Ruthie is 17 months old!!

This month has been exciting... full of doctor appointments, new skills, and lots of talking!! :) Our sweet laid back angel is developing quite a stubborn streak. We're working on "being gentle" before the baby comes!

Here's what she's been up to:

* She LOVES buttons (this has been going on for quite a while) anything with buttons is her favorite...tv remotes, dvr, phone, etc..
* She will repeat everything we say. Most of the time it actually sounds like what we said!
* She battled her first ear infection :( She felt HORRIBLE for about 2 weeks
* First trip to Disney World
* She LOVES airplanes. Every time she spots one in the air she points and loudly says, "Mommy, What's that?" to which I respond, "Ruthie, that is an airplane. Can you say 'airplane'?" She then tries to say it and repeatedly blows kisses to the airplane. Then as it flies out of her view she says, "bye, bye" and we repeat with each plane spotted!! It's so cute! And, it warms my plane lovin' husband's heart!!

* She also loves to BURP! She thinks it's the funniest thing when she lets one rip. So, once she's burped on accident, she always tries to burp more on purpose. It's kind of funny, but we don't laugh. We have been really working on saying, "excuse me!"

* Her newest food is small bites of skinless apples. She eats them up. Of course she is still LOVING cheese. I think she's going to become one giant cheese cube!
* When you ask her to give baby a kiss... she leans down to kiss my belly. I just love it.
* Tooth count: 11 (4 front top and bottom and 3 molars... another on the way!)

* She loves to dip foods in ANYTHING. It started when Tony and I were eating chips and dip and has moved on to chicken nuggets and ketchup or Sweet and Sour/Polynesian sauce... etc... It's so cute to watch her take her food and dip it in the sauce and then eat it. She is so serious when she's dipping. It's obviously an important event in her day! :)

* Her new words:
"bye"= bye
"ba" = ball
"buh" = book
"peek boo" = peek-a-boo
"morah"= more (been saying this for a while but says it A LOT now!)
"ba ba" = A Men (weird, I know, but she is consistent with her interpretation?)
"ight" = light
"pees" = Please
"dat" = that- used for everything!
"cuhkee" = cookie

* She's even putting 2 and 3 words together to form sentences...
"tear yo go" = There you go
"ear yo go" = Here you go
(Never knew we said that so much until she picked right up on those phrases... now I hear myself saying it ALL the time!)
"I say dadee" = I say daddy
"I ha bo" = I have bow (meaning she's taken her bow out of her hair and is giving it to me... )
"Whats sis" = What's this?
"guh grul" = good girl

Here's some pictures for you to enjoy from last month:

Helping daddy with the lights on the Christmas tree!


Eating a bagel breakfast (one of her favorites) at the hotel in Disney World


With Aunt Rachel and Uncle Matt ("Ma") on Thanksgiving... not feeling well due to an ear infection... hence the paci in her mouth. We've only had the paci to sleep for quite a while (maybe a 4-6 wks) but she felt SO BAD that I wanted to give her a little comfort. We're glad to report she's back to only using it during sleep!


Working with daddy on the computer - remember her love of buttons? Well, to give her some non-destructive buttons we give her the little calculator while daddy uses his big mac computer to do art work!


Reading with Great Grandma before Thanksgiving!


Can you tell who takes the pictures in our house? That would be me, and that would be why I NOT in any of them!! :)

25 weeks!

Well folks- we're on week 25!! They just keep flying by!! We had our level 2 ultra sound this week (actually a follow up) and we're very glad to report that our littlest baby's heart is a-ok!! PRAISE THE LORD!! Her heart is all normal!! She is growing and kicking- more than Ruthie ever did- and we can't wait to meet her. We have the cutest little foot print from the ultra sound... so stinking cute.

Here's what Baby Center says about week 25:
Head to heels, your baby now measures about 13 1/2 inches. Her weight — a pound and a half — isn't much more than an average rutabaga, but she's beginning to exchange her long, lean look for some baby fat. As she does, her wrinkled skin will begin to smooth out and she'll start to look more and more like a newborn. She's also growing more hair — and if you could see it, you'd now be able to discern its color and texture.


