One about the boy

Today Griffin walked from the living room into the hallway all by himself! He's getting better everyday although he still prefers to use his walker, but I think that's just because he can run with it. Soon, very soon, he won't need it anymore. I'm soooo looking forward to that day. I know it will be exhausting to run after him, but I'd rather chase him then lift a 26lb weight all day.

Something I am not looking forward to, at least at this point, is weaning. We're having a lot of fun nursing right now. Griffin enjoys trying to shove his fingers or his foot inside my mouth while we nurse. I try and bite whatever appendage is closest and he laughs while nursing, usually spilling milk. I'm glad that so far he is still content to nurse so I won't have to think about weaning for awhile.

I had a lot more to talk about, but I've forgotten it already. *sigh* I'll get my memory back one of these days, right?

Griffin's 1st birthday

I don't know which is more exhausting, birthing a 9lb 1oz 22.5 inch baby boy or throwing a 1st birthday party for said baby boy.

All I know is that I'm exhausted. And happy. Today's party went well and the kids had a BLAST. Penelope loves the park, her friends, and cake so today was pretty much the perfect day for her. Griffin loves to eat, so today was also the perfect day for him.

So here are some pictures - and some video of our now toddler (yep, he's walking!) at the end.


Artwork courtesy of Uncle O-Nic


Birthday Boy!


Mommy & a sorta sleepy birthday boy


Griffin and his Aunty Liz


Mmmmm... cake


Granny K & Penelope


Walking around with Uncle O-Nic

And.... he walks!

Hello, I (sorta) have an M.Ed.

Hello, my name is Jessica and I have a Masters. Sorta. I have completed all my coursework, got an A on my Thesis, and have petitioned for Graduation. So all that's left is paperwork (not on my end) but I don't technically have the Masters until the paperwork is completed.

This should all happen rather quickly. As will getting my Credential - I have all the paperwork in for that and am just waiting on the CTC to process and send me my credential #.

And then it's continuing to look for a full time classroom position.

In kidlet news, Griffin took a step today! He's getting braver and stronger each day. We are definitely close to walking and no one is more excited about it than Griffin.

Here are some pictures of the beast-man:







I don't have any recent Penny pics. I'll try and take some tomorrow. She's had an on-again-off-again fever with no other symptoms. Weird. She's fine during the day and feverish at night. Weirder.

A picture post

We went to the zoo today and Penelope had a great time:







And now for belly pictures - 26 weeks with Ampersand and 26 weeks with Penelope for comparison:

Look what I can do!

Yesterday Penelope learned "Brown Bear" - she can pick him out of the last page on her Brown Bear, Brown Bear book. We're going to start working on the other animals :) She can also pick out Max in the all the pages of Where the Wild Things Are, and will say "ooh, ooh, ahh" if you ask her what a monkey says.

She can point out Mommy's nose and mouth, and her own nose, mouth, and ears. Eyes are trickier and we're working on those as well. Half the time she'll show you her fingers if you ask, but not consistently...

Walking is progressing along nicely, she walks more often than she crawls and doesn't need to be carried as often. It's been nice, but also comes with its own set of challenges. The other day at Starbucks she kept running towards the door and needed to be corralled back to where we were sitting. I would call her name and she'd turn around, grin, and shake her head "no" and then turn back to the door and take off. Cute, and exhausting. It'll only get worse as she gets better at walking, I think we may end up with a runner :)

This morning we were looking at all of the Christmas/Holiday picture cards we received and she picked out the one of Orson, Kim, & Matt. I asked her "where's Orson?" and she leaned over and kissed his picture! :) So cute! It won't be so cute when she's 13 years old, but it is at 13 months.

Tonight she goes over to my parents for the night so Bryan and I can go out and celebrate our anniversary (a day late). Thanks to my parents & Santa we have a gift card to a wonderful restaurant and a gift card for movie tickets so we can afford to enjoy ourselves. Hooray!

