A Few Of His Favorite Things

Nicholas has loved his Rescue Hero toys for several years now. Rescue Heroes are big guys that are firefighters, scuba divers, pilots, etc. that can swoop in and rescue people. Nicholas has a bunch of these guys and a few of their vehicles. Most of them were gently loved before he ever got them. Some came from freecycle but most came from various children's consignment stores. He plays with them all the time and carries them with him for rides in the car and even takes them into the grocery store with us. He asked Stuart to take some pictures of two of his Rescue Heroes for him.







At some point, the makers of Rescue Heroes decided that they hadn't completely tapped the market and they branched off to create Planet Heroes. Of course, he had to get those too. This picture was taken a while back but here he built a hanger for his Planet Hero ships out of his beloved Tinker Toys.





Rescue Heroes, Planet Heroes, Tinker Toys, and also Legos...just a few of his favorite things. He plays with at least one of these toys every single day.

Rachel is 9 months old!

I'm so excited for my little girl. She is growing up so beautifully. She's happy and healthy and she brings such joy to our lives..and a little more exhaustion too.

Rachel is able to hold herself up in a standing position for quite a while. However, she isn't crusing around on furniture yet. She will scoot her hands along whatever she is holding on to but she forgets to move her feet with her so she just falls. Poor baby! She is trying to pull herself up into a standing position but just isn't strong enough yet.

Rachel eats mostly baby food but she loves to try to eat mushy table food. She has a good pincer grip and is able to pick up small pieces of food but somehow they often slip away between the finger to mouth transfer and most of them end up in the seat of her high chair. We're working on getting her to take a sippy cup but it's going about as well as it did when we tried to get her to take a bottle. She just chews on the spout and doesn't seem to be able to figure out how to get the liquid out.

Rachel loves to grab things and shake them, especially long things like a strip of ribbon or even a particular speaker wire that she has discovered in the living room. She can fly across the room on her belly but still not crawling. Speaking of flying across the room, Rachel will play well by herself for quite a while but when she's ready for a break she quickly will belly crawl her way right over to me and pull on my clothes as she tries to climb into my lap. The other day I had her playing in the living room while I was in the kitchen washing dishes. I had not watched her for a minute or so and next thing I know she has crawled all the way into the kitchen to find me so I could pick her up.

Her hair has grown a lot but it is still baby fine and wispy. I brush it several times a day and within five minutes the curls are back and going in all different directions. I try putting headbands and barrettes in her hair to contain the crazy hair but Rachel just pulls them out.

Rachel loves swimming and playing in the grass (although she tries to eat any grass, leaves, or sticks that she can find). She loves her naps and is a very good sleeper.

And we all love and cherish her very much.

Fun in Our Own Backyard

We love spending time outside in our own backyard. This summer has had a remarkable number of days of 100+ degree temps so we've had to stay indoors more than we would like. However, give us a "cool front" with temps in the mid-90s and we're back outside again having fun.

Harvesting our tomatoes. It's amazing. This sad little tomato plant has been so neglected this summer. I'm amazed that it hasn't died from lack of water. Yet, it keeps producing some great Roma tomatoes. Nicholas loves harvest time!



Rachel loves her outdoor swing. And Nicholas loves to push her in it and make her laugh. He's such an awesome big brother!







And of course, we do lots of swimming!

World Wide Photo Walk '09

This morning our wonderful neighbor and her daughter came over to watch Nicholas and Rachel while Stuart and I escaped to participate in the World Wide Photo Walk in Grapevine. On this day there were about 900 photo walks taking place all over the world. The idea is to get together a group of photographers in an area, have them walk a path in the town for 2 hours while taking pictures of interesting things. There is a contest for the best photos but the whole idea just sounded fun to me. And it really was. We walked down Main Street, an area that I've walked around many times before. But today I saw some things that I usually would have overlooked as not interesting or photo-worthy. I had a great time being able to photograph the sights around me but it was especially fun because Stuart and I were doing it together.

I took a ton of pictures but here are some of the highlights. Please help me choose TWO of these to enter in the contest. Just leave a comment with your vote or send me an email.

Train pictures.







Old stuff in the train yard.









The Homecoming - The statue depicts a soldier returning from service to a loving embrace.





Photographer extraordinaire.



Hand blown glass from Vetro.



Windmill shadow on a house.



A sunflower.



Water tower.



My sweet hubby - not a pic for the contest :)



Shadows.



Mannequin.



Light through a leaf.



Leading lines on an old cabin.



Carved Indian statue.



Bottles in the window of a cigar shop.



An old gas pump at Willhoite's restaurant.



Ok, so I just like to shop for shoes, even when I'm on a photo walk.



Now that you've seen some of my favorite pictures from the walk, please help me narrow it down to TWO pictures to enter in the contest. Just leave me a comment with your choices. Thank you!

The Wise Old Owl

Nicholas was in a camp this week at his Montessori preschool. The camp focused on theater. They made their own costumes, painted the backdrop, learned a line or two, and learned a song. Today they had a performance for the parents. The theme for the performance was Disney. Nicholas was in the Winnie the Pooh skit and he played the wise old owl. He was originally assigned to be Pooh Bear but he asked to be Owl because he wanted to be "someone that could fly".

They all started out marching around the audience and singing where they happened to stop. Fortunately I had a good view of Nicholas from our seats. He was so cute in his little owl costume which he made himself. He painted his wings and shirt and feathers on and even helped to make his silly little beak. But his wings were a bit of a hinderance to him when it came to scratching his nose and picking up his mouse ear hat that fell. He was nervous about performing on stage but he did great and I can hear him singing above the others most of the time. He even gave us a "thumbs up" when he finished.





After the performance, we had lunch at Chicken Express and Nicholas had to check out the train out in front of the building next door. We've looked at it before and he's climbed all over it but we can't go near it without having to stop and climb on it just one more time.



While Nicholas and Daddy were playing on the train, I let Rachel sit in the passenger seat next to me. That didn't last long. She went for the straws in our drinks and had fun trying to chew on them and ripping them out of the cups. Silly girl!