This is what she's supposed to look like... except she's breech!! Her head is up and her feet (at the time of the sono) were up by her ears!! But, her position doesn't really matter because we will be having a scheduled c-section regardless!!

Away in the Manger

Merry Christmas... can you believe it is only about a week away? CRAZY!!

Things are getting very busy, but we are loving every minute!! Sunday, Ruthie was in our church's Christmas Play/Contata... she stared as the Cow- at the manger scene. Very important part. However, if you remember her role in last year's Christmas play you'll think she may have been demoted!! :)

However she was the absolute cutest cow on earth!! :) Tony "released" her at the end of the aisle and said, "go find mommy". I was sitting at the front of the church in the aisle saying, "Ruthie, come see mommy" and she was going in a zig-zag fashion asking, "mommy?' "mommy?" and then when she saw me at the front she excitedly and exuberantly said, "MOMMY!!" And quickly took off for me. She turned the corner and crawled up the stairs to worship the baby Jesus!

They (the nativity people/animals) were supposed to sit there for an HOUR!! However, our little cow sat for exactly 30 seconds before she crawled down the steps and we took her off the stage!

The reaction from the audience was priceless! They all laughed and cooed as she crawled up the aisle. Which was good, because that meant no-one heard Tony and I coaxing her to go the right way!

I do have to say, that I wanted to eat her up in that costume!! She actually really liked having it on. I think we are developing a little drama diva!

Ruthie and the others worshiping Baby Jesus- amazingly captured during one of her very serious 30 seconds of on-stage appearance!


Ruthie practicing to crawl up the aisle on Sat.


What a lovely Cow!!

Tip of the Day!

Keep the toilet seat down. Especially if you have a curious 16 month old daughter who loves to play in water... GROSS!!

M-I-C -K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!!

This past weekend we took our first family (with Ruthie) trip to Disney World!! We had a wonderful blessing of a FREE trip. My mom was at a conference in the Coronado Springs resort (a Disney resort) so she invited us to share her room. And, my brother's wife's family works at Disney and they got us into the park for free. Our entire trip (minus the gas) cost us about $5!! Talk about a blessing!!

We were supposed to leave on Thursday night when Tony got home from work. However, Ruthie's 2nd and 3rd trip to the pediatrician for an ear infection(s) that wouldn't go away got in our way. Poor Ruthie. She was SO pathetic. She DIDN'T feel well at ALL. She just sat around, and cried. Of course, she didn't sleep at night or eat much at all! We actually took her on Monday the first time and by Thursday when she was still running a fever and crying her head off at night, I took her back. That was Thursday. I thought he'd just change antibiotics and we'd be off. (Yes, I just admitted that I was taking my sick girl to Disney...but it was FREE) That's actually what he did, but he said come back tomorrow morning I want to check it out again. Which we did, and he then changed her medicine again because he could finally see that she had a STAFF infection in her middle ear and an outer ear infection. CRAZY. So, again we changed the medicine and went on our merry way. PRAISE THE LORD!! The third times the charm... she started feeling better after one day of the new meds!

ANYWAY

We were intending to take Ruthie to the Magic Kingdom where kids reign supreme, but once we got there we found out that because of an unscheduled "Regis and Kelly" taping that the Magic Kingdom was closed to cast members and their guests!

So, we quickly decided on another park and ended up at Hollywood Studios. We had a SUPER day. God blessed us with seeing Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck right as we entered the Park!! She did so well with those cute characters... She kissed Minnie's nose and Daisy's bill.

The best stunt show I've ever seen is their stunt show with cars. It's like the driving they do on the movie "drifting" I spent the entire show going... "oh"... "oh-no".... "woah" Because I thought they were going to hit each other. They were driving SO fast and close together. Ruthie, by the way, slept through the entire LOUD thing!! :)

At the end of the day, when it had gotten dark, we were able to see the "Osborne Family Festival of Lights". It's like 5 million lights or some crazy number. They had originally belonged to ONE family, and after some disputes with his neighbors he donated them to Disney to display at Christmas time. They played REAL Christmas music and it was just beautiful. When Ruthie saw the lights she used both hands to point and said, "Oh, WOW" over and over. It was totally cute. To top it all off, they at certain times during the light festival they had SNOW machines at the tops of the buildings.... and it SNOWED in FL!! (Except without the cold, and the bad driving, and the snow days!)

