Bed Sheets, Creeping (not Crawling), Toys, Extra Children...

Playing with a ball I crocheted for her out of some scraps... it's stuffed with old plastic shopping bags! If you want to know how to make one, just ask...

So, you may have gathered from my last post that Rebecca is capable of moving herself now. Actually, that is an understatement. She is creeping very quickly in order to get into whatever strikes her fancy. So, we've been cleaning everything we can in an attempt to be at least child safe even if we aren't child proof. As it turns out, it's a good thing we've had to do this now, as I was approached by a neighbour looking for temporary care for her 13 month old today. She's about to start working full time hours and at the moment her child is on the daycare list, but hasn't got a spot yet. So, we are talking it over, but there is a good possibility we'll be caring for the little one for a few weeks while they await a day care placement. The other reason we're working so hard at getting everything cleaned up is because we have Amelia and Jacob coming to stay with us for three weeks starting on June 7. Justin's parents are going to be away, I'm the back up pick-up person, so rather than having to run out and get the kids if something comes up for Donna, I volunteered to just have them spend three weeks here with us. That should be interesting, especially if we do have the other little one as well. Imagine... a 6 month old, a 13 month old, a 5 year old, and a 7 year old... all in this little house!

Justin gave me some gorgeous potted flowers for my birthday! Yellow miniature roses, and yellow gerbera dasies!

Since we have our niece and nephew coming to spend three weeks with us, we have to come up with beds for them. We decided that since they are both shorter than 4' and both weigh less than 50lbs, we could put them each on a toddler bed, and everyone would fit in Rebecca's room! As it turns out, Donna has a toddler bed still, so we only need to find one other, and we're leaning toward making our own, as I found a plan for making a toddler bed, and it looks really cute... plus it would be sturdier than the ones you can buy... and we can probably modify it to suit whatever we want. Anyway, since we're aiming for the toddler beds, we needed bedding. But, did you know that to get a bedding set for a toddler bed you'll be spending a minimum of $40?? We're cheaper than that though... we went to Wal-mart and got some really cute Winnie-the-Pooh fabric (the pattern is called "A Day in the Park" if you want to Google to see what it looks like), and some flannelette, and some pale yellow fabric... and I made a comforter, a flat sheet, and a fitted sheet for each bed. We're just going to use regular plain white pillow cases. You wouldn't believe how simple it is to make a fitted sheet for a crib mattress! Seriously... I'm never buying one again! I can make 4 for the price of buying one brand new! (And if you need to know how to do it, just ask... I'll tell you!)

A result of our cleaning and reorganizing: Rebecca on a book shelf! (By the way, she's wearing a Bummies Whisper pant over her diaper... and they are WONDERFUL. And cheap!)

Rebecca has been very fussy lately. I don't know if it is teething or something else, but she has not been sleeping well, she's constantly wanting to nurse, and rarely wants to be put down. Even at night when she wakes in the night she wants to stay up unless I'm holding her. It's becoming quite tiring! Hopefully she'll outgrow it soon! However, we've discovered that while we have freezies we don't need teething rings/toys! She just loves the frozen things, and seeing as they are sealed, and various colours, they're perfect. They can thaw and be refrozen a hundred times, and still be okay to eat afterward!

Rebecca's been doing some hanging out in her playpen lately while we've been cleaning, and she's starting to like the toys I've got in there, though she hates being confined!

And, finally, we're experiencing a lovely thunderstorm, in which the lightning seems to be right over top of us (and the thunder would agree with this statement!). I'm starting to think that it can't rain here without thunder and lightning, as I don't think I've seen proper rain happen yet without it. For that matter, I've seen lightning and heard the thunder without any rain, so I suppose perhaps we're just prone to it!! At least we didn't have "severe weather alerts" today, so I guess it can't be too bad... :)

Picture Time :)

I finally got a chance, while we await Justin's return from his LAST SHIFT AT WENDY'S(!!!), to shrink and upload some pictures. :)

Rebecca hangs out on the floor by the table playing while we eat our breakfast, and most times she's pretty happy, though she's started getting into a lot of stuff lately, so I'm thinking we're going to need to contain her in a high chair so we can eat soon... which means we need to find her a high chair that I actually like! This takes a lot of work!



