Week 24

Week 24 was all about partying!  We headed to Grandma & Grandpa Price’s to celebrate Grandpa’s birthday.  We had a good time, as usual, and Audrey got to play with some of her favorite people!  Audrey is becoming so much fun to play with and tickle, she really interacts with us, and smiles, and talks, and laughs.  It’s pretty hard to resist!

Talk about personality!!

This past weekend, we headed to Ft. Scott, KS, for a reunion with Grandma De’s side of the family.  We really had a great time, meeting new people and checking out Ft. Scott; we even visited the prairie where my great-grandparents lived.  It was a beautiful weekend, and Audrey sure had fun meeting new people. 

 

Mommy totally forgot the pack & play for Audrey, so we had to make do without.  She slept pretty well in a chicken nest on the floor!She never sleeps in her swaddle anymore.  I wrap her all up, nice and tight, and by morning I’m lucky if her feet are still in.  Typically, the swaddle is just around her stomach!  

Audrey got along very well with Uncle Jim, who loves babies.  She was happy to sit on his lap and prop her feet up on the table! :)

Happy baby!

Of course, it wasn’t all about meeting new family… we got to hang out with Grandpa Don, too!  He and Audrey had quite a “meeting of the minds.”

 

Anyway, a busy week again in the Looten house… Audrey keeps growing faster than I can keep track of!  She is really laughing a lot now, although she still get the hiccups most of the time.  She is a rolling machine, she is never in the same place  we lay her down.  But she still has one huge weakness -- a blankie!  She also started to enjoy playing peek-a-boo this week, which is really fun.  She is still vibing on her veggies; she hoovers a whole jar every chance she gets.  Guess she’s an eater! :)  Definitely our baby girl…

Week 23

Well, I have to say the focus has been more on the big sister this week, as we got ready for Laney’s 3rd birthday party!  But we did manage to grab a few good pics of Miss A. along the way!

Thursday it was a beautiful day, so after I picked up the girls I decided to take them to the park.  As usual, Audrey spent most of her time hanging in the stroller, but she still seemed to enjoy herself!

 

Down the slide with big sis… who wasn’t so interested in actually holding Audrey up! :)

And Audrey’s new favorite trick… sucking on her toes!!

Daddy and Audrey!

  

Miss Audrey has been introduced to some new foods this week, she tried peas and green beans.  This little girl LOVES her veggies!  I haven't given her one thing yet that she didn’t eat the entire jar!  She totally does the baby bird every time I put the bib on her and break out the spoon.  It’s hilarious!  A few shots from her first attempt at peas:

Total baby bird!

Anyway, no major new developments this week, Audrey continues to grow.  She is very vocal and talkative.  She is a very laid back and mellow little girl, content (most of the time) to just chill and watch everyone.  She rolls over like crazy, and is trying to crawl, too.  She loves to be on her tummy (no aversion to tummy time here). 

So that’s about it… we’re off this weekend to meet some new family members, so I’m sure there will be lots more pics next week! 

Week 22

Well, it has definitely been an interesting week for Miss A.!  Our big first of the week was in the last post, when we started baby food!  So far we’ve had sweet potatoes and squash, and she LOVED both!  We were a little worried, because she wasn’t liking cereal AT ALL, and we’d been trying to give her that for a couple of weeks.  Well, apparently she just didn’t like the taste of the rice cereal, because as soon as we started with actual food, she is like a little bird any time she sees the spoon.  Guess she just has more discerning taste than the average four month old! :)

She is also a rolling machine.  She almost never spends any time laying on her back anymore, she always rolls over onto her tummy.  She is very interested in in her toys now, too.  She spends a lot of time looking like this:

Love these baby smiles!  She is a very happy, smiley baby.  Mellow and laid back… which is desperately needed around our house these days!

She is also trying to crawl.  She mostly just sticks her butt in the air and chews on the carpet at this point, but it’s a start! :)

And, since learning to crawl is such hard work, a nap is often necessary!  She is such a blanket baby, just give her a blanket and she snuggles it up to her face and goes to sleep!

One difference of learning to eat as a 2nd child… dealing with a 2 year old’s attempts at “help.” :)

Last Friday night we went to the Providence Bowl, which was Audrey’s first football game!  She was properly attired in purple for the Kewpies, but couldn’t quite make it through the whole game awake.  Good thing Daddy’s lap is a good place for a nap!

