A Party

On Saturday we had a fabulous time with some of my friends from high school that I don't get to see very often. Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at pulling out my camera that day, so I only took a picture of Holly and Kyra opening their shower gifts. The park was lovely, a bit chilly in the morning though. Sterling had to take off to work about an hour after everyone got there, which was really sad, so...we'll have to do it again soon!

Luke and Holly. They are having a boy. I am SO excited for them! 

Kevin and Kyra, also having a boy. SUPER excited for them too!!!

LOVE this. I said "smile Ruthie!" and this is what I got. Best ever.

There was a little girl, who had a little curl. You can't tell too much, cause it blends into the door behind her, but I put a curler in the little tuft of hair on top of her head. It looked a little ridiculous, unfortunately. But fun!

This is Ruth's favorite bear, Norman. We even took Norman to church with us on Sunday to keep her happy..and it really worked, she played and played with him. She also likes to sleep with him. I came in the other day, and she was fast asleep like this. So sweet. (This was in her pack 'n play, during the time where she could crawl out of her crib, and before we lowered the rails on her crib.)

Some things:

(Have you seen the video floating around that shows the little girl with curly hair that is telling herself all the things she likes? Sterling and I have adopted that video into our home and now, in her 4 yr old self-confident voice, we often have rants about the things we LOVE-instead of like-....if you haven't seen the video, go watch it 'Jessica's Pep Talk' on youtube. This post will make more sense.)

I LOVE my baby--and how she gets super hyper when she's over tired and starts laughing at everything.
I LOVE my hubby. (And how he puts up with me when I come up to him and start saying "I love your hair, I love your eyes, I love your shirt, I love your eyelids, I love your eyelashes, I love your smarts....etc, etc.)
I LOVE the warm weather. (Are we out of the spring-time ups and downs? I hope so)
I LOVE baby books.
I LOVE watching Ruthie play the piano.
I LOVE my new magnet board (made off pinterest) and the updated family snapshots I put up.
I LOVE watching Ruthie pushing out the dregs from a gogurt tube.
I LOVE the old man at Sam's Club that tells me EVERY TIME how much Ruthie looks like his granddaughter.
I LOVE my mom who stopped by to give me a hemmed pair of pants, and in the process made all my loaves of bread look beautiful (and even complimented my dough!).
I LOVE living by moutain trails.
I LOVE my life right now. Even though I am a tad bit envious of my friends who just found out where they're going to grad school. So excited to get to that point some day!
I LOVE Ruthie's blue flower-print PJ's. I will be so sad when they are too small.
and I LOVE Sundays at home with my hubby for an ENTIRE day, because then he is not feeling guilty that he isn't studying, so here's to tomorrow!

Thats all for today folks! ( I think I sunburned my part (in my hair) today at the park. Ruff.)

A picture of Ruthie a day...

keeps you happy in EVERY way(even when she won't sleep at night. Or during the day. Seriously, what is her deal? But you go to get her up and she grins up at you like she is the happiest girl on earth, and you can't help but love every moment of her). Check out these eyebrows:

Her eyebrows have some serious awesome.

Sunday and Monday

Sterling gave me THREE days to do with him WHATEVER I want(before he starts studying for the mcat and once again becomes nonexistent in my life). Monday was one of those. Sunday is always one of those. We have had some GOOD times. Sunday: park in Huntsville by Pineview Dam with Megan and family. Monday: first Waterfall Canyon Hike with baby in tow, then we came home and invited several neighbors outside and had a bbq, and then to top it all of OUR SWAMP COOLER GOT TURNED ON TODAY!!! and the peasants REJOICED!!!! (the landlord has to come take the cover off the roof. It is warmer much earlier this year than normal, so he is excused, but still...the last two days have been miserable, especially this afternoon)

I have to get EVERY LAST CRUMB of Aunt Megan's yummy cookie into my mouth! 

Posse of soccer players around Team Awesome Anders to inspect the wounds.

No I will not smile at you Aunt Lindsay, but I will scowl a little.

I'll take a camera with my cookie, please!

I should've taken a picture of Thunder, he was panting beside Ruthie the entire time. He endured countless hair pulls and hit-pats. One time she reached out and started stroking his tongue...and he just kept right on panting. I really love Thunder.

Handsome man

Marlowe came and initiated the soccer game, good thing we brought his good brain along.

You old men are spent ALREADY?

