11 Months!

As I peeked into Teresa's room as she was going down for nap this afternoon, I had to smile at what I saw.  There was my sweet little girl sitting up.  I am guessing she was as surprised as me!  Sitting up is one of her new 11 month tricks.  She sat up on her own (meaning she pushes herself up from her tummy) twice this past week.  I am guessing we will be seeing a lot more of that.  I wondered if she would really sleep, but happily for me, she must have flopped back on her tummy and drifted off into dreamland.
She still is not crawling, but continues to be adept at rolling and scooting and pivoting on her tummy.  She also has the lunging from sitting position to her tummy down pat, so I am guessing crawling won't be far behind.  I am excited for her, but I do know it means life will only get a little busier around here.

Another development in the last month was Teresa's new found love of her baby doll.  It is a tiny doll she got as an Easter gift and now she loves to hold it or hand it off to let someone else hug it before giving it back.  You say "where's baby" and if it isn't in her hands she starts searching for it with her eyes.

What else about our 11 month old...she is taking to baby foods a bit more now, but not so fond of finger foods expect bananas and cheerios.  She babbles some and at times I can convince myself her mamama is for me!  She loves to swing and play in water.  Timothy makes her giggle.  Anything her hands can reach she is curious about.  That keeps Timothy busy trying to keep his toys away from her.

Only one more month and we will have a one year old.  Wow!

Laughing at her big brother.

A bear-less picture.  All she wanted to do was throw it on the floor!

Water fun

We have finally gotten some warm summer weather, so it was time to pull out the pool.  I had promised Timothy we could put it by his slide to make a waterslide.  He had a lot of fun with this and Teresa loved watching Timothy!  It was a fun afternoon.

Bathing beauty!

Ready to slide!

Baptism Day

We celebrated Timothy's baptismal birthday today.  What it amounted to was a special dinner in his honor.  He asked earlier in the week if his friends would be at his baptism party!  It was just his family, but he did get to have sprinkle blueberry pancakes and a cookie for dessert.  We lit his candle, prayed for him and sang "happy baptism."  He seemed to enjoy the celebration.

Father & Son Camping

It seems appropriate, with Father's Day being tomorrow, to commend Troy on being an excellent dad!  It is not just any dad that ventures out camping with just a three year old for company!  It is a brave dad, indeed.  A dad ready to put up with the whines, the constant questions at 10 pm when one of them should really be sleeping, the gamble of how early the wake up call will be (9 am surprisingly!), the threat of mosquitoes, the challenge of continuing potty training even while camping, and whatever other surprises might come to be!
They camped just one night, and it was a wonderful night.  But that was enough for both of them.  (Timothy gets worn out easily--he took a 2.5 hour nap today!) They had all the fun of camping...playing in the tent, swimming, nature walks, listening to loons, checking out the nature center, eating s'mores, and simply being together!

Timothy has come to enjoy coloring lately, but from the look on his face, I guess leaf rubbings weren't his thing!

Timothy looks with longingly at the lake.  Hmm...what he like to do next?!

That's right...swimming.  Notice that happy smile!

Eating s'mores with daddy. 
Troy said Timothy has learned the art of savoring his treat.  It took him an eternity to eat his s'more.

Happy boy showing off how he can balance on a log.  And a good dad letting him actually do it!

Summer Fun

I was recently inspired to plan a bunch of fun activities to do this summer.  I get Family Fun magazine and the recent issue had lots of good ideas.  But I know I won't do them unless I plan them into my week...so I did.  I got out my little calendar and started penciling in some fun!  So this summer we will be doing projects, learning games and trying out some tasty treats.

The first project was making t-shirts.  Teresa got a butterfly shirt and Timothy got a shark shirt.  I had the butterfly stencils and I made the shark stencil with contact paper and a template from a website.  Michael's had spray on fabric paint that worked great!

For some reason I couldn't get my computer to turn this photo--thus a sideways Timothy!  But you can still see his cute shark!

