Bunny Teeth

Sandy has two teeth on the top.


And two teeth on the bottom.


At Bill's work picnic on July 24th she got a lot of comments about her cute "bunny teeth."

Her bunny teeth won't last for long, though, because yesterday I noticed that THREE new teeth had popped through. She now has four teeth on top and three on the bottom.

One of Sandy's favorite things is to sit in chairs. It's actually the process of getting in and getting out BY HERSELF that she likes.

Early Birthday Present

Sandy's birthday present from my parents arrived today. I'm getting ready for a baby shower tomorrow and in much need of a distraction for Sandy, so I set it up and let her play with it.

It is a hippo that she can ride on.

The seat flips up so she can push the hippo.

It came with blocks that the hippo scoops up.


Here is a video of Sandy playing with her new toy.



Thanks, Mom and Dad!

Getting Ready for Bed

Tonight I was getting Sandy ready for bed. As soon as I took her clothes off and changed her diaper, she decided she wanted to get down and play so I thought I'd get some pictures.

Here she is using her stroller as a walker. She likes to hold on to things that move -- strollers, high chairs, the dog, a pant leg -- for balance while she walks along.

Here she found the diaper rash ointment. I guess I didn't put the lid on tight enough because she grabbed a handful. By the time I realized what was on her hand, it was all over her face and the wall.

Then it was time for Sandy to brush her teeth. She loves her toothbrush. I brush her teeth and then it's her turn to brush her teeth.

Does Sage like Sandy?

Sage has been really good with Sandy, but sometimes I wonder if she likes her or just tolerates her. I mean, Sandy is always getting into Sage's food and water dishes and using Sage as a jungle gym. But then I caught this on video. Watch Sage's tail.

Sandy is 11 Months Old!

Sandy is 11 months old today. She is 19.4 pounds (according to the Wii Fit) and 2 feet 4 inches (according to Bill's tape measure).

She is so much fun to be around and I can't even imagine not having my little shadow around. She is really good to play with toys by herself, but she always knows exactly where I am. I will leave her in her room playing with toys while I take a quick shower. I leave the door ajar so I can be sure to hear how she's doing. Before I finish my shower, I usually see a little head pop around the corner of the shower curtain as she comes to see what mommy is doing.

Sandy is happy most of the time and I love to hear her giggle. I also like to listen to her chatter. She chatters a lot to herself and when I ask her a question, I almost always get a long response although I'm not sure what she's saying. She says mama and dada and mum (which means give me that, usually food). She also loves to blow raspberries and will sit and do that for long stretches of time. Bill thinks she'll be a french horn player. One of her favorite places to blow raspberries is in church or other meetings.

She loves our dog, Sage. Sandy gets so excited when she sees Sage each morning. She loves to feed her - and sometimes teases her with food. She also loves to get into the dog water and food dishes. She doesn't eat dog food - she tried that a few times and decided she didn't like it - but she loves to put dog food in the water dish, spread dog food all over the kitchen floor, and sometimes even lap out of the dog water dish like a dog. I know, it's gross. Sandy has a sippy cup of water on the floor all the time now so I can quickly grab it and encourage her to drink that instead.

Sandy pulls herself up on everything. She loves to walk - as long as she has something to hold on to. She goes from person to furniture to dog - around the house. Yes, she will even pull herself up on Sage as she walks by. She also uses her high chair as a walker. She just grabs on and pushes it in front of her. She'll even hold on to our pant legs and walk next to us.

She learned how to climb stairs earlier this month. On May 9, we had some friends over and we were playing in the back yard. Sandy decided to climb the back concrete stairs. She goes up stairs great! She hasn't figured out how to come down yet, though.

She has two teeth, both on the bottom, and she is a great eater. She's willing to try everything and she likes almost everything. Some of her favorite things are string cheese, fresh fruits, vegetables (she eats frozen corn and frozen peas, it must feel good on her gums), and chips.

I love my little girl!

Sandy and Sage

Yesterday I took Sage to the vet for a yearly checkup. Sage is 8 years old and 83 pounds, which translates to 80 years old in human years!

When the vet came in, Sage was sitting and Sandy was holding her leash. He really got a kick out of watching the two of them play. The veterinary technician thought she was adorable, too, and took Sandy in back to visit the other staff and dogs.

