For Rachel

Our Little Rachel (this is her most common face)

Brand new Rachel

Since most of this blog has been dominated by posts about Lauren and other randomness, this long overdue post is for Rachel.  Rachel is now six months old and bursting with personality.  It's amazing to me how much spunk you can see in a six month old. I love this age! She is so much fun and loves making all kinds of weird noises that of course sends Lauren and anyone else who hears her giggling.  One of my favorite "milestones" that Lauren and now Rachel has hit is when they realize what kisses mean.  They start to like getting them and will smile or laugh - at least for the time being :)  Rachel also loves being on her tummy and playing with or more watching Lauren.  Rachel ADORES Lauren and Lauren likewise.  Whenever Rachel wakes up Lauren gets really excited and asks if she can play dishes, or trains, or whatever with Rachel.  Even though Rachel doesn't do much I get the sense that she loves being included. Lauren can make Rachel laugh like no one else.  They both feed off of each other, I think they will probably cause a bit of trouble.  

For the longest time this is what Rachel would do
whenever I took her picture

Rachel has been a very different experience than Lauren was for me.  When Lauren was born I was only with her maybe 50-55% of the time.  Ryan and I both had class and traded off often.  Ryan spent many hours pacing the floor with Lauren during the day but I rarely ever did that with her.  As a result of this I have noticed that I have a much shorter tolerance when Rachel just wants to be carried and walked around.  I didn't have to do that with Lauren, Ryan did. She has definitely helped me work on my patience.  She has also been a bit more challenging eating wise...or more the regurgitation that comes from the eating.

Lauren really wanted Rachel to ride her bike with Piggy

At around two months we became concerned that Rachel was spitting up a lot, more than we ever remember coming out of Lauren and it seemed to be fairly frequently.  Her pediatricians first response to this was to go off dairy, the spitting up could be due to some kind of reflux and dairy apparently makes it worse.  I was kind of skeptical that this would do much, so I didn't try very hard to stay off dairy.  Of course we didn't see any results, the doctor had her checked for other problems and I saw a couple lactation consultants.  Finally I faced up to my denial that dairy was a problem and went more or less completely off dairy.  We also found a few other culprits namely: chocolate, soy, and nuts. So that's what I've been trying to avoid. I don't know for sure if it is reflux, allergies or just intolerance, I'll I know is that when I eat those things Rachel doesn't sleep well, is congested, spits up a lot and often, and has gas and diarrhea. And hopefully she'll grow out of it. This has been a huge test of self control for me, but at the same time very gratifying to know that there was something I could physically do to fix the problem.  And it really does make all the difference, I'll do it for her.

 I am so grateful for Rachel and love being her mom.

Rachel in her new dress from Aunt Sarah

Tummy time

Rachel and Mom

Big Blue Eyes... to go with the big forehead and baldness
(Sorry Rachel inheritance doesn't always work out in your favor)

A Bit of Awesomeness Growing in the Garden

View of the left half of the garden

Our tomatoes and green peppers

Our garden has gotten huge in the past few weeks.  Even though we have been ravaged with all kinds of bugs and blight on the tomatoes and green peppers things seem to pulling through enough that we are still getting a lot of fruit/vegetables on them.  I think out beans are about done, but we were able to can 25 pints worth!  Now we are just waiting for all the peppers and tomatoes to finish coming on.  Our mutant marigolds have finally started getting flowers on them, which is exciting.  Some how we missed the part on the package that said they grow to be 18"-24" high.  We thought we were buying your typical everyday 5" high marigolds until they kept growing and growing and growing.  They are now   averaging 24"-36" and are taller than any of our other plants.  Who knew marigolds did that?

Mutant Marigolds

These green peppers make Ryan VERY excited,
he LOVES green peppers

View of the whole garden plot

Our first harvest yay!!

Our green beans pre-canner stage

19 beautiful pints of canned green beans.
Planted, grown, canned, and to be eaten by us!

