Our Little Family

My 34 week belly, I'm terrible at posing.
Sean and me, he hates this so much.
Sean's face says exactly how he feels about family pictures, but I thought this was cool.
Rosalie's favorite climbing ladder at the park, she doesn't look for pictures, I swear she purposefully looks away and avoids it.
The slide, Rosalie loves that too, she was looking at dogs during this picture.
Rosalie absolutely loves the swing, which is why we thought we would do pictures there. We got some real natural smiles from her. She does not pose for the camera.
We would hold the swing and then make her fly really high, so she would smile, she loved it, and we got a couple of good ones. Ruth is there too, in my belly, but we will probably have to get a few more pictures once she is born.
They seriously adore each other, you can totally see it in this picture. There is nothing I love more than hearing Sean make Rosalie laugh hysterically. Those two have so much fun together, and it really makes me melt. Sean is the best dad and really loves his little girl, it is so fun to see him with her. Although sometimes he gives her what she wants even if I say no, she is sneaky and knows how to manipulate the system already. Thanks to Sean for posing for a few shots, and to Linda for asking for a family picture for her birthday. I finally had an excuse to catch him on camera. And thanks to Nicole for spending time on a Saturday morning to help us out.

Rosalie

I'm seriously lucky to have this girl as my own. She is so much fun and so interested in the world and such a great kid all around. I am excited to give her a sister in a few short weeks, but I'm sad I'm losing my baby. She is so grown up lately, she sleeps in her big girl bed, she cleans her toys, she tries to cook food on her own (this scares me to death). I've decided that these next five weeks I'm going to spend every minute I can just loving her before I get busy with a newborn and lose that time. We will be having lots of craft time--painting and play dough, tea parties, pretend food, baby dolls, trains, playing with little animals, and going on adventures such as the zoo, the park, and whatever else I can manage the energy for. I just want her to know I love her even though I will be super busy soon. She is the best, and she will be an amazing big sister.

34 Weeks

I've made it this far, only 6 weeks left. If I can make it that long... I keep having lots of contractions, especially at night when I'm trying to get to sleep. I have lots to do, so hopefully it all gets done in time. I also hope that I can keep up with Rosalie these next few weeks. I'm just so slow and tired, and chasing her is tough, as well as bending over to get anything she has thrown or to pick her up... It is definitely a much different experience being pregnant and taking care of a 2 year old. But it is oh so much fun. I am so excited for Rosalie to be a big sister, I just know she will be amazing. She is such a caring little monster, and I call her little monster because sometimes she is just that. I also get so sad sometimes thinking about how I'm going to lose my alone time with her, I really cherish the time we spend snuggling together and playing, I hope that I can still manage to have some time just for her. Well I just thought I would post that pic of my belly, courtesy of Nicole. Hope you all enjoy.

Rosalie's song

Rosalie has recently started singing random songs all of the time. She likes to pretend to play on her guitar purse and sing a song and makes me dance. She is so entertaining and we love it. Sorry that the video is upside down, the phone is not very clear on which way to hold it in order for the movie to be the right way.

August Recap

Blurry I know, she moved last second, but here we are having a tea party with her puppy and she is pouring the tea and stirring it with a spoon. So fun.
I made a baby car seat cover, it was a fun easy craft.
Rosalie learned the joy of watercolors. She has a love of arts and crafts like me, it is so fun. The only thing is that when I went to clean it all up she threw a huge tantrum.
Sean worked from home one morning so I could do my glucose test early and he could stay with Rosalie. This is what I found when I got back.
Rosalie started carrying around her stuffed puppy everywhere. So I showed her she could put it in her little purse, she thought that was really nifty.
Snuggles with her dad. I just love watching the relationship between these two. He loves her so much and she adores her dad, it is so great, he is so loving and affectionate with her. She is using his hand as a pillow if you can't tell.
Rosalie loves to color, sometimes she colors herself.
We spent a week with my family. Rosalie loves her uncle Grey, and would sit next to him whenever he was around.
Every time we are at the store and see bikes Rosalie wants to "ride" them. She hasn't figured out how to peddle, but her feet finally reach the peddles. We should probably get her one this winter when we can actually enjoy the outdoors. She also insists on wearing a helmet, what a safety conscious little girl.
Snuggling with Uncle Grey again.
Rosalie also learned to love playing with playdough. She loves to make little men and put buttons on them. That is my only cookie cutter I own, so she uses it to play. It is really cute, except that she demands we sit with her and pretty much do it all for her aside from putting the buttons on.
New toy at the grocery store, she insisted on riding Pooh Bear. We had just seen the Winnie the Pooh movie with her, which she loved, so she was really excited to find him at Walmart.
Rosalie began liking dress up. She had only ever worn dress up shoes, but this month she started liking to wear the jewelry and hats too.
My belly started to get bigger, this is around 29-30 weeks.
Rosalie got a box of new clothes from her Gammy and absolutely loves this dress, if you notice she is wearing her clip on earrings and there are necklaces next to her which she was spinning for the picture.

