Our "baby" is two!

Leah had her second birthday last week. Happy Birthday, Leah! We love you!

Number Two!

We are excited to announce that we are expecting Baby #2 on June 3, 2010! Yay! :)

P.S. Here is how we told our families, around the table at Thanksgiving dinner. We just took off Leah's sweater, and waited to see who would notice her new shirt!

Eat it, duckies!

The other weekend, some friends of ours took us to the Arboretum here in Seattle. It was very pretty there, and they have a duck pond :) We brought a lot of old bread and Leah had lots of fun feeding them. When we ran out of bread, Leah started picking up handfuls of gravel and tossing it in front of the ducks (she couldn't quite throw it far enough to hit the ducks, thankfully). "Eat it, duckies!"

Here is a really cute picture that our friend took (thanks again, Emily!):

Ferry!

Last Saturday, we went exploring! We drove over to Bremerton and caught a ferry across Puget Sound back to Seattle! It was really fun, and a great way to see a lot of sights!

Our cute girl

Leah loves to wear her "big jacket".


She even likes to put it on herself!


And this is just a cute Leah in a cute dress :)

Nursery Battle Scar

This (see arm) happened sometime during nursery this past Sunday. Both Matthew and I were in with her the whole time, and neither of us heard any shouts or hollers, so it's still somewhat of a mystery... Though it is quite cute when she says "kiss owie" and kisses her own owie :)

"Leah Stories"

Whenever I talk to my mom on the phone, she asks me to tell her a "Leah Story". Of course, I can never think of the really good ones right there on the spot! So, this is for my mom, and anyone else who wants to hear a good story (or five or ten) about Leah... because I've got a few saved up: (WARNING: Leah is really cute, so this is going to be long.)

• Leah found her daddy's contact case the other day and immediately said "Wash chin!" Then she rubbed it across her chin, my chin, and Matt's chin. (Since then, she likes to help "wash" just about anything... with her hand, paper, a towel, or whatever she has nearby.)
• Whenever she sees a picture of a temple, she says "Temple, oh goodness!"
• When I go to change Leah's diaper first thing in the morning, she has started saying "Oh, man!" My best guess as to where this came from is me saying "Oh, man!" if there is a leak (which is not that often, really) or if her diaper is messy. Oops!
• Leah loves to point out if something is big or little. She will use her big voice or little voice accordingly. For example, a little cow says "moo!" really high, and a big cow says "MOOOOOO!" really deep.
• When she's happy, she will say "Woo-hoo!"
• If you say "Row row row your", Leah will say "boat, mewwy mewwy mewwy" (for merrily... etc.). If you say "If you're happy and you know it", she will say "clap hands" and clap her hands.
• When I am brushing my hair, sometimes Leah will say "Pretty Mommy!" :)
• When I get out a cookbook, or set the timer in the kitchen, Leah will say "Twenty minutes!" (This goes back to one time when I was looking at a recipe and said "Okay, Leah, it needs to cook for twenty minutes.")
• Leah likes to run up to me and say "Boo!" Then she asks me, "Boo Daddy?" I say "Okay" and she runs up to Daddy and says "Boo!"
• Leah also likes to tell me what color I am wearing: "Blue Mommy" or "Green Mommy" or whatever.
• Just now, Leah sneezed and I said "Bless you!" She then proceeded to say "Bless you, Mommy" to me (I fake-sneezed for her and she thought that was pretty fun) and "Bless you, duck" to the stuffed animal duck that was nearby.
• The other day, our box fan was down on its side and Leah said "Oh no fan. Boo boo fan. Up-daisies fan!"
• I was laying down yesterday and Leah approached me and said "Wrong, Mommy?" like she was asking me what's wrong!
• One more (for now): Last night, she tripped a little and fell on a couple of her toy cars. Immediately she pulled them out from under her and said, "Sorry, fire big truck. Sorry, taxi." :)
• Nope, she just did one more. She dropped a small ball behind our TV stand, which is slightly inaccessible to a toddler. She said, "Mommy, ball!" but I didn't really know what she wanted. I looked up to see her grab her penguin toy, drag it over to the TV stand, and say, "Penguin, get it, help!"

"Good girl, Baby!"

Leah really likes pretending these days. She likes to feed crackers to her tuffed animals, and offer water to the folks on TV. Most recently, though, she likes to help her toys play with other toys. Here, she is helping her baby doll play with a toy. If you listen closely, you can hear Leah instruct the baby to use her finger, and every time the baby gets it right, Leah congratulates her with a "Good girl, Baby!"

Also, listen for Leah saying "Bonk eyes!" as she, well, bonks the eyes of the animals on the toy.

Words we're going to miss.

