We'll be back!

But at the moment we are loving holidays and family time! 

Babies are hilarious!

Our daughter is tired of lying down.  She is even tired of sitting. No, our daughter wants to stand.  She wants to stand ALL OF THE TIME. Her newest trick for assuaging this desire? Standing in her bouncy seat.

Being insightful parents, we eventually deduced that, although funny and cute, hidden dangers lurked for our chair-standing baby.  Perhaps there was even an actual purpose to the little baby seatbelt on the chair (previously we had debated its utility.) So we dutifully strapped her in and got this, equally cute and hilarious behavior, instead:

Unfortunately, the baby seatbelt is a little to long in the crotch strap because shortly after this she figured out she could stand even while strapped in (sigh). There really is no defeating the determined baby!

Aspen is 5 months old! Man how time flies!

She has several new tricks up her sleeve.

For example, she sucks on her lips ALL THE TIME.

She also plays with her toes ALL THE TIME. 

(Really, who needs toys when one has toes?!?)

She would really like to stand up, but since I haven't mastered the art of simultaneously baby spotting and picture shooting, her attempts to hold herself up will have to go undocumented for the moment. Instead I give you yet another tummy time photo. :)

She has also started eating some solids every now and again. (Originally I had wanted to wait until she was 6 months, but for a variety of reasons we switched gears a little.) Towards the end of the summer we made some homemade baby applesauce from the trees in our yard and froze it in ice-cube sized pieces for when she was ready.  Well, the two times she's had it she seems to like it, but apparently it is (as you will see) a bit tart!

Also, on a similar theme, she has definitely developed the common baby attitude of "I see it, and can place it near my mouth; therefore, it must go in my mouth!"

We love our little muncher!

p.s. the movies were huge and I got impatient for them to upload so I converted them to avi's...that is why they look kind of crappy, but I think the cuteness still comes across!

My little pterodactyl.

Did you know that I gave birth to a pterodactyl?

I know that she doesn't look like a pterodactyl. I know that she doesn't eat the same things a pterodactyl eats (while I don't know exactly what pterodactyls eat, I do know that they aren't mammals so it isn't milk). I don't think she smells like a pterodactyl, although admittedly I can't absolutely confirm that.

However, I am absolutely positive that she sounds just like a pterodactyl! Especially when she is happy. Her newest trick is to experiment vocally by gleefully making loud piercing shrieky noises.

Alas, it turns out I am not incredibly fond of what peterodactyls sound like so hopefully she will move on to experimenting with other noises soon....

Note: Aspen smiles, I promise! In fact she also grins and laughs quite often. NOT, however, for the camera (sigh). In the above pics I was trying to get a smiley photo of her wearing the sweater my aunt knitted so I could send an adorable grinning picture of her in the sweater to my aunt.  Alas, Aspen continues to play coy with the camera!

In addition to playful shrieks Aspen has also rolled over and can spend a solid hour grabbing her toes in fascination.  However, these latter two skills can only be performed while naked (I think the diapers impede her hip flexors a little, something she will grow out of) so we have a lot of baby naked time at the house. Especially since she is so happy when naked!

In other big events recently we had Halloween, a visit from nana (jamie's mom), and Aspens first snow!

I'm a piggy!

Lil' piggy hanging out with puppy and lobster friends!

Aspen was very underwhelmed by the snow.

4 months old!

Last Saturday Aspen turned four months old. FOUR MONTHS OLD...crazy! She is practically a wizened old woman! :) At her four month appointment we discovered she is a whopping 15 lbs. and 10 oz. (that is 75 percentile for weight). Her height, ahem, is more in the 50th percentile mark. That's right, we have one chunky monkey!

She is so much more interactive now then she was 2 months ago. She laughs, smiles up a storm, and started to discover her toes!

Last weekend we were also able to go up to mountain to try and get some pictures of Aspen in the aspens.  By "we" I mean myself, Aspen, and our good friend Angela who took all of these pictures (Jamie was out of town).  There are some great photos here, thanks Ang!

There are also a whole of funny face photos because it is not like Aspen exactly sits still for the photo shoot. Here are three of my favs!

(I really love this one because Aspen purses her lips like this all the time! I think she does it when she is concentrating.)

(A baby sneer?)

(I am DONE taking photos, do you hear me?!?)

I love our baby girl so much and feel so blessed to have her in my life!

Swim time!

