Happy Adoptiversary to our First Born
Poor Butters. He’s now third fiddle in our family, when he used to be numero uno! The kids love Butters to pieces — literally. Pulling his tail, his fur, poking his eyes out, and jumping on him. He takes all of it. This picture pretty much says it all.
Melanie’s 10 month Photo Shoot
Between holidays and road trips, I was too busy to write her 10 month post, so see the 11 month post for developmental updates! But here are the photos from her 10 month photoshoot. She loved the bell i had bought at the craft store while buying glitter glue for her new Christmas stocking.
She also had carrots on her cheeks from the previous night’s dinner — we were out at Sapporo’s and she grabbed the whole container and spilled it all over herself! What a mess. Then i guess i didnt wipe her very good before bed (i remember her crying a lot because she was tired). Whoops. When I saw these pictures i was worried she was getting another mole or something… Nope, wiped off the next day. Carrots!!
She really really loved the bell! Mostly eating the string.
I think she knows she’s cute. Silly girl.
Happy Thanksgiving with the In-Laws!
Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family.
We had a good time celebrating with my father-in-law and mother-in-law, now that they live down the street!
I made green beans and mashed potatoes and they did the rest! How easy.
Vincent actually ate some dinner this year, though not sure how much. He tried sweet potatoes (what he’s pointing to in the photo).
He was very excited about dessert/pie. We usually bribe him to eat dinner by saying he won’t get dessert if he doesn’t eat “X” amount of bites of his dinner.
Melanie had green beans from the jar. She was hamming it up all night for the camera.
She loved rolling around and finding different things in the living room floor.
Her mouth even found Pop-pops chair.
Vincent helped with the dishes!
Henry Cowell Redwood Hike and Picnic
Decided to go for a hike up in Santa Cruz. Melanie is big enough (but small enough!) to use the hiking back pack. Loading her up in the parking lot. It was cold and we only had a jacket for Vincent…
So this was Vincent’s first “nature walk” walking by himself. Tell us which way to go!
Wow, look!
He did good, pointing out “turtles” and “frogs” (really just moss covered rocks and trees), and we did see a live squirrel. Heard birds.. and… a choo choo train! (That’s when the hike started to fall apart, we needed to find the train).
One quick photo before we go find the train… can’t ever get them to look at the same time. Vinny distracted by a leaf!
The California Redwood trees!
The fall leaves!
Vinny wanted to be carried for a little bit. Mainly because he wanted to find the train… There is the Roaring Camp Railroads right next door to this park, so we walked over that way to see the train and then eat a picnic lunch.
There it is! Made it just in time to see it take off. Waved to all the people.
Nice picnic area. Bye bye train!
Kids ended up sitting on the picnic blanket. (We took Melanie’s 9 months photos here) Melanie was cute reaching for stuff. Vinny was super funny singing his songs!
Here’s his rendition of “C is for Cookie” from Sesame Street.
Melanie is 9 months!
9 months! Next month we will be in the double digits. These months are just flying by!
She is very content on sitting up and playing. We usually put her next to a big red box filled with Vincent’s toys like legos and other things. She sits and plays, reaches for things too, but just within her little circle. Her favorite toy in that box is a firehose. Not really age-appropriate. She also really likes strings and power cords! She gets real mad/vocal when you take them away from her.
I fed her puffs. She’s learning her “pincer grasp”. She has a funny look on her face after you feed one to her. She’s not quite ready yet i dont think. The label on the container says to wait until she is crawling with her tummy off the floor and she is not there yet.
She is able to rock up on her knees though. So she’s working on it!
It’s funny to watch her. She does get scared easily — watch the end of this video. She also instantly cries whenever she falls backwards when she’s sitting up.
When we went to the doctor for her 9 month check up, the doctor was a little concerned she was not crawling/pulling up AND not rolling over. She said two milestones not being reached might be a little red flag, so she told us to have a free developmental assessment by a professional. Jeff and I are going to wait a little bit before doing that. If she is still not crawling in a month or two then we might schedule the appointment.
Oh, and speaking of doctor, we did take her to the specialist for the mole on her face, and they confirmed it was likely just a fatty deposit that MAY go away with time — could take a while. So we should just wait until she’s about 4, then discuss options for removal (which would definitely involve general anesthesia)
I got a good shot of her new tooth coming up!
What Melanie would look like with Mommy’s hair? She’s probably going to get Daddy’s hair though.
