Violet's First Playdate with Alex

Friday, June 12th we babysat my nephew Alex for a short while. He's about 5 months younger than Violet. They actually played together really well. And by playing together, I mean sitting beside each other playing.

At first, Alex was just playing with his giraffe and Violet was eating her veggie-cheeto thingies. Funny thing, when I set Alex down on his blanket, V crawled over to the edge and sat up there, almost like she wasn't sure if she was allowed on his blanket or not!

Take notice that while Alex is 5 months younger than Violet, he's almost the same size! Long baby!

Here she is with the veggie-cheeto thingy hanging out her mouth. She likes to leave it half in and half out of her mouth and sit there like that. Then she pushes the rest of it in after the first half has dissolved.


One day, if she ever looks at this when she's older, she may hate me for putting up these pictures. I know I wouldn't want pictures of me eating posted, but I'm her mom and that's what moms do, post embarrassing pictures! Hehehe.


Okay, so back to playing with Alex...here they are again, Violet still eating and Alex still playing with his giraffe.


Once V was done eating, she wanted to play with some toys. So I got a couple out, and Alex wanted to play as well.


At first they were both content playing with their own toys...


Then Alex got curious as to what Violet was playing with. "Hey, what toy you got? Looks fun."


"Excuse me, I would like your toy!" I really like how she's just seeming to ignore him. I believe she has learned this from being at daycare and having to share with other babies all day long.

They always want the toy the other baby has! =)

Not terribly long after this, Violet got bored of her train and started playing with her ball toy. Alex was very interested in this toy and kept trying to get it from her and I actually had to move her b/c I didn't want her to hurt him (the ball has colored panels that she could have accidentally snapped his finger between). Then it was dinner time for Violet, and Alex's parents (Kristen & Ryan) came to pick him up. So I didn't get any more pictures.

Overall, their playdate went really good. They are both such laid-back babies and got along really well. She's so lucky to have so many cousins close to her, age-wise. Noah is 5 months older, Alex is 5 months younger, and Josslyn is 7 months younger. Slightly further apart include Kate (14 months older) and one on the way (Tiff & Wade's 2nd), who'll be about 17 months younger. What a crazy bunch of grandkids from John's side, and that doesn't even include Natalia (4 1/2) and Anthony (9)! Holy cow! =) We're lucky we all live in the same town so she'll get to grow up with all her family nearby.

Playing with the Dogs

So, Violet really likes our dogs. She especially likes "petting", which is more like hitting, them. Because of this, the dogs don't seem to like her as much. Oh, and the fact that she's a little unpredictable probably doesn't help at all! =)

The other day, Violet discovered the rope toy the dogs like to play with. I believe at the time that Smokey was playing with it. She waits til it's on the floor, crawls over there, and steals it. He actually did play with her for a few minutes before he learned she had no intention of throwing it for him, which is his favorite way to play. That, and he really likes to shake his toys, and I wasn't letting him do that by her for some reason.

Anyway, here's a pic of her trying to get him to play.


After a failure with Smokey, she tried to get Daisy to play. Look at that ornery face!


"Why won't you doggies play with me?!!!!"


"Fine, I shall come and get you!" Notice Smokey watching her like, "what is that crazy baby doing now?!" Also, Daisy doesn't like her so much any more because she tries to pull to standing using Daisy!


"Hi Smokey!"


He really didn't like it when she laid on him. He very quickly struggled to get out from under her! But I did get a cute pic! I believe she was actually trying to crawl over him, which she does to our legs frequently by crawling up, laying over the leg, and then trying to push over! It's very cute, but the dogs don't like it so much.


"Doggies are so much fun!" =)

Little Engineer-to-be

So, sorry for the delay in posts! As some of you know, part of being an engineer requires a little OCD. I had taken Violet swimming for the first time on May 30th, and Laurie (my M-I-L) took some pics of her. That next week, I took several pics of her as well doing various things. However, I didn't want to post them because then my posts would be out of order! But I decided I can do it. So on with the post! =)

Violet always seems very interested in random things...she turns her little piano over to "inspect" the screw holes, she sticks her little finger in the saxophone on our little singing snowman, she looks intently at the wheels on her Hot Wheels car...things like that. She's a very curious baby.

Well one day, she crawled into the office and took interest in the router. She's always looked at it, but she's never really "inspected" it before.

Here she is reaching for it like "Oooh, what is this thingy?!"


And here she is inspecting it. "Hmmm, I wonder what THIS does?"


Now mind you, John was on the computer whilst she was playing with the router and he had called me into the room to get her away from it...instead I ran into the other room, grabbed the camera, then took some pics! After that, I did remove her from the router and we went into the other room and played some more.

