Then Grandma called and someone decided they would talk on the phone and that in order to talk on the phone she must hold the phone. Yes these pictures were snapped during the conversation!
She has now made up her own sign for phone, I have realized, I don't know how long she has been doing the sign, because Mommy is a little slow. She really didn't have much to say, but she enjoyed giggling!
PS every project in our house is at the 90% completed state, we are hoping that soon we will actually start having stuff 100% done, but until you try to sell a house do you every get a project 100% completed?
This picture right here shows why we, namely me haven't been able to get pictures of Gwen lately. Every time she sees the camera she runs at me so by the time I get the camera turned on and a picture snapped, this is what we end up with! In your face Mommy!
This weekend as I mentioned, we visited Edie. We don't get up to see Edie as often as we probably should, but with Gwen it is often amazing that we attempt to get in the car and drive anywhere that takes 2 hours, it used to be so daunting because she would scream! But this time she was great in the car, unfortunately I didn't bring her enough books, I had toys, but only 4 books. She was very shy with Edie. Last Monday was Edie's 82nd birthday so we were planning on going up and visiting for her birthday and I was going to bring cupcakes, have I mentioned that I got a cookbook for Christmas that has 500 muffin/cupcake recipes. So I made orange chocolate cupcakes and we went up to visit Edie. We went to lunch and chatted for a while. 
This is the closest Gwen would get to Edie, but as you can see she really enjoyed the cupcake! Edie suggested we get pictures of the chocolate face!
Soon after these pictures we realized it was time to go. Gwen started to act crazy, her I am starting to get tired, fall on the floor randomly and cry when Mommy walked 2 steps out of the kitchen and made me stay in the kitchen with Edie and Grandma. We had a nice visit with Edie, on the way home we realized that if we don't get up to Edie's again in the next few months we won't get up there until after June sometime when we will have to contend with traveling with 2 babies! AH!
Yesterday we walked to the grocery store, Gwen was in the stroller, but we let her out and she had a good time.
Then we let her play outside. Of course, by then she wanted dinner and wasn't into playing outside.
We made her make a snow angel, can you see it?
In other monumental news, Gwen tried the egg this afternoon. We even had the same meal for lunch...ok not totally the same meal, but she ate the chicken from my leftovers and we split a pear...that's progress isn't it? Ok, so maybe after I took a bite of the pear she took it from me and wouldn't give it back. I even tried to slice her off a piece, but she would rather eat from the fruit itself, so I had to settle for the slice. So tempramental! Well, she is up from her nap now, time to get a move on! 
Tomorrow Gwen has her 18month appointment, we will see how that goes. I have some stuff to talk to her about. I don't really have much to talk about today, I thought I did, but my child, who has not napped now in 3 days, must be causing my head to lose all thoughts.
We had the ultrasound this morning. As many of you might know, I am not the most patient person in the world and almost walked out! I really feel like, if you are going to be 1/2 hour behind you should definitely let the pregnant person know, especially when you are supposed to have a full bladder (and apparently have to sustain that for an hour!), and you have a 1.5yr old (who pooped in the waiting room and we had to change her in the waiting room, b/c they don't have changing tables!) Eric walked up there before I was getting ready to leave and asked when we were going back and they were like oh, we are done now. I mean seriously, what is it about Dr's offices that believe that their time is more valuable than mine! What this translates to, is that we didn't get home until 12:30 (the appt was for 11 and we don't live more than 15 minutes away!) Shouldn't they have some kind of system like restaurants to manage your expectation of waiting times. You know when you come into the office, they say I am sorry the Dr is running behind today and give you estimate of your wait. I mean if they just told you up front, you could be much less irritated! Now, if you yourself are late for the appt (which we weren't) then I can understand having to wait. IRRITATION HIGH! I thought we were supposed to keep pregnant women calm! The reason this is important is because Gwen didn't get lunch until 1p, which is when she is usually already in bed, which means as I type this she is still not down for her nap, because she was sleepy in the car on the ride home, maybe I should have just put her straight down when we got home, but I thought she might be hungry (she wasn't). So now, 2 hours later, still no nap and I have to go to the grocery store and I didn't get my vacuuming done...this throws off my whole week people! Just when we are getting our schedule under control. Tomorrow is water babies, TH is Gwen's Dr's appointment! AH! 
These pictures are from last weekend, one of my girlfriends sent me some maternity clothes. Along with it, besides lovely pictures from the girls was a little present for Gwen. It is called a 'pet store' pet, a little dog, with a big head and a little carrier for said dog. She does like to carry around the dog and put other stuff in the carrier. 
I'll have more pictures/videos to upload, I am hoping this week. We'll see!