Oh, my interview on Thursday seemed to go well... I should know in a week or so. Hopefully I'll have a few more interview and/or be able to find some substitute teaching work. I need to look into a few Charter Schools and Private Schools to see if they're hiring teachers since with my BA I can teach at nearly any non-public school. It would be wonderful to get a teaching job, although that will mean day care for Penelope. I think she'd do just fine, but I would miss our weekly mommy & baby activities.

And let me just say that my favorite Clone is Rex. He's just awesome. (We're watching Star Wars Clone Wars cartoon this morning).

Excuse my poor cinematography...

I was laughing during most of this video, hence the shaky cinematography. But I think it's hilarious and I hope you do too :) The first part is Penelope and Bryan playing "I'm gonna getcha", the second part is Penelope dancing to a car commercial, the third is her pointing to my belly when I ask "where's the baby?", and the last part is titled "The Long Walk" and is Penelope's longest walk yet! She does tumble a bit at the end but does not harm herself in the fall (it was a close call).

Anyway, it's been an eventful night. Here's the video:


(and for those on Facebook, I'll post it there as well)

Where's the Baby?

A quick post:

When I ask Penelope "Where's the baby?" she'll point to my belly, it's cute :)

She also signs the word "please" although still has to be reminded when to use it, but I'm super happy that she knows the sign (well, her own version of it) and uses it to ask for things.

She's walking more and more, but still not all the time. It'll happen, and I'm glad she's at least walking part of the time. It makes things a little easier on Mommy.

Yesterday she fed herself her entire lunch! Half a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and string cheese. I still haven't given her an opportunity to practice using a spoon since I dread the mess it would create - but that will come eventually.

When she holds crayons, drumsticks, or the mallet thing for her xylophone, she has to hold them delicately at the VERY end of the stick. Which makes it difficult to properly color, drum, or play a song but no matter how much I model or mold her hand she moves it back down to the very end.

Favorite foods as of 12 months: broccoli, bananas, strawberries, anything pasta (especially mac & cheese, but what kid doesn't like that?).

Ok, have to go - I have a TON of stuff to do today and less time to do it in.

Introducing & and many other things

So a few days ago we decided that no matter what the gender, we'd name New Baby "&" so we could still be PB&J.

The symbol.

It was, of course, a joke. But the nickname has stuck and New Baby has been re-christened "&". So he/she shall henceforth be referred to as such... and the poor thing will likely be stuck with the nickname well after birth.

Little & is doing quite well, he/she is moving around a lot especially when I'm holing Penelope. The extra pressure on his/her ever shrinking home (well, it's not shrinking, he/she is just getting larger) can't be very comfortable. I try not to hold Pen too much, especially since holding onto her for more than 5 minutes becomes an exercise in arm muscle endurance.

So I'm currently uploading a ton of video... some is of Penelope watching various Muppet Show clips on my laptop - there's some she find absolutely hilarious, there's also some of Christmas, and of Penny WALKING!

The last few days Bryan has been working with her on walking and she's getting really really good. That's probably the only video that I'll edit and upload. The rest will be dumped onto the external hard drive and Penelope can look at it when she's older. The Muppet stuff may end up here, but the Christmas stuff isn't too terribly interesting. She enjoyed herself at Christmas, but wasn't super excited - 12 months is a little early to understand the whole present concept. It's mostly just Penny & I opening her presents, not exactly thrilling :)

Christmas Eve & Christmas went well - Penelope certainly had a good time. X-Mas eve was at my grandmother's house, x-mas morning was at my parents, and then we drove up to Reno to spend x-mas day with Bryan's family. The drive was quite pleasant in the new Rav4 and Penelope slept the whole way there (and the whole way back - yea Pen!). She got a lot of clothes and toys that she loves, although I think her favorite is a book called The 12 Dogs of Christmas - it's pictures of a bunch of dogs. Surprise, surprise, she LOVES it. She'll turn the pages, say "dawg" and then laugh - it's pretty cute (well, nearly everything she does is pretty cute).