Getting Big

The girls are getting bigger and bigger everyday;  with this constant growing a few changes have been made around our house.  Rachel has grown out of the bassinet and needed the space that the crib would provide, therefore Lauren has been booted out of the crib and has joyfully accepted "the big girl bed"  as her new place of rest.  I had been keeping an eye out for a toddler bed and mattress for a while but everything seemed kind of expensive.  But thanks to Criagslist we got this little bed complete with mattress for $25 bucks.  Not as good as free but definitely more in our price range.  So thank you Craigslist.  Lauren has been really good at staying in it for bedtime and even naps, I'll admit I was pretty worried about how it would all go down, but so far it hasn't been bad at all.

Our next big challenge is far more daunting to me than a bed though.  We've decided to take the plunge starting tomorrow (I have a thing for starting goals or new things on Mondays) and start......potty training.  I think Lauren is definitely ready and now seems to be a really good time to start.  All the same though, it's like standing at the beginning of a marathon:  you're excited for what you are about to accomplish, but at the same time you know it's going to be hard and messy and probably not go quite how you imagine and you already wish you were done with it.  But like a marathon, the best and only way to get done with it is to go forward.  And go forward we will...tomorrow.  Wish us luck.

Fourth of July Festivities

Apparently she was being chased

For the fourth we went to our ward pancake breakfast at the church the went to check out the parade with some friends.  For some reason I assumed all parades were like the ones I'd seen in Utah and on TV: floats, marching bands, horses, firetrucks, people throwing candy, interspersed with various political figures riding in convertibles and the sidewalks are packed with people on camp chairs and blankets.  Fun, right?  So going in with this expectation Bloomington's parade was kind of lame, and as Ryan put it some of the so called floats were at little "kinky."  There were a lot of fire trucks and dump trucks, flat bed trucks with people waving, and various other trucks. Basically it was like one big Bloomington commercial with various businesses riding down the street with their logo on the side of their truck interspersed with a couple flat bed trucks with people shouting out about what ever they feel like. Some of them did throw candy though, which Lauren thoroughly enjoyed.  Maybe most this is how most parades outside Utah are and my expectations are too high.  I don't know.  Here are some pictures though.

Patriotic Lauren giving a pose

Classic Rachel face

Holiday Weekend

Pancake breakfast while camping

So Ryan was home for a nice four day weekend last week, we were super excited and planned on getting lots done in the garden and around the house.  The night he got home Lauren said she wanted to go to the beach (she must have gotten this from grandma), Ryan laughed and said the nearest beach was a long ways away.  The wheels in my head started turning though.  The next morning I received an email from an Indiana tourist site saying "Visit the Dunes! Your summer getaway!"  The pictured it showed looked like a pretty good beach to me and the dunes are only 4 hours away on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.  So I asked Ryan if he was up for a road drive/camping trip.  He said he was game, then I called my sister in Michigan to see if her and her family wanted to meet us and camp that night then go to the lake the next day.  For better or worse they dropped their plans for the evening and decided to join us.  A few hours later we were on the road. It was great to be able to visit with Sarah, Steven and Jacqui.  Lauren loves Jacqui and will follow her just about anywhere.  That night while we were camping Lauren and I saw fireflies for the first time, it was awesome.  Apparently it was so awesome that Lauren could sleep most the night. She tends to get more and more wound up the later it gets until finally she crashes.  Because of this Ryan helped calm her down in the tent and Rachel and I slept in the car.

The beach

The next day our little girl who was so excited to go to the beach got sand in her eyes withing the first hour of being there.  Within 30 minutes she had rubbed them so much that her eyes were red and puffy and she could barely she out of them. She was miserable and was crying about wanting to go home.  Since there wasn't a whole lot we could do there to get her cleaned up (everything was covered with sand and just made it worse) and she was obviously not going to enjoy being there, we left Sarah and Steven at the beach and headed home.  Our first stop of course being somewhere we could rinse out Lauren eyes and get the rest of her cleaned up. 