So, today Gwen is 18 months old. When people ask how old Gwen is I can officially say 1.5 yrs. We have been battling sicknesses and food strikes for the last couple of days which has made life not so fun in the last couple of weeks. We had some of the kids over from SS yesterday, everyone seemed to have a good time. Gwen was remarkably well behaved since everyone was touching her stuff! She didn't get mad or pick fights...I was so proud! She did start to lose it toward the end, she was starting to get hungry and kept leading me into the kitchen and trying to get in her high chair. I gave her a banana to tide her over and that worked well. I think she also wanted to be in the kitchen because no one else was in there but us, and that was just fine for her. It is a little overwhelming to have 11 kids running around, ok so 4 of them are not mobile, but Gwen is not used to having that many guests over.
So, what is new with Gwen these days, she is becoming very charming, she likes to wave at people and she will "talk" to people she knows. She is very good with the baby signs and is using more intelligible words, which is nice. We are still working on context though. She knows that when we go up the stairs she says up, but lately she has been saying up also for going down the stairs. I don't know if that is because she associates stairs with up, because she crawls up those by herself (without any help) and often gets distracted, when it is cold outside and I have stuff in my hands I work hard to keep her on task by saying up up up.
She definitely has likes and dislikes and doesn't mind telling you what she wants or needs. Her baby signs are improving everyday. She is so cute when she does the signs and is so expressive. One of these days when she starts talking we are going to be sorry.
The food strike appears to be over, for a little while. I still need to figure out how to get her to try new things, which she so politely hands new foods back to me. I am trying a new experiment with the eating, I will let you know how it goes at the end. We have a Dr's appt next week so we will see how she is doing based on other babies her age. I think she will only have 1 shot this visit, so we are looking forward to that!
Next week we are also starting swim lessons. That should be super exciting! Ok, so I have no idea how she will react to the water and I am not looking forward to being in a bathing suit at any stage of the pregnancy nor do I have a bathing suit that will likely fit and class starts Tues. AH! One of my friends also scheduled for the class said I should wear a 2 piece. Not likely! I have only worn a 2 piece once in public, and that was on my honeymoon.
No pictures or videos with this post. I have been trying to post a video for over an hour and it hasn't worked out, maybe I will post some pictures later, like in the next couple of days, but it seems that I will never get that video posted. Sorry!
Of course, she 'tackled' Daddy.
Gwen also enjoys laying on the floor, mostly on her belly while kicking her feet, but first she had to roll off Eric and lay there and smile at us until she was ready to get up.
I can't believe I just posted these pictures, but, I guess it gives an idea of a day in the life! |
 |
| Make a scrapbook - it's easy! |
Here is Gwen and the only toy we could really get her interested in looking at, in the box. We couldn't get her to open anything, she just kept wandering back to the chairs, until we tried to open this monstrousity, and then she was all over us like glue signing and saying "O", which she uses for open.
She also has some interest in her new baby doll, which she immediately stripped and we now carry around a naked baby doll with us places!
Oh, and Gwen in her new chair, which is now in her room for reading and such. Part of the bed/bath ritual used to involve Gwen sitting in Eric or my lap and reading MANY books, or parts of books. Now she sits in her chair, sometimes she will let you sit with her, but not all the time.
This is my Christmas cake...or as I like to call it velvety goodness! So, I am not such an expert on putting 6 layers together and making the cake look pretty! But when you cut a piece out no one actually knew that the cake was so lopsided! The icing was rich and the layers yummy and no one has complained about it so far! I just have to work on my technique!
On the new baby front, I have felt kicks and punches and I had thought that Gwen would be the most active baby in utero, but this little one is giving her a run for her money! The other night I was getting kicked and punched, I suspect because one sec I felt a punch/kick down low and the next sec I felt a punch/kick up high. So either we have another swimmer or I don't know what. We are now at 50% to not find out the sex, 40% to find out and 10% say find out but don't tell anyone! Thanks to all who have voted so far, I can tell you this is going to make one of our readers VERY unhappy, she wants to know NOW what I am having. After that AU game last night, I am still leaning toward my favorite AU players for the first name...if it is a boy, haven't gotten approval for these names yet from the other naming party, but I still have a couple months to work on him for those names! WAR EAGLE and happy new year. Sometime I will probably post a slideshow of pictures, a year in review, but probably not today...I have my Christmas puzzle to work on people!
Unfortunately it was bedtime and we tried to take off all her clothes to get her into the bath, and she insisted that we put the jacket back on. And since Daddy is in charge of bath time, of course he put it back on!
So, you might wonder why we would post/take these pictures, well this jacket is at least 21 years old. Gwen is the 5th person in the family to wear it, I think. I think some of the other wears of said jacket would enjoy seeing Gwen in it. Unfortunately I didn't realize that the jacket is for 6 mons. It fits her pretty well, except for the sleeves.
