Halloween 2012

This year we held our annual (yes, it's an annual thing now) Halloween Open House.  You may remember from last year that it gets pretty wild in our neighborhood around this time of year.  Hundreds of kids come through our neighborhood to trick-or-treat.  They even close our street to vehicles. Last year, I remember Halloween night being really cold.  This year, it was WET.  It rained and rained and rained.  However, even with torrential downpours, we still went through about 10 Costco-sized bags of candy.  The rain slowed down the crowds a little, but not by much.

This was also Ruby's first Halloween.  We didn't take her trick-or-treating, but we did dress her up and she played with friends who came through our home.  She was our little love bug:

Before our friends showed up, she helped get things ready and man the door.  It was already pretty wet outside and the weather only got worse.

 

Noa and I dressed as hippies.  Yeah, it's pretty boring for us, but we had to think of something in a pinch and I had bought Ruby's costume back in November, not really thinking about what we could be.  I think we pulled it together pretty well and you know that Noa loved the wig and 'stach.

 

Surprisingly, she didn't seem to mind wearing the costume.  Ruby was in a pretty good mood all evening.

We had lots of friends come through and hang out at our place.  It's always fun to see all the different costumes and this year was no exception.

The Landers: Lego theme (they even had a costume for the dog, but he wasn't here)

 The Caldwells: homemade creativity, even a traditional ghost

The Berneys: random assortment of costumes, including ketchup, a skeleton, and a werewolf

 

The James: an angel and a dinosaur

The Giesbrechts: they get the prize for the best Goodwill find: an inflatable sumo wrestler costume!

 By the time most everyone got here, the rain really started pouring.  But that didn't deter the trick-or-treaters.  They still went out - even if it meant using garbage bags as costume protection.

It's hard to tell in the picture below because it was dark, but the sky was dumping buckets!  On a separate note, you can see that I did the same style of pumpkins as last year. I love taking a drill to a hallowed out pumpkin.  They look good and are fun to make!

I decorated the house a little for the event.  As much as I hate using the fake cobwebs, they sure do add a lot of punch to the Halloween decor.  One of my friends kept wanting to dust my lights (she then realized that the cobwebs were there on purpose - ha ha!).

In spite of the horrible weather, it turned out to be a really fun evening.  I'm glad that this is becoming a tradition in our home.  I'm already trying to think of a good costume theme for the three of us for next year.

11 Months!

Wow - it's 11 months already!

Age: 11 months

Weight: 16.9 pounds

Length: 28 inches

Sleep: sleeps in her crib, 2 daytime naps, sleeps through the night (amen!)

Eating: formula in bottles, pureed foods, lots of finger foods

Appearance: blue eyes, light blond hair that tends to stick up and look like she has a permanent bedhead, wearing 6 - 9 month clothes, almost 7 teeth (2 bottom, 4 top, and 1 peeking up through the bottom)

Skills: can sit, roll, pull to a stand, crawl, starting to cruise (move from one piece of furniture to the next while standing), expresses lots of baby babble, repeat dada and some other sounds, has basic pincer grasp, grabs toys and passes from hand to hand, can "catch" a ball that is rolled to her, "dances" to music, responds to the dogs, gives good eye contact and smiles!  She can also throw a mean tantrum, complete with arched back and wailing cry.  Ruby is really fast with crawling and cruising and, although not yet walking, she has just stood twice without holding on to anything.  Her favorite thing to do is hold on to her favorite toys of the day while crawling or cruising across a room.

She is becoming so independent.  She eats much of her food by herself, even trying to use her spoon.

Although usually she just uses her hands.

As mentioned earlier, her new favorite thing to do is to hold on to her favorite toys of the day as she crawls around the house.  One day she discovered a couple of newborn disposable diapers that a friends left behind.  She held on to those diapers all afternoon and was giggling all the while.

Bath time is often a funny time.  Although she's not a big fan of having her hair rinsed out, she just loves her two rubber ducks.

And she makes some great faces!

Ruby's other favorite game is chase.  She either wants us to crawl after her or she'll crawl after us.  She giggles and laughs the whole time.  It's pretty adorable.

What is not so adorable is when she crawls right up to the TV/DVD player/cable box and starts pushing buttons.  This new "game" is all kicks and giggles, especially when we go to remove her from such enticing equipment.  She's learned to crawl away in a hurry, giggling the whole time.

Ruby is beginning to show signs of becoming a future reader.  She'll pull a book out of her toy basket and turn the pages, looking at the pictures.  Okay, okay, so the books may be upside down or backwards, but I feel like the time spent reading to her is finally reaping some benefits.  Currently, her favorite book is a board book called "Peek-A Who?"

 

So, next month will be the big one year celebration!  I can't believe it's so close.  I've already caught myself getting teary just thinking about it.  I'm trying to focus on what she's doing now - although she's changing so fast, I have to hold on hard.

Catching Up!

It's been a couple of weeks since I last blogged and I thought it would be a good time to do a little catch up post.  We've been a busy bunch of kids since the last one.

Fun times: we celebrated Noa's 35th birthday!

We surprised Noa with a sports-themed party.  New England teams were the obvious favorite. 

  

For Noa's birthday, I converted our third garage bay into a home gym.  Okay, it may not look like much, but it's still a functional gym and workspace.  Plus, it used to be filled with storage and give-away items.  Now it's so organized!

I got a new job!  I'm still at the humane society, but I have a new part-time position: the foster care coordinator.  I like to refer to myself as the FCC.  Basically my job involves recruiting foster volunteers to take care of young puppies, kittens, and animals with medical or behavioral needs in their home.  I'm beginning to develop a network of foster families and I get to work with cute little furbabies.  My first night on the job involved me taking home a litter of three-week-old kittens!  They were cute, but a lot of work!

