Summer pics!

Summer is finally here! Here are some pics to enjoy of the girly girls!

It was the summer of..... 2009!

Fifth Month : Two under 2

First off, I'll post pictures soon, I promise! Maybe tonight. :)

We're in the 5th month of two under 2. Crazy, that Izzy's almost been here for half a year already! We couldn't imagine our family without her anymore. She's scooting, yes scooting, across the floor using her little feet to push her to where she wants to be and she's ony 5 months old! She sometimes gets the hands to work with her feet, but they usually work independently right now. She smiles at you from across the room, dimples and all. She's been on oatmeal for just over a month now and is slowly figuring out how to use her tongue to eat. In a few weeks we'll start introducing veggies - we'll see if she takes to them as well as Anna did. We also did the "cry it out method" about a month ago and it only took a few nights and she's been sleeping through the night ever since! Lovely for mom and dad, for sure. She flails her limbs when she gets excited, loves Grandma Tiemens hair as she giggles from her toes, she rolls all over the place and loves to find all of Anna's puzzle pieces to chew on. Teething for sure. She squeals when she gets to play with Anna (or rolls near her) and just follows her every move. I think Izzy is going to do things even earlier than what Anna did. She's very passionate about her bottle as even when we carry her up the stairs with her bottle in our hand, she grabs it and pulls to to her mouth ready to eat. If she even sees a bottle, she stares at it as if where going to float over to her. So cute. She's certainly a happy baby.

Anna is amazing us each day too. She studies every move we make, like how something opens, what button to push, how to use a napkin or how we say a word. It's like every moment she has, she wants to learn. She say's her ABC's really well, is starting to put 2 words together and has lessoned her "no" and timeouts lately. I'm sure that'll go in waves. She loves taking our finger and walk us over or pull us down or tells us to sit where she wants us. It's so cool that she's starting to really communicate with us and she's remember things we did a few days back. Like last night, she pulled me over to the stairs and patted the step for me to sit down. She brought over a catepillar car. Then I remembered we did that the other night where I rolled it into the kitchen and she'd bring it back to me. Smart girl. Or she's grab our finger only to walk a couple steps and then pull for us to sit down by a puzzle to do with her. Then last night was great! Gary brought out her beanbag chair and she flopped down in it. He picked her and the chair up to drop it back on the floor and she'd giggle. Then she'd said "again"! Hehe, that was awesome. She's having the typical toddler issues with dinner by not always eating something she's like a week ago, so we've been telling her that that's the only food she'll get tonight. She doesn't seem to mind, but we give her a snack a little later and tell her she got on b/c she ate dinner good. So far dad's a lot better at dealing with that than I am. :) I have guilty mom syndrome. She loves being outside, sometimes bringing us her shoes and saying "side" as she walks to the door.

We're trying to enjoy outside when it's not over 90! The sprinklers have been turned on a few times - Anna likes it half the time. Weird. We planted a small veggie/herb garden to see what happens. So far the tomato plant is huge but some of the others have had their leaves eaten. Most of my flowers are planted - still trying to find the time to spray paint my pots again to get the remainder on display. A few new bushes and perennials have been added this year. In the fall, some dividing and transplanting will be in order. We're looking to get some rock for the sides of the house (since the house didn't come with gutters!) yet this summer. We're hoping to finishing painting the basement this weekend (guest room: fresh day, living room: starless night and pure white) so we can start moving stuff back down there... oh, and we can't forget the 52" tv that has to go on the wall. :) We'll just have some little projects to finish up this summer, the rest can wait till fall/winter (can't believe I just said that). In the meantime, we're going to try to get the beach and the lake whenever we can. At the end of July, we're heading up to Beaver Island for what seems may become a yearly event. Fine by me! It's awesome up there.

We're all healthy, cool and thankful for our jobs and life. It's busy at times (well most of the time) but we wouldn't want it any other way! Here's to a wonderful summery weekend!

