My Fish

It has been so hot up here so I finally decided to get a kiddie pool. Sydni loved splashing around and chasing the fish. She knows how to wave 'bye-bye' now and sometimes she can even say 'bye-bye' as she does it. She also says 'oh, dude', and 'kitty' now. She can smack her lips and make a kissy sound but I'm working on showing her how to kiss my cheek. What else... She pulled her self up to standing last Tuesday, I think. We were visiting my dad and he had a piece of furniture that was just the right height for her to grab and pull herself up. It was very exciting. It's looking like we might also see some top teeth here pretty soon. I will post pictures, of course. Til next time...

Finally, a fresh dose of cuteness!

Sydni's first time standing without one of us! These were taken at the end of July, I think.

Below, her trademark move, with the tongue out the side. She's my special grub.






















We hung out with some friends in the park and listened to a bunch of old white guys try to play reggae. The kids had fun dancing and lounging in the shade.


















Picking Jacob up from the field late at night. Imagine the funkiest smell you can and then multiply it by 9.5 and you might get an idea of how rank that office smelled. The men were proud of their funk, though. They felt they'd earned it, and I'm sure they had.







We love to read!



And hanging out with her best big buddy: Chaso.
Chaso and Sydni have a lot of fun together, they keep each other entertained, which is especially nice when we all go out to eat. She's such a good friend to Sydni.

4th of July pics

We hung out...

We Bar-b-Q'd...

We blew stuff up and took pretty pictures.

What I Got

As I mentioned in the last post, we were just down in San Diego last week visiting family. I thought I would post the scant few pictures that I have...
This is us at Sea World. Yay. Sydni was more interested in all of the people for the most part, but when we watched the dolphins jumping up in the air she would get so excited. I can only wonder how she views the world around her. Seeing those dolphins must have been the weirdest thing.

And other than Sea World we did a great many other things... such as playing Guitar Hero

As you can see this game takes a great deal of concentration and Sydni is doing all she can to help. Ok, that's all you get today. Bah ha.

Update...

I just fixed my camera so that it won't make that horrible focusing sound when I record. It was driving me crazy!

I've neglected you.

I haven't posted any Sydni action in over three months. If I ever do that again feel free to bombard me with e-mails.

A lot has been going on and time has just been flying by. The little nugget is 8 months old now and she smiles and chatters constantly. She says 'mama' all the time, but it pretty much sounds like she's saying 'Bob'. She is not quite crawling yet, but I can tell she's discovering some strength in her legs. Once she does start crawling I'll make sure to post a video. Speaking of videos...

This is Sydni with our cat Bently. We'd just gotten home from a trip and both of the cats were so excited to see the baby. And of course she was absolutely thrilled to play with the kitties again. We flew down to San Diego and did not take nearly as many photos as I would have liked. So instead I will just post some pictures of baby/cat extravaganza.

Yeah, that's a lot of cuteness. Needless to say we are having a blast with our little bug. She was nick-named 'The Grub-bug' by her father when she was born because when she was all swaddled up in those white blankets he thought she looked like a little grub you might find under a log or something. She continues to change and enhance our lives in ways we could have never imagined. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't like kids, but this one could probably take over the world with awesome-ness. I like to be a realistic parent.

Sunshine?

The other day I took Sydni on her first pic-nic! The sun was out, and even though it was still a little chilly I decided we should take a walk down to the nearby park and enjoy the great out-doors. She seemed perplexed by the big blue sky above her and the lingering winter chill dancing in the wind across her nose. She did a lot of blinking and frowning at first and then moved on to play with her rattle. I think this was the first time I was able to actually take her outside when it wasn't raining and freezing.
This is one of those shots that you hope for but are surprised to get. Zoolander, anyone? This, to me, was the magnum shot. This picture will go in highschool graduation slide shows, any future suitors will gaze upon this beautiful baby photo and someday Sydni will blanche and shy away from her embarassing parents, sick of hearing about what a cute baby she was.

Anyways, the pic-nic was short and sweet, and I really can't wait for warmer weather so that we can go outside and play!