We went on our first hike with her in the backpack. She seemed to dig it. (See separate post)
Melanie also had fun Trick or Treating at the Barnyard. Next year it will be better when she can walk! (Note to self, stroller not a good idea at the Banyard — too many steps!)
Happy Halloween! Rainy Trick-or-treating this year.
This year we decided to dress up as Disney/Pixar Monsters, Inc. Vincent actually is Mikey from the pre-quel, Monsters University. Jeff is Sully, I’m Celia, and little Melanie is Boo! I bought the boy’s outfits on Amazon, and the hats for the girls were from two different Etsy shops.
We went trick-or-treating on Sunday at the Barnyard like we did last year with our friend Kyle and Bonnie and their daughter.
There were a lot of great reactions from people on our family costume.
Vincent got the hang of the trick-or-treating.
We carved pumpkins one night while watching the Giants in the World Series.
Vincent is learning all about pumpkins and halloween at school. He even knows a halloween song! Its cute when you ask him to sing it.
On Halloween night, it rained really good. Our plan was to do the wagon again this year, but since the rain, we just decided to drive over to Pop-pop and Oma’s.
We left Melanie with them, then trick-or-treat around their neighborhood.
We went around one really long cul-de-sac. We used glows ticks, which was helpful in the dark. We probably hit up about 10 houses.
Vincent rang on the doorbell and knocked. He did well at saying Trick or Treat, Happy Halloween, and Thank You, He held his jack-o-lantern the whole time.
A few people really took pity on him and gave him extra candy. Also, there were not any other trick-or-treaters out! Guess we’re pretty hard-core.
We also got a surprise from one house — a man dressed in one of the skin-costumes. He was scared at first, but warmed up to grab the candy. But then! His wife jumped out behind him and scarred Vincent for life! Poor dude. That pretty much ended the night. Glad we didnt go to that house first! I was laughing.
We noticed when we got back though that a lot of his candies were wet and not really appetizing looking. Whenever Vincent wants candies to eat now, he says “trick or treat”!
Visiting the Pumpkin Patch!
Fall is here and time to visit the local pumpkin patches! Vincent gets really excited to go “i go puck’n patch!” The first one we visited was Borchard Farms, which we have started the tradition of going to each year.
It was blistering hot outside…. didn’t feel like Fall at all!
This year we went with Pop-pop and Oma.
This year they had bunnies! Maybe they have then every year but i didnt remember…
Found our pumpkin! Just one this year… and a decorative orange/white one, and a squash.
Have to say hello to the turkeys, birds, ducks, etc.
Melanie touching a freaky squash.
Every year its decorated a little differently.
Though i do remember this cat from lat year.
Our next pumpkin patch adventure a few weekends later was Hacienda Hay and Feed. I heard from my Mommy group that they had animals to look at as well, so we checked it out in Carmel.
This is where we did Melanie’s 8 month shoot.
They advertised a “hay tunnel” — we were expecting a little more…. but luckily its perfect for a toddler.
He went though.
Then wanted to “go again!”
Turtles eat pumpkins i guess.
A donkey.
Goats!
And more goats!
Vincent won’t smile for the camera.
Unless something silly is involved like throwing some hay!
Vincent Started Preschool
My childcare provider also does Preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the older kids (3 and up), so, since Vincent turned 3 in July, he’s started the school year in September. Picture above is from his first day, along with his very own “cubby” to put his completed work in.
They typically complete 2-3 worksheets and then do 2 arts/craft type projects.
I look forward to seeing what he does every week.
Each month there is a theme. September was apples.
October was pumpkins.
The also work on a shape every month. September was a circle. Vincent showing Daddy his artwork.
Here are his classmates! Acting silly.
Melanie is 8 months old!
My happy baby is already 8 months old. Big milestone this month is springing her first tooth! My childcare provider was the first to point it out. It’s still working it’s way out and hopefully i can get a picture soon if her tongue doesn’t get in the way!
Melanie also started vocalizing a bit more this month – saying common baby phrases such as “da da”, “ba ba”, “ma ma”, and even the coincidental “hi dad” and “bye dad”. Super cute. Oh and slightly scary because she can make really convincing “zombie” noises. It will come out of nowhere. She’s like a demon child. But only for a few seconds. Then she’s back to her smiley self.
We went to see a dermatologist about the mole on her face. The doctor said it’s most likely a cyst, but they couldnt really know unless they biopsied it. She recommended seeing a specialist since Melanie is an infant and the fact that its on her face where you’d want it to be minimal scarring. So we’ve set an appointment up for next Thursday to see a pediatric dermatologist up in the bay area.
