trick or treat, round two

Rachel woke up this morning talking about it being trick or treating day.  She kept asking, "Is it 6 o'clock yet, Mommy?"

We all went together this year. 

Rebecca looked around in her car seat for the first 30 minutes or so, but then she started fussing.  It was past her bedtime and it was cold and windy (she was warm, but I was cold!).  We had already turned around and started heading for home because Rachel was tired, too, but I left and headed back home as fast as I could push the stroller into the wind in order to get a tired, cranky Rebecca into bed.  Rachel and Daddy finished trick or treating on the way home.

Rachel was so fun to watch.  She'd run up to each house, get her candy, and run back to us saying, "Did you see what I got, Mom?  I got CHOCOLATE!"  like it was a complete surprise and thrill.  And each house was just as exciting as the last. 

Now her care bear costume has entered her dress up bin, so I'm sure I'll be seeing a lot of Funshine Bear around the house for the next couple of weeks.

five months

She's five months old today....I can't believe it.

At five months, Rebecca is still obsessed with putting her hands in her mouth.  And I mean OBSESSED!

I remember Rachel going through a phase like that, but Rebecca's hand chewing phase seems to be lasting MUCH longer!  She seems to be heading toward a thumb or finger sucker--she can't seem to decide what she likes better--her thumb or a couple of fingers at a time.

She smiles a lot and is a pretty happy girl most of the time (except the last hour or so of the day).

She can't roll over yet, but seems to be getting close in the last few days.  She is pushing up on her hands a very little bit, too, finally, and will stay propped up on her elbows longer, though it's not her favorite.  She is close to sitting by herself, but is a GREAT supported sitter.  It seems to be her favorite position.  She can hold onto things for quite awhile now, and she's often happiest under her play gym, squealing at herself in the mirror and holding on to the toys that hang down from it.

She goes to bed around 6 pm, gets up around 6:30 am, and is sleeping all night, as long as we get her up to feed her at 9:30 pm.  Her naps are sporadic....I wish I could tell you we're on a good daily schedule, but I'm STILL working on that with her.  She loves oatmeal, and I'm sure she'd devour any kind of food we'd try to give her right now, but we're sticking to oatmeal for one more month.

She likes to be tickled under her chin and likes it when I sing to her.  She kicks her feet vigorously when she's excited or about to get upset, and she's easily startled by loud noises.  She "talks" to me a lot on the changing table, but otherwise she's pretty quiet, quite the opposite of her sister when she was a baby (and still is today!).  I wonder if that means Rebecca will be our quiet one, more like Mommy?  Only time will tell, I guess.

Most of this I wrote so I can fill it in in her baby book eventually, but hopefully some of you will still enjoy reading about my sweet girl!  She's growing so fast!

musings

*Rachel's discovered Super Heroes.  Oh brother.  She latches on to new characters like you wouldn't believe.  So while it was first (and still) princesses, then Thomas, then Cars, then Care Bears, now it's The Incredibles.  She puts on her "Super Boots," (pink cowboy boots), "Super Cape," (the felt Wonder Pets cape my mom and I made her when she was two), "Super Gloves," (white princess gloves, two sizes too big), and paper Spiderman mask from a birthday party she went to, and suddenly she's Mr. Incredible.  Then she slowly takes her mask off to show me that she's really just Rachel.  Thank goodness she reminds me, because I frequently forget, you know.

*Rachel's fascinated with the human body and asks me over and over to read her this Dr. Seuss book we have called, "Inside Your Outside," which talks (in rhyme, no less!) about the body.  So I'm currently sick with a cold or some sort of sinus thing and today she came up to me (as I was laying on the couch, not feeling well) with her pretend princess camera and tried (unsuccessfully) to lift up my shirt to "take a picture of the germs inside you."  I asked her why and she said, "Because I want to see those white things (white blood cells) eating the germs!"  (That's what the book says....that your white blood cells eat the germs when you get sick to help you get better.)

*Rebecca had her Help Me Grow evaluation earlier this week to see if she qualified for physical therapy.  She didn't qualify.  So on the one hand, it's good because they've determined that she's more normal than abnormal.  But on the other hand, it's not so good, because she's still not rolling over or pushing up, and they won't provide the physical therapy so she can learn how!  So I'm hoping that we can maybe do a few physical therapy sessions where we went before, learn what we need to know, and then I can do the exercises at home with her myself. 

*Until last night, Rebecca had been sleeping through the night for about two weeks straight.  I didn't write about it here because I didn't know if it would last.  I'm hoping last night was just a fluke (she was wet all the way through her clothes--which is all the impetus I need to move her up a size in diapers--I've been putting it off to try and get the most bang for my buck--there are more size 2 diapers in a package than size 3 diapers--but I'll gladly pay for the extra diapers if it means she'll keep sleeping all night!) and that from now on she'll stay dry and keep sleeping.  We'll see.

*That's about all I can come up with on a Saturday afternoon when I'm not feeling well.  Thursday night is trick or treat night around here, so I'm sure I'll have lots of pictures of my Care Bears again after that occurs.

a getaway

My husband and I were able to get away for the weekend last weekend without the girls.  My parents kept Rachel and Rebecca and we took a mini-road trip.  I won't tell you where we went, but for those of you who know where I live, it was about 2 hours south of us at a city on the river. 

