A little wet

Jason and I both take turns giving Hannah baths, but we both do it a little bit differently. He typically undresses her, diaper and all, upstairs in her bedroom and runs her downstairs to get in the tub. When I give her a bath, I get her undressed in the bathroom as the tub fills up. Tonight, he gave her a bath. A minute after they got downstairs I heard him yell something to me. I couldn't hear exactly what it was, so I went downstairs to see what was up. As I got in the bathroom, I see Hannah smiling up at me while sitting in an empty tub, and Jason standing next to the tub in wet track pants. Apparently, his strip and run strategy backfired on him tonight, and Hannah wet on him! I think he may be rethinking his approach the next time around.

Teeth

Hannah recently got her 4th tooth - another one on the top. With a full set in the front now, we thought we'd start getting in the habit of brushing her teeth. This is proving to be quite a challenge with a 10 month old. I'm not sure how much we're actually brushing her teeth and how much she's really just sucking the toothpaste off of the toothbrush (what little there is), but hopefully we're at least setting a good example for the future.

Last weekend's show

In keeping with our latest winter hobby, we visited yet another show last weekend. Jason's gotten quite a green thumb lately, and orchids seem to be his latest obsession. That being the case, we took in the beautiful orchid show at Frederik Meijer Gardens. Thinking that we would have to pay admission to get into the show, we purchased a membership to the Gardens at home online before we went, only to get there and see that it was free. Go figure! We've actually been talking about getting a membership for quite awhile, so it wasn't in vain. We're really looking forward to getting there more often.


Some of the stunning orchids at the Gardens.


This is how Hannah stayed busy while Daddy looked at orchids.


Hannah's latest trick - the splits!


Having fun exploring the show.

Just beauitful!

Bye bye

Hannah's latest trick is waving bye bye. She's been waving for a little while now but she's finally putting the wave together with the meaning. Now when we say "hi" or "bye bye" we get a wave. Such a smart girl!



She's also taken a big liking to water. I picked Hannah up from her babysitter's house on Wednesday to find her in a different outfit than I'd sent her in. Apparently, while they were at play group earlier in the day, Hannah found the dog's water bowl and went for a swim. She was literally soaked from head to toe! I think swimming lessons will be in our near future.

The show circuit

After being sick last week, we took advantage of the sunny day on Sunday and once again headed down to DeVos Hall to check out another hobbyist show. Last time it was the AutoRama. This time it was the Camper and RV Show.

People are serious about their RV's. There were some monsters on wheels, that's for sure. I think some of them had more square feet than our house (they definitely cost more than our house)! After some meandering, we finally stumbled upon the ittty, bitty restored campers. Were people smaller 50 years ago?? They were very cute, but not very roomy.


Jason sizing up the inside of a vintage Airstream

Yup, my dad's a nerd!

I'm pretty sure touring around the country in an RV is not in our future. See you at the hotel!

10 Months Old

This is a little late in getting posted due to illnesses that have hit our house over the past week. Hannah has quite a cold and cough, and I was lucky enough to get the stomach flu. We're praying that we're over the worst of it and that we don't share our illnesses with each other. So far, Jason has been spared. We hope that he avoids it all together.

At any rate, back to blogging. Hannah turned 10 months old last week (1/14). I can hardly believe my baby is in the double digits! There is never a dull moment these days. She is one little girl on the move. Over the last month, she:

• Took off full-throttle crawling. It's amazing how quickly she can get across a room. Jason just installed a baby gate tonight.
• Turned into a little monkey, pulling herself up on anything that will hold her - furniture, play table, toy box, her crib. She's even gotten brave and let go a few times. Yikes! We now occassionally find her standing up in her crib after her naps. Lowering the crib yet again is next on our list.
• Has really taken a liking to "real" food. She particularly likes spaghetti, blueberry pancakes, scrambled eggs, peas, bananas and strawberries. However, there really hasn't been anything that she won't eat. She's starting to get the hang of sippy cups as well. She loves apple juice!
• Loves being sung to. Her favorites seem to be Itsy Bitsy Spider and Jesus Loves Me.
• Jibber jabbers all the time, some of which is starting to become understandable - "uh oh", "ma ma", "da da", and "ba ba" (not quite sure what that one means but she says it quite often) are all a part of her regular vocabulary.
• Likes the game of dump out and clean up - she dumps her blocks out of their box and then puts them back in. Of course, she gets highly praised for clean-up!

We are so blessed to have such a happy-go-lucky baby. We went out to breakfast after church last Sunday to one of our favorite restaurants, and 5 different people came up to us to tell us what a cute, good baby we have. Of course, we think so, but it's always so nice when other people agree! We really do feel so blessed to have Hannah in our lives. She brings us more joy than we have ever known. I pray that God would continue to guide us as we raise her, that ultimately she would bring glory to Him through her life. Now that would be the ultimate gift!

