Holly’s Blog

At Michael and Jenny’s wedding they served cupcakes as wedding cake.  And we all enjoyed them… thoroughly!

The month of June brought lots of play time, as Jane becomes more mobile and interactive.  And also a big trip to Seattle for Daniel’s brother, Michael’s, wedding.  As always, the trip was way to short and we didn’t get to even scratch the surface of all the things we wanted to do and people we wanted to see… but We did as much as we could.  Especially with two little ones in tow.  This trip really drove home the point that it’s hard traveling with small children.  We stayed 4 different places in 10 days, and towards the end of the trip Annika said, “I’m tired of seeing new people.”  Poor girl.  They both held up really well, but as always, it was nice to get home and back to our house and routine.

The wedding was so beautiful… as was the bride!  Michael’s face and emotions were so full of love as he watched Jenny walk down the aisle.  Annika was honored the be the flower girl (and only wedding attendant).  She did a great job, and at the end of the aisle she still had some “rose crumbs” in her basket, so she stood there until she dropped all of them in the grass.  It was so cute.

Got a new camera – Canon DSL… LOVE IT!  And if I wasn’t a photo snapping woman before, I sure am now.  It’s fun to “snap, snap, snap” like a professional.  There is still a lot of learning to do, but I’m having fun with it even in auto, and the few other setting that I have figured out so far.  He he he! A few picks from the new camera:

So… after a string of visitors and Easter, we had a quiet May just hanging out.  Annika and Jane were busy as usual… and the photos will share some of the highlights.

(Not sure why the photos are so huge and overlapping… gotta go with it for now.)

So here’s a few photos from the rest of our Easter adventures.  We were able to attend the “SeaHunt” at the Waikiki Aquarium for the second year.  (It’s fun to be in a place to actually attend an event two years on a row!  Maybe we’ll make it three years next spring!)  Annika enjoyed the fishing pool, coloring, and seeing the Easter Bunny.  Our neighborhood had their own Easter Egg Hunt also.  Annika loved running for the eggs, and only wiped out once.  Her neighborhood friends were there, which made it even more fun.  Time for the photos to talk….

Celebrating the joyous resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Blessings to all of you!

Jane turned six months April 12th.  It’s hard to believe that she is six-months old already.  She’s been a part of our family for that long… though it’s hard to imagine life without her.  Even on the hard days.

Six month update:

Favorite things to do:  “Bang” her toys, specifically rattles… she seems to love the noise.  “Go”… she loves to move, constantly.  Kicking on the changing table.  Army-crawling around the family room, under the kitchen table and down the hall.  In fact, she’s so much of a mover that we can’t get her to sit still long enough to learn to sit up.  She immediately flops over and is off rolling or crawling.  Finally just yesterday she got herself into a sitting position… yes, all by herself.  I looked over and she was sitting up.  Granted it only lasted 30 seconds, but long enough for me to snap a couple photos… then she was off again.  She’s begun to get fully up on all fours, belly off the floor, for crawling, but just shoots her legs out.  Even funnier though, is her spread-eagle stance.  She’s done this a few times the past few days… arms and legs straight up & out, holding her up off the floor.

She makes a really cute scrunch-face that makes us all smile.

Favorite toys:  Pretty much anything and she puts it all in her mouth.  She’s so much more of an ‘oral’ baby than Annika was.  Jane is still sucking her thumb, but will also suck on anything else she can or wants to.  She loves the old-style fisher price phone (Thanks Rachel and Rob who gave it to Annika for her 1st b-day… and we are still using it!).  She will roll onto her side and spin the dialer with her hands to make it ring.  She also likes the blue chew ring, that we gave to Carsten Guenther and he shared back to Jane.  She’s also into the dog dish, the electronics… she’s even chew on furniture.  Crazy!

Just this week she started to baby-babble with actual word sounds.  “Bub… Wub… Baa…” usually with her bottom lip tucked under the top one and often times with her lips pulled in an “o”.  Even when she gets upset with us, she’ll still “Bub… Bub… Bub” in between tears and cries.  We have been awoken the past two mornings to “Bub… Bub… Bub”.  Annika calls her “Bub-Bub”.  But then again, Annika has a new name for her every week (Cuckoo, wiggle toes, silly girl).

Just tried rice cereal for the first time.  We thought she’d love it, because she’s always watching us eat and reaching for food/plates/bowls/silverware at the table.  But when it came time to actually eat, a lot of it came back out.  I know it takes time for new things and new textures, so we’ll try again.  (Just as contrast, Annika opened her mouth wide like a hungry bird the first time and never turned back!!) We are looking for a high chair with good shoulder restraints, because of the above comments on moving all the time.  She won’t stay still… I was having to hold her upright her the ‘chair’ because she was leaning forward, bending in half at the waist strap… reaching to get out.  She won’t stay in the Bumbo chair either… she twists her body and pushes with her legs.  Can’t leave her alone in it either.  Any recommendations on high chairs!?!

She’s sleeping really well.  But scoots/crawls up in her bed in her sleep.  We go in before we go to bed and slide her down… and still in the morning she’s head-pressed-up against-the-end.  A bumper was put in the crib for that reason… she was crushing her head on the crib slats.  And now she has learned to pull down on it to peek over and out of the crib to watch us come in her room in the morning.  Pretty cute.

I spend more time than I should reading blogs of women who do all kinds of fun craft projects and home design things.  I’m not sure where they get the time to do all that, let along take photos and blog about it all.  Ask anyone who knows me, I have a HUGE backlog of “projects” that I want to do.  I talk about them way more than I work on them… but just recently two of them were realized.

I got up my “family photo wall”.  I’ve been dreaming about this for years.  But seeing that we have had 5 addresses the past 5 Christmas seasons… so much moving has not allowed for it to happen.  It is also something that you need the right space for.  So when we moved into this house… I saw my opportunity.  We will be in this house for two years and the stairway had a turn it in, leaving me a huge blank wall.  Yippee!  I went out and bought lots of black frames, and collected the ones I already had.  The frames sat in a box… in project limbo (like so many of my projects) for too long.  Finally I hung up all the frames.  With the ‘fake’ people still in them!   He he he!  I though that having ‘fake’ people look at me every day would motivate me to get the photos printed.  Well, it still took me about a month to get the frames filled.  And I still have to find a couple negatives (buried in a box – another project to complete!)… but other than that it’s done.  And I love it!  I can switch photos out as the girls grow.  And we put all the aunt and uncles down at the bottom so the girls can see their faces every day.  Even if we live far away… they still can know them all.

My second project was a ribbon hanger.  I saw a bunch of these on blogs and wanted to make one myself.  I won’t tell you how long ago I bought the materials… sigh.  Story of my life.  But it’s also done… and turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself. I just painted an art canvas, laid out the ribbons, moved them around until I liked it, and then staple gun-ed the ribbons onto the back.

Annika’s little neighborhood friend, Nathan, had his third birthday party at the “Box Car Race Track”.  Annika was so excited to go… even though she probably didn’t totally understand what it was.  And to be honest, I didn’t either.  Box cars are wooden ‘cars’ without any motors… only a steering wheel and brake.  They start on an incline and by the twists and turns, keep the momentum going to finish the ‘race’.  It was a small track, but plenty long for them all to have fun and get lots of turns to race.  Because of Annika’s age, Daniel raced with Annika.  (I was on sick-Jane duty… poor baby girl had a nasty cold!  Yes, we get colds in Hawaii… and quite often too!)  Annika loved it.  Her expressions and the laughing giggle around the whole track were the best.