The Fun Begins

The title of this blog is multi purposed. Its intended meaning was that today starts the beginning of the best month of the year! Or at least since Jeff has started traveling again. This afternoon Jeff comes home for his week off. Then on Wednesday when he heads back to work he will be dropping Johanna and I off at the airport. From there we will be flying to Ohio to visit my family for two whole weeks! Then, when we are done visiting family we will be greeted by Jeff at the airport and he will be home again for a week! Can you tell I am very excited about all of this?

Someone else must have been excited too. Look who was up at 5:00 am this morning ready to start the day?

 The second meaning behind the title is the fun is now about to start because I now have a very mobile baby on my hands! She has been working on her crawling for a while now but would only move a foot or so. Well this morning she decided she wanted to do some exploring and off she went. She would find a toy, play with it for a minute, then try to drag it along with her as she moved on to the next.

 

I got her to sit still for a minute to take a picture of her "Daddy's Roughneck Princess" shirt that she is wearing in honor of Jeff coming home in....five hours!

 Let the fun begin!

8 Months

My little baby girl Hannie is 8 months old today. Last night we went to visit some friends and their two week old daughter. I couldn't believe how big Johanna looked next to her! She was so sweet, she loved the baby girl and would gently caress her arm. She even used her quiet voice while we were visiting and only squealed once when she saw their puppy dog. Keeping up with last month's post here are a few Johanna 8 month old facts:

 -prefers scrambled eggs over hard boiled but loves squishing hard boiled eggs between her fingers

 -nurses 5 times a day sometimes 6 if it is extra hot out and eats 3 meals a day of solids.

-loves making clucking noises and blowing raspberries

 -her favorite toy is her plastic Minnie Mouse figurine our friend brought back from Disney World

-her favorite show is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

 -still has a gummy smile, no teeth!

 -practices curling her tongue, she can do it when she coughs and every once in a while she does it on her own! (Grandpa Brian showed her this and she just thought it was hilarious and has been working on it since)

 -Shares her food with Mommy and thinks it's funny

-loves to creep, pull herself up into a sitting position and if she tries really hard pulls herself up into a standing position

-her favorite place to crawl is over to the fireplace to play with the shiny door, why do kids always gravitate toward the dangerous stuff?

-crawls for a foot or two but isn't zooming around the house yet (which reminds me, I still need to baby proof...)
-She started dancing! We were in a shopping cart at the grocery store and she was bopping up and down to the music while we were shopping, it is hysterical!

-is back to taking her medicine very well but now sometimes doesn't like having her diaper changed and will try her hardest to wiggle out of it

-always falls asleep in her stroller when we go for trail jogs but never falls asleep when we go for walks to the grocery store or frozen yogurt shop

Happy 8 months peanut, we love you so much!

My Gym

 My friend Sara and her 10 month old son, Landon invited us to go with them to My Gym one day for a free visit. We loved it so much we decided to sign up for classes as well. For the month of June and July it's unlimited classes so we signed Grandma Lori up to come along on Saturday. Johanna loves the gym. Right now she is in their Tiny Tykes class, for 6 to 13 month olds. It is catered for the non-crawler to beginner walker. She has always loved being around other kids so this class is perfect for her!

 The class starts off with all the little ones doing their warm ups to exercise music. It is so funny to see all their arms and legs stretching to the beat.

 After everyone is nice and warmed up comes my favorite part, dancing around the circle.

Johanna loves this part too, as you can tell by her little blur of a face. 

 After stretching and dancing the kids get to go around the gym and explore the different things set up.

Throughout the class they set up different activities. She loves the swinging rings!

 Look at my little girl! She loves it.

 This was part of their separation time. They got to pick a toy then the parents walked away and left the kids to play on their own.

 Johanna is as happy as a clam when she is surrounded by other kids to talk to. She didn't even notice we had left!

Lastly, the day ended with a story and then some crawling games. We love My Gym!

My camera lens may have had a little smudge during class but I am also having a hard time capturing some action shots with out them coming out blurry. Help Staci!!

Summer is Here

 Can you believe that Summer is already here? Today was the third longest day of the year so we wanted to enjoy all of it. Ginger (GiGi) has a fun new splash pad near her house named the "Sprayground." She had a great idea to take the kids out for a picnic lunch and play time in the water and it was a great idea indeed! Johanna was fascinated with the shooting water holes. She would grab at the water then flinch when the cold water splashed her face, then do it all over again. Her favorite part of the day was watching all the older kids run around through the water. She would scream to get their attention and laugh when they got sprayed.

 Highlands Ranch has a great outdoor concert series throughout the Summer for families. They are free concerts that are great for grabbing a quilt to sit on, packing dinner up and beers to sip on while the kids dance all their Summer energy out. This week The Jersey Boys were performing Beach Boys and other hits from the 80's. Johanna had fun dancing and shaking her rattle stick. What a great Summer day!