that’s-a-girl

JT enjoys his friend-who-is-a-girl (not girlfriend), Gracelyn, very much! We enjoy her and her family, too, so that works out well. 🙂 Gracelyn’s family came over for an indoor picnic lunch this week after we got rained out of a boat ride. JT and Gracelyn play together most weeks at workout, and they both did gymnastics together, so they see each other a lot.

They figured this little number out all by themselves: JT came rolling into the living room with Gracelyn on the back and said, “Hey, look!” All the adults thought it was pretty cute. I think it was Gracelyn’s first ever Harley ride!

Barrettes and Cheerios

I bought Haley some new barrettes at the store the other day. She rides sitting up in the cart now and her eyes LIT up when she saw them. It’s so crazy to watch a little girl who is just riding along, enjoying life, and then she is screaming because she can’t hold the barrette pack. Toy cars? No. Bananas? No. GIVE ME THE BARRETTES. How does she know?

I was explaining to Jim why she needed barrettes, not just hair bows, and he understood perfectly. “They’re her everyday, around the house barrettes,” he said. I love that man. Now she wears something in her hair almost every day. It is great fun!

Haley is also super interested in food. Watch out – she will grab anything that comes her way. Today she grabbed onto a casserole dish from the oven and gave me a heart attack. Fortunately, it had cooled off and she wasn’t hurt.

She is working on using her baby feeder for bananas and avocado but really prefers an apple slice without her feeder. Once her teeth come through she won’t be able to do that, but for now she just gums the slice and it works just fine.

She also conquered getting a Cheerio (organic sugar free toasted Os, but no one calls them that)into her mouth all by herself. It was very exciting!

Baby Shower

Haley and I got to go to a baby shower for two of my cousins, Cora and Rebecca. (What’s with my family? We seem to get pregnant in multiples.) They are both having boys! Cora lives far away, so she joined us via Skype. Aren’t we so cutting edge? 🙂
The group
Catching up with Cora
Aunt Sara practicing to be a grandma
The shower was at the beautiful Weyerhauser Mansion in Tacoma. We took advantage of the rain-free day and the gorgeous view and took a four-generation picture. Haley is my grandma’s only great grandchild from an all-female line… and she will always be the only one, unless God surprises us with another daughter someday. (I’m having a stroke just typing that. Two is plenty, thanks.)
Julia Evelyn, Terrie Lynn, Becky Lynn, and Haley Lynn
Two lovely ladies

Girls’ Weekend

Jim had to leave town for work and I had Book Club plus a baby shower, so JT went to spend the night with Grandpa and Grandma Cole. That left Haley and I with the house to ourselves for 24 hours! It was pretty fun “just us girls” and I must say that I am really looking forward to when she is older and we can do girls’ nights together.
I snuck up on her while she was playing in the kitchen with her duck toy…
And she thought that was so funny!
Haley has been super hungry lately. I finally let her have a little something extra at lunch time, and she is now very interested in self-feeding with apple slices, banana chunks, avocado wedges, Cherrios, and Happy Baby Puffs. This makes three meals a day for her in addition to four nursing sessions. Good heavens! I don’t understand where it’s all going… she still weighs just 13 pounds.
It was beautiful outside, so Haley watched me wash the car. Afterward, she went inside for a nap and I got to weed and mow. It felt great to work outside for the first time this year!

Pretty in Pink

Oh, my, is it just me? Or do I have the most beautiful little girl in the whole world? She was sitting in her room the other day and the sun was streaming in, and we had the house to ourselves, and I just couldn’t help but take a few pictures. Or twenty. 

Sweet girl
Oops, got a little forward there…
It’s okay, Mom, I know how to roll…
Hello there!

Digital Scrapping

Oh no, I’m hooked! My first foray into digital scrapbooking was making a family calendar for my grandma last year for Christmas. Now that I have a new computer and PhotoShop up and running, I’ve started on Haley’s first year scrapbook. I did JT’s the paper traditional way just like the scrapbook I made of Jim and my first ten years together, and I decided to try digital for Haley’s. OH MY. It is so fun! Thanks to Shabby Princess, I am now down several hours of sleep each night. Here are my first three pages… I already had the first one ‘test printed’ at Costco and it looked beautiful. I can’t wait to do more!