Anyway, after a week and a half of no sleep (due to Ruthie's ear infections....yes plural) over Thanksgiving, we were really excited to share this special weekend!! :) Enjoy the pictures below.

Friday afternoon at the resort's gift shop. We had fun looking at all the cool things. She liked these ears the best! Please don't mind the ketchup ALL over her face. She's just recently gotten into "dipping" and ketchup is one of her favorites. To put it mildly, she isn't the neatest dipper!


Saturday Morning- Ready to see Mickey!! We're on the boat to get to Magic Kingdom...


Tony and I on the same boat... it's almost empty because we're actually going BACK to the parking lot to get a different disney bus to take us to the Hollywood Studio's Park.


The only part of the Magic Kingdom we'd see that day... (boo hoo) The castle from afar!


Us with Minnie and Daisy... if you enlarge it you can see the PRECIOUS look on Ruthie's face. She's going in to kiss Minnie's nose!!


By this time in the day, she was needing another dose of medicine and Mr. Incredible scared her just a bit. She didn't want me to stand by him!


Uncle Matt and Aunt Rachel on the San Francisco street!


Daddy, Uncle Matt, and Ruthie waiting for the car stunt show


The amazing stunt show in action (remember, Ruthie is sleeping!)


Our fam with our special glasses!


With both pointer fingers point and say, "OH WOW!"


Ruthie reaching for the snow... which you can't see in the picture! Also note, that by this time of the day/night, one of her pig tails was completely OUT!!

Humpty Dumpty...

This year for my birthday present the hubs did some remolding for me!! It was all very exciting. We planned it for months. We spend many a date night at the Home Depot and Lowes planning and figuring. We even drew up the plans on a napkin from a date night dinner. What is the project you ask?

I wanted to rearrange the kitchen so the space plan was more usable and flowed better, and I wanted to take down the wall between the kitchen and the family room. The idea came when I was thinking, "I wish I could see what Ruthie was doing while I'm in here cooking." And then I thought, "What in the world am I going to do when I have two little munchins running around?" From that the plan was born.

Don't ask me what the title of this post has to do with kitchen reno- but it does have to do with a wall. Although it was Humpty Dumpty who sat on the wall, and then took the fall. Whereas with this project the wall itself took a fall... Anyway, I digress!

Well, a week before thanksgiving my birthday present became a reality. I really didn't believe that it would really happen... as it took A LOT of coordination. My brother came in from another city, two friends from Church took off of work (one an electrician and one a carpenter) and my father in law saved the date. My mom and I provide the nourishment for the hard working guys. I had cooked for a couple of weeks before getting ready for meals to serve (heated up in a crock pot or microwave- my only two working appliances all weekend!)

The really amazing thing was that I didn't just want all this work done, but I wanted it all done in one weekend. My only (ok, well not the ONLY) stipulation was that I could cook breakfast for Ruthie come Monday morning!! Tony kept reminding me of how long everything would take. And I, being the forman of the project would refer him to my time management plan for the execution of this project. If all went as planned... we'd have plenty of time.

Let me tell you those guys really put it into high gear. On Sunday night, we had a very near finished product. Want to see?

Before:




During:
These cabinets are getting taken apart and the refrigerator will come in the place of one of these cabinets...








After:
The cabinets that were above the stove and fridge before are now in my laundry room...so I didn't loose any storage. I actually gained USABLE storage where I needed it!


From the kitchen side (we added the one cabinet and another small new cabinet next to the stove and the pendent lights) scroll up to see the before pic of the stove and fridge. WHAT a difference!


From the family room side-


Ruthie helping daddy build the small new cabinet


This is were the 2 cabinets used to be- now it's the new spot for our fridge!


Me- the Foreman


Uncle Matt and Ruthie the night before the demo took place!