Oh, and her top right molar is peeking through, just a few of the points right now but I'm going to count it. If I can feel actual tooth then it's an official tooth :) She now has 11 teeth and there are two more making their way in. At this rate she'll have a full set in a few months! All this teething means she ends up in bed with us nearly every night - usually right around 1am. But it's ok, teething won't last forever and one day Bryan and I will get our uninterrupted sleep back (the day after which I will probably go into labor and then we'll be screwed on the sleep-front for another year plus).

Alright, so here's video of Penny walking... I'll also upload to Facebook since for whatever reason when this blog is automatically uploaded to my Facebook page the video doesn't transfer. Enjoy!

Blogging instead of Sudoku

I was so very close to clicking on the "web sudoku" bookmark instead of the blogging bookmark... so very close.

It snowed in Sacramento yesterday - barely enough to really be called snow (at least at our house) but it was still rather eventful. Some school districts up the hill had snow days (for less than 6 inches of snow, wusses) and people forgot how to drive - fun times. Penelope celebrated the momentous occasion by sleeping in. She also slept in today, so I don't know if I can call it "sleeping in" anymore. She may just be changing her nighttime sleep pattern from 8-6:30 to 8-7:30. I am totally and completely ok with this. Of course, this means that we only get one nap during the day, but it's generally a 2 hour afternoon nap and that works out pretty well. If this is still the pattern next week then I'll consider it an official schedule change.

We've also been pretty successful about cutting out one of her three bottles, so she's basically down to two. One before nap and one at bedtime... I honestly don't think the nap bottle will be all that hard to eliminate but she may prove me wrong. The bedtime one will probably be the most difficult and I'm still trying to decide how I'm going to go about doing it. Cold turkey or a gradual weaning? I still have a few months before I want to attempt messing with that bottle so we'll see how things go - she may wean herself if I'm super-duper lucky.

Still no walking on her own. I know she can do it, and I am really really really ready for her to start. As soon as I say this out loud there are a dozen people who tell me I'm crazy and will regret saying such a thing as soon as she starts. I say bull. Anyone who tells me I'm not ready for her to walk have never had a 28 lb 1 year old and been 6 months pregnant at the same time. Damn skippy I want her to walk, my back is killing me.

Speaking of pregnancy, New Baby has decided that nighttime raves are uber awesome. I swear that as soon as the sun goes down he/she parties it up like it's 1999. Bryan was able to feel the baby kick the other day, which (if I remember correctly) was much sooner than he was able to feel Penelope. So someone is already raring to go and will probably walk 5 minutes after birth, which may be sooner than their big sister. (Ok, so that was a tad melodramatic, Penelope WILL walk before she's 16 months).

We've also added a new name to our girls list: Amelia. So for those who are keeping track, the girls list (in no particular order) is: Amelia, Calliope, Isadora, Milla, Athena, & Ophelia. Boys list is the same as it was: Theodore, Milo, Parker, & Xavier.

I've yet to fall in love with any of our boys names, there are some that I *like* but none that I love the way I love nearly all of our girls names. This means the baby will probably be a boy (not really, both Bryan and I are still convinced it's a girl). But I'd still like to add a few more names to the boys list in hopes that we find a few we really and truly love. This means I'm going to have to change my standards (although I already have with 2 of our girls names and 1 of the boys names). So they no longer HAVE to be Greek in origin. Greek boys names are really difficult to find; I mean there are a ton of them but they're either super common (like George or Jason) or REALLY Greek (like Posiden or Agamemnon). I love my Greek heritage, but I can't saddle my poor son with a name like Posiden, or Perikles, or Ajax. (And for the record, I love the names Perikles & Ajax - but one would be very difficult for people to pronounce or spell and the other has a line of cleaning products with the same name).

I could go with something like Apollo, which both Bryan and I like - but that's an awfully big legacy to live up to. That's really my greatest hesitation in using the names of gods and goddesses - that my child will somehow, in someway, feel compelled to live up to the myth surrounding their namesake. I am, perhaps, putting way too much thought into it. It's likely that since so few people know anything about Ancient Greek mythology (which is a shame) that no one but me will even think about things like this... but *I* think about things like this. Blame my Undergraduate Degree.

Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering - the boy middle name is Walter no matter what first name we choose. The girl middle name depends on the first name, so it's either Ruth or Katherine.