Justin thought it was funny when Rebecca reached for the shower rod... and then she started making the most priceless faces.


It's like you can just hear her thinking "this is really hard work!"


Justin has started carrying Rebecca around like this a lot, and he claims this is how fathers go bald... their babies supposedly pull the hair out!

...so I decided to be "artistic...

I introduced Rebecca to sidewalk chalk, and she thought it was pretty neat for a while...

then she decided to eat it,

looked at it suspiciously,

and tried eating it some more!

I was trying to get a picture of Rebecca SLEEPING on Justin, but she opened her eyes when I was taking the picture.

She just loves to pick things from the lawn, in this case a dandelion leaf, exmine, taste, and feel the things.

This is a blue-eyed grass flower. they actually have little balls for seed pods, but I really like the flowers, and they are all over our lawn in both the front and back yards.

And, the jolly jumper. I have to say, I think this is one of Rebecca's current favourite activities. She can turn herself to see all parts of the room, and she can bounce and see everything, without being on her tummy all the time.

As I mentioned, tonight was Justin's last shift at Wendy's, which is nice in a lot of ways. We like having Saturdays to use for our own leisure and pleasure, and him having to work was a pain a lot of times.

We went yard saling this morning, and ended up going to the thrift stores as well, in search of a few items. We didn't find what we were looking for, but I discovered that one of the thrift stores has an incredibly stocked children's book area, so we picked up some books for Rebecca for both now, and later. Some are board books, some are paper backs, but they're all really good classics, and books that teach something or other.

Rebecca had her 6-month appointment on Wednesday, and Dr. McLean feels she is doing well. She weighs somewhere between 15 1/2 and 16 lbs (not quite 16lbs yet for sure), is 24 inches long, and her head is measuring 16 3/4 inches now. The only problem with her measurement on the head dept. is the smallest bicycle helmet is for a 17 1/4 inch head, so the smallest we can get her is way too loose, and by law we can't take her on our bicycles with us unless she has a helmet on. We're pondering getting one of those really tiny helmets so we can simply say "she has a helmet on" and no one will question us (or ticket us!). She is very good at sitting up, which is the main thing when it comes to whether you should take a baby on the bike in one of those child seats or not, so there shouldn't be a problem on that at least.

Other than that, things are pretty much the same as always... I feel like I haven't much to talk about lately

For Now...

I thought I would throw a video of Rebecca in her new Jolly Jumper up. We were having the hardest time figuring out how to get one here, and as it turns out, it is only sold in Canada, so my parents found one in Halifax and sent it down for her. She seems to enjoy it a lot, though she often gets frustrated that it keeps her from getting the things that are on the floor (keeps me sane though, LOL)!

I am currently working on getting pictures shrunk down to size and all that fun stuff, and then I have like three weeks worth of pictures to put up! I'll be back later today or perhaps tomorrow with pictures. :-)

I realized it had been nearly a week!

I do have pictures, they're just stuck on my camera until I figure out where I put the cord! In the mean time, I thought I would give a bit of an update on things around here since Rebecca is currently asleep!

Rebecca has started pulling herself up from a sitting position to a standing position, provided that she can get her fingers around something stable enough to stay in one spot with her weight on one side of it. She's not making any attempts at moving beyond that, so I think she just likes the new perspective on the world. She isn't even really crawling, unless you want to count getting onto all fours to look around, then flattening out so her head is on the floor and using her toes and fingers to try and move herself whatever direction she wants to go (and getting there!). We were given some money as a baby gift, so we went and got her a number of books. Some were board books, some were paper back or hard cover. We got her The Little Engine that Could, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Guess How Much I Love You, Ten Little Lady Bugs (sort of a touch-and-feel type book), Corduroy, Goodnight Moon, and Pat-the-Bunny. We also invested in a Barnes and Noble membership that day, and with those and a couple of other purchases basically saved the cost of the membership, and since that is an area that we spend a few times each year (on books, etc) we figure it was worth the money!