Leah has her own little versions of words that I hope she never grows out of! I don't really encourage the right pronunciation for a few of them yet, because they are just so darn cute (especially in her sweet little toddler voice), but she will probably figure it out on her own one of these days. Anyway, here are some of our favorites:

Finging (finger)
Fum (thumb)
Pang-oons (penguin, singular)
Juffuff (Joseph)
Bassik-ball (basketball)
Widdit (ribbit)
Tee-Wets (T-Rex)
Bummy (bunny)
Dah-bidge (garbage)
Wah-wap (lap)
Effatent (elephant)
Boom (spoon)
Duh-duh-yoo ('w')

New place

Here are some pictures of our new place. (You can click on it if you want to see it bigger.) It has been perfect for us!

Seattle is fun!

We are very happy living here in Seattle. It has been really fun learning about it and discovering all the little things that make it different and exciting! I just wish I had my camera for everything that we see! Speed bump alternatives, Fifth-floor Target stores, airplane parts that decorate parks, cars parked all along every road, even if it's supposed to be a lane... etc.

Also, everyone that we met here has been so nice! Example: Tonight I found our church building and went to the Relief Society broadcast. I checked ahead of time, and it started at 5. I ended up the only one in the chapel listening to it! On my way out, a lady asked me if I was inside listening to the broadcast. She told me that the whole stake was eating dinner together and was going to listen to the rebroadcast at 7. So she invited me in to have dinner and sit with her. I said, "Oh, but I didn't know about it and I already ate!" She said, "You can eat a little more, come on!" Anyway, I felt so welcome :)

Okay, on to the pictures.

This is a park along the lake that is a five-minute drive from our place, with said decorations:

There, we learned that ducks like to eat apples!

And here is Leah just being cute. She loves her "-tories"!

She pulled all her toys out of her toybox, and then climbed in the box. :)

See-tattle

That's how Leah says the name of our new stomping grounds. We're here, we made it, and we've spent our first full day in our new place! It has been very crazy, but very good and successful. We are still getting organized and settled, so I guess I will wait to post any pictures :)

Three more days in Ridgefield.

In three days, we are moving to Seattle! It seems weird that it is coming up so quickly. We are both excited and sad. Excited for a new adventure in a new place, and sad to leave our families. We have had such a nice time being here with them! We will only be two and a half hours away, so we will still be much closer than we used to be, but much further than we are now.

Also, we have a new family picture (thanks, Dad!). See a tiny version of it to your right. :)

Last week

Last week, my brother (Bryce) and his family (Kathy and Elina and Aaron) all came over! Bryce went with my dad to Alaska, and the rest of us played around here all week long. We had so much fun! Other than playing Farkle, which I have already talked about, we...

...played golf!


...made sushi!


...went to the beach!




...went to a kid's club!


...went to the zoo!




...went on a lot of walks!


...had lots of fun inbetween!


Thanks for coming, everyone!

Farkle

When Bryce and Kathy were in town last week, we played Farkle.

I actually tried to score points, too!

Where's the garbage?

You are looking at Leah's first made-up sentence. She has memorized several small phrases (where-is-it, I-love-you, here-we-go, etc.) and can say "hi" and "bye" to things on her own (hi fan, bye doggy, hi dress, etc.), but her first real made-up sentence came yesterday:

She loves finding pieces of paper and plastic, crumpling them up, saying "garbage", and throwing them away. We were in a room without a garbage can last night, and she found some garbage. I said, "Leah, go put that in the garbage in the other room." She replied, "Where's the... garbage?"

I CAN'T BELIEVE HOW FAST SHE IS GROWING!!

Vacation!

Matthew and I went on a vacation last week! We took a couple days off of work and headed out to the beach. Our parents were soooo wonderful to watch Leah for us so we could get away! I was a little nervous because I had only left Leah for a couple of hours at a time, only a few times, and never overnight. I think I handled it pretty well though. I mean, I think she handled it pretty well, considering.

Anyway, we stayed at a campsite at Cape Lookout and a hotel right on the beach at Lincoln City. It was SO nice and SO fun! We went to four or five different beaches, went to the aquarium, went whale watching, had a campfire, found tidepools and treasures, did a little shopping, ate really good, and went on as many walks as we could! It was perfect!

Leah's latest antics

Leah learns so much, so fast! She picks up 2-3 words or phrases each day, my new favorite being "I love love love you". She knows a few colors and about half the alphabet. Here she is telling me to be quiet, showing me a couple of emotions, and making all sorts of animal sounds :)

Big berry

My dad planted some new blueberry plants this season. Leah calls them "big berries" in the deepest voice she can muster.

Six down, twenty to go...

No, this isn't the latest word in the language I'm creating. It's all the letters that Leah can recognize! Point them out in any order you want, and she can tell you what they all are!


If you're thinking that this is the number of dollars I earn per hour, guess again. It's the rough number of words that Leah knows! My favorites being glasses, oh-no, sorry, pretty, and bicycle.


And this is just the number of degrees I wish it wasn't right now.