Another project this summer is our playground book.  We mapped out 13 parks to visit and when we go to each we take some pictures.  Timothy tells us what he liked at each one.  By the end of the summer we will have a great record of summer fun.  This also helps Timothy learns the names of his favorite playgrounds.

Next week we have some father's day projects planned!

The Potty Dance

Last night Timothy did 'the potty dance!'  The dance kids do when they have to go, but they would rather keep playing.  The dance parents don't usually like because they would rather their child just go use the bathroom and not stall.  But I was ready to dance right along with Timothy because this means that he is wearing underwear and is on his way to being potty trained.  It has been a long journey to this point and required lots of patience on my part, but we are here and it's great!

The decorated potty and the jar of M &Ms--key incentives in the potty training business.  (He, however, has already switched to the big potty now which is okay by me!)

I have always heard potty training is easier with girls.  I hope this is true!!

10k race

This weekend Troy and I ran a 10K together--and Teresa was along for the ride.  (Timothy was having fun at Grandma Judy's house.)  I thought it would be fun to do a 10k--not too hard, but hard enough to require a little training on my part.  The week before the race I had only managed to run about 4 miles, so I wondered if I could even make the extra 2.  I only recently took up running again.  But even with the North Dakota wind, I was able to finish without walking in just over an hour.

Troy not only had to run the 6 miles, but he had the extra effort of pushing Teresa.  She has not really been in the jogging stroller much so we could only hope she would do okay.  Troy did a short run with the stroller and a 50 lb bag of grout in it the day before the race.  (Teresa was sleeping when he went running.  That's why he chose to push grout instead of Teresa!)  That run made him a bit nervous for the extra effort the stroller requires.  (Thankfully Teresa weighs a good deal less than the bag of grout!)

Happily, Troy had a great race, and Teresa did too.  She enjoyed the ride and only nodded off near the end.  And the best part...Troy and Teresa won a bronze medal for Troy's age division!  (And we like to say that Teresa was first for her age division!  There was only one other baby in the race, but Teresa beat him.)

It was a great morning and we all had fun.  Hopefully next year we can run again.  Now I am just happy I don't have to run on a treadmill anymore!

The happy runners (& rider) after the race.

The proud medal winners!

10 month photo shoot

Teresa turned 10 months old this week.  As usual, I attempted to get a nice picture of her with her bear to show how she is growing.  But at 10 months she is very curious and wants to grab everything in reach...including her teddy bear! 

Let's see how a furry bear tastes!

Mommy tries holding the bear still.

Eyeing her companion...just who is this bear anyway!?

Ignoring the bear, but focused on her brother Timothy across the room.

Is this how I should hold him, Mommy?



Still going after the bear during the picture with Timothy--which Timothy always insists upon.



At 10 months Teresa...
* is still not crawling, but can move all about by rolling.  She is starting to scoot backward just a little.
* is learning to eat solids, but is picky.  Some days she gobbles things up and other days she won't open her mouth.  She loves bananas and just had a first taste of cheerios.  She has eaten small pieces of sweet potato and tried a variety of baby foods.
* likes to twirl her feet and has started to do what we affectionately call the "Timmy shuffle" of rubbing her feet on the floor.
* babbles a lot...baba, dada, and lots of other sounds I do not know how to write.
*has two teeth and her mommy is convinced some other teeth will be appearing soon (although mommy is usually wrong on this!)
* has the amazing ability to sit with her feet lifted off the ground leaning way back and never tips.  I guess she is working on her abs of steel!
* loves to swing and go down little slides--with help.  She has even learned to sort of scoot herself to the edge of the slide so she can go down.
* likes dancing to music, slapping her hands, and clapping.
* sleeps most nights from 7:30 until 6:30 with minimal wake ups. (Yeah!)
* Likes to open and close things and put toys in a container and take them back out.
* has huge smiles when she sees Mommy, Daddy or Timmy.