Oh, and an update on the raffle I posted about a while back...I won! I won 3 bows and a headband for Violet so expect pictures soon! I picked a double hot pink bow, a black and white bow, and a dark purple and light purple bow. They are absolutely adorable! =)

Memorial Day Weekend

So, as some of you already know, the refinery I work at (presently owned by Sunoco) was recently purchased by Holly. The takeover date is June 1. That means for the rest of the year, we'll get our vacation pro-rated by 7/12's. Well, John and I have some trips planned for later this year, so that means all my vacation with Holly is spent. So, I decided to extend my Memorial Day weekend by taking off the Friday before and the Tuesday after, since this will be my last chance for "vacation" until the end of August.

By the way, in case you didn't know already, 5 day weekends ROCK! We didn't really do anything exciting, but it was just nice to have some time off. We did go see two movies in the theater: Star Trek (which was AWESOME!) and Terminator: Salvation (which was pretty good).
On Memorial Day itself, we partook in the typical activities...John played some golf, we barbecued with his family, ate some watermelon, all the good stuff. Although we missed my family, my dad was recovering from a cold and we wanted to play it safe so Violet didn't get sick.

Here are some pics of Miss Violet riding on the Barbie motorized car.

Note John in the background steadying her so she doesn't fall off!

This dress was handed down from her cousin Kate, who wore it on Easter in 2008. It is just adorable, and I couldn't help but put a bow in her hair to match!

She had so much fun riding the car like a big girl!

One of Violet's favorite thing to play with during bath time is her rubber ducky. Well, after her last bath, she snuck it into her bedroom! Actually, she was still holding it when I picked her up and wrapped her into her towel and I just didn't notice until we were in the bedroom, but the other way of telling it is more fun.

So now, she gets to play with her ducky outside of the bath. Here she is in the living room talking to it.


And here's just two more excuses to show of her big blue eyes and two-bottom-toothed smile!

1.


2.

Such a happy baby!

Oh, Violet's fourth tooth broke through around Friday, May 22nd. She now has her two bottom center teeth and her two top center teeth!

More soon! It's finally warming up so we should get some good pictures outside...swimming and blowing bubbles and all that fun stuff! Yay!

Biter Biscuits and Mother's Day

So, Violet is probably one of the only babies ever to not instinctively put things in her mouth. She's never taken a pacifier, she only tried to suck her thumb like, twice. And she's never put her toys (or anything else) in her mouth to chew on or what-not.

While this sounds like a very good thing, and it is, in some cases...it also means she does not put food in her mouth. When she moves up into the next class at daycare, she has to be able to feed herself somewhat. Well, she doesn't.

We've been working with her on it...with Cheerios and Puffs and the like. She picks them up now, but they're usually just to hold on to. If you try to get her to put it in her mouth, she drops them...just opens her little hand and lets go.

Sidebar: She also does this when trying to get her to hold her own bottle, but that is not the point of this story.

So, I bought some biter biscuits for something for her to chew on a while back when she was teething. The first time I tried one she just played with it, as always. Well, two weeks ago, I whipped another one out hoping maybe, just maybe, she would eat it by herself.

We sat down on the living room floor, and I gave it to her. At first she just looked at it, and played with it...but then I moved her hand to her mouth and helped her and she caught on! She actually ate it by herself! YAY!!!!!

So, of course, I had to document it with the camera. I also took a picture with my phone and e-mailed it to John (who was in OKC for a race) b/c I was just so excited and proud and I wanted to show him the proof!

Here she is eating it!




Check out the mess she made!


After a while of eating it, she started to play with it. "Ooh, it's crumbly in my fingers. This is fun!"


And this one is right before I took her into the bathroom to clean up.


Now, had I actually thought she would eat the biscuit, I may have been a little smarter and done this in her high chair, with a bib on. (The next time I gave her one, that's what I did.) But, since it was an experiment and I didn't completely think it through, we did it in the living room, on the carpet.

By the time she was done actually eating it, I had to fight to keep her from putting her fingers (coated in biscuit) on the carpet or on me...I also had to keep her from leaning too far forward or else her biscuity drool would go on the carpet. That's when I decided biscuit time was over.

She wound up eating probably 1/3 of the whole biscuit, which I thought was really good!

The next day was Mother's day (my first!). John and Violet got me speakers for my iPods/iPhone. I got one speaker for at work and one for at home. Super exciting! We did dinner with my mom on Saturday night, and with John's mom on Sunday late afternoon. We got both of them little wallet sized digital photo displayers that you can upload pics onto and it's small enough to carry in their purses.

It was a great Mother's day weekend!