Anna learning how to do new things all the time and having her first experiences. After a few tries, she has learned that the grass is ok and the she can pull it and try to eat it. She gets a little angry when you put her knees and hands first on the ground, but she's coming around.
A few weekends ago we went to Calvin College's perennial sale and got a few native plants to start my perennial garden. She was able to don her new sun hats. Uncle Alex and Aunt Nicole joined us later for lunch. 
Anna finally can touch the ground flat footed in the walker Grandma and Grandpa Tiemens got her for Christmas. Although she only has figured out how to go backward in it, it won't be long till she'll be scooting all over the place and we'll really have to go get some gates. Her hair is also getting a bit longer, more like fuzz standing on end and her mullet has disappeared with the growth of her melon. It's still pretty light, but so was mine and now I'm a lighter brown color. So we'll see! Her eyes have seemed to stay the bright blue too.
Uncle Alex and Aunt Nicole visited all of us througout the school year - this is the result of their last visit before school let out. Anna is wearing her Build-a-Bear outfit, the Pistons jersey. And it fits for goodness sake!
Anna has expanded her pallet to 2nd stage foods. The doctor gave me the ok after the last visit to move her on and she hasn't looked back. She's eating chicken and rice, turkey and rice, chicken noodle, all kinds of mixed fruits and veggies along with oatmeal all with a smile on her face. We've also transitioned her to 4 bottles at 7 oz each from 5 bottles at 6 oz each. She's fine with it.
Anna has really developed her personality in the last few weeks. She's become more independant with her doing her "army crawl" across the floor and getting into the tiniest of things on the floor - like thread, hair, bits of whatever. The video below is when she first started "crawling" - now she cruises a lot quicker.Needless to say the carpet will have to be vacuumed more often now. She doesn't miss a thing, she'll follow us, our voices or if something falls to the floor, she'll flop over to see where it went. Her vocabulary has reached to "ga ga", "ba ba" and screaming in short bursts. She's starting to mimic us with making those noises, making raspberry noises and the "do it again" with playing with mom and dad. She's figured out how to make sounds with her arm to her mouth and likes it when we put our hands out for her to make a noise and us to make it sound funny. Yesterday we started to figure out how to give kisses - they are open mouthed, sloppy drooly kisses, but amazing little Anna kisses they are. She has also figured out tonight how to clap - she watched us do it and she started doing that tonight. That was great! She giggles all the time, talks to animals and small children in screaming sounds, she is truely amazing and we love seeing her grow everyday.
Since we're trying to do fun, more local things due to the crazy gas prices, we invested in a pack and play to take with us if we're staying late somewhere or just to contain and entertain her. And as with everything else, it's edible. 
With all our landscaping endevours, we got a wheelbarrow as well. It's worked out wonderful and Anna liked it for about 2 minutes while I tried to take a cute picture.
We tried. Anna doesn't like to be smooshed for too long.
With all our landscaping endevours, we got a wheelbarrow as well. It's worked out wonderful and Anna liked it for about 2 minutes while I tried to take a cute picture.
We tried. Anna doesn't like to be smooshed for too long.
She has the best smile!
One morning before work, she was cuddling with Hairy Scary Guy and it was like I caught her red handed - hand up in the air and all. Too funny!
It was time for another photo shoot and she took to it very well! This was a dress that her "Grandma" Carol got for her. And of course I had a sun hat to match. She even sat in the grass without complaining!
We're all doing well here. Anna is obviously doing so many new things each week and we're loving being parents to her. The landscaping is our first project this spring/summer and we've about finished that. We have some other exterior maintanance to do yet and then we'd like to get some other rooms in the house painted and decorated to our tastes and continuing the "decluttering" of our lives we started at the beginning of the year. So far it's going well. Work for me has been crazy busy the last few weeks due to trade show season, but we're wrapping that up this week now. Gary's work has calmed down a bit since school has let out - he now can wear shorts and leave at 4:30 each day! Lucky bum. Our neighborhood is filling up - only one house open now. It's mostly couples our age and a new next door neighbors are empty nesters and wonderful people! So we're looking forward to getting know everyone a bit more this summer. Gary and I are still volunteering for the nursery at church - one Sunday Gary was with 17 - 2 year olds! Hehe. He made it through. We keep Anna in church for the music at the beginning as she seems to really like it and then take her to play with her friends. We're doing through a series right now called "Desperate Households." It's been great so far! It's taking different stages of life or different generations of life and teaching us how to pray for them, how to make relationships stronger, what to work on within ourselves - we've really enjoyed it and have had great conversations about it. Otherwise, we've been camping out at home, getting outside and finding new things to do. We're keeping busy that's for sure!
Well, I'll leave you on that note as it's time to wrap up for the evening. I hope all is well with everyone - sorry I haven't been as on the ball with the blog as of recent, but I'm sure you understand and will try my best to keep it updated more often.
Have a great rest of the week!
Love,
Gary, Christie and the Booger
Then Anna had her first experience playing in the grass while Gary and Uncle Alex raked the yard. She seemed to like it. I'm sure as we do it more, she'll want to put the grass and all that's around it in her mouth.
We've been to the doctor with Anna 4 times in about 3 weeks. It sounds like a lot, but we're really not "those" parents. We brought her in the first time b/c Gary and daycare had noticed she was pulling her ear a lot. So she goes in, doctor said she was either on her way to get better or worse and to bring her in in 2 days and he could tell. So brought her in 2 days later, she was on the mends and all was good. A week later, she's pulling at them again. Made an appointment b/c we were headed to Chicago for the weekend, so we wanted to make sure she was alright. She was perfectly fine. A week after that (yesterday), I had to bring her in for her 6 months shots. What a trooper she is! After all those doctor's appointments, she only wailed for about 20 seconds, picked her up and she's smiling and happy as can be. No Tylenol this time either. And found out today, that she's allergic to the adhesive perhaps in the bandaids b/c she has some sores around where they sat overnight. 
She's definitely finding many of her emotions these days. She gets very scared if it's not mom or dad waking her up or there when she does wake up. Or she gets scared if I turn her around too fast, she'll grab on to our faces/hair/clothes to keep from falling. She's talks a lot and says "ga ga ga" very well. If something falls from her grasp, she doesn't think it disappears, she follows it and looks for it. She does the same with people who aren't holding her, she follows them like a hawk.
We spent the weekend over Gary's birthday in Chicago with my side of the family. Gary and I have been working on revamping my home church's website and held a meeting for it on Friday afternoon. Everyone seems to like it and it'll be a really cool site when it's finished. We headed to Orland Mall on Saturday, bummed around, had Boss Birthday's at night and Anna played pass the baby very well once again. Sunday we relaxed after church until we headed back home (where of course, we had to stop at Sherman's).
Posts