Friday night we also went to Fuddrucker’s before the game, and Audrey wanted to eat before we were done.  So I kept her distracted with a pickle… horrible picture, but she loved the taste!

We also went out to Grandma & Grandpa Price’s to celebrate Aunt Kate’s birthday (she was visiting from Colorado).  Grandpa wasn’t there, so Miss Audrey got to try out Grandpa’s chair! 

So, anyway, big week for Audrey… she is growing up so fast!  She is talking all the time now, and rolling over, and trying to crawl!  I can’t believe it!  Sometimes I am so distracted by trying to take care of two that I forget to stop and watch Audrey grow!  I’m glad I’ll have this to look back on, that’s for sure! 

5 Months!

Happy 5 month birthday to our baby girl! 

We celebrated with SWEET POTATOES!  I think she got a better deal than her sister, who celebrated with squash! 

 

It got a little messy, but she ended up downing the ENTIRE jar of sweet potatoes… piggy, piggy!  Apparently, she’s down with this whole baby food thing, here’s hoping she keeps the same appetite when it’s peas! 

Hard to believe she’s growing up so fast!

Weeks 20 & 21

I know, I know… I’m a slacker.  But the last few weeks have been very busy for us, and last Thursday was the first day in a long time we were all home together.  So I decided to not spend a good portion of the evening working on the computer. 

Anyway, on to the update… Audrey is still growing like crazy.  She is a rolling fiend now.  We can’t lay her down at all without her flipping over.  The funny thing is, she likes to roll from back to front, while most babies roll the other way first.  But Audrey likes to be on her tummy, looking around at everything. 

When she is on her back, though, she is typically doing this:

She definitely has a serious fascination with her toes! :)

She’s been getting better at eating cereal, although she isn’t taking to it like Laney did.  I seem to remember that Laney was ALL ABOUT eating when we started introducing her to cereal.  By the second or third time she was a total baby bird with her mouth open.  Audrey, well, Audrey could really take or leave the whole eating thing.  She’d way rather nurse, and gets rather angry if we try to feed her cereal instead of nursing her when she’s really hungry.  So, we’re going to have the daycare start giving her some cereal, too, and we’ll start introducing more foods in a couple of weeks, when she’s five months.  Which is actually next week… eek!  Not sure I’m ready for that!! 

Speaking of daycare, it’s going pretty well.  She’s the only little baby there most of the time, so she gets lots of attention!  She’s had a cold since about her second week there, but that’s kind of to be expected.  I’m sure it’ll pass and she’ll get all better!  Overall, very happy with Cannery Row. 

I think that’s about it as far as updates… Audrey is still a very mellow, VERY smiley baby.  And she’s really starting to talk, too, which is always fun.  She loves being tickled, even though laughing gives her the hiccups.  And she loves “flying” in the air above my head.  And she is a TOTAL blanket baby… loves to snuggle with her blankie… any of them! 

So, now with a couple of random pictures…

She fits in Laney’s first Easter dress!  It’s a little big on her, but it kind of confirms my thinking that she’s a little bigger than Laney- Laney didn’t wear it until she was 6 months old!

Funny story about that picture of her, it’s from church, and I didn’t take it.  I have no idea who did.  But it’s cute! :)

Last Saturday we actually had an entire day to ourselves with NOTHING planned (it was wonderful) so we took the girls swimming at the ARC.  We’d been there for about an hour and a half when I looked down and poor Audrey’s lips were blue!  So, we decided to get her out.  I wrapped her all up in a towel and she stuck her thumb in her mouth and PASSED OUT!  The picture isn’t great, but I was trying to hold her and take it… it was so cute! She didn’t even wake up when we put her in the car seat!  She took a good long nap after that!

So there’s the update… not many pictures for a two week post, but we have just been so busy, I haven’t even had five minutes to take pictures of my beautiful family!  When I do have five minutes, I’d rather be playing with them than behind the camera.  Life with two kids is a little crazy!  But we sure do love watching our beautiful little girls grow! 

Week 19

Week 19 was a big week for Miss Audrey! We had several firsts, and she’s just growing so fast!