California

Once again, I apoligize for not posting anything new for... wow, has it really been almost two months? I hope that you'll somehow find it in your heart to forgive me. Maybe these new pictures will help to persuade! You do drive a hard bargain. The above pic is Sydni (obviously) and her grandma's dog Lucy. This Chihuahua barely weighs in at 3lbs and Sydni had a blast with her. This was probably the only dog that could sit on her lap without crushing her. And then...

We spent some time with my best friend and her 1 year old daughter, Brooke. It was hard to get a good picture of them both due to the fact that they are both small and wiggly. Brooke is exactly one year older than Sydni and it's hard for me to belive that in just a year Sydni will be walking and talking, yet I just can't wait.

And of course Sydni relaxed and enjoyed some story time with Grandma and Lucy the Wonder Dog (it's a wonder she's technically considered a dog... sorry mom, you know I love her!). We had a really good trip and she slept during most of the drive. All in all, Sydni was a very pleasant travel companion and I hope she is up for traveling with me much more in the future. I just can't seem to stay in one location for too long before I start itchin' to see what else is out there. Love you all, and I'll try to keep up with this blog more often!

Already Buddies

Sydni LOVES the kitties already. They have recently been allowed where the baby is (supervised of course). Titus (pic) loves to just come sit next to the baby, and as you can see she likes the company. He even shows his acceptance of the new family member by 'cleaning' her head. Very sweet...

On a Roll

Sydni did this for the first time this evening!

Oh sentimental me

Yesterday I finally put Sydni’s REAL crib together. This whole time she has been sleeping in a Pak n Play at the foot of our bed. For about the past month or two she has been sleeping through the night, waking up around 6am to eat and then go back to sleep. So we decided she’s probably ready to go into her own room, mostly because I don’t have to get up every couple hours to feed her anymore. You seasoned veterans of parenthood reading this know the drill.

She hung out on her little play-gym on the floor while I put said crib together, glancing up at me every now and then, wondering what the heck was going on. Once I had the crib done I had to do some further adjustments to furniture between our room and hers, but who cares about that? Anyways, I found myself feeling strangely sentimental about the whole thing. I wasn’t expecting to, but this transition made me think of the rest of my life as a mother. For the rest of Sydni’s life I will have to let go of her bit by bit until she is a grown woman, hopefully equipped with the proper tools to handle this crazy world. Though I will have to let her go, I can only hope that she doesn’t choose to let me go. I have a whole new appreciation for mothers, mine, Jacob’s and any other mother that cares. I guess fathers go through this feeling as well. Tears well up in my eyes as I write this even now.

When I placed her in the crib beneath the mobile and next to the floating fish that light up and blow bubbles I immediately knew it was the right thing to do. She just lay there grinning up at the mobile and looking to the side at the fish taking in her new surroundings. I think we all slept better last night without having to worry about waking each other up. Even now she is asleep in her room while I get to play on the computer, typing as loud as I want to.

Nisqually

This morning I took Sydni on one of my favorite walks. About 15 minutes from Olympia there's a wildlife refuge in the Nisqually river basin that is abosultely beautiful. It was pretty cold and windy but Sydni was warm against me in the pak. We join a bunch of other mom's and their kidlets on this walk about once every other week or so. This time we saw more wildlife than ever. As you can see in my blurry picture up there^ we saw TWO bald eagles hangin out; but we also saw some Blue Herons, some sea lions and a whole lot of birds of prey such as hawks and falcons. It was great but I can't wait until Sydni's old enough to be able to see all of these things! But for now she can just stay bundled up and cozy, oblivious to the big wide world out there.

Ah Christmas...

Sorry it took me so long to add another post. We were very busy around the Holidays, as I'm sure you all were. I won't write much for now because Blogger is taking forever to load for some reason and I'm very tired. But, as you can see we had a nice cozy Christmas. It was a day for lounging in jammies and eating yummy food. Sydni recieved some of her first baby toys that we are very much looking forward to exploring with her. In the past couple of days she has already shown so much progress with communication. She now smacks her lips and sticks out her tongue in response to us and when we talk to her she coos and and tries to form as many different sounds as she can. I will try to post a better video of her 'talking' pretty soon.

I hope you all had a merry Christmas, and may this next year treat you all well!