Hayden is 11 months old!

Wow, we're almost at 1 year! I really can't believe that this time last year I was still pregnant, and we had no idea what kind of baby we were going to have - a sweet, adorable, funny, and easy-going little girl!

This month we finally got another tooth - so now 3 total! Two on bottom, and one on top - not in a hurry to get all her teeth! Hayden continues to crawl and climb all over the place like a champ, but has decided she is no hurry to start walking. We thought for sure she would be an early walker due to her physical abilities early on, but I guess we'll have to wait a bit longer until she decides it is time.

Her newest talent is dancing! She is a dancing queen, and starts boogying anytime music comes on - her toys, the TV, radio, us singing, whatever. It is too cute and she really has some great moves! She's also getting very good at pointing to things or people we say - she points to Daddy, mommy, sister, doggy, light, and her favorite is airplane!!

Family fun at the park

We've had some great weather lately so we've tried to fit in a few end of summer visits to the park!

1st day of school at The Children's Garden

Emmie had her much-anticipated (by her and her parents!) first day of preschool at the Children's Garden last week. Despite her normal uneasiness in new surroundings, she did great and appears to be settling in very well, and loving it! What a great place, where all the kids, families and teachers are very creative, involved and supportive! We are looking forward to two years of many fun activities and school memories.


Meeting teacher Bonnie

We had all the girls over for a playdate before the first day so Emmie could get to know them - what a great group of fun girls!

Trying to figure out what to wear on the first day!

Emmie's masterpiece

I left Emmie alone for about 15 minutes, and I came back to find her just putting the finishing touches on this beautiful painting! I've always known she is a natural artist, but this just floored me. It is a picture of one of the Disney fairies, Rosetta. You can see her wings, of course, and in her left hand is a flower (because Rosetta is a garden fairy), and the line at the bottom is the ground, but of course, Rosetta is higher because she is flying! The thought she put into it just amazes me, but more than anything, I can't get over how proportionate the whole picture is - I really think I could not have painted a fairy this well! She clearly did not inherit her artistic abilities from me. :)

Trip to Whidbey

While daddy stayed home for a long weekend of campaigning, mom and all the girls (even the dog) went out to Whidbey for a relaxing weekend with grandma and grandad.

Hayden is 10 months old!

Miss Hayden is now 10 months old! It seems like I say the same thing about her every month, but it's still true - she is such a fun, happy go lucky baby! She makes us laugh constantly and we love her to pieces.

This month she began sharing a room with big sister, which was a risk for us all! However, so far, it's turned out to be alot of fun. Hayden is sleeping pretty well, just up every few nights once or twice, and it never seems to wake Emmie, thankfully! My favorite thing about them sharing a room is to hear them "talking" to each other when they wake up in the morning. I am always so tired in the morning that it buys me a few extra minutes of laying in bed while I listen to them chat away with Emmie calling out "good morning sis!" and Hayden responding with lots of shrieks and clapping. This continues for 10 mintues or so until Hayden remembers that Emmie cannot actually get her out of her crib, and then it turns into crying so mommy will come get her out to play!

Hayden has perfected the art of "turbo crawling" - she is sooo fast it's hard to keep up, and she is still into everything, putting it all into her mouth so fast that I'm sure she's managed to sneak in quite a few pieces of fuzz, dirt or leftover cheerios off the floor before I notice her! Her little stubborn streak shows itself when I say "Hayden, no, no no" when she's trying to put something in her mouth, and she responds by shaking her head and laughing at us! She is pushing her walker along like a champ and it was the oddest thing to see her take off doing that for the first time! Her best new trick, though, is giving kisses! If we say "Hayden, give me kisses!" she will plant a huge slobbery one on us - basically she just opens her mouth wide, sticks out her tongue and licks us! It is so sweet and cute and wet!

Emerson goes to cooking school!

Grandma Betty started taking Emmie to cooking classes at Cookalicious Club in Issaquah. Emmie has been a huge fan of mixing, cooking and concocting her own recipes for quite some time now, so going to cooking class has been great fun for her. She has been learning all the "correct" techniques to use, so maybe she can teach mommy a thing or two!

So far they have made sweet potato casserole, tilapia w/dill sauce and banana cookies! Though Emmie told grandma before the class when they made tilapia that she doesn't like fish, she tried it like a good sport and told grandma afterward that she "loves fish!" yay!!

So cute in her very own chef jacket!

