Summer Fun Pics

Not much to report around here. Bea is super fun right now -- she is only unhappy when her teeth bother her (molars are coming in). She is now capable of walking all around the room, but she still tries to hold hands whenever she can. Her hair is getting long and curly! (If you click on the Phone picture below, you can see the curls). She is also going through a "Mommy's girl" phase, which is interesting... won't let me out of her site. Kind of nice to be loved, but kind of nice to leave the room once in awhile, too. :)

Anyway, hope your summer is going well. Have a great 4th.

Here are some fun pictures for you.

Melissa

Father's Fun

Last week was Father's Day and I had a great weekend. Sunday was a beautiful day Melissa, Bea and I had lunch next to Minnehaha Falls in Minnepolis with my parents. There is a fish/seafood restaurant next to the falls that was extremely busy, but we had a table close tot he falls and the food was fantastic. Bea likes water, and with the recent heavy rains the falls were flowing as heavy as they ever do. She was impressed. Fathers Day dinner was with Melissa's parents at a nice Italian restaurant in Edina. We were able to sit outside there to. Bea loved the waiter, he was hamming it up big for her. Father's day weekend was followed with a tour of the new Gopher football stadium on Monday evening. It's always neat to see a stadium as an engineer, it's even better to see a stadium that means something personal. The stadium has redefined the campus with it's large height, it looms in the background. The unobstructed (no walls yet) view from the top of the stadium were amazing and a perspective I've never had around campus of the outlying neighborhoods. It was a great way to wrap up Father's Day weekend.

Yesterday Melissa went back to Appleton with her parents to check on her grandmother Marcella who reportedly wasn't doing too well a week ago. Well the good news is her grandmother was in very good shape, she has had dimentia for a while, but she apparently recognized Melissa.

I was left to hold down the fort with Bea and Bullet, the day went well and we capped it with a walk around Lake Harriet. It started with me parking next to the lake and up on walking up to the Lake I realized the street was probably 30 feet above the Lake and the there were stairs with probably at least 50 steps, two blocks later we found an at-grade access for the stroller and Bullet. Then about 1/3 of the way around the busy lake pedestrian trail Bullet poops right on the trail. To my horror I quickly realized I forgot Bullet's poop-security-trash bags in the car, but I found a couple of bags in Bea's diaper bag. I'm embarassed with people all around and am trying to move quickly before Bea or Bullet get irritable, I pick up the poop when a woman behind me says "You missed one over here" and there was a huge turd. Bullet has pooped twice on a walk with me, ever, and he's 10 years old. I don't know if it was old age, a warmer day, or just bad timing. It was a long but fun trip around the lake. We capped the walk with a trip to Sebastian Joe's ice cream. I left Bullet in the car and grabbed some chocolate-oreo ice cream with a table next to some kids and a little water fall. Bea loved it. What she like even more was the little sample of ice cream I gave her. She was not happy when the spoon went over her head to my mouth. I had a separete spoon for her and let her likc some ice cream every now and then. I convinced Melissa and her parents to head back to the Lake to check out some nice houses and a repeat of ice cream. Bea likes chocolate a lot better then vanilla.

Walk This Way!

Just wanted to post a quick note to give you the big news: Bea is walking on her own! :) We're not exactly sure when her "official" first steps were, but she is now able to take 5-6 steps unaided... but only when she is distracted - otherwise she really still wants to hold your hand.

In addition, today I walked into the kitchen and she said "Mama?" FINALLY! :) She's been saying Daddy, Dog, and once even Gran (for Grandpa)... but never Mama in relation to me.

Well, our internet is down, so I am doing this on borrowed time, so I will talk to ya later!

Melissa

1 year (full term)

Beatrice is one year old, full term (when she was supposed to have been born), on May 25th according to Melissa and May 30th to me. The doctors went back and forth between the 25th and the 30th and the two of us use different dates. Her real birthday is April 6th which is sadly only a few blogs ago but there's been significant excitement since then.

Melissa has already alluded to Beatrice liking to walk a lot better than crawling. Today she had her fill of walking as we went to my Grandmother's 90th birthday party and the grandparents walked her until everyone was tired. Bea talks and laughs and squeals with delight quite often when she's walking.

Below is a picture of Grandpa Rach walking Bea and we captured her in mid-vocalization.














Here she is at (Great)Grandma Hazel's 90th Birthday Party with Grandma Pat, Great-Grandma Hazel, and me - four generations.












Lastly, here's Bea standing in her party dress after the party. (Look Ma, only one hand!)


When we're too tried or sore to walk her, she's crawling as fast as we can keep up. She loves torturing Bullet and following him around endlessly. Besides eating anything and everything, she without failure farts like a grown up when we're feeding her. She's slept through the night for probably three weeks in a row. It's amazing what a little rest can do.

I don't know that I've ever posted on the power of Branding. When Bea was a few weeks old, we put black and white prints of unusual shapes on the walls so she could develop her eye sight better. With time she was able to see the pictures a few feet away.

Probably the first thing she ever saw at a significant distance was a 12 pack of coca-cola. It was probably 10 feet away across the room and she just sat up and stared at it. It was the bright red and contrasting white colors with the patented swirl that locked her in.

During dinner after she got bigger and stronger and could stand in the exer-saucer she'd stare at the can of coke when I drank it at dinner. I would lower it down to her to let her touch it. She smiled the biggest smile like I was giving her the best christmas gift ever and she would touch the cold smooth can with both hands and stare back at me with the huge smile in wonderment. Today, she is much more aggresive, grabbing for the can whenever she sees it. When I drink out of it, she immitates me and licks the can. Here she is in mid-can-lick:



I guess I better be careful what I eat, drink and do in front of her so I don't set a bad example. I think I've found a new conscience.

