Santa

We went to a little "winter celebration" the other day, and Santa was there. I tried to bring Leah to get a picture with him, and this is what happened:

Her face really shows how she felt about the whole experience :)

Later, while we were still there, Leah wanted to go back and see Santa again, but she was just as shy of him as the first time. She just wanted another candy cane!

Three years old!

Leah had a lot of fun on her birthday! Her Grandma Caine and Uncle Jeremy came to help her celebrate her special day! It was really cute -- she just seemed so happy and excited about everything the entire day. Here are some pictures:

Leah really loved all of her birthday balloons!

We went to Ballard Locks to watch the boats go through and check out the fish ladder (we might have seen one fish), and they had these fun wave sculpture things that Leah liked.

On the way to the park later, we stopped by the Fremont Troll. Leah wanted to climb to the top of the "scary monster", but it wasn't that easy to get her up even halfway, so this is as far as we got :)

Leah was so happy to open presents! She tried to share them all, too, and insisted that some of them were ours, even after she opened them.

Ever since her Daddy's birthday in October, Leah has insisted that she wanted a "blue chocolate cake" for her own birthday. We think she was referring to the blue box that the chocolate cake mix came in, but I thought it would be fun to frost it with blue frosting anyway. This was the first year that she blew out all of the candles herself!

We also had french fries for dinner (at Leah's request). Don't worry, we made hamburgers too, but Leah only had one bite of hers... oh well! It was her birthday, after all!

Yesterday was Leah's three-year appointment, and she weighs about 33 pounds and is about 37 inches tall. She is very healthy! She was sad at the end, when she had to get two shots ("the doctor gave me two owies"), but overall she was very excited to have her own doctor's appointment! (She came with me to Grant's six-month appointment last week, and has wanted to go back for herself ever since.)

Through the eyes of Leah

Leah is three years old!!! I will post pictures and stories from her special day later, but first I wanted to show off her photography skillz (the 'z' means I'm serious ;) ). She got a cute little digital camera for her birthday and wasted no time in filling up the memory with over 100 photos. It is so fun to see what she thinks she needs to take a picture of! Here are a few of them:

As you can see, she was excited to take pictures of every one of her new crayons. Her poor Uncle Jeremy was her favorite subject though, and he was so patient with her flashing his face over and over. I just transferred all the photos off of the camera, so we will need to work on holding the camera still and not getting so close to people's faces... Stay tuned for more fun photos, through the eyes of Leah!

6 months

Six-month birthday

Right before Thanksgiving, Grant turned six months old! He celebrated by cutting his first two teeth, and we celebrated by giving him "solids" (rice cereal) for the first time!

Grant likes his solids!

At his checkup yesterday, he weighed 20 lbs 8 oz, and measured 28 inches long. That's around the 90th percentile I think. So still big! He also didn't even cry during his shots! Just kinda yelped a little during the last one. He is just an awesome little guy! :)

And I just can't get enough of watching the bond and love between these two. It is the sweetest thing!

Leah likes to make Grant smile when he's sad.

He really likes it!

But sometimes gets overwhelmed :)

Camera

I am convinced that I am the luckiest girl in the world. What other guy gives his wife presents for his birthday?! This year, Matthew gave me a new digital camera! I have been having a lot of fun trying it out, and I have a couple of cute, semi-willing (Grant more than Leah, hence the proportion of pictures in his favor) subjects. We had a few sunny days this past week, so I brought it out on one of our walks. Here are some cute ones!

Pirate

I forgot to put this with the last post...

A few days before Halloween, we were at Fred Meyer when all of a sudden, Leah told me, "He's a pirate! He's a pirate!" Sometimes Leah notices the tiniest things, so maybe she saw some logo on a food package or something.

I looked around, and saw a man walking by, wearing a bandana on his head :)

Happy Halloween! And then some...

We have had a busy week or so. It seems like there was something big every day!

• Last Saturday was our chili cook-off.
• Sunday was Grant's five-month birthday.
• Monday and Tuesday was Matthew's conference in Spokane where he presented his research.
• Wednesday was the first day of the regular season for basketball.
• Thursday was Matt's birthday.
• Friday we carved pumpkins.
• Saturday was the stake Trunk-or-Treat.
• Sunday was Halloween.
• Today is the first day of November!
• Whew!

In case you are wondering how it all went...

