Moving

Dan took some video of our new house today after we unloaded some stuff. It is very messy with everything right now but you get the idea. We will do a video after we get all moved in too, so you can really see it. Our camera only does 30 second video so that is why there are 2. It is small and not perfect but I think we will make it a nice place to live. Raine and Mo already seem to like it a lot. I showed Raine her room with her toys and she was very excited to play and shut the door on me. Apparently she needed some alone time. She also loves the backyard, which means I will have to get over having a clean baby. I don't know why but I get a little stressed out or anxious when she gets dirty and want to clean her up right away. Yesterday while she and I were there she literally rolled in the dirt. I have cards with our new address to send out to everyone, I just need to get some stamps... so hopefully I'll get those out tomorrow. We will probably be moved in this coming weekend. I will be so glad when we are finally in and things settle down. I thing Raine will be too, she has been very clingy lately and we decided that maybe it is stressing her out to not really know what is going on. Today I was loading things into the vehicles with her strapped to my back because she just wouldn't be anywhere that wasn't touching me.

Raine has been learning so much. She now knows her head, belly, belly button, toes and sometimes her eyes and nose. She will wipe her face and nose if you give her a wipe and ask her too, she will go and sit on her changing pad when you tell her it's time for a diaper change, she will get her jammies out of her drawer when asked and today she helped me make strawberry/blueberry pancakes. She put all the berries in and tried to stir (which ended with batter all over her, but she had fun and it kept her busy). Oh, and she loves to take things to daddy, if she finds something that she knows is Dan's she takes it to him right away, or if I ask her to take him something she runs it to him. She also loves to shut doors, which I have discovered is not as good as I thought. She sometimes shuts herself in dark rooms, yesterday she kept shutting me out of the new house when I came up with hands full of boxes, and today the poor girl shut her thumb in a door. I just can't believe how fast she is growing up!

Dan is still working like crazy, but he is doing really well. He was trying to quit smoking a few weeks ago and he did so well for almost a month - he was only having like one cigarette some days, but doing so much overtime he gave up the quiting for now. He will give it another try soon I think. I was so proud of him, he was doing very well! I think it will be easier when he tries again too because we will be in a new house and he won't have a smoking buddy anymore. I am hoping that work will slow down for him soon so he can get a break and relax for a while.

I have still been babysitting for the 2 families. One family is very occasionally and the other is 5 days a week. It is so nice to have the extra money and it is even nice to be doing something for a few hours a day. It gets me out of the house, even if it is to hang out with other kids. It's funny because when I was just home with Raine all week I really wanted to get out of the house and do stuff on the weekends and poor Dan being at work all week really just wanted to hang out at home. So, having this job lets me appreciate being home a little more, I'm not so stir crazy. Raine really likes the other kids, so it is pretty fun for her. This last Friday we babysat the occasional family that I have been watching for a few years now and we all had a good time, the kids are 4(almost 5) and 3. The oldest is a girl and the younger is a boy and Raine thought it was so neat to have a big girl around. She just loved playing with the kids and their toys and just watching them, sometimes copying what they were doing. It was too cute. The kids really enjoyed her too, which I was thankful for because back in December when I watched them they were very stressed out that she was touching their toys.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!!

Raine went to her first Easter egg hunt today. We got a flyer from a church down the street that was having a community egg hunt. It was pretty cute. Raine carried her basket around all morning, while we were at home I put her shaker eggs in her basket and told her we were going to find eggs and put them in her basket, then Dan gave her a pep talk on how to find eggs and off we went. She was too cute, she saw some eggs and right away picked up a few eggs and put them in her basket. Then she took them out, carried them around, put them back in her basket, took them out again, and then she figured out how to open them - so she opened all of them. She was so excited when she found the eggs, you could tell she was proud of herself.

After the egg hunt I had to go to a yoga workshop for labor/birth (which was neat and interesting, I wish it would have been around before Raine). Raine and Dan hung out together for a few hours while I was there. Dan made peanut butter, banana, honey sandwiches for the two of them for lunch. I don't think Raine was convinced that it was edible though, she wouldn't even take a bite. Silly girl, I know she would think much of the food we put in front of her is yummy if she would just taste it.

When I got home Raine and I went shopping for dinner and she was so excited because she got to push the shopping cart (they had mini carts just her size). She was a very good shopper. She pushed the cart like a pro and when I gave her something to put in the cart she did it very enthusiastically. Then she decided to pick out things on her own - if left to her own devices we would have bought a pack of mixed nuts, popcorn, chile chips, minestrone soup, and chicken broth. :) She even got to try a free sample of organic animal crackers (which she later threw up all over me).