This is what Hannah's normally up to these days (although not normally on the couch!)...

Cars and weddings

We actually had a whole day without plans today, so we took advantage of it and headed downtown to check out the AutoRama at DeVos Hall. Normally, this is something that we're really not all that into, but we thought it would be a fun way to get out of the house on yet another snowy Michigan day. The cars, trucks, motorcycles, and even bicycles were really quite impressive. These people really put a lot of work into their vehicles.


Jason enjoying the great variety of cars.


Such beautiful cars!

Of course, Jason was particularly drawn to the 1930's, 40's, and 50's "vintage" cars.

Even Hannah had fun checking everything, and everybody, out.

It just so happened that in the hall next door was the GR Bridal Show. Although we're obviously not in the market, I thought it would be fun to check out. Apparently the show only ran through the early afternoon, and by the time we were leaving the car show they were no longer charging admission to the bridal show. Perfect! The three of us headed in and cleaned up on all of the free samples that were available at the booths! You'd think that people would figure that with a baby and wedding bands on both of our hands that we weren't shopping for ourselves, and yet I was amazed (and amused) by how many vendors assumed that we must have been an engaged couple with a baby getting ready for a wedding. After several vendors asked us if we'd like more information, we finally started answering that we already had whatever service they were offering taken care of! I will say that if you're looking for a place to have a wedding, GR would be a great place. There are a ton of vendors with beautiful pictures, great food, and delicious cake (we know first-hand now!).

What Hannah's up to these days

Hannah has discovered a whole new world since she started full-on crawling this last week. Of all of the toys that she has, she now finds the most interesting thing to play with is anything having to, and including, JJ. Thank goodness for a very patient dog!


Hannah discovered how much fun it is to splash in JJ's water bowl this week while we were downstairs doing laundry.

She loves to play with Mama's kitchen utensils.

Hanging out under the Christmas tree.

Daddy's little assistant.

With her newly found mobility, we've had to get creative in keeping her in the living room. This will have to do until we get a baby gate for our stairs. Yes, that's the at the very top of our to-do list!

My first dolly

Hannah received one more Christmas present this week. Due to illness in our babysitter's house, my dad came over to watch Hannah while we went to our small group Bible study Thursday night and then when I went to work on Friday. He brought along with him a gift for Hannah from our good friend Julie. After all of her gifts at Christmas, she's a gift opening expert. She tore right into it and was very excited to open her first dolly! Surprisingly, nobody else has gotten her a doll yet. It never even occurred to me to get her one. Leave it to Julie to think of it!


Hannah tearing into her gift


I think it's safe to say that she likes it. Thank you "Grandma" Julie!!

#3

Tooth #3 (top front) popped through last night. Tooth #4 is not far behind. Her poor upper gums are just bulging. She's actually cried a few times today b/c she's bumped her gums on things, but overall, she's her normal, happy self. We're so blessed with her easy-going temperment.

Splish splash

Hannah loves bath time. She especially loves playing with the new bath toys that she got for Christmas.


She gets so excited that we have to hold her back from taking a dive!


She is one happy little fish :-)

So much change

The last 2 weeks have been full of change at our house. It seems that nearly every day Hannah is doing something new. She's now officially crawled (although only a few "steps"), started randomly waving and saying "ba ba" (we're not sure this means bye bye, but we're going with it!), and started pulling herself up on her play table. We've been experimenting more and more with "real" food and letting her feed herself. She's finally getting the hang of grasping her puffs and getting them into her mouth. Peas, on the other hand, are a little trickier. One thing is for sure - she's definitely keeping us on our toes!

Happy New Year!

Hannah had her first slumber party away from us to ring in the new year. Jason met his parents half-way in Ionia on New Years Eve day and dropped Hannah off with his parents. They have been having a great time with her, and we've been enjoying some couple time.

After I got home from work and Jason returned from Ionia, I made a nice prime rib dinner for the two of us. We got out the China, candles, and all. It was so good. We had great conversation and really felt like we had a nice date night.



Around 10:00, we bundled up and headed downtown to check out GR's first New Years Eve on the Grand (neither of us could remember the last time that we actually headed OUT at 10:00 at night!). We had intentions of trying to get into one of the downtown establishments, but we didn't feel like waiting in line. Instead, we checked out the activity in Rosa Park Circle.



This is where the ball was when we got there...



...and this was how we watched it drop...



We decided it was too cold to hang out around town, so we came home and watched the ball drop from the warmth of our family room :-)


Happy new year! We wish you may blessings in 2009.