 

 

Speaking of furbabies, we recently had a six-month-old puppy visitor.  This is Vesper, who took a liking to Sadie immediately.  The two of them ran laps over and over again in the yard.  Isn't she cute?!

 

So, it's been a busy few weeks as you can see.  Ruby just turned 11 months old yesterday (post coming soon!) and we are gearing up for Halloween.  We still haven't come up with costume ideas yet for me or Noa...thoughts? Ideas?

Fall Family Photos

Last month when Jess was visiting, she took us outside for a quick family photo shoot.  Poor Rubes was not in the mood (it was getting close to her bedtime), but Jess still managed to get some great family shots in spite of little miss I'm-ready-for-bed-and-not-gonna-smile.  I'm trying to finalize which ones I should have enlarged and framed in my house.  

As always, beautiful work, Jess!  If it wasn't for you, I'd have most of my family photos from my iPhone camera.  Thanks for making our family look beautiful.

Babies! Babies! Babies!

Looking through my pictures recently, I realized that babies seem to be be everywhere lately.  Probably because well, we have one, and a lot of our friends have 'em too.  It's a fun stage of life, especially when we get all our babies together.  Here are just some of the babies we've hung out with lately:

Ruby and Brady donning their monkey pjs (check out the feet!):

Just getting up from a nap:

Showing their Patriots pride:

Amy and Ben, me and Rubes, and Jess and Brady in Port Townsend, WA:

Babies: Ruby, Brady, and Valentina

Moms: Me, Jess, and Franchi

And the babies without the moms....Brady is not too happy since he had to have a major diaper change right before this picture was taken.

A couple of photos of fellow Navy moms and their babies at Jim Creek Recreation Facility:

And, yes, Ruby looks kinda upset in the last photo.  She was not in the mood for a group photo.  There's always one in the group and this time it had to be her.

After looking at these pics, I'm reminded of how much I love all my mama friends.  I don't know how I would have survived this first year of motherhood without them.  And really, they all make such CUTE babies!  Wouldn't you agree?

10 Months!

Ruby turned 10 months old this past Sunday.  I am completely amazed by how quickly she is changing and developing into a little person.  Before I get into specifics, here are her current stats:

Age: 10 months

Weight: about 16 pounds

Length: 28 inches

Sleep: sleeps in her crib, 2 daytime naps, has recently slept THREE nights in a row without waking up...fingers crossed that this is it for nighttime wakings!

Eating: formula in bottles, pureed foods, lots of finger foods 

Appearance: blue eyes, light blond hair that tends to stick up and look like she has a permanent bedhead, wearing 6 - 9 month clothes, 6 teeth (2 bottom, 4 top)

Skills: can sit, roll, pull to a stand, crawl, starting to cruise (move from one piece of furniture to the next while standing), expresses lots of baby babble, repeat dada and some other sounds, has basic pincer grasp, grabs toys and passes from hand to hand, can "catch" a ball that is rolled to her, "dances" to music, responds to the dogs, gives good eye contact and smiles!  She can also throw a mean tantrum, complete with arched back and wailing cry.

This month I waited until Noa was available to help take the monthly photo, but we still had trouble keeping Ruby still - even momentarily - for the shot.  She continues to love her newfound freedom and is constantly getting into everything.  Her new obsession is the cable box and DVD player.  We now have to block it with furniture in order to keep her away from them and their alluring buttons.

Thankfully, Jess was visiting recently and took some great photos of Ruby that are perfect for her 10 month blog post.  This first one is one of my favorites:

Although she's not smiling here, I think she looks pretty adorable.

Look at all those teeth!

Ruby sitting in the stroller; I just adore those beautiful eyes.

Now, some less-professional pics.  She loves her new activity table.  It plays a bajillion songs (which I can now recite perfectly), identifies colors, shapes, numbers, and some Spanish words. Of course, Ruby's favorite part is the plastic phone that is just a rattle (it's laying on the floor in the photo below).

But, if she gets bored with her toys, the plastic food containers can be pretty entertaining in a pinch!

She still loves her thumbs.  Oftentimes, she'll try to put both thumbs or hands in her mouth.  She's learning to wave and I've even caught her waving with the same hand that has a thumb in her mouth.  I bet this will be a tough habit to break when she's older, but for now, it's just cute.

One of my favorite things that I've noticed this month is the development of her humorous side.  She has learned that her actions can cause people to laugh.  So, she'll do things in order to get us to laugh or joke with her.  She might see something tempting across the room (like, the dog bowls, for instance) and make a bee-line for them, while laughing and huffing with excitement.  When we pick her up in the midst of this crawling sprint, she'll laugh or squeal.  When we feed her, she'll bite on the spoon and then give a mischievous smile, waiting for us to laugh along with her.  Often, Ruby will giggle and squeal while excitedly jumping in her jumperoo.  It's all pretty cute, but I fear that she'll inherit her parents' corny humor over time.

Eating is also another area where Ruby has made major improvements.  She is still getting bottles and purees, but her finger food intake has vastly increased.  She can pinch small pieces with the pincer grasp (thumb and index finger) and is able to get most of the food in her mouth.  She loves rice, chicken, banana, and cheese.  She is working on keeping the pureed food in her mouth and sometimes she'll grab the spoon, full of food, before it reaches her mouth, but overall, her eating habit have gotten better.

Her least favorite thing is getting ready for bed.  That's usually when she is tired, hungry (for a bottle), and just done with the day.  It's usually a fight to get her changed, dressed, and into a sleep sack.  But, once we have finally gotten all those things checked off, she is able to fall asleep pretty quickly.  

Sometimes she'll even fall asleep in our arms and that is simply a perfect moment in time.