Oh, Snow!

We got 16-18 inches of snow on Saturday, along with most of the rest of the east coast. It made for a quiet weekend, which was kind of nice before our upcoming travels this week.

The left picture here is from the front door sometime mid-morning and the right picture is from Sunday, once we were pretty well cleaned up.

Reagan and I were quite happy to stay in the house all day Saturday. Tim shoveled the sidewalks 4 or 5 or 6 times, we kind of lost count.

Sunday, we decided to leave the house, first heading for Sidamo, which wasn’t open yet. So, I cleared out the car and we took a drive to Ikea to wander around and play with the kiddie toys.

 

A Busy Week

With Tim down in Atlanta this week, Reagan and I have been very busy. After dropping him at the airport Monday afternoon, we made a quick run through Costco, mostly to get diapers and formula, which made Reagan pretty happy. She's getting so big that she can sit in the cart seat and loves it.

Tuesday night, we had ladies' night at book club. It was a great night and despite it being a bit late, Reagan was a trooper and had a fabulous time with a wonderful group of women. Tonight, we took a drive through rush hour to my boss, Charles' house. It was busy and loud, but I think it was good preparation for travel and family visits for Christmas next week!

The biggest thing Reagan's done, though, is start crawling on her hands and knees. She's an expert army crawler, but this is a new skill. It's pretty funny, because she's kind of reluctant at first and really, most likely to try this when she's mostly naked. She's having fun, though, and I think she's going to just get moving faster.

Picking out our Christmas Tree!

Happy Half-Birthday!

Reagan, our wonderful, lovely, squealing, smiling babe-

Your first summer and fall have come and gone. You’ve traveled to and visited family and friends in New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland. You’ve ridden in the car, on the Metro, on escalators, in elevators, in your stroller, in various carriers, on a plane, and on a tractor/hay ride and you love almost all of them, except the stroller sometimes.

We’ve celebrated Father’s Day, the 4th of July, Halloween, and Thanksgiving, and we’re getting ready for Christmas!

 

You’ve been to the doctor, mostly for check-ups and you’re usually okay with being there – even when it takes forever and mom and dad are really impatient about it. The only part you don’t like are the shots, but we don’t like those, either.

   

You really hated your first bath, but then you loved your SpaBaby. Now, you sometimes take a shower with dad and sometimes get a bath in the sink.

As we hoped and expected, you love to eat and had no problem adjusting to bottles and working on solid food. You love apples, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, acorn squash, rice cereal, oatmeal, and peas. You have even starting to pick up small food pieces with your fingers and feed yourself. And, your first tooth started coming in just this week.

One of your favorite thing these days, though, is crawling. You love exploring the floor and can get to many of the places you want – even if we think you shouldn’t be there. You love play with and chew on your board books, legos (especially the little man), plastic shapes, and Freddy the Firefly. You really like playing in your exersaucer, though you’re almost too tall for it already, and you really love climbing underneath it.

This first six months have been fabulous and we can’t wait to see what the next months and beyond bring for all of us. Happy Half-birthday!

Love ~ Mom and Dad

A Tooth!

Reagan’s first tooth showed up yesterday. We had a bit of a rough day with a few moments of screaming, which I think (and hope) were due to the tooth thing. There are no pictures yet, but we’ll work on getting one soon.

6 Month Appointment

I took Reagan to her 6 month well-baby check last week. It was another long visit – almost 2 hours. She did well, but didn’t like when the pushed on her belly (or gave her shots). The paper on the table, though, was a huge hit. She chewed on it, crumpled it, ripped it, and slobbered all over it!

She weighed in at 17.7 lb and was measured at 26.5 in long.

On the Move

So, the squealing is kind of new, and we’re not huge fans of it. We’re hoping she’ll learn something new soon.

And, Reagan is moving like crazy. Not crawling, exactly, but scooting and army crawling. She really gets around, especially to things that aren’t hers. Admittedly, the clicker was a setup, because we usually don’t let her have it, but she will scoot and get to her toys, too.