We had a wonderful time.  I'd never left Rebecca, so I was really scared that I was going to spend the whole weekend missing her and worried about her, but I didn't.  Yes, I missed her, and I skyped with my parents a few times so I could see her (and Rachel, too!), but otherwise, I did fine with leaving her.  And the girls did great and were well behaved for Grandma and Grandpa.

Here's a picture taken at a park down by the river.

We didn't have anyone to take our picture, so this was a do it yourself photo with the river behind us.  I kept closing my eyes when I pressed the button so I had to put my sunglasses on so you couldn't tell!

We went to a conservatory in that park and saw some beautiful plants and flowers.

This is at the same park.  It's crooked, and not really a beautiful background, but there was a wall that we could set the camera on (we didn't have a tripod with us) so we tried it.

On the way back home we stopped at a state park.  The next pictures are from there.

We also went out to dinner two nights, saw a movie, went shopping, and basically just had a weekend-long date night!  It was lots of fun and a very, VERY nice break.  The weather was gorgeous, too!  Thank you, Mom and Dad, for taking such good care of my little girls!   

trick or treat, round one

Last night we went to our town's Halloween Festival.  It's the first year we've gone, and Rachel had a great time.  She's had her halloween costume for a couple of months, and it's been put away in the closet because she was so obsessed with it.  So the chance to wear it was absolutely thrilling for her.  

Speaking of thrilling, they were playing Michael Jackson's "Thriller" on the speakers at one point, and Rachel stopped in her tracks and started doing a very thriller-like dance.  My husband and I were cracking up, and I soooooo wish we had taken the video camera with us!  It was priceless.  How she learned to dance like that, I'll never know!

We couldn't believe how crowded it was.  We've heard a little bit about this event, but never too much, so we thought it wasn't that big of a deal. We were wrong.  We could barely park the car or maneuver our stroller around the crowd.

Rebecca was good while we were there, though she screamed in the car on the way there and the way home.  It was past her bedtime and she was exhausted, and here we were making her dress up and go out for the evening!  Poor little girl. 

Anyway, here are our little Care Bears.

See how crowded it was??

My eyes are closed in this picture, but I'm showing it so you can see Rachel's "belly badge."  She's "Funshine Bear."  At one point in the evening I called her to catch up to me and she said, "You can just call me Funshine Bear, Mommy.  Not Rachel."

And here's just a picture of a happy Rebecca from today, because I don't seem to get many of those pictures.

And here's an unrelated side note.  I was at church for MOPS today and when I went to pick up Rachel from child care the woman in charge told me, "You'd better watch out with this one.  All of the boys were picking her to be the goose during our Duck Duck Goose game!"  When I told my husband about it he said it was probably only because they knew she couldn't catch them!  When I asked her she said no, that she didn't catch any of them.  So I guess my daughter isn't going to be a track star.  But she makes a good goose, apparently!

fun in the fall

We took a day trip today to a state park and to an ice cream factory on the way home.  It was a gorgeous day to be outside!

Rachel sitting on the wall, waiting for me to finish feeding Rebecca

Daddy and Rachel climbed a fire tower while Mommy and Rebecca stayed down (see us?)

Here's the fire tower they climbed--Rachel was thrilled to be up so high

Rachel's stage--she was singing us a song and dancing

Another stage...a covered bridge

The ice cream factory

Daddy and his girls

Daddy and ALL of his girls!

Mommy and her girls

The trees were just starting to change--not as much as we had hoped, but still pretty

picture day

Today was school picture day for Rachel.  Knowing her tendency toward having difficulty looking at the camera, I decided to take a few at home just in case the ones at school didn't turn out so well.

I had to get her to tell me a "joke" (her version of a joke is a really bizarre story that makes no sense at all, and then she laughs at herself) in order to get her to smile and look at me, but it worked!

things Rachel says...

::The other day she asked me, "Mommy, will you get my shoes, please?"  I told her that she could get them and she replied, "But if I say please you have to do it!"

::She asked me, "Mommy, where's heaven?"  I told her I didn't know and that we wouldn't know until we died.  That answer didn't satisfy her, so she asked, "What kind of country is it?"

::Along the same lines, she asked me, "Mommy, what's inside God?"  I told her I didn't know (why does she always ask me these hard questions I don't know the answers to?) and that she'd have to ask God when she sees Him in heaven.  "But I don't want to die," she told me.  I said, "I mean when you're old.  Everyone gets old and eventually they have to die."  She said, "But I don't want to get old.  I want to stay your little girl forever.  But I just keep growing!"

::My husband was leaving to go to a meeting.  He gave me a kiss goodbye.  Rachel saw this exchange and said, "Mommy, you're falling in love!"

::She was playing with her stuffed animals and told one of them, "Your prince is going to come and sweep you off your feet!"

::This one requires some backstory....  When I was pregnant, Daddy and Rachel went on lots of outings to give me a break.  One thing they did quite a bit was walk at the park and then play on the playground.  During their walks Rachel would ask Daddy to read her the little plaques along the way.  Many of them describe the type of tree nearby, and one of them was "Shagbark Hickory."  Rachel came home several times and told me, "Mommy, we saw Bagshark Hickory trees!"  We kept correcting her and she finally got it right.

So a couple of weeks ago we were at our church's fall picnic.  We took a hayride into the woods and Rachel calls out for all to hear, "Look!  That's a Shagbark Hickory tree!"  And she was right--it was!  She then proceeded to tell our wagon everytime we passed a Shagbark Hickory tree.  I'm sure they were thrilled with the nature lesson.  What other 4 year old knows what Shagbark Hickory looks like?