• I won no prizes for my chicken chili, although it was yummy (I was up against 40 other chilis... no one could even try them all!).
• Grant is five months old and a big, happy, rolling, nearly-scooting boy.
• Matthew did an awesome job at his conference and even got invited to present at a bigger one in a few months.
• We had pizza to celebrate the first day of regular season basketball, and the pizza turned out good, even though our team didn't :(.
• Matt's birthday was a lot of fun! Leah insisted he wanted a black chocolate cake (we made him a delicious French Silk Pie). She also learned how to sing happy birthday with me.
• Our pumpkins turned out cute, I think (see above). Leah found two ladybugs that came in with the pumpkins. For her, they were much more fun than the pumpkins. For me, the roasted pumpkin seeds were delicious. And Leah still likes to tell me that "Daddy's scary, Mommy's a kitty cat, Leah's a ghost, and Grant's happy!" Can you guess whose pumpkin was whose? :)
• The trunk-or-treat turned out great! Leah dressed up as The Cutest Pirate I've Ever Seen. That's what I decided to call her. She has two cute little picture books about pirates that she really likes, so this was fun for her. It was pouring during the trunk-or-treat, but tons of people still came and Leah had lots of fun and lots of candy!
• Halloween itself wasn't all that exciting, since we had already done all the trick-or-treating the day before. But we still had little trick-or-treaters come knock on our door, which was really cute.
• And today, I can't believe it's already November! We still need to flip the calendars though :)
• Whew, again!

Rolling

Watch him go!

Grant rolled for the first time (accidentally) a few weeks ago. Over the past week, he has figured out how to do it on purpose and is getting better every day! And of course, this is the first time he did it for the camera :)

5 months old

Grant turned five months old today! It sounds so old for him... so much older than four months, for some reason. I weighed him here at home about a week ago (so I guess it's unofficial) at twenty pounds, meaning we are now in the market for a new car seat very soon! He is happy and healthy and more lovable than ever!

He has successfully rolled from tummy to back and back to tummy (the latter one being on purpose), and has been working so hard at mastering both of them. It is so much fun to watch him grow and learn new things. We are excited to see what kinds of solids he likes in a month! He always looks so interested when he sees me eat.

Here's a picture from today of our smiley baby with our sweetheart toddler (preschooler?). Leah is a great big sister and loves to be goofy to make Grant smile. (Is it just me, or does Grant look almost as big as Leah?)

Here is Grant modeling my latest creative attempt. I made him a hat out of some scraps of fleece. It's a little big... and weird... but it will keep his head warm this winter. And I loved the picture.

And just two more pictures that melt my heart! I figured it's a post about Grant, so I'll fill it up :)

Post #100

Wow, this is my one-hundredth post! Anyway...

Contrary to what I have heard so often, boys are just as much fun to "dress up" as girls :)

And here is our little princess:

And here is what she is up to...

She loves playing Candy Land (and follows the rules somewhat closely, more so with prompting, which makes it fun to play with her):

She loves her little brother and showers him with hugs and kisses!

She loves showing off her sunglasses :)

And I don't really have a good picture to go with this (understandably), but she has been having so much fun pretending lately! She goes to the pretend park, the pretend driving range, eats all kinds of pretend foods, and even once pretend-painted my face. Anything and everything can be pretend. Makes it nice for when we don't have exactly what she wants or don't want to give her something. (Example: Leah says, "Can I have some candy please?" We reply, "Here is some yummy pretend candy!" Leah takes it and pretends to eat it, enjoying it very much. She even asked me to help her open her pretend smarties one time!)

Oh, and hide and seek is a favorite right now, too.

A little math...

First, some numbers... Yesterday, Grant had his four-month appointment, and he is still in the nineties percentiles for length (26 in) and weight (18 lbs 1 oz). Leah was the same length at four months, but didn't hit 18 lbs until she was twelve months! Interesting. Anyway, Grant is as healthy as can be!

Now for some arithmetic...

This:

Minus this:

Equals this:

Yessiree, Grantman had his first haircut a week and a half and ago! His hair was getting in his eyes and covering his ears, so we got out the clippers and finally gave him a little boy haircut. I was a little nervous because I thought all his hair was pretty darn cute, but it is even cuter now! His hair even looks a little lighter now.

Leah had her first haircut just after Grant's, too:

Both haircuts together:

One more:

This:

Plus two years...

Equals this:

And some cute tummy time pictures. I don't know how to include them in the "math" topic, but maybe you can measure the increasing angles between Grant and the floor?

Precious

Anniversary

Five years ago, today, I married my best friend!


They have been the five best years of my life. I couldn't be happier!

Adventures in wheat bread making...

I've baked. I'm not great at baking, but I'm not new to it, either. I've made white bread, wheat bread, rolls, breadsticks, cornbread, focaccia bread, banana bread (see two posts below...), cookies, muffins, scones, brownies, cakes, et cetera. Most of the time, things turn out okay (don't see two posts below), but I want to get better so that I can make something spectacular. Something so good, it doesn't have time to cool before it's devoured. Something that people remember and ask for ("Oh, I hope Jeralyn makes her delicious <insert delicious food for which I am known, here>!"). Commence wheat bread experiments.

The other day, I ground up a little bit of wheat and made my first attempt (in a long time) at a delicious loaf of wheat bread:

(Overhead view necessary since loaf did not raise above edge of pan.)