She’s gotten much more interested in playing- looking at herself in the mirror, hanging out on the floor, just chillin and watching what’s going on around her. And with Elena around, there’s LOTS going on all the time! :) And, of course, it makes for good pictures…

Love the ornery look!

This weekend we headed to Windermere with the youth group for The Edge (I’m trying to get a post up about that on the other blog, but I probably have 300 pictures, so I just don’t see that happening very quickly). Laney stayed at home with Grandma & Grandpa, but Audrey tagged along (she’s a lot less distracting than Elena, and, of course, I’m the food source!).

One big first from the weekend: Audrey slept on the top bunk! :)

So tiny in the big bed! She slept good, though- I had to wake her up in the morning! I love having good sleepers!

For part of the afternoon we have some free time, and it was so blazing hot that we hit the pool! It was Audrey’s second time swimming (she went at the family reunion), but it was the first time Daddy got to go with her! They sure had fun…

She HATED floating on her back!

And, of course, there was lots of hanging out with Uncle Charlie! :)

The REALLY big first this week was eating cereal for the first time!! She’s four months now, so we started her on some rice cereal, which is always entertaining!

Ready to eat! All smiles…

Daddy… what is Mommy doing to me?!

And the difference with having a big sister- she always wants to help!

She’s still not too sure about the whole cereal thing, but she’s getting better at it! It’s hard to believe she’s already big enough to eat cereal!!

Other than that, it was Audrey’s second week at daycare, and it went pretty well. She has gotten a bit of a cold, which is pretty much expected after her first week at daycare! It doesn’t seem to bother her too much, but the cough has caused her to lose her voice some, and it is just the most pitiful thing to hear her try to cry when she doesn’t really have a voice!

Before she lost it, she had really started to discover her voice before the cough, though… check out this video:

She’s really started just randomly screaming and “talking” even when she’s not unhappy. It has certainly increased the noise level in our house (not that it needed it!).

She continues to grow and change… can’t believe how fast it is all going!

Week 18

Well, week 18 was actually a pretty exciting week, considering the lack of pictures! 

Audrey has gotten a lot better at rolling over.  She can roll both directions, although she doesn’t do it often.  I feel like once Laney learned to roll over, she was everywhere.  Audrey seems like she’s a little calmer.  She can roll over if she wants to (usually), but is pretty content to stay where she is and look around.  She is always watching everything.  Even when we lay her down with her mirror, she’s more interested in everything else, rather than looking at the toys. 

Her eyes have already changed colors.  They are a dark greenish color right now.  I’m interested to see if they stay green or turn brown, like Laney’s did.

Sometimes rolling over is too hard!

Pretty much the only picture of Audrey that I took from our adventure to Louisville (read more about that on the other blog).  Sitting up in her stroller at the zoo, just like a big girl! :)

 

So there’s the grand total of good pictures from this week!  IT was a fun week, though.  Over the weekend we went on a little Looten family adventure to Louisville, KY, where we toured the seminary campus, went to the zoo, and just explored Louisville some.  More on that on the other blog…

This Monday marked my first day back at work full time, an Audrey’s first week of daycare.  It wasn’t easy to leave her, but it was easier than with Laney.  Probably because Laney was helping me take her to her room, so I had to hold it together for her! :)  But Audrey has been fine this week, and has been well taken care of, so I guess I don’t have much to complain about!

We also had Audrey’s 4 month checkup this week.  First off, the stats:

Height: 23 1/2 inches
Weight: 12lbs, 13 ounces
Head circumference: 16 1/4 inches

Percentage-wise, that’s 25%, 25%, and 60%… looks like we got another little girl with a big head! :)  And she’s gained 2 lbs, 12 ounces in two months!  She’s getting downright chunky!  But at least the thigh rolls are cute! :)

The doctor also took a look at her torticollis and said that he didn’t think it would be a problem.  He said to keep doing what we’re doing- putting toys on her left, encouraging her to look that way, and giving her lots of tummy time. 

Anyway, they said she looked really good, and she even escaped shots because they were out of one of them… unfortunately for her, we’re headed back next week to get them!

She continues to be a very mellow, calm baby.  She rarely cries unless she’s tired or hungry.  And she is a total blanket baby… she can be fussing and whining, and if you toss a blanket over her she immediately calms down and starts snuggling! 

Guess that’s about it from week 18… loving watching my littlest girl grow! :)