Of course all the name talk makes me both curious and excited to find out what the baby's sex is... and we have a 19 week wait! It's almost too much to handle, but I'm really happy we've decided to hold off on finding out. It makes me look forward to labor/delivery that much more - and makes me more excited about the pregnancy in general.

Alright, this post has been long enough. Web sudoku calls.

Gimmie 2 Steps...

We had our first unassisted steps today! She took 2 steps for Daddy and then was nice enough to repeat the performance so Mommy could see. Go Pen!!

Another quickie...

I wish I had time for more, but life is super crazy.

Penelope turns 9 months on Saturday, and the countdown to her birthday begins! I haven't really decided if we're going to have a big party or not. Part of me does, and part of me doesn't really want the hassle - I mean, big or small, she's not going to remember it. And I don't want to feel like I need to one-up myself every year. BUT she's turning 1! How could we NOT celebrate??

I have three months to figure it out.

In the meantime, here's a picture of some quality father-daughter time:



I keep forgetting to mention that for about 3 weeks Penny's been shaking her head "no" - she does it ALL THE TIME. It's quite hilarious... And she crawled yesterday, it was a single crawl but we're counting it. She'd still much rather walk, and I'm sure she'll be doing both quite well before she turns one.

Last night she had some night terrors, which are very rare for her, so we brought her into bed with us. This morning when Bryan was getting ready for work she almost wiggled herself off the bed (she was still asleep) and when I "rescued" her she woke up - so we were up early this morning. No fun for mama, but at least that means she took her morning nap early so I was able to wash bottles, start a load of diapers, and post this entry!

I still have to make our lunches and shower so we can head out to music class. Today is going to be a busy one, maybe she'll be nice to mommy and let me take a nap with her later this afternoon.

There's a lot I have to talk about...

But never enough time to blog about it all. So here are a few things and some pictures...

All Penelope wants to do ALL DAY LONG is walk. I'm so not kidding. She gets upset if you pick her up and take her somewhere (like her room or changing table) because she would much rather walk there. Only this is hard on Mommy & Daddy (plus it's super annoying since it takes 20 times longer). So we went out and got this thing called "Walking Wings" which makes supporting her walking easier on us. Here's her in them:



Her hair is also getting super long, we occasionally give her a Mohawk in the bathtub, and here's a picture of that:



And here's just a picture of her being super cute in her dress and the ridiculous hair accessory that I occasionally insist she wears even though she's not a fan and it's so very old school of me:



And one more just for fun:



Oh, and I hate the current class I'm taking.

More later, hopefully.

Teething is a pain.. but we lucked out

I don't know anyone who enjoyed their child's teething. Maybe celebrities or the super-rich who have their children raised by teams of nannies, but no one whose actually spent more than 30 seconds with a teething child.

With that said, we really lucked out. Penelope is not a crier when it comes to teething (knock on wood). I can tell they hurt, but she doesn't really get super fussy. Although we do pop the teething tablets like they're candy (and they sorta are), but no screaming, fits, or extreme crankiness. Just an overwhelming desire to bit mommy, gnaw on daddy's shoulder, and chew mercilessly on her little hands. Poor baby.

Lately her teeth must be REALLY bugging her, because she's started putting things into her mouth and voraciously gnawing on them.

I will do a happy dance when teething is over and done with.

Other news: Penelope is getting much better at walking! What a difference a day makes... yesterday she took some tentative steps while I held on to her hands and today she took off! They're still a little jerky and she needs to work on her balance, but I think the Pediatrician will be proven right, she'll be walking by 10 months (if not well before).

Speaking of age, Missy turns 8 months old tomorrow! Hooray! I love this stage, I love it more than 6 months (and I LOVED that stage).

I'm sure I have more I could talk about, but I'm sleepy - goodnight blog-o-sphere!

Video, video

Penelope knocking down mama's "buildings"


Penelope "walking"

We're walking! (sort of)

So today Bryan and I decided to put Penelope in the baby walker to see how she likes it. She did!

Here's some video - choppy editing is my fault :)