Swimming lessons

Both girls started swimming lessons this summer. Auntie Erin took Hayden to hers every week, and she loved it! She was a natural, already going under water with no problems at all!



Daddy took Emmie each week, and true to her nature, she was very hot and cold about swimming. We knew it would be tough because she's naturally afraid of the water. She started out a little hesitant, but then did great for awhile, followed by a couple of not so great classes. So she will be a work in progress. :)

Summer Fun

Since I am waaaay behind on keeping up the blog, I'm going to do one big post with a bunch of pics from all our fun over the last month! It's been busy, but fun! I think we are all ready, however, to get back to a bit more of a routine schedule with preschool starting soon!

We went to a kids' concert at the Kirkland waterfront and Emmie has gotten so brave around the water - she actually waded in up to her chest!

Fun playdate at Lola and Abbey's house

Family hike to Denny Creek and the natural waterslides ... lots of fun, minus the million flies!

Emmie and Rhea watching the Blue Angels

Emmie went to an adorable tea party with all the little girls from her new preschool that she will start in a couple weeks!

Great-grandma Shaha and great-uncle Bill came for a visit.

We went blueberry picking - do you think Emmie had a few to eat?! :)

Great-grandma Evie came for a visit, too!

Our sweet little angel :)

Lots of summertime fun with Jordyn - they are pretending to be mermaids.

Hayden is 9 months old!

Our little munchkin is getting big fast! We have seen alot of firsts in the last month - Hayden started crawling, got her first two teeth, began pulling up to standing, clapping and pointing! She has also added "uh-oh" to her vocabulary, except it mostly comes out as "uh!" when she drops things on purpose to see our reaction.

This little baby is so physically capable of everything, we are always amazed! She is SO fast at crawling, pulling up and sitting down is no problem at all, she crawls all over us and everything, climbs into things, out of things, and when we're outside or on the hardwood floor, she "walks" on all fours so as to avoid hurting her knees! It's amazing to watch. It has also been fun to watch Emmie and Hayden interact on a new level now - they actually play together and it is too cute to watch. Emmie, of course, loves to 'teach' Hayden everything she knows!

As always, miss Hayden continues to have the best personality - she is so easy-going and always has a huge smile on her face! We love her so much!

Here are her stats at 9 months:

Height - 28.75" - 90th %
Weight - 18.5 lbs - 50th %
Head - 90 % (big like Emmie's!)

Great-grandma Shaha visit

Great-grandma Shaha came for a visit and the girls had a great time playing with her!

4th of July

Our 4th of July was busy but fun! We had our first family campaign outing since Nate began his quest for Issaquah City Council - we went to the picnic at the South Cove neighborhood on Lake Sammamish, where we enjoyed watching kids in the dunk tank, got Emmie's face painted, and of course, had hot dogs, while Nate learned the fine art of talking to complete strangers, asking for their vote! We then came home and spent the rest of the afternoon at our own Dahlia Park neighborhood BBQ. It was a HOT HOT day, so alot of time was spent playing in the water and eating popcicles with all the kids. At the end of the evening, I stayed home since Hayden was asleep, and Nate took Emmie up to the bluff above our house for an awesome view of all the area fireworks. Nate took some video of Emmie describing what she saw. :)

Raspberry picking

We made a trip out to Remlinger Farms with all the neighbors and had a great time picking raspberries a couple weeks ago. I think we ate as many as we took home! Once home with our raspberries, we attempted to make our first raspberry jam, and while it tastes good, I didn't manage to get all the sugar dissolved so it was very grainy! But Emmie doesn't seem to mind at all, and we had alot of fun making it.

Camping and clam-digging fun

This month has been alot of first for Emmie - we took her on her first camping trip to Dosewallips State Park on Hood Canal. What a great time! We went with about 15 families from the new school Emmie will start in the Fall, The Children's Garden. What a great group of people, and it was so fun to see Emmie hit it off with several of the kids, so she will know a few familiar faces when she starts in September.

The highlight of the trip was going clam digging - something we had never done before, but what a great time! We all had a blast tromping around in the mud, digging up a bucketfull of clams, and Emmie's favorite - chasing around the million tiny little crabs that were scurrying all over the place!

It was a beautiful place, and we had so much fun, can't wait to go camping again soon - next time we will take Hayden with us! We missed her!


Emmie and Brady checking out the clams they dug up.


All that white stuff in the background are oysters!! There were tons of them!



Yum yum, smores are so yummy.