The month of August was hot, we didn't do much outside other than swimming and we played at home and watched a lot of movies (I feel bad admitting that one). Rosalie had love affairs with Monster's Inc., All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Tangled. She also started to do a lot of imaginative play which was a lot of fun, and she had a vocabulary explosion. She learned a bunch of new words and is saying all sorts of funny sentences. She also was battling constipation, which is an on going issue. Something I really have no idea what more to do about, we have seen the dr and are giving her stuff, but I think she has a mental aversion to going #2. Until that clears up she is still only semi-potty trained. Oh well, she is just growing so fast and sometimes I don't mind keeping her in diapers and having her still be a baby. We love her so much. August was a good month.

Another new post below.

Some of Sean's Vacation

Astros Game, not exactly Sean's vacation week, but I'll count it.
Watching the Fireworks, Rosalie did not like the sound they made. And as we were leaving the stadium she kept saying, mean fireworks.
4th of July we went to the park and nearly melted.
Fireworks at the Astros game.
Grocery Shopping, she loved that helicopter.
Yogurtland, finally reopened in time for Sean's vacation week. We went as a family and Rosalie absolutely loved it.
Moody Gardens. Sean's phone had all of the pictures from the Aquarium Pyramid, mine are all from the Rainforest Pyramid. So that's all you will see.
Rosalie is looking at a butterfly on the flowers, she was so good and didnt' grab them, but absolutely loved looking at them. It was really hot and humid in this area, and she did not want to leave it. I will have to take her to the butterfly museum sometime here in Houston, she just loves nature.
There were all sorts of animals in the Rain Forest Pyramid. Most were in areas we couldn't really get close. There were bats, and parrots, some sort of big cat, turtles, fish, and these monkeys. The monkeys were loose and walked up so close to us we could almost touch them. It was incredible. And when we were leaving they started calling out to us like they wanted us to come back.
We went to a swimming area that is a really small lazy river and a few slides. Rosalie really enjoyed it, but was getting worn out because she did not have a nap. So we got dressed to leave and Sean bought her an ice cream treat. She LOVED it.
In the car on the way home, she fell asleep mid drawing. She was so so tired, she didn't even stay awake until we got on the free way which was about 5 minutes from where we were parked. So fun!

The rest of the week we spent swimming at our apartment pool. And hanging out around Houston. Sean also had a fun eye dr appointment, and dentist appointment. I'm sure he loved using his vacation days for that. We were so glad to have that week in July to spend as a family, I should have documented it then, but I'm lazy lately.

July 2011 in Pictures

I've been terrible at blogging, and taking pictures with anything other than my phone. So here is July, minus the week of Sean's vacation which has so many pictures it deserves its own post.Shopping at Costco, Rosalie loves the samples.
She also loves to smell the flowers.
Belly shot at around 22-23 weeks.
Favorite pastime of Rosalie is making faces into the camera of my phone, with it facing her so she can see of course.
Eating breakfast in a bucket.
Playing with mom's jewelry, I'm now missing 2 pairs of earings, but I think I lost them not her.
She was obsessed with laying in the baby bassinet one day. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with Ruth gets here because Rosalie is always trying to commandeer the baby stuff.
Yogurtland, a family favorite. Rosalie has to have her own, there is no sharing it with her because she eats it all!
Helicopter at Walmart, she loves that thing as long as you don't put money and turn it on. I'm fine with that, sometimes I tell her it is broken though so that I don't have to sit there with her for 5 minutes. Poor kid.
Eating frosting off the beater. She loves baking.
French braid. She kept moving so I didn't get a good picture, but I was so excited about it.
Swimming with dad, another favorite pass time.
Keeping cool in the pool, something we did for most of the month of July. It is so hot here.
Chilaxin and watching tv with snacks. Notice the arm behind her head, it is so funny to me that she lays like that.
Walking to get the mail and making me hold on to her stuffed animal's hand, unfortunately I didn't get a great pic of it.
Donuts, one of her favorite treats. But she mostly just picks the parts with frosting and sprinkles off and leaves the cake part.
Pigtail braids, her hair is getting so long, I love it.
Pigtails, so much fun.
Ouchies, this is actually a really long story. Rosalie scraped her ankle, no big deal. But then she sliced her toe pretty bad, more than a scrape but not needing medical attention. So I was washing it out and trying to stop the bleeding and holding her and she passed out. So then we ended up in the Dr. office for the afternoon trying to find out why she passed out. We think it was a combination of low blood sugar, because Rosalie refuses to eat breakfast and this was at like 10 AM, and being scared from having her first cut that bled a lot. She got her finger pricked at the Dr. to check her blood, but she ended up being fine at that point because I had pumped her full of juice and a sucker and lots of snacks. It was pretty scary seeing my baby so pale, her color took forever to return, and luckily Sean was working from home that day and was able to help calm me down when everything happened. I'm just grateful she is ok and that it was nothing major, but at the time I was a crazy person.
And last, a belly shot at around 25-26 weeks.

We had a great month and are just happy to have each other and do fun things together. I am going to try to get the pictures from Sean and will post our staycation week then.