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I hope everyone had a good St. Patrick's Day! Here is a fun link to some info about St. Patrick's day from the history channel. I enjoy learning about what we celebrate so I thought I'd share the link if you are interested. http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=mini_home&mini_id=1082

We had a pretty uneventful day. We all had to work today and poor little Raine is sick. (Although, she still manages to find the strength to play and be mischievous - the doctor said it must be the Irish in her.) I made my first attempt at corned beef and cabbage with potatoes and carrots yesterday. It turned out OK, it seemed like it was missing something, but it was still good. I really only wanted the left over meat to make Reuben's with anyway. :) Raine thought it was OK, she tried some bites but didn't seem to have a big appetite. She has had a fever of 102.6 the last 2 days. I feel so bad for her, she just feels like she is burning up. I was worried she had a throat infection because one of kids I babysit had that, but the Dr. said it is just some 5 day virus going around. He said other than the fever she looks great.

I was so proud of her today. She ate so well at lunch. She had some macaroni and cheese, some apple and some chicken. She loves macaroni and cheese. She gobbled up nearly all of what I gave her, which she has never done. She also did very well drinking her liquids today! Oh, to be a mom, huh? What do "normal" people get excited about? Oh, well. I think it's exciting that she is getting better about eating real food - she has also gained almost 2lbs and grown and inch this last month. She is so funny and so smart. She was very frustrated with Dan and I this morning for trying to put a cool, damp cloth on her head, but when we were leaving to go babysit I got her her little wash cloth and gave it to her damp and for the rest of the day she put it on her own head. She was so cute walking around with the cloth on her head. She would take it off and put it on or in her diaper bag and then later she would go get it and put it on.

Today Raine found her old baby swing under the bed and decided she needed in it so I reassembled it and she is now napping happily in it. It is too funny, the things she didn't really like when she was a baby she enjoys now. She loves pacifiers now (which I was afraid she would become addicted to one, just as she should be weaned from them - she's OK with out it though), now her swing and she found a bottle as I was cleaning out our diaper bag and decided she wanted to drink out of that now. Silly girl. I tried for almost a year to get her to drink from a bottle! She will get to hang out with Dan tonight while I teach yoga. They have been getting Monday nights together and I think they have fun.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

13 months going on 3 years

Raine thinks she is such a big girl now. It is cute and scary at the same time. She has quite the personality. She is definitely not afraid to tell you what she does and doesn't like.

Raine and I went with our neighbor to the Aloha Festival and Ikea this weekend. We had fun. We got to try some very tasty Hawaiian food and look at all the fun crafts. Raine really enjoyed the food, she mostly ate some rice but she tried some breaded chicken too. Her favorite part of the day was Ikea though, she got to play on all the kid furniture. She pulled out chairs and sat at tables (I don't know why she thinks tables and chairs are so fun, but she does) and she played in the tent they had set up. The all time best part of her day was when she got an ice cream cone. I was just going to let her have a lick or two but she took the whole cone from me and tried to run off with it. I had to eat the ice cream down to the cone (which she was not happy about) because she was taking her time eating it and it was dripping everywhere. She would not give up that ice cream for anything, she ended up falling asleep eating it on the way home. I took it from her when she fell asleep and when we got home and I put her down in bed she was still trying to eat it in her sleep. I wish I could have gotten a picture of that because her face was the best - asleep covered in ice cream and eating the imaginary ice cream cone in her hand. Too cute.

Here's what we've been up too...

It has been a little while since our last post. I have been busy with my nanny job, when Raine and I get home we just need to relax and play. Dan has been working crazy overtime again. He has been taking off one night a week and usually Sunday too so that is nice. Hopefully, that will help him from getting run down as much/fast. We have also been in the process of finding a new place to rent because our lease is ending at the end of April. We have found a little house to rent with a fenced in yard for Raine and Mo. It is a small house, but it will be cute. The landlady is nice she has been letting me pick all of the new stuff she is putting in, which is pretty fun and exciting. She just tiled the whole house and she will be painting everything - and we get to choose what ever colors we want. I was pretty surprised at that, I picked some neutral colors for her and then she was saying "whatever you want" and I said, "Even lime green?" :) I am really excited to move in and have our own space, with a room for Raine and a yard for Mo. The landlady is even going to buy us a storage shed for the backyard since there is very little storage inside. I am excited to pick the paint colors, it is almost like having our own house... almost. :) I don't know how we are going to fit our giant couch in there but Dan is good at tetris...

Raine has been pretty funny. She seems to think the kids we watch all week are her siblings. They are nice to each other mostly, but they all have no problem fighting either. The younger boy (who is 6 months older than Raine) has a pacifier and after seeing him with it Raine decided that sometimes she need one. She also will not drink out of her sippy cups because they aren't just like theirs. She is growing up so fast. She is a fast little walker and needs to walk everywhere. We went to Lowe's today to pick out paint colors and she got to ride in her first Race car shopping cart. She loved it so much she cried all the way to the car after I took her out of it.

Well, I hope you enjoy the pictures and I will show you the pictures of our new place as soon as we move in.

Video Clips

Here are some video clips of Raine walking on her birthday. I have a bad habit of turning the camera the wrong way... sorry.

Raine's Birthday Party