Mr. Samuel

Here are some pictures of what Samuel has been up to recently:

Painting. Messy = good.



Taking a break from playing by hanging out in the toy cabinet:





At a friend's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese:



Side note about Chuck E. Cheese: I remember going to a birthday party there for a friend when I was about 8 (I don't know if you read our blog or not, but hi Jenny Boucher!) As a kid, I remember thinking it was fun. As an adult, I hope we do not get invited to birthday parties there very often. It was absolutely insane. The zillions of kids running around screaming, only to be fueled by pieces of cake the size of their head. The fact that kids need to take their shoes off in one part of the play area, but then are too excited/impatient to play/hopped up on sugar to want to put them back on before they do something else so they are running around the entire germ-filled room with no shoes on. And, is it just me, or is Chuck E. Cheese himself kind of scary, old, and dirty looking? However, Samuel LOVED it. His level of excitement about being there could not have been matched if Santa Claus and Buzz Lightyear both arrived at our house to play with him at the same time. He asks all the time if we can go back. I hope we get a little time to recover before someone else we know has a party there.

10 months old

Becca is 10 months old now. Almost a year already! Here are my attempts to take her picture with the bear. She was not interested in sitting still at all. I tried to give her a book to see if she would sit still, but then she just wanted to look at that and not at the camera. In the last picture she has spied the camera strap and is trying to grab it so she can eat it:







Notes about this month:

• She now weighs 20 pounds and is 27.5" long, both about in the 50th percentile.
• She is still a good eater and will try just about anything that I give her (and some things that I do not give her, but she has decided taste yummy, like paper, baby wipes, and woodchips from the playground.)
• She pulls herself up to stand on everything, and can stand on her own for a few seconds at a time without holding on to anything. She wants to walk very badly, and will walk all around the house holding on to our fingers. I think real walking is going to happen soon.
• She loves to play peekaboo, read books with pictures of babies, and go outside.
• At 9 months old she had 2 teeth. She now has SEVEN. She got them all at once!
• She adores her big brother and absolutely lights up when he walks into the room. She is constantly trying to pull his hair, which he is not a big fan of.
• She likes to explore, and will open any cabinet that is not baby proofed to see what she can find inside. She loves the tupperware cabinet in particular. One day when I was making dinner, I opened the fridge and she crawled over to check it out:

9 months old

Becca is 9 months old now. Here she is with the bear:



She is a super fast crawler now and loves to head for the stairs, the toilet, and Bella's water dish. She gets angry if you try to move her away from any of those things and will arch her back and kick her legs and scream. It's very hard not to laugh at her.

Things she really likes right now:

• Bella
• Reading books, especially ones with pictures of babies
• Eating, especially mashed potatoes
• Having you hold her arms and let her walk across the floor
• Taking baths
• Being outside

Splash!

Last week Meg and Lilly came to visit and we went to Buckner Park (a combination playground/splash pad.) Here are some pictures of the kids having fun:

Dear Delta Airlines, we are no longer friends.

So. As you can guess from the title, our trip last weekend was not exactly ideal. The actual visiting with family was great, but the getting there and getting home was not. Things started out just fine. Our flight was on time in Fort Wayne. We went through the security line with plenty of time to spare (side note: they did a vapor test on Becca's bottle at the little tiny Fort Wayne airport. Coming home from Boston, they did nothing.) About 20 minutes before our flight was scheduled to take off from Fort Wayne, I walked up to the counter to get a gate check tag for the stroller. As I am in line, I hear a call come through on the radio telling the gate agent that they need to find 15 people to give up their seats since the plane is overfueled. I was not aware a plane could be overfueled, but apparently they put enough fuel in there to go to Minneapolis, when our plane only needed to go to Detroit. This was a small plane, 50 people tops.

The gate agent made an announcement that 15 people would need to give up their seats. Everyone just sort of looked at each other. 15 people out of 50? When it became clear that this simply was not going to happen, they moved on to plan B. Plan B was to fly around in the air for an extra hour to burn off the extra fuel. Who exactly was in charge of thinking of Plan B? They told us all that we would probably miss our connecting flights in Detroit, but we could either get on the plane, fly around for an extra hour, and then try to get new flights in Detroit, or we could stay in Fort Wayne. Since Detroit is a much bigger airport, we opted to get on the plane.