I didn't have my camera with me at the vet's office, so I decided to put Sage's leash on again today and see if I could get a picture of her with Sandy.

Aaron's Birthday Party

One of Sandy's friends turned one and we went to his birthday bash. (Aaron is the son of my old roommate Jen who married my third cousin.)

The party was fantastic - food, games, decorating cupcakes. But the best part was the pinatas. There was a regular pinata for the older kids and a special pinata just for the babies that was made out of paper. Sandy dove right in, ripping paper. Then, she ripped off a paper chain decoration and proudly crawled back to daddy with her loot.



Once it was opened and she realized there were toys, she crawled back into the fray.

Here she is with her loot from the pinata.


Here's a couple of pictures of Sandy with her daddy.

Day at the Zoo

Bill had the day off work today. He got a lot of woodworking projects done in the morning, and then we spent the afternoon at the Hogle Zoo.

Sandy loved the animals. Her favorite were the meerkats. She got right up to the glass and one of them came right up against the glass to check her out. We tried to get a picture, but it didn't turn out.

She liked the giraffes.

Here we are with the penguins.


The closest we could get to an animal at the zoo.


Time to go home.

What a fun day! Thanks, Grandma Sherri, for the zoo membership!

New Bike Helmet

Bill came home with a bike helmet for Sandy. We have a bike trailer and hope to take her out in it this summer. She didn't like wearing the helmet very much so Sage tried to make her feel better by licking her face.

Sandy

Here's a short video of Sandy. I was trying to catch her clicking her tongue, but I missed it. So, there isn't really anything special in this video but I thought my mom might like to see a short clip of Sandy.

Crawling, Great Deals, and Pilsbury Bake-off Contest

Here is a video I took last week of Sandy crawling.



She is headed for one of her favorite things: Sage's food and water dishes. She likes to splash in the water dish, throw handfuls of dog food, and put the dog food in the water dish. She has finally decided she doesn't like the taste of the dog food (hooray!), but she's not above lapping up water from Sage's dish. She's also discovered lapping water like a dog works in the bathtub (my cue that bathtime is over). When Sandy heads toward Sage's dishes, I try to put them up on the table out of her reach. So now when Sage sees Sandy heading over there, she runs over and starts eating as fast as she can. What to do?

On another subject, I found some great deals at a consignment sale Jennie told me about. Here is a picture of what I bought:


It's kind of hard to see, but for under $20 I got a shirt & capri set, a dress, a shirt and shorts set, a sweater, and two pairs of shorts. I also picked up a pair of brand new, never opened shoes (Robeez brand).

It's over now, but the sale is twice a year. The next sale is September 18-19. I signed up for their email list, so I'll try to post about it on my blog before the September sale. The sale is held in the Hilltop United Methodist Church in Sandy and it was packed full of great baby and kid clothes, toys, etc.

Finally, I've spent the last month or so perfecting three recipes to enter into the Pilsbury Bake-off. I meant to enter them last week but didn't get to it. Yesterday I thought it wasn't the most appropriate thing to do on the Sabbath and I thought I still had all day today. Today was crazy and I just tried to enter and found the contest closed at noon today. Darn it! Oh, well, I guess there is always next year.

Strep

Sandy has a topical strep infection that is causing diaper rash. She's had really bad diaper rash for the last week or so, which is unusual because we have a great diaper rash cream* that usually prevents diaper rash and clears anything up quickly. Last night she also had blood in her diaper so I decided it was time to take her to the doctor. Of course, on a Friday night the only thing that was open was the instacare. We saw Dr. Andersen and he said he had just been to a lunch training where they talked about topical strep infections. He decided to do a strep culture and it came back positive. So, I'm feeling very blessed that the doctor we saw had just that day learned about a test for diaper rash that helped us. Sandy's on antibiotics and I'm hopeful her rash will clear up soon.

I asked if I needed to start calling parents of kids Sandy has played with about the strep infection, but he didn't think it was likely that it would be passed to them since it is covered by her diaper. I did call my sister, Molly, since Sandy and Lexie bathed together last week.

*We use Corona ointment. It is a fantastic lanolin ointment that is intended for horses, cows, etc. I buy mine at IFA, 1147 West 2100 South. My in-laws learned about this from a pharmacist when they were struggling to clear up diaper rash with one of their children.