Starting out on Waterfall Canyon hike. Sunscreen, check. Second coat of sunscreen, check. Sunshade, check. Tinkly giraffe to play with, check and check. 

Yay! We made it to the waterfall! Lovely, cool mistiness.

Yay, this guy who hauled me up the mountain made it to the top too!

The waterfall was A.W.E.S.O.M.E. this year! SO much water, and SO much misty spray! (Plus, there was a HUGE mastiff named Bruce. It was the best naming job I have ever encountered. He came almost to my shoulder. He was awesome.)

Ogden.

She was SO happy the entire time, minus the several moments of agony when sunscreen was being reapplied. Definitely a hiker. We'll keep her.

On a different note, Friday night Danica babysat while we went out to dinner. I decided Ruthie is lucky enough to have a THIRD grandma. When we picked her up, she was conked out in her car seat, the juices of licorice all down her shirt and pants, tired from a day of ATVing and horse-back riding. Spoiled? More than a little. I hope we never have to move away from Aunt Megan!

Stroller Lovin'

Quick Note

I should've pulled out my camera today. I had a happy baby, a hard-working man, and a beautiful day at home (mostly home).

Sterling was wonderful enough to get up early so that I could have a quick soak in the tub sans baby. He then went to Lowe's (or some store like that) to get little suction hooks to hold our shower caddy onto the wall...Ruth is starting to pull everything on the side of the tub onto herself, so a caddy was my solution, only it didn't stay on our shower head because it is slanted. He also got a screw to keep the knob on our hot water in the tub. It has been coming off every time you turn it for the last FOREVER. He then helped me set up a cheap-o shelf I bought at Walmart the other day because I am so sick of his mcat study books and organic chemistry books and biochemistry books, etc, etc being all over my bedroom floor. But then we decided to put the new shelf out in the living room, and put our old living room shelf in our bedroom for the books. That led to moving furniture in the bedroom, which led to moving furniture from the baby's room into the bedroom (the idea there being that when we have ANOTHER baby, I will need to move the furniture out of the baby's room and into ours, so we can fit two babies in that room...not that that is happening anytime soon, but I wanted to make sure I used Sterling to the utmost capacity today...better to be prepared, even years in advance, right?) which then led to moving furniture in the baby's room. This THEN led to moving around all our stuff in the storage unit so that I could fit some odds and ends into it that have just been hanging out in the baby's room. Also, I made  a nice little spot right in front to fit the stroller...so no more lugging it up and down the stairs in and out of the apartment. I can just open the storage unit door and walah! there it is.

After all that hard work, Sterling watched Ruth while I ran into work for an hour, and then spent the beautiful afternoon hard at work mowing the lawn and weedwacking it-he gets paid for doing that around our apartment complex. On TOP of all of that, he watched Ruth tonight (took her on a stroller ride) so I could finish my last eight CE credits so I could renew my dental hygiene license for another two years. HE IS MR. INCREDIBLE! I LOVE YOU STERLING HAWS!

Life is Great

Why does she go to bed fantastically one night at 7pm, and the next night won't even fall asleep at almost NINE??? Ruff. I blame it on the babysitters. They played too hard and had such a fabulous time, that Ruthie fell asleep on the way home, which was WAY too late.

I was going to post a cutie pie picture with this post, but Sterling has the camera to transfer all of his rat-sacrificing pictures and videos for another kid at the library today. And he really calls it sacrificing. He says it is the correct term in research. Fabulous.

The following post is written mostly for myself, who is not currently up-to-date on Ruth's baby book and so I do not want to forget at what age she did what. Feel free to read, or not. But comments are always welcome.

Ruthie has been a BUSY girl this last month. I feel like month 8 takes the cake on mobile development, and foods she can eat. It seems like just last month she was mostly milk-fed, barely sitting up and certainly stationary, and an INFANT. Now, I feel like I have a baby-growing-toddler. And I want it all back. Please? Anyone object to turning back the clock? Now that thats settled.

Ruth likes bites of my cheese, she LOVES pushing gogurt into her mouth (I had a strange craving for gogurts the other night and bought some), she likes ANYTHING she can put in her mouth by herself: puffs, cheerios, baby crackers. She's started eating all these grown-up foods: slices of grapes, rice...whatever I happen to have on my plate that I think I can cut up and she can reasonably chew up with seven chompers...which brings us to her next big feat.