I was originally supposed to have an hour and a half layover in Detroit. I figured I would change Becca's diaper, we'd walk around a little bit, watch the planes, etc... We landed in Detroit at 10:10. My next flight was due to take off at 10:30. I somehow managed to get off the plane, run like the wind with Becca in the Ergo carrier, the diaper bag on my back, and the stroller not even opened up (no time to unfold it) and get to my connecting gate just as they were about to close the doors. Becca thought this was great fun. She was laughing and laughing as she bounced along as I ran. We were the last people on the plane, and they closed the doors behind us. I was so glad to have made the flight because the next one wasn't going to be for 7 more hours. Hanging out in the Detroit airport for 7 hours with a baby is not my idea of fun.

So we made it on time. Hooray! We spent Friday night in Fort Plain with my parents and the kids, where I apparently did not take any pictures. The next morning we drove to Aunt Beth's house outside of Boston. It was a 3 hour drive. Becca screamed for, oh, 2 hours and 59 minutes of it. The other minute she spent throwing up because she had been screaming so much. (My apologies again to everyone in the car with us. Poor Fiona, I am sure you are scarred for life.) When Becca got to get out of her car seat, she turned back into a happy baby. Here she is at the shower with Nanny:

Erin and Mark:

Erin with her maid-of-honor Robyn:

Apparently it is important to take not 1, but 2 pictures of the ceramic Mickey and Minnie cake topper, and zero pictures of Becca with my real, live, actual, non-ceramic father (sorry Daddy!)



Here I am with Erin, Meg, my mom, and grandparents:

The shower was very nice, and Becca was a huge hit with all of the cute little old aunts. She also had a great time playing with her cousins Anne, Jack, and Lilly (of which I also took zero pictures. Why exactly did I bring my camera on this trip?)

The next morning Aunt Beth took us to the Boston airport. About 2 minutes after she dropped us off, a Delta person asks me if I am in line for the "delayed Detroit flight". Because obviously it would be too much to ask to have a smooth ride home after our hectic flight getting to the shower. My flight to Detroit was delayed due to maintenance. For FIVE HOURS. Remember how I didn't want to hang out in the Detroit airport for 7 hours with a baby? Well, I got to hang out in the Boston airport for 5 instead. The only good part about this was that Erin and Mark had a flight back later that day. So when they got to the airport, we got a chance to hang out for about 45 minutes before my flight left.

Through it all, Becca was such a trooper. I was worried she might scream on the flight and that we'd be THOSE people, the ones everyone stares at with angry eyes. But (car rides aside), she did such a great job. She smiled at everyone, even when she was long overdue for a nap. She happily played with an empty pretzels wrapper and plastic cup for a good half hour. She stuck her face into the space between the seats to play peek-a-boo with the people sitting behind us. On every single flight people stopped me to tell me what a good baby she was.

Here are 2 pictures of her at the Boston airport. The first is in a little play area we found:

And here she is in the bathroom, laughing at herself in the mirror:

My good, happy girl. When you grow up, I promise not to let you fly anywhere with Delta.

One Happy Boy

We got Samuel his first real bike this past weekend. Here he is showing it off. As you can see in the video, his favorite part of the bike is definitely the bell.

8 months old

Becca is 8 months old now. Here are 2 pictures of her with the bear:





Isn't that flower headband super cute? I got a set of different colored ones to mix and match from ebay.

She has definitely mastered crawling, and is now trying to pull herself up to stand. She's still not steady on her feet, but she loves for me to stand her up by the window so she can watch things outside.

She likes just about every food I have given her, and she wants to try everything she sees us eating. Last night for dinner she ate applesauce, string cheese, mashed potatoes, graham crackers, and canteloupe. She can definitely eat!

She has outgrown the baby bathtub and now takes baths in the regular tub. I have been putting her in with Samuel and she LOVES that. She will happily sit there and splash away.

Here she is playing her special game with Grandpa Bob. She turns her head to the side to get him to turn his head to the side. Then she sits back up, waits for him to turn his head back up, and does it again:



I will be taking Becca on her first plane ride this Friday. I hope she is as happy and good natured on the plane as she is at home. Updates to follow when we return!