Love,

Gary, Christie, Anna and the Izmeister

5th month: Two under 2

We're in the midst of basement refinishing, with the mud and taping finishing up today! It looks great, dirty, but great! We're going to get the spare room painted this week so when the fam comes up this weekend, they'll have a semi-private and clean room to sleep in. With the sale of the truck, the purchase of the longed for TV's and all the special wiring and set up in the living room of the basement, I've decided to decorate the spare room with no direction (except that it'll flow with the colors of the living room and carry the chair rail through the room) from Gary. Not that one or the other gets the ultimate say over room, it just defaulted that Gary put a lot of thought into his networking and surround sound, so I declared the spare room mine. :) So with my cronic blog reading, I've been inspired to do the room in a beachy, coastal decor. Very soft, washed out colors, with all of the accessories repurposed from the thrift store and a homemade headboard. So excited! As with everything with 2 little kiddies, it'll be a process, but at least I have an idea to work with. The living room will have a 3/4 chair rail with the bottom being white with trim to create some dimension and above the chair rail will be a deep shade of navy blue. With all this, built in desks and cabinets (all still to be determined as we keep finding new inspiration for what we realy want to do with our all purpose living room), a living space, plenty of storage for all our crafty, computer, kid and house stuff. Yay!

As for the kiddies, they're doing great! Izzy is getting better with sleeping through the night, but only one time still works for us if that's the way she is. She sleeps like a little frog with her legs on the sides of her as opposed to Anna's method of butt up in the air. Both extremely cute. Izzy started on oatmeal a couple weeks ago and seems to love it! Although she doesn't quite get how to take food off her spoon other than using her tongue like she drinks her bottle, but most of it makes it in her mouth! So we thought Anna was a quick learner, Miss Izzy has figuring out how to use her legs or leg rather to scoot herself closer to whatever she just lost or wants. She's only 4 3/4 months old and she's starting to figure out the whole crawling thing! I'm going to video that this week. She's getting to be a big girl, looking more like a baby than a newborn. Her little giggle and bright smile is always something to brighten up our day. It does go by fast, but I'm glad to still have an itty bitty thing around the house. :)

Anna is growing up more and more each day. She's learning new words every day, seems to know what a sentence is but doesn't have the right words to put it all together yet. She's adding new animal sounds with the latest being a tiger, lion and bear all growling the same way, but so cute. She does a monkey, snake, horse and sheep really well too. She can repeat the alphabet very clearly except for a few letters. She's taken to what sound like singing these days. Love it. She still loves "no" and seems to get frustrated with little kids and tends to bite to get our her frustrations. So immediately mom got the book out "Teeth are not for biting". Hehe. But we found she bites herself and starts bawling. Don't get it. She gets "ouchys" a lot and needs them kissed a lot. So with all that said, we've started working in timeouts and that's seemed to be quite effective. She gives hugs and kisses (when she wants to) very well, helps out with giving Izzy her pipe back, giving her the small Elmo to play with while she plays with crazy Happy Birthday Elmo. :) She likes to play with Izzy, but then it turns into what can I get away with by stepping over Izzy, stepping on Izzy's limbs, ramming her pipe in her mouth and pulling her hair. She doesn't know her own strength but knows that timeouts follow if she continues mauling her poor little sister.

Gary and I had our first kidless weekend (Izzy's first time overnight somewhere else)! We headed to Detroit as neither of us had spent much time over there. We got a river view room in the Marriott, walked the riverwalk, did some shopping, relaxed and hit up a Tiger's game and a great dinner at Detroit Beer Co. A well needed, rejuvinated weekend for the parents while the grandparents and Aunt "She-ya" enjoyed spoiling the girls over the weekend. Back to reality, but excited to start painting the basement and getting ready for family this weekend!

Hope everyone had a wonderful, rain free weekend! Hopefully summer will start soon! I'll post more pictures soon (and maybe find a better way to get pictures up faster)!

Love to you all,
GCAI