Saturday, August 25, 2012

Mama did it!!!


It wasn't pretty, but this year I completed my first triathlon along with my super-duper, awesome neighborhood friends.  I signed up last fall after several of the ladies did it for the first time figuring that it would be a good motivator to get me back into shape.  I really thought then that I would average a little more sleep by the next summer.  By about April, when I still wasn't sleeping more than 4 hours a night, I gave myself a "Pass" and decided to just focus on completion. 

 
It was a super early morning...


Super-scary (well for me, anyway) 1/2 mile swim in Lake Washington,


 
12 mile bike ride, on my new bike over I-90 and back,

 
And a 3.2 mile run to finish up the course


After mild stress about it all summer, it felt AMAZING to be done and who knows... I may be up for trying to doing again next year!

No way... Janie is ALMOST TWO!!


Our heads are spinning wondering where the past year has gone.  Weren't we just celebrating Janie's first birthday?  How do we have this singing, talking, inquisitive little kid instead of a little baby!  CrAzy!!

Over the past month it feels like Janie has taken leaps and bounds with communication, which especially highlights how "grown up" she seems.  She asks a lot of simple questions and does a nice job with her responses to things we ask her.  Janie has always kind of had her own way of doing things and already she seems to have a sense of independence.  She likes to be given choices and makes it clear when she disapproves of something, most often with this fake (super annoying) cry. 

Like her older sister, Janie is really into music and books.  It feels like in the past month, the number of songs she can sing independently has quadrupled.  She also loves demonstrating that she knows most of her letters, can sing the alphabet and count past ten (some days twelve, some days she make it to fifteen).  She also knows most of her colors and shapes and started "performing" that after weeks of being silly and intentionally misidentifying the colors in the stripes on her wall and laughing about it. 

There has been some regression with her sleep patterns, we thing from teething pain, but we look forward to getting her back a pattern of sleeping through the night soon.  Janie seems to be an early riser liker her Daddy (and opposite of her Mommy especially when she is up with her at night) but luckily she can entertain her self for up to an hour looking at books in her crib.  She also requests "Mickey Mouse!!" or sometimes Sesame Street and while screen time is monitored in our household, I am not above indulging her in her requests for television!!

One of the best parts about Janie's current developmental stage is her love of sharing hugs.  She requests them all the time!  She has figured out how to use her sweet request to work us over, but seriously, who can deny a hug request... or eight, from this sweety!?!

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Time with Just JBug!


Last week Grandma Carol came and picked up Clara for a 5 day stay at her house filled with lots of exciting activities and time with her cousins.  Clara had a BLAST and reported that she only noticed that Mommy & Daddy were not there at bedtime.  We are so glad that Clara had such a great fun filled week, but also for all the one-on-one time we got with Janie. 

At first, Janie seemed a little lost with what to do without Clara to follow around.  The first day was a little rough on Mommy when I tried to fold clothes and make dinner.  So we spent a lot of time reading books and doing activities that Janie was interested in... like Legos!

By the end of Clara's time away, Janie's attention span for independent play, especially for activities like Legos or colorforms, grew exponentially.  With the extra attention and focus she was a lot more compliant and really responded well to helping roles.  In a way, it was like she grew up a little quicker this week, but probably more correctly, this week I had the time to notice how quickly our baby IS growing up!

Celebrating 60 YEARS of marriage!


Look at this cute couple after 60 years of marriage! 

We recently celebrated Grandma & Grandpa's diamond anniversary with a fun party!




My mom, Aunt Pat & I had fun with some of the details for the party.  It all came together for a delightful afternoon that meant a lot to Grandma & Grandpa.


G.G. & Papa Bob hanging with all of their great-grandchildren!
It was hard to get them all to cooperate, but the collection of photos is pretty cute!





I have been blessed with such wonderful grandparents and really appreciate their friendship and guidance.  It was really nice to get to share in the fun of celebrating their beautiful relationship!