Rebecca seems to have been traumatized recently when she wasn't given right back to me when she was straining to get to me. Now she often will cry if the wrong person so much as looks at her, let alone talks to, or holds her. She was even ready to cry when Deanna (a very "safe" person in her life) talked to her. She's past it with Deanna, I think, but she doesn't respond so well to people she doesn't know as well anymore, so hopefully she'll get past it sometime soon, but, perhaps we'll just have a "shy" baby for a while.

Justin cut the lawn today (YAY!!!). Our back yard was going to seed since it had been so long since it was cut. Of course, part of the reason it had been so long is because one half of our yard was a marsh for about 10 days because it's been raining so much, so I'd only had the opportunity to cut half of it, and then the weekend before that, Justin didn't have time to cut the lawn. So, now it's done! I do want to find out if there is some sort of tic spray or powder that you can put around your yard, because there are a lot of tics in this area this year, and local doctors mostly refuse to treat Lyme's Disease if you get it (not sure why, but they do, and I think it's foolish of them). So, it's more important than ever to make sure the tics don't stand a chance in our yard... which requires regular cutting of the lawn, and keeping the brush clear. Honestly, I think we are probably in more danger of being sucked dry by mosquitoes, but there's not a whole lot we can do about those!

We are probably having our niece and nephew come and stay with us for a couple of weeks at a time over the summer. We figure since they're both shorter than 4 feet tall, they can sleep on toddler beds, which will mean we can actually fit two beds and a playpen into Rebecca's room, and they'll have proper places to have quiet time, and sleep at night. We think their mom has one toddler bed, so it's really just a matter of finding a second one, and some toddler bedding. Hopefully those will be easy enough to find. I have an ad on freecycle right now, but so far in four or five days, there hasn't really been much of a response, so I don't know if we're going to get them for free or not. We figure if we have to, we can get a fairly nice bed from craigslist, and have it become Rebecca's when she's bigger, and consider at least one of the bedding sets "Rebecca's, on loan", so that would make up for some of the cost, perhaps. We'd just be purchasing a little earlier than we were originally planning.

And, Justin doesn't know this yet (because I forgot to mention it) but we currently have one baby bird in the finch cage. I'm guessing we'll have another three in another three days, since there are three yet to be hatched (newer) eggs in the nest, but we shall see. I'm not really sure if this baby hatched today or yesterday, so perhaps there is already another baby in the nest! We would have had babies about a month ago, except that the parents decided to kill two of the eggs, and then abandoned the rest of them just before they should have hatched. I'm rather relieved that they haven't tossed baby or eggs out as of yet, really, and am hoping that they will raise this one, and any siblings so they get to fledge. I'm not, however, looking forward to the noise that will ensue in another couple of weeks! Those things are loud when they are learning how to sing!

We're Home

We arrived in Richmond safely at quarter to ten, which was 1/2 an hour earlier than our flight was supposed to land. I think the pilot was speeding! Of course, that's only a small part of our adventure flying home. We got to the first plane just fine. Then, we were still sitting at the gate ten minutes after it was supposed to take off. We finally left about fifteen minutes late. And then? We got in to Toronto 22 minutes late. We had originally had 1 hour and 12 minutes to make our connection, the minimum required when there is customs involved is 1 hour 10 minutes. So then we had no more than 50 minutes. But, after ten minutes, our luggage didn't come up on the carousel... I asked at the desk if we were going to have time to make our flight, and they did a bunch of stuff on their computers, and decided that we were going to have to go without our luggage, especially since the carousel had just broken! So, we were basically raced through customs, then got to the security section where they insisted that I had to have a boarding pass for Rebecca, even though when I was insisting in Halifax that I needed one they said I didn't need it (and they never even did anything with it when we did get on our plane in Toronto). So, we were down to 25 minutes to go and I had to go back to a ticketing kiosk to get a boarding pass that wasn't really needed by anyone but the lady at the security section, and I stood in line for 15 minutes waiting to be able to get that boarding pass. Boarding pass in hand, we raced through security, ran down the escalator, down the halls, jumped onto the bus that was taking us to our sattelite gate, and the bus got delayed by a plane that was getting ready to leave. At the time our flight was supposed to be leaving, we finally managed to get into the correct area, and discovered that if we'd been even one minute later, the flight would have left without us! And so, we left Toronto about 10 minutes late. We landed early, as I already said, which is good, because I then had to spend 1/2 an hour getting paper work filled in to get my luggage sent to my house when it finally got to Virginia! The luggage arrived sometime after nine on Sunday evening... my bag had been searched, Rebecca's hadn't. So, despite the fact that I wasn't even WITH the luggage, I was still "searched" at the border!