Surprisingly enough, this loaf was rather tasty. The dough did not rise. At all. I think my water was way too hot and destroyed the yeast (yes, I used yeast). I let it try to rise for hours, and even punched it (it hardly made a dent, but it helped relieve my frustration at the dough ;) ), but it remained dense and heavy. So I cooked it. We ate it. I learned.

A couple of days later, I found some new recipes and wanted to try again:

(Overhead view not necessary since loaf is about a hundred times taller than the last one.)

(This loaf turned out so pretty, it deserves another picture.)

Okay. Big difference. I got the water the right temperature this time. I let the dough rise over a warm oven. It actually doubled! Success! It rose (raised?) even more the second time, and even more in the oven. The top was a little dark, but it was light and fluffy. It tasted alright, but Loaf Attempt #1 actually tasted better. This one is great with a little butter and honey, though!

So now I need a little break from wheat bread making. I think next time I will return to my first recipe and be more careful with the water temperature, and I may just have something. If it turns out, watch for me to bring some to your door one day :)

Our cute little guy

We all love our Grant!

Ever have one of those days?

...where everything you cook turns out like this?

(This is supposed to be blueberry banana bread.)

A couple of weeks ago, I made this banana bread. I've made banana bread successfully dozens of times. What happened here? It actually tasted pretty good... Anyway, I'm glad I took a picture because now I can laugh about it :)

Webcam

We had some fun taking pictures with the webcam today :)

Leah and Grant lately

Back on the 27th of July, Grant had his two-month checkup, and it was confirmed that he is a BIG boy! He weighed 14 pounds 11 ounces (95th-ish percentile), and measured 24 inches long (90th-ish percentile). I know boys and girls grow at different rates, but I checked Leah's old measurements, and this is about how big she was at four months. Interesting comparison for us :)

Over the past few days, Grant has started liking the idea of sleeping for a 6-7 hour stretch every night (yes!!), followed by 30 minutes of diapering and eating, followed by another 2-3 hours of more sleep. By that time, Leah gets up and we all start our day. I can live with that!

Leah has been making some big improvements with potty training, too! When she has to go, she looks at Mommy or Daddy and says "I gotta go potty!" and then she runs over to her potty chair, takes off her underwear (yes, underwear!) and pants, sits on the potty and does her business, then counts to 10 (so she doesn't get up too fast), grabs a wipe and wipes, and then comes to Mommy and Daddy for help putting her underwear back on (she gets it all twisted still) and washing her hands (she can't reach the sink on her own). We still give her treats afterwards, and we still put a diaper on at night. Most mornings, though, she will wake us up with an "I went potty in potty chair!" and we go in and she has taken off her (dry) diaper and gone in the potty chair all by herself. We are so pleased that she is able to do so much on her own, and not have to worry about diapers anymore! We are still working on getting her to sit on the toilet though... so far, she is not a big fan of sitting on the "big potty chair".

After a couple minutes of tummy time the other day, Grant got upset and started crying and rubbing his face in the blanket. Leah was showing sympathy! :)

Cute, but it's hard when one kid crying gets the other one started, too...

Image overload

When we moved, I lost our camera for about two weeks. One day, after trying to research new cameras, I took a nap for approximately one minute, in which I pictured myself finding the old camera in a box under something. When I awoke, I thought to myself, I haven't checked the "cell phone stuff" box under the bed yet. I immediately went upstairs to check the box, and voila! There was our camera :)

I have since tried to make up for lost time by taking extra pictures. As a result, there will be a lot of (cute) pictures in this post. Enjoy!

Like Father, Like Son, Part I: Here is Grant wearing a little outfit that his daddy wore as a baby. Grandma Brewer brought it for us!


Like Father, Like Son, Part II: This is one of our first family pictures with Grant, and it was on his blessing day. We had just moved into our new apartment the day before, and we had both sets of grandparents in town. Grandma Brewer brought the little blessing outfit that Matthew wore when he was blessed as a baby!


Smart Girl: Yeah, we think our little Leah is a smarty, and sometimes dress her as such :) She is so social, too, and loves all of the neighbors we have now. She calls all of the kids her "new friends" and asks where they are whenever she doesn't see them.

Fun at the Park: We have been having fun trying out lots of new parks in the Seattle area. Leah loves the playgrounds and the water (a lot of the parks are along the Lake or the Sound). The sad part is trying to get her to leave! To save room, here is a little collage of the many pictures from our park trips:

Two Months Old: Grant turned two months old on the 24th. That seems both too long and too short for what it actually feels like. Hard to explain. He is super healthy! He has started to sleep during the night, only getting up to eat once or twice, and then going back to sleep fairly easily. We are very happy about that :) He is big and strong, holding his head up by himself most of the time. He smiles so easily when you smile at him, and he is getting really chubby too!