TEETH! It seemed like Ruth only had her two bottom teeth for FOREVER! Everyone (EVERYONE!) commented on how young she was to have teeth (3-4months) and how cute those tiny little bottom teeth were poking up out of her gums. Now she was a whomping seven...with the eighth one giving a mighty good try at poking through any time (it still might make the eighth month mark...we still have a week and a half). Her teeth grew in a funny pattern..bottom two teeth, top two teeth, and then one on top and bottom on the left side ONLY, and now she finally has one on the right side to somewhat even it out. She needs the top one on the right side now! She can bite and bite HARD, so watch out fingers!

Ruth still twirls her feet when she drinks from her bottle, or when she's in the car seat, or the stroller. It is pretty much the cutest little affectation I have ever seen. She still LOVES hair. Idolizes it, really. The other day I had my hair up, and pulled it down for some reason, and she looks up, her eyes start glittering, she makes an 'ah' sound, and reaches her hand towards it...and when she touches it she squeals with delight and flaps her arms and legs (true test of happiness right there).

And her BIGGEST milestone, she is crawling like a CHAMPION. Several of my friends said that when their baby learned to crawl, they were everywhere. Ruth learned to crawl, then slowly extended her point of view to a two-feet radius, and then continued to increase it. Now, I cannot clean the bathroom and set the garbage can in the hallway---not for a second. Haahaa.

I think her happy place is the seat in a store cart. She LOVES being there, she kicks her legs the entire time, she smiles at every person walking past, and she cranes her head around to look at where they go. That is also another favorite of mine--craning her head. As soon as something disappears around a corner that she can't see, or she can hear something but can't see it, she CRANES her head around until its touching her legs, or the ground, all the while grinning and looking oh-so-curious. Love that. She also loves the stroller, she pulls herself forward by grasping the tray in front of her and kicks her legs the entire ride. She likes to play peek-a-boo, and she loves to fake cough, then have you do it back to her, and back and forth and back and forth, etc. She also likes to bite toys and pull off parts of them...any pieces of hair, yarn, string, cardboard books, etc. get bitten off and wadded up in her mouth.

That's pretty much my Ruthie update! I love her SO SO much, and she is just the happiest, best baby ever! ( oh and I'd totally post a movie with this, but just so happens iMovie is WAY beyond me...so Sterling takes his last final tomorrow, and I'll put teaching me how to use it on my list of things for him to do haahaa)

Layton Parkway-placey HikeI

I suppose I'll post this even though I think I look retarded. Its the only picture Andrea snapped.  And I wanted to document our first hike...FINALLY with Andrea and family. We've had this scheduled. Last week it snowed. Yesterday it rained. Today was nice...until the sun went behind the clouds and it got really windy. Ruthie was a champ though, and even though she was really tired (the hope was she'd fall asleep) she stayed really happy until the very end when the wind got really chilly. I've got to go more though...I need more conditioning on carrying that thing.

Eli. aka child whisperer. Nuff said.

Easter

Very first Easter. I am in love with her little bunny. And her little bunny pj's.

The boys were a little concerned about Ruthie stealing their things and chewing on them. We played a constant game of giving things back while she attempted to steal the next thing. Haahaa.

Takes after Grandpa Jack...starting the licorice at a young age!

A Morning With Ruthie

If you are one of those people (Dad) that thinks if the child is wearing the same outfit, and it is within the same three days, there is absolutely no reason to take multiple pictures...then there is no need to scroll to the bottom. This post is mostly for me, and because I love EVERY SINGLE ONE of these pictures. I have the sweetest baby girl.

Good morning mom! Do I get some cheerios this morning?

I DO get some cheerios? You are the BEST MOM EVER!

Wait a second, is that grandma over there?

Hm..what is she doing?

Oh she's smiling at me! Quick! Smile back!

Hm, mom's still here?

I guess I'll give mom a quick smile too, after all, she is holding the cheerios.

Yay for fistfuls of cheerios!

Insert fist in mouth, and hope that the cheerios magically get transferred from fist to mouth.

Is my mom still taking pictures?

I guess I'll smile for her one more time.

Sweetest smile ever.

Okay, this smiling thing is getting a little boring.

Add caption

I'm really starting to be done.

And...one more picture cause I love her beautiful eyes and her funny, crinkled eyebrows. Oh I just LOVE her!