So, anyway, here are pictures from our holiday! :-)

We had a 7 hour layover in Toronto on the way to Halifax, so my cousin Iris got it all organized so that my Auntie Sue, cousin Bridget, herself, her husband Stuart, and then a couple of family friends all got to come and visit with Rebecca and me while we were hanging around at the airport.

Rebecca conked out while we were in the airport, but here's Auntie Sue with her.

Iris was holding her while she was sleeping as well.

Stuart came after she'd woken up again. He tested all her baby reflexes, and informed us all that they work perfectly (he's a kinesthesiologist... or on his way to being one if he isn't one already).

This is my cousin Bridget with Rebecca... I think it's a better picture of Bridget than Rebecca, but still cute. :)

Mrs. Shulte and Mrs. Cabot came after Iris, Stuart, Bridget, and Auntie Sue had been. Above is Mrs. Shulte.

And, here's Mrs. Cabot. :-)

Finally we got on our airplane in Toronto. I think they were tired of listening to Rebecca fuss. She was wanting to eat when it was supposed to be about 15 minutes from boarding time, but then they spent an extra 10 minutes waiting to board... and then they got me on before anyone else because everyone was listening to that fussy baby whining and crying about being hungry and I didn't want to start a feeding before we got on the plane since we could board any time. We arrived on time in Halifax, despite our slightly later than planned departure from Toronto.

Rebecca had fun playing with the old baby toys my parents kept from when Shannon and I were little, plus she was given a bunch of toys while we were there. I think we now need one of those toy bin rack things.

Rebecca trying to eat my pants??

Close up. :-)

The first Friday that we were there, Mum, Shannon and I took Rebecca swimming for the first time in her life. The most she has ever done is float around in her little bath tub. She really seemed to enjoy her time in the pool. We were really surprised at how long she spent in the pool! We spent about 40 minutes floating around the pool. Oh, and it just happened that while we were there we were given a swimsuit in Rebecca's size... and then we were given one in the next size up... and we have one here already in the size after that. So, we have swimsuits for up to 2T, which I'm guessing is going to be closer to 2 1/2 or 3 years old, but anyway. :-)

Mum with Rebecca

Rebecca getting in for the first time.

Swimming with Aunt Shannon!

Swimming with Mummy!!

Rebecca, Aunt Shannon, and Mummy

Here's Shannon... She absolutely refused to smile for me. As you can see, she refused to even give a PLEASANT look... :-P

My parents regularly have my grandmother over. This is Granny... Rebecca's great-Granny.

Rebecca with Mooshum (my dad)

My old employers, the Schelew's, gave us many things, both new and used, and this was a particularly cute (and neat) item. It's a glove finger puppet thing with a book of Old McDonald on the palm. Cokum (my mum) and Rebecca sat and "read" it for a bit.

Rebecca and Mooshum enjoyed hanging out together regularly.

Once we got home, Rebecca got to play with a little teeny tiny wagon Daddy got for her while we were in Canada. It's quite cute, but I'm not sure she'll be riding in it, LOL. :-)

So... apparently the handle is very tasty?

She liked the sides of the thing...

And, the handle especially!

See??

Daddy had to catch her... she's just a little too big to ride around in it. However, she was quite good at balancing in it for the most part!

And, we thought it was quite amusing just how happy she was in this location... Daddy tossed her into our laundry sorting thing, and she thought it was hilarious! She was giggling and grinning for about ten minutes about being in this thing... then she ended up flipping nearly onto her head, so we removed her promptly. ;)

And, finally, a picture of Rebecca sound asleep. :)

By the way... the only pictures that Justin actually DID take are the ones of Rebecca in the sorter. The rest were accidentally labelled as being his... oops... :-)