Matt

Whirling Dervishes!

It's been a pretty eventful week here at the ranch. Everybody's running around like crazy! Today, we finished having our entire yard re-landscaped. We started just wanting to repair all of the tree damage from last August -- and ended up with an entire yard redo. It looks so nice now! Bea enjoyed watching all of the guys working, especially the man driving the bobcat. She kept waving to them, but got frustrated because they were working and not looking at her. (It's sort of a theme with her...)

Matt and I also went to look at some houses this week. We are trying to decide if we should move. We like our house, our neighborhood, and especially our neighbors. Unfortunately, the house doesn't have an office, master closet, or three-car garage... which we'd really like. And, even more important, it's in a bad school district. So, we're debating, and debating... So far, we have only seen one house we like a lot, but it was overpriced. We've also seen a lot of houses we didn't like at all. Well, we're certainly in no hurry!

In addition, it's the busy season for Matt's work -- so he's been going non-stop. And, I've had a lot of big deadlines this week. So, it's busy, busy, busy.

As for Miss Beatrice, she can now crawl incredibly fast and is desperately trying to figure out how to stand up on her own. Once she gets that, she will be unstoppable --because she walks pretty fast holding hands. She is also adding new vocabulary everyday. She now lets us know when she wants "MO!!" food. Some people swear she also says "Thank You" -- and it does sound like it, but I think the jury's still out.

Finally, Bea spent her first night away from both Matt and I last Saturday. We went to an engineering banquet in Duluth (a few house north of Minneapolis) and Bea stayed with Grandma Liz and Grandpa Dick. A good time was had by all.

Hope all is well with you!
Melissa

She Scoots, She Crawls!

Hello to everyone and Happy Mothers' Day! Since we last posted, Bea has hit a very important milestone - she figured out how to crawl. She is now all over the place and particularly likes to antagonize the dog and the house plants. She is also becoming an actress... once she crawls close enough to any person she thinks will pick her up, she does a bellyflop (on purpose) and and lays on the floor "crying" (eh-heh, eh-heh, eh-heeeeeh). Then she peaks up to see if the intended target adult is looking. She has several other attention ploys, too. Lovely.

Although crawling is good, she REALLY likes to walk with people holding her hands. We do it until our backs give out. Luckily this weekend, we saw lots of both sets of grandparents, so there were more people to take turns.

Bea has also had many new culinary experiences, because she is eating alot more grown-up food now. Two of the highlights include yesterday when she had taco meat (mildly spicy). She took a bite and shivered all over. Then she tried to get her hands in the rest of the pan!! She loved it. Today, she had a few bites of Mom's special Mothers' Day Blizzard. She liked that a lot, too. She was a bit surprised by the coldness, but then was so intent on having more that Daddy had to distract her. That will teach me to wait until the end before I give her a taste of something good!

Today was my second Mothers' Day, so I'm an old veteran. I'll post a picture, but I have to get it from Grandma Liz. I hope everyone is well!

Enjoy Spring!
Melissa

And One (Year)

Hi. It's Matt. Yesterday was my birthday. Just one more year gone by, kinda. Today marks the one-year anniverary of Bea coming home from the hospital. I believe it was three days before Bea came home that I was doing the evening shift at the hospital and gave Bea her first bottle. She pounded it in about 7 minutes, apparently a near record for a baby that age excluding the fact it was given to her by her Dad - apparently dads are less talented in the bottle department then moms. The next morning they told Melissa that Bea could come home the next day (my birthday). Well since Melissa was on bed rest for 90 days and including the the last 60 days in the hospital, and Bea was born another 56 days early, we weren't ready at all and we asked for an extra day to get ready. We had a crib that that was it. So I spent my birthday last year with my father-in-law with two shopping carts at Babies-R-Us and bought everything. It was like a $500 bill. At 10 pm on my birthday we just had finished dinner and Melissa essentially told me to hurry up and eat my piece of cake so we could open presents and keep on working or whatever we were doing.


Fast forward to yesterday when we had a nice birthday lunch with family and Melissa and I went out for a nice dinner and movie date. Not having to eat your food as fast as you can (before someone gets fussy) is pretty nice. Unlike our last date on Valentines day Melissa kept her food down (no flu yet). As you can see on the picture of me and Bea, it was a little chillier then normal. The average temperature is 63 degrees, so the snow and wind chill of 10 degrees or whatever it is wasn't appreciated. I told Melissa we have an equal chance of an 85 to 95 degree day as the cold weekend we've had.

We liked Bea a year ago, but a 12 month old (or in our case a 10 month old full term) is a lot, lot, lot more fun then a 2 month pre-term baby. Yesterday we had a long back and forth conversation to the tune of "AAAAAAAHHH" and today it was "YAYAYA". Other recent highlights including playing superwoman and flying towards her birthday balloon (with a huge grin and multiple vocal signs of pleasure), holding her hand or preferably letting her hold her little toy car while learning how to walk. She doesn't crawl yet, other then backwards into things and getting really pissed off or spinning circles, but she loves walking (with some assistance). She's generally a non-stop smiler with lots of laughs and head bobs (to the beat of a good tune). The enormous grin when waking her up and the non-stop dialogue when changing her are pretty good too. Basically Melissa and I are having a blast with her.

I wonder what next year will bring.