December pictures! (and maybe some verbal updating...)

Justin's work had a Christmas party for the kids, so we decided to take Rebecca to it, figuring she'd at least be able to eat a candy cane and maybe colour or make an ornament. It turned out that she was able to participate in nearly everything they had available for the children, although we did have to modify things a little for her! I love how they make it so easy to bring kids of all ages to their stuff! :)

This is a little snowman bell ornament we made... she was getting a kick out of shaking it there. We have to get ourselves a gluegun though, because that thing just doesn't want to stay together!!

And... a picture with 'saint' Nick... no, really, his name is Nick! Kinda funny, but anyway. This was how the kids got their little treat bag or stuffed toy-- they had to go see him. Rebecca was the only child under probably 3 that didn't scream or cry, lol!

Oh, and no, we're not doing Santa with Christmas.

The weather has truly been frightful much of the last couple of months... if it isn't freezing (literally) it's pouring rain... and sometimes it does both! But, we do have the occasional reprieve in which we can actually get outdoors to do more than take a walk, so here are a few pictures from a nice day. :)




The following is what happens when you give Rebecca a really mushy banana. It ends up ALL OVER HER.

A cute banana story from a couple of days ago...

We are teaching Rebecca some ASL while we await her verbal communication, and so one of the words she knows (we've discovered) is banana. She walked quite purposefully into the room I was in signing eat, and then something else... and I thought, "Oh, maybe she's asking for a banana.." So I asked her if she was wanting a banana, and she looked at me, went right into the kitchen and stood under the bananas and kept making that sign and pointing at the bananas! She made her banana disappear in about 2 minutes or less, lol!

And... apparently Rebecca really takes after me in many ways. Here she is feeding Cinders... piece. by. piece. She got a cup of food out of the bag (which I hadn't realized she knew how to open), and sat down with Cinders and fed her every single piece, and then tried to get me to let her have more to feed the dog! When I was little I used to sit and feed our dog as well. :) At least Rebecca doesn't like the taste of the dog food, because I also used to eat the food! :)

At the Aquarium

As I mentioned a while back, we went to the aquarium while my parents were here. Rebecca had a great time, though by the end of the few hours we were there she was getting cranky due to being tired of being out... and probably just being tired as well. :)

She LOVED watching the otters! (So did I!)


Kinda looks like they're about to go swimming... doesn't it?

A seahorse! Did you know these things hatch right here in Virginia?!

Tree frogs... playing an unsuccessful game of leap frog, lol. Maybe they were making a frog totem instead.

I can't remember what these blue-billed ducks are called, but Dad and I both liked the looks of them. :)

Looking at all the little minnows!

This was one very curious turtle! It saw Rebecca looking in the window, and swam right up to her! It almost looked like it was trying to give her a kiss.


That fish is HUGE. Seriously... the tank was full of fish that looked like they could eat Rebecca in just a couple of bites!

The giant sea turtle. This was as close as Rebecca was able to get to it, as the little girl to the left in the picture kept going up and down the glass with it wherever it went. :-/

And... looking at (and below, touching) a horseshoe crab. She wasn't really into the touching of the little fins and gills and things, but when it was right side up she was fine with the shell. :)


Anyway, there's the conclusion of my November pictures... I've got some December ones to put up probably tomorrow, and will hopefully have even more in a few days (the rest are still on my camera).

Some News

Well, many who read this will already know, but for those who don't... we're expecting baby #2 at the beginning of June. :) The official due date is June 3, but as everyone knows, babies almost never arrive on time, they're almost always early or late! I'm currently about 16.5 weeks along. For any who may wonder, no, I'm not showing at all yet, much to the disgust of my friend who is almost exactly 2 months ahead of me in her pregnancy, hehe! I almost think I look smaller than I did with Rebecca at this point, which is almost concerning me at the moment! However, the heartbeat sounded good when we heard it (150bpm), so we assume all is well, especially since all regular stuff has been normal so far. I've got a little 'ticker' to the right, now, that tracks fetal development as well as gestational age. :)

I haven't taken many (read: any) pictures recently (ie, the last 7-10 or so days) because first Rebecca was down with a mild case of Roseola, and we're pretty sure we ended up with it as well, and then we all got the flu. What a lovely time of year to get that! We're just starting to get back to 'normal', though I'm still not feeling very normal right now, as every time I think I'm starting to feel normal again I end up spending the rest of the day laying down feeling miserable. I think Rebecca hasn't fully recovered yet either, as she has taken 1-2 naps every day, even though she fought it, for the last three days. I guess that's what happens when you get hit by two viruses in a row! I do have more pictures from November that I ought to post sometime, and some pictures from about two weeks ago that I need to get off my camera, but haven't had the energy to put out that effort in the last week or so!

This week is Christmas week, so things are somewhat quiet starting on Thursday. Justin's off for Thursday and Friday, so we get a four day weekend. :) Next week he has Friday off, and I think he normally gets off early on New Year's Eve, so that will make for a nice three day weekend as well. :) Anyway, I must be off, but figured I should put something on here. :)

Beach, Flooring, and Cousins

Well, I don't know how many paid attention to the weather around here in mid-November, but we had a very big "nor'easter" combined with the tropical storm "Ida", which caused 30-year historic rainfall! We had flooding all over the place, some places deep enough that cars were entirely covered, and houses were half-filled with water. Thankfully all that happened here was the end of our road got covered in about 1 foot of water, and the ditches all the way along the street were flooded, so driveways were hard to distinguish. No one on our street had indoor flooding though!