Our Little Cookie Monster

Today at playgroup someone brought snickerdoodles for snack. I gave Sandy a piece of one and a few minutes later saw her with a whole cookie. She stole it from a boy that is a few months older than her. He was upset that his cookie was gone so I gave him another one. I'm not exactly sure how she stole it from him when he walks and runs and she's still just crawling!

I didn't have my camera with me - and I probably wouldn't have taken a picture anyway because stealing cookies isn't something I want to reinforce - but here is a picture of Sandy from today.

Watch out, here she comes!

Sandy has started moving and nothing is safe! She's been scooting for a while, but she didn't go very fast. Last week she learned to crawl. All these months I've been trying to motivate her to crawl by pushing toys just out of reach. She'd just look at the toy and find something else to look at or play with rather than go toward it. Well, last week, I learned what she is motivated by. My daughter will crawl across the room to get a half of a jelly bean.

And she's not just crawling. This morning I walked into the bathroom to find this:

So now she has learned to pull herself up, too. She's been walking around things, but she hasn't been able to get up herself until today.

Her cousin Lexie can do these things, I guess she helped Sandy learn while she was here.

So now I'm quickly trying to adjust to a mobile baby. So far it has been pretty safe to leave her for a few minutes playing with toys and trust that she wouldn't go far. No longer. This afternoon I left Sandy playing with toys and ran downstairs to get a package ready to mail. It was almost ready, I really wasn't downstairs for more than a couple of minutes, when I heard a low growl. I called Sage's name and went running upstairs to see what was going on and found Sandy eating the dog food.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter! I hope everyone had a great day! This was our Easter....

First, Sandy and Lexie opened their Easter bags. In this picture it looks like Sandy is trying to open both of them.


The girls played with balloons that came in their baskets.


Then we got them dressed in matching pink Easter dresses. I realize that we didn't get a single picture of them in the dresses. My dad took several of them on Saturday, though. We loaded them into a double bike stroller and headed to church.


We had spaghetti for dinner.


The girls loved the spaghetti, and required a bath immediately after eating.


After napping, they were ready to put on a second set of matching dresses and get their pictures taken.



And then it was time to wind down and get ready for bed.


Molly and Lexie leave tomorrow morning. We'll be sad to see them go, and we hope they come back soon!

Family in Town

My parents, sister, and niece are in town for the week. It's so much fun to see them and, since they live in South Dakota and Ohio, it doesn't happen nearly often enough.

Here is a picture of my dad with both the babies, Sandy is on the left and Lexie is on the right.


Tuesday my grandparents came up for the day and my aunt, uncle, and cousins joined us for dinner. We had a great time and we even got an official four generation photo. We have pictures of Sandy with everyone in the picture, but this is the first time we were all together.


My dad's hobby is photography and so one of the side benefits of his visit is we always get great pictures afterward. I downloaded this picture (and the one above) from my mom's blog. I'm excited to get the rest of the pictures he took. Look at this cute one he took of Sandy.
The main reason for the visit was that my grandpa got married on Wednesday, April 8 (yup, now we share a wedding anniversary). Here is a picture of Grandpa and Gayla on their wedding day.


Here's my mom holding Sandy at the wedding.

And one of me and Sandy at the wedding.

This is April?!

I was not pleased to find it snowing again this morning. I hope the snow storms blow over before my parents drive across the country this weekend to come visit us.

Here are a couple of pictures of Sandy taken this morning. You can see her bottom teeth in this one.

Here she has crawled over to my plant and is pulling off the leaves. I need to remember to take a leaf in to the local garden center to find out if my plant is poisonous.

Sunday Dinner

Last night we went to Provo to have dinner with my grandparents at my Uncle Duane's house. Here is a picture of Sandy with Grandpa Pete.


Here is a video of her playing with Grandma Gingie.



Here are a few more pictures of Sandy. She loved Grandma's roast and mashed potatoes. She ate and ate and ate.






Some more pictures with Grandma Gingie. Duane videoed Sandy and Grandma Gingie playing together, including playing pat-a-cake, but I'll have to ask Bill where the video is.





Sandy loved Uncle Duane! She smiled every time she saw him.