 Despite some craziness it was fun to get away and definitely worth the drive to see family and stick our feet in the water even if only for a few minutes :)

Summer Reading Challenge

Our library is doing an adult summer reading program during the month of July.  There are nine prompts to choose from and as you finish one you submit an entry that will put you in drawings for prizes. There are small drawings every week and then a big one on July 31st.  You can only enter and entry for each prompt once. I thought this would be a good way for me to branch out a little bit, plus I like prizes.   Here are the prompts: 1. Reread a book you loved as a child. 2. Tackle the classic you "cliff-noted" in high school. 3. Discover a book of poetry and read some aloud. 4. Read a book written the year you were born. 5. Hoosier connection: read something about Bloomington or Indiana or by a Hoosier author. 6. Choose an author or the setting of a book that is foreign to you. 7. Play opposite day: Try nonfiction if you usually choose fiction or vice versa. 8. Spend an aimless hour exploring the Main Library, Ellettsville Library or Bookmobile or wandering the website. And/or ask a librarian to show you a reader's advisory database. 9. Find a book about an exercise or diet you have never tried and try it. (gluten free? tex-mex? yoga? chair exercises?) Here are the ones I've done so far: 1. Reread a book you loved as a child. The Boxcar Children  by Gertrude Chandler Warner I loved this book, and the rest of the series, when I was younger.  There was just something about it that would fire up my imagination; it was the ultimate way to play house.  Sometimes I would pretend our bunk bed was a boxcar that I was living in.  It was fun to read it again and remember how much I loved it when I was younger. 6. Choose an author or the setting of a book that is foreign to you. Sofia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya This is a story based on the experiences of the author and her friends and family during the Great Purge in Russia during the late 1930s.  Sofia Petrovna works in a publishing house as a typist when various acquaintances and other workers disapear and are accused to being traitors to the Communist party.  Sofia's son is taken and she spends her days standing in long lines at the prosecutors office hoping to hear any news of him.  It was fascinating and heartbreaking to read what kind of experiences people in the Soviet Union went through, all the uncertainty when what you believed in all the sudden doesn't make any sense and takes your family away.

Christmas in June

Ponies at Wheeler Farm with Aunt Leah

For our Christmas gift this past Christmas Ryan's parents said they would fly the four of us out for a visit to see our families.  We opted to taken them up on it after the end of the semester when there was a little less craziness and nicer weather, well the weather wasn't as nice as we thought it would be but it was a great time all the same. Since it was our first time being back since we moved to Indiana we had a lot of visits to make with family and good friends, and of course some of our favorite places.  We'd been hyping thing up with Lauren for months hoping that see would be excited to see a bunch of fun things, like the Hogle Zoo, Wheeler Farm, Temple Square, BYU (that wasn't for Lauren that was for Ryan and I). We wanted to check out some more things but figured we were trying too hard, all Lauren really wanted to do was play at grandma's house with toys, chase balls in the grass, and follow grandma's cat. Lauren did get to have her birthday party while we were out there, which she has been looking forward to and talking about for months.  Every time we talked about going to Utah she would talk about her party with cupcakes and do a little dance.  So we had a party with cupcakes and even some balloons, which are always a big hit with her.

Supervising the sheep

   We had a great time being out there with our families again and the girls were great little travelers.  We even got through airport security ok with us and all our loads of bags, car seats, stroller, and other miscellaneous whatever.  One sad travel event though, we suffered a little casualty on the way back coming through the airport, our beloved Piggy.  I'll have to write about that in another post though.

   Thank you Woolsey Mom and Dad for the great Christmas present!  It was a great trip!

 

Who knew these were at Wheeler Farm?

This is what Rachel did everywhere we went

I think Lauren wanted to see the temple more than anything else.  She
was so excited to touch it and see the big Angel Moroni on top.

The zoo was supposed to be really fun but thanks to the new
animatronic dinosaurs she spent the whole time fearing for her life.

Making cupcakes with Grandma Merkley

Attempt at family picture

Typical shot of the girls, Rachel crying and Lauren is mad because
Rachel is touching her.

 

Lauren's new birthday outfit of choice.
Thanks Sarah, Steven, and Jacqui!

Lauren and her birthday loot