Missing: Sophie the Giraffe

Description: 7 inches tall, tan body with brown spots and brown hooves, shiny black eyes, RA written on the bottom of a foot.

Reagan and I were off to a great start today. While Tim went up to New York for the day, Reagan very kindly slept in until 8:30 this morning and woke up quite happy. Our friends were all busy today and it was beautiful out, so I decided we could run some errands at Union Station, grab some lunch, and take a walk towards the White House to get our White House Christmas ornament for this year.

We had a great start to the day, with a bath and nap for Reagan. She and I started out for Union Station to go to the post office and get a watch battery changed – the post office was fine, but the watch is actually broken.

The day changed from there. Reagan was happily sleeping in her stroller, so we walked towards Gallery Place to find some lunch for me. It was warm out, but there was a bit of wind, so we had a blanket, but it kept falling off and I think that is what contributed to losing poor Sophie. Reagan had Sophie when we were in the jewelry store, but that was the last time I saw her.

I didn’t notice Sophie was missing until we got to Gallery Place – about 10 blocks away. So, off we went, retracing our steps back to Union Station. We did not find her, so I grabbed a very disappointing lunch – as could be expected at Union Station – and I was so distraught about losing Sophie, that I hardly ate and we ended up walking partway back on our route one more time.

Luckily, I was with one oblivious girl who was just happy to be out in the beautiful weather. And, Tim got home earlier than expected, so we were able to walk back to Union Station – again – to meet him at his train tonight.

DC Fun – Part 2

When Gwen, Sharon, and the kids were in town, we had much better weather for Sunday than Saturday. It was a beautiful, crisp, fall day, so we decided it would be great to head out of the city to a farm to do some pumpkin and apple picking. The pumpkin picking was mostly successful, but the apples, not so much.

We did the obligatory wagon ride out to the pumpkin patch and Reagan really enjoyed the apple bucket. And Collin was mostly interested in the hay.

We searched and searched for the best pumpkin out there – only in the field they said we could go to, of course.

 

And eventually settled on the ones we liked.

So, we were off to pick apples. Well, we walked through the apple trees and saw lots of apples on the ground. We only found 1 apple actually hanging on a tree and Collin picked it – and that made his day.

 

What an awesome day!

A Trim

Reagan's long bangs were hanging in her eyes and it was driving me crazy,

so I, very unceremoniously, trimmed them. I admit that they are a little uneven, but they aren't hanging in her eyes anymore.

She seems to be pretty thrilled with it

Getting Stronger

Well, she's not quite moving everywhere she wants to be, but this little babe is pretty happy scooting on her stomach and hanging out on her hands and knees. We now have a gate to block the stairs, so Reagan can have a little more range to move.

Fun in DC – Part 1

A few weeks ago, Gwen and Sharon, friends of mine from growing up in New Jersey came to spend the weekend in DC - to catch up and hang out with the kids. We visited with each other as much as possible, but the kids did get in the way a bit ;) Saturday was kind of raity, but we braved the weather and hit the zoo. We were lucky enough to catch the sloth bear feeding demonstration when we arrived. (Note: The sloth bears might be my favorite animals at the National Zoo right now. They sucked these little buggies so loudly that I was sure there was some mechanical device doing the work, but the presenter assured us that it was just the bear.)

We also spent quite a bit of time in the bird house - it was a dry place to sit and eat lunch. We found a very brave blue-crowned pigeon.

Sharon egged on this little owl. He was quite offended at her attempts to scare him and responded accordingly – though I missed getting a good shot of it.

We spent some time at the end of the day with the prairie dogs and Collin and Paige got to run through the tunnel play area.

Family in Philly

My (Tim's) parents were in Philadelphia so we headed up to see everyone.

Reagan had a great time with Papa Armstrong...

At the diner

Playing with toys at Ikea

Checking out Grandmom Grillo

She got fed by Mom-mom

And then we all rode in a bumper car at the bar

As you can see, Reagan had a great time.