So, anyway, because of this, the ocean beaches were difficult to access at the beginning of the week that my parents were here, so we suggested that rather than going to a local beach, the OBX (Outer Banx) might be a better option. After going to the beach there, we thought perhaps a drive down to Cape Hatteras would be nice, turned out the road was flooded out, so they were only opening it for 1 hour of the whole day. We decided we'd go somewhere else, and ended up going to see the park where the Lost Colony was located... until they disappeared mysteriously. It's really an interesting thing, because it's a mystery that they may never find the answer to.


Rebecca thinks it is great fun to climb her stroller. We were waiting for everyone to be ready to go to the OBX at this point.

Lunch break! We'd just entered Kitty Hawk, I think. We stopped to have lunch at the tourist information there.


BEACH! I love the above picture. :)

We found a shovel sitting on the beach, and Rebecca had a great time digging in the sand for a while with it!


One of the things that we did while my parents were here, is floored the living room. Currently I haven't taken any "after" pictures-- I'll have to do that. But, this is before... but after we had the leveler down. Rebecca thought she should help too!

Mooshum helped her chiseling out the lumps...
and then tried to get her to help sanding it smooth...
but she went elsewhere, lol!
Getting ready to lay tiles, I believe, but here's one half of the room.

There's the other half!

And, here's Mara and Rebecca together. :)

1 year check-up

Rebecca had her one-year appointment with the doctor today, and it seems he was quite impressed with her development! While she didn't say any words while we were there, we were able to list more words that we've heard her use than he was expecting for her age. He informed us that speech develops at different rates in all children, and by the sounds of it she's at least on target, perhaps slightly ahead.

He watched her walking around and investigating and such, and informed us that not only was she walking exceptionally well for her age (which he was surprised to learn she started doing at 9.5 months!), but all of her motor skills seemed to be well beyond the norm... apparently she comes closer to a 2 year old's motor skills than 1 year old's!

He also informed us that she was extremely alert and bright for a baby her age... which I take to mean that probably her mental functioning level is beyond "normal" too... which we have known for a long time, lol. :-)

As for stats... it turns out that our scale is a little off, she weighed in at 18.5 lbs exactly this morning. She's 27 inches long as of this morning as well. These measurements place her between the 5th and 10th percentiles for weight, and below 5th for height, which is pretty consistent with her birth percentiles, and definitely explains why her current clothing size is only 6-9month when she is 12.5 months old.

And, finally, he answered our question about her current stuffy nose (which has been there for nearly 2 months) VERY thoroughly, and advised us about how to treat it. Did you know that vitamin C has a natural antihistamine effect? He recommended that so long as she doesn't have a cold which would need some drying up, to simply treat every day with 250-300mg of vitamin C. Apparently using Benadryl actually causes fluids to dry up from the nose area, yes, but it also can cause those fluids to recede back into the sinuses and ears, which is when you start having major infections in those places, and can end up with things like chronic sinusitis and such. Interesting fact I never knew before. :-)

So... there's the "one year" update.

First Birthday... and a little of the week following

These first two pictures from from Rebecca's actual birthday on the 11th. She ended up getting a fat lip that day by flipping forward off Justin's legs before he could catch her... so she got her first freezie that day. :)


Rebecca's frog-themed cupcakes and birthday cake! We discovered we think she may not tolerate red colouring very well, as she kept everything except the red icing she had down. Hmm... odd that she's fine with red candies though! I'll have to see if I can figure out which number of red it is that does it!


Birthday cake! She very much enjoyed it! However... she didn't eat the whole thing, lol. Sorry, I haven't any more pictures of her birthday party... I was kind of IN all the pictures instead of taking them! Hopefully some certain other people who had cameras will give me the pictures BEFORE Christmas of this year (HINT, HINT!!). I meant to take a picture of her in her little dress, and it totally slipped my mind until she wasn't wearing it anymore! I'm going to have to do that despite the fact that it isn't her birthday. She still looks relatively the same, so I don't think it will matter too much...

My parents, sister, and niece were visiting from the day after Rebecca's birthday, until this past Saturday, so we went out to various places while they were here. One of the days we went to the SPCA's petting zoo, where Rebecca had a GREAT time chasing the deer around, trying to pet them, and then we took them to Sandy Bottom, a park in our area. We had a good time, and got to see something that if Justin's eyes hadn't taken note, we would have been entirely oblivious to! (See the two pictures at the bottom of this post to see what that was!)

At the petting farm, they have a number of otters, who were very active and playful.
The said deer that Rebecca kept chasing around! It was a little big for her, I think!
Rebecca loves chickens. There's a little petting farm near our house, and every time I go there with her she'll stand and stare at them until I drag her away!

Now, this little goat is much more Rebecca's size!


Below is what Justin spotted...

Although Shannon insisted that it was a northern pine snake, I have since done some research on the snakes in our part of Virginia, and discovered that this is called an Eastern Milk Snake. It is non-venomous, and this one mostly just sat and stared at us as we photographed it... until I shook the branch a little too much, and then it lifted its head a little, as seen in the picture below. :)

Happy Birthday!

To Rebecca!

1 year ago, she looked like this:

(6lbs, 15 oz, 18.8in)

Now, she looks like this:

What? You say you didn't get a good enough look??

Well... here you go:

(19ish lbs, 27ish in)