It turns out that Aspen is a fan of the water...yeah! This works out nicely because her mommy and daddy are also big fans of playing in water. We had the opportunity for some pool time this weekend and boy was it fun!

Aspen all ready in her duck and bug suit.

The fam!

 Scoping out the scene!

Hey, what's this stuff?

Oooh, water is fun!

What happened next unfortunately didn't make it on camera. Aspen went from gently exploring the water to beating it with her fists.  In other words, she learned to splash, and boy did she like it! Notice how in all these photo's here hair is dry? Yeah, that didn't last long.  However, this wasn't joyful, giggling, splashing. No, this was the kind of splashing that takes concentration. It was intense and purposeful. She pursed her lips, furrowed her brow, and went to town (kind of like the expression in the above picture).  I thought she would cry when she got it all over her face. Instead, she pursed her lips more, furrowed her eyebrows more, and whacked the water even harder. 

Splash! Splash! Splash!

Baby legs!

Leg warmers on adults? Meh.

But leg warmers on babies? 

A-DORABLE!

Bonus feature pics:

Hanging out with mommy

Like father, like daughter! 

(this picture completely cracks me up)

October 2

This Sunday Jamie and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. We headed out to Mormon Lake

Lodge (where we got married last year) for breakfast and then went on a hike.  It was a truly lovely day! Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the hubbub of life and sometimes Jamie and I stress out about where we will be next. (Can we get jobs? Can we find somewhere we like to live? Will we have to commute to work? Will we ever be able to have chickens? Scratch that, will we ever be able to actually own a house?!? Aaagh, the list can go on and on.) This is why moments like last Sunday, where we ground ourselves and re-center are so important.  As I said to Jamie while hiking, "honey, as long as I have you, her, and can do this, I can be happy anywhere!" ("her" being Aspen and "this" being outside in the wild woolly world).  Speaking of a wild and woolly world, our wedding anniversary hike gifted us with some unexpected treasures.  Specifically, a ton of delicious mushrooms and a sighting of this AWESOME tarantula!

(sorry mom, I should have warned you there was going to be a spider picture)

I also spent a lot of time on Sunday thinking nostalgically about our wedding and how much fun we had.  I loved our wedding!  (Which is pretty hilarious since prior to having to plan it I had really never thought much about weddings at all.)

October 2, 2010

Lastly, I couldn't help to think about where our life is now and how different (wonderfully, beautifully) it is.  The last year has wrought many changes, and I wouldn't have it any other way!

October 2, 2011

Of course this wouldn't be a proper blog post without an Aspen montage.  So without any further ado:

We spent last weekend visiting family in Washington state, it was such a great trip! Unfortunately, I forgot to break out my camera for most of the trip so I am short on pictures.  Most of the pics below I stole from mom and are from a family get together on Saturday. I promise I will have a content blog later in the week...but for now pictures!

Cousins! The top row is my siblings and cousins from my mom's side of the family, the bottom row (plus Aspen) are my brother's and cousins kiddos.

Four generations! Mom and dad are above me, and both grandma's on either side.  (Maternal grandma on the left and paternal grandma on the right)

Mom, Aspen, and nephew!

Dad, Aspen, and Jamie's torso.

My wonderful siblings!

Hiking in the woods!

Hiking in the woods...baby and mushrooms and man, oh my! :)

The North Rim and the Kaibab Plateau

Sorry it has been a while since I posted anything.  As I am doing a little catch up I thought some pictures from our camping trip 2 weekends ago would be appropriate.  We camped on forest serice land on the Kaibab Plateau and visited the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Aspen was a trooper and I hope that our next trip goes as smoothly with her! 

The trip was nice, but rainy.  Once we arrived at our chosen campsite our first hour was spent hanging out in the car waiting for the deluge to stop so that we could set up camp.

Fortunately we brought plenty of tarps.  Here is Jamie and Aspen hanging out next to our tent under the tarp shelter to stay dry.

However it didn't rain the whole time and we were even able to have a camp fire at night. As she grows Aspen's vision keeps getting better and better and she really enjoys looking around. I was curious what she would think of the fire, but alas she fell asleep during the whole time it was burning

Saturday we went to the North Rim and enjoyed the view!

This chunk of rock is called Angel's window and you can walk out on it. That is where I am in the photo above.

On Sunday we took a short walk to a vantage point on the Kaibab Plateau about 4 miles from our campsite.  That isn't technically the grand canyon in the distance, but rather another canyon that feeds into it.

Yellow paintbrush! I am used to see bright red/orange paintbrush.