While watching some video of Vincent when he was 8 months, it looked like he was starting to crawl already. He also was good at flipping from he belly to tummy and scooting himself. Melanie really doesn’t do any of that. She just sits up and plays a lot. She reaches for toys from that angle. I guess we really need to do more tummy time and even more back time.
We have been very cognizant of placing her on her back when she’s not sleeping because we basically did that 24/7 with Vincent from 0-8 months since he took forever and a day to learn to sit upright. I guess every child learns different things at their own pace. I’m certainly in no rush to have Melanie crawling. I think it is pretty perfect right now that she’s able to sit up and occupy herself with toys, but stays put! But i’m sure we will be pulling out those baby gates in no time. What will Vinny think of a mobile Melanie? (LOL)
Speaking of Vincent, he’s not too great with sharing his toys, and we’re trying to teach him to be better at it, but in general, he’s very nice to his younger sister. He worries about her when she cries (“Mommy, Men-nee cry-ing!”) and tries to trade her different toys when he see’s that she’s already playing with toys he wants to play with (…nice, i guess…).
We were cuddling on the couch once and decided to give her a hug and kiss out of nowhere! Though, he’s also hit her on the head one time out of nowhere too… I suppose this will be an ongoing saga…
Oh other developing news is that Melanie is what i consider “sleeping through the night” now — she goes down around 7:45p, wakes at around 11p for a “snack” and then is out until 6a, sometimes later sometimes earlier. Mom’s a happy camper. She still uses a pacifier for bedtime.
I fed her puffs last month, and she didn’t even want to put them in her mouth! Then i read the container and it said they should be “ready” if they crawl with their belly off the floor. Ha! Well, that explained it.
I tried again this month, even though she can’t crawl yet, and she did a lot better! She ate a few.
Still in 9 month clothing though i bet she’d fit in 12 months just fine. I think i’m in denial however, 12 months just seems too big for my little girl!
She’s definetly growing though – not just physically but emotionally as well. She gets real mad when you take a toy away from her. I find her playing with all sorts of things she really shouldn’t be playing with – like string, the remote control, mommy’s phone (which she managed to buy something that i didnt need from), small objects that she could potential choke on, etc… But if you take it away from her she screams and cries instantly! Oh boy, she’s feisty. I’m interested to see her more of her personality as she grows up.
Master Bathroom Remodel
Our first remodel project — and, boy, it was… interesting! It seems like we kept running into problems! But in the end, we have a decent new bathroom, so i guess that is all the matters! Details below…
We started off needing a bathroom remodel because the faucet was leaking heavily. It started as a slow leak, maybe a few years ago,… and we had a plumber look at it to fix it, but he said he would have to blow out entire wall to fix it. So we said we’d wait until we wanted to redo the entire bathroom. Well that day had finally come! YAY!
We decided to go with this company who helped us with our drywall/ceiling/roof redo project. We got the estimate, took a look at some tile choices at Emser tile, and paid our deposit. All things going well until…
The contractor coordinator said she was unhappy with the variance of colors in the tiles we selected. See examples of what we picked out below. The floor was to be darker brown, the walls, a light tan, along with some matching floor and accent tiles.
So they “returned” the original order of tile, and got a new a batch. This new batch was SUPER LIGHT compared to the original. So, the top half of the bathroom was white. OK, fine, i didn’t think anything of it.
The bigger issue was that they contractor / tile worker, didn’t line up the corners so that they met at the same spot. This bothered Jeff immensly. I didn’t care that much either way, which is totally surprising because this is opposite behavior from us! We asked them to rip it out and make sure they lined up. They agreed. Fine.
But when they redid the tile, they had to “reorder” the tile, since they used it all up. Oh wait, they still had the “dark, mismatched” tile that they returned initially. OK, lets use that… Fine, except for now, we had one back wall (top_ with all light, side walls with all dark (top) and mismatched in a very obvious way on the bottom! So, we had to direct them to rip out certain ones so that it just looked “random”.
Also, they put in the wrong floor tile initially. They used the wall color on the floor instead of the dark color we picked!
It was turning into a bit of nightmare, and the project took almost 3 weeks.
Here is the BEFORE picture:
And the finished product!
Needless to say, we arent using these guys again, though we had initially wanted to do the hall bathroom with them as well. I mean really… don’t these people do this for a living? Dont you know that natural tile had variances and that you should always order more than you need and make sure to “mix” up the tiles in the boxes so it doesn’t look funny? Now i do….lesson learned.