Not what I intended to capture

My dad was here this weekend, and after spending the day with Baba while Mama went to doctors' appointments and a massage (ahh!), Hannah had learned to climb onto the ottoman and chair. Yay. As she was demonstrating this new skill, I decided it would be great to capture it on video. (You've heard this one before, yes?) So we pulled her off the chair, and rather than climb up again, she of course launched into a fabulous boo hoo routine. I'm surprised you can't see my tears of laughter rolling down the video screen.

Still our baby

So many of the clothes that she wears now are little girl clothes. No more snaps at the crotch! I found this outfit at a yard sale last year sometime and got lucky that it mostly fits this summer. One of the photos is blurry, but you can see the potential, so I'm posting it anyway.

I posted a few more new entries this evening, so scroll down after this one to see more!

Princeton Reunions

We went to Princeton for Andy's 10th reunion last weekend and had a great time. Hannah did well on the flights, for being a squirmy toddler, and renting a carseat was only moderately scary! For those who aren't familiar with this fine Princeton tradition, Reunions is a much bigger event than the typical class reunion. It's held every year the weekend before graduation, and the campus completely fills with people from the current class through the "Old Guard", who are people who graduated 60-plus years ago. It's a big deal to every 5 years, so we couldn't miss Andy's 10th. This is the year a lot of people show up with babies, so it was fun to go show Hannah off and to take advantage of the kid food, play area, and changing room! Pretty sure the class of 08 had a different weekend than we did.

One of the bummers about having transferred mid-way through college was that I don't have a really strong attachment to either one at this point. Despite my initial trepidation about the whole Ivy League thing, Andy's friends have welcomed me to the fold with open arms and I've really enjoyed taking part in this tradition. I'm pretty sure I own more Princeton clothing that either William and Mary or Virginia Tech. That's if you could the new shirt that I bought this year, which we promptly lost. We're pretty sure it fell out of the bottom of the stroller in the dark, as did our travel changing pad. Lesson learned about cramming the thing too full!

Hannah took advantage of the play area, a lot, and learned the joy of stickers!

Long day. 'Nuff said.

Current "faves"

Hannah's favorites:

Sitting in her "Tot Spot" camp chair (found it at a consignment sale)

Signing - she'll often go through every one she knows in hopes of getting what she wants. These include more, all done, milk, and water. It's like a dance to see them all done in succession!

Saying "chee" and "sha". Chee means food, or more, or I want - we think it was originally cheese. Ironically, she's not a fan of just cheese these days. Sha means a lot of things. Sometimes it seems to mean snack (do you see the food theme here?), but it seems to mean a dozen other things that we can't decipher.

Playing on the bed with Mama or Daddy.

Playing with kitchen toys at Pottery Barn Kids or the science museum - time to buy some new toys!

Daddy's hair brush and Mama's hair bands. She'll pull them out of the drawer, put them in something else, and cart them around the house. She sometimes walks into a room with every hair band I own in her hands. What a colorful treat!

Her Duplo blocks. She's getting better at assembling them, which makes her daddy so proud.

Sleep sacks. I realized that she had grown a little too attached to the one I made last December, so I finally finished the new one I was working on and got her to accept it. She gets really excited when we put her in her favorite one for bed time, which is wonderful for so many reasons!

Playing piano. Sadly, I can't play with her in the room because she pushes my hands off so she can play.

Dancing. When I start to turn on the stereo, she claps and starts bopping.


Lindsey's favorite thing:

She's starting to say Mama some, and she has this amazingly sweet way of pronouncing it. Magic.

Fun with food

These are some photos I've collected of Hannah in the past months enjoying the cullinary delights of our toddler kitchen...

Yogurt, all by herself!

Going for Daddy's yogurt. She kept moving closer and closer, hoping that his spoon would accidentally end up in her mouth.

Yes, that is my toddler "eating" baby food. She'll actually eat veggies that way, so it works for now. In hopes that she'd get the spoon thing going, I set the jar down on her tray and turned my back for a second...

Hannah has this great sewn toy that's an alphabet animal train. She had dumped out all of the animals to play with, and then suddenly got up and went in to the kitchen. I wasn't really looking at what she was doing, until I looked up and saw her with a plate full of stuffed animals. Our little girl, playing carnivore!

Guillot cousins

One of the best things I found to help me survive being a new mama was the New Moms' Group at the hospital where Hannah was born. As much as that weekly meeting helped me, the friends we're made out of the group have been just as wonderful! Little did I know I'd also be making family connections in this group of moms.

Family history lesson - my dad grew up in Dallas. His sister, Sarah, married a man named Larry Guillot. The Guillots are one of the early French families of Dallas, so there are lots of Guillots around and we even lived on Guillot street the summer we got married!

I knew that I might run into Guillots living in Dallas, but little did I know there would be two at the moms' group who are now a part of the playgroup that Hannah and I go to every week. We're not technically related, but our kids share Sarah and Larry as great aunt and uncle, so we're family! A couple of weeks ago, we got some great photos of the three cousins - Hannah and Lloyd are just a few days apart, and Maddie (the hugger) is a few months older. Maddie really enjoys loving on "baby" Hannah, and Lloyd is smart enough to do his best to stay out of the way!

MS150

Andy rode in the MS150 bike ride this past weekend. The riders go from Frisco (north of Dallas) to Ft. Worth in two days, with an over night stop at the Texas Motor Speedway. Andy of course did a great job and rode with some of the fastest folks both days. The ride is a fundraiser for MS research, so it's cool to be invovled in such a big event for a good cause.

Hannah and I were support crew. We were also official support for the Believe Team from the First Unitarian Church of Dallas. (We're members, but no one knows us 'cause we never go!) My job was to bring beer and cookies, Hannah's job was to entertain the tired riders. The first day we had a tent set up nicely in the "not grass", and Hannah had her first day of playing in the dirt. I kept her skin protected from the sun, and her clothes from her food, but not her face/hands/legs/arms/hair/nose/mouth/fingernails from the dirt!

The second day finished in downtown Ft. Worth, which meant hanging out in a parking lot. Hannah discovered a whole different color of dirty! She also discovered the reality of waking up at 5:15 and then not napping until we left at 2:00. I don't think she made it two blocks before crashing!