Chad's home!

Lauren and I were SO excited to welcome Chad home safely last night. He's been in Beijing, China for the past 9 days. He went there on a grad school field trip to study international business. Jeez, when I was in grad school, I went on a field trip to a local middle school. Chad went to China. Must be nice!

He took lots of great pictures and I'll try to put some on the blog this week. We picked him up from a park-n-ride last night and he got many huge smiles from Lauren. It was so sweet at her bedtime- we couldn't get her to go to sleep. She was crying a bunch in her crib and stopped each time Daddy went in and stood beside her. I suggested he hold her and cuddle her on the couch for a few minutes to calm her down. They snuggled for about 15 minutes, with her holding her blankie and sucking on her pacifier. It was adorable. Then we put her back in her crib and she went right to sleep. I guess she just wanted a little extra time with Daddy. Isn't that sweet?

On Saturday, I took Lauren to Rhythm and Booms in Madison. It's a huge fireworks display set to music. Chad and I have gone for 9 years in a row and I was sad to go without him but I just couldn't miss it. Beth, Andy and Rachel came with me. Instead of making a full day of it at the park like we usually do, we waited and went much later in the day. We finally had our picnic blanket set up in the park by 8pm and enjoyed visiting until the fireworks started at 9:30. We loved the fly-overs of 4 blackhawk helicopters and 4 F-16 bombers. Before we went to Madison, Beth helped me find child-sized noise reduction headphones for Lauren. She didn't mind wearing them at all! Also, we had covered ourselves with bug spray but it turned out that we didn't really need it after all. We had a wonderful time and Lauren and I escaped without any mosquito bites! The fireworks were fantastic and Lauren just stared and stared at them with her headphones on to mask the loud noises. In fact, it was so quiet for her that she fell asleep halfway through the 40-minute fireworks display!

Here's a crowd-shot. They say that there are typically close to 200,000 people that descend on this park each year for Rhythm and Booms. My sweet girl didn't mind wearing these at all. Believe it or not, they are noise-reduction headphones meant to be worn by children that go along on hunting trips so that the sound of gunfire doesn't harm their hearing. I don't plan on taking Lauren hunting, but the headphones work just as well for fireworks!

Love,

Mindy and Lauren

Busy, busy, busy

We've had another busy week! Lauren is babbling like crazy, "talking" to everything and everybody. Also, I think I may have started something...a few nights ago, she was reaching for my water glass as I was taking a sip and I decided to let her try to sip it too. I laughed and laughed as she used her tongue to lap up the water just like Westin does! Now she tries so hard to grab at any glasses and cups and bring them to her mouth. We went ahead and gave her a sippy cup of water last night and she drank a bunch (okay, she also drenched her shirt but that's beside the point). She's not even 6 months old yet and still detests rice cereal, but insists on drinking water from cups. Go figure.


My good camera is still on loan so I haven't gotten very many good pictures this week. That's unfortunate too because I took Lauren for her very first boat ride on Tuesday. My school secretary had a luncheon and took us out on her pontoon boat for a slow ride around the lake. Lauren was adorable with her sunhat and diva sunglasses (hot pink with fake diamonds all around the lenses). She stayed awake for three hours through the luncheon as she was passed around to all my co-workers, smiling and cooing the whole time. She enjoyed the first five minutes of the boat ride before she fell fast asleep in my arms and slept for the rest of the ride.

My mom has been staying with us since Tuesday and watched Lauren this afternoon so I could wrap up some things in my classroom. Then we fired up the grill and had a nice dinner. Tomorrow, my college roommate Beth is coming to stay for the weekend! Should be fun!


Have a great weekend. Here are a few more pictures from our week. Sorry for the crummy quality--I'll get my preferred camera back on Sunday night. We're looking forward to Sunday night :-) More on that later!

Westin is looking handsome after an afternoon at the doggy spa today. He got a massage as well as a bath and a haircut. Plus a deep conditioner treatment. Lookin' good!

Have a fun weekend :)

Love,

Mindy and the cooing one

Oh- one more thing...

YES, she has a mohawk. I happen to find it adorable. No matter how I comb the little tuft of hair on top of her head, it naturally styles itself into a spiky mohawk. She better not dye it pink someday (or any other color for that matter).

~Good night :-)

Having a fun week already!

Well, I'm trying out the still-camera feature of our Sony Handycam Video Recorder this week (somebody, who shall remain nameless for now, is borrowing my good camera for awhile). I don't like the quality of these pictures as much as the ones my regular camera takes. See for yourself-






Lauren's first pair of crocs. A cute pair of shoes for a cute baby~

Lauren and I went out for gelato (italian ice cream) yesterday with our friends Andy and Rachel. I had wanted to shop around downtown Waukesha when we were done but there were theatening skies, so I took Lauren home before the rain started. Now today we had lunch with my friend Debbie at Panera then came home so Lauren could take a good nap in her crib. I'm cleaning up a little around the house while she sleeps right now. This afternoon, I plan on taking Lauren and Westin for a really long walk through our neighborhood. Have a great afternoon!

Love,

Mindy and the little one

Who needs a thumb or a pacifier, anyways?

Lauren's latest trick...

"Hey, there's a baby in that mirror. I want to give her kisses!!"


She looks so little in her highchair :)
Have a great weekend!

Love,
Mindy and the toe-sucker

I love summer vacation :-)

Lauren and I are already settling in to a nice schedule together. She's been doing much better sleeping through the night. She sleeps from about 8:45ish until 5:15ish and then nurses briefly and falls right back asleep. Then she gets up for the day at 7:15 every day, just like clockwork. Then we play and she goes down for a morning nap from 9:15-10:30. Then we play more or go for a walk and she goes down for an early afternoon nap at 1:00. Today, I took her between naps for a long walk along the Fox River in downtown Waukesha. There are some really pretty floral gardens there and a big playground, so we looked at the flowers and watched the
"big kids" on the playground (okay, so really they were about 2-years-old each and not really "big kids" but to Lauren they certainly are!). I had her in the Baby Bjorn tummy pack for that walk. At 15lbs 10oz, (I had her weighed at her vaccination appointment yesterday) I could feel that she's almost too heavy for the tummy pack so I'd better use it while I can.


Since I'm home all summer, I'll probably be able to post more frequent blog updates. I took a few cute pictures today, just before we went out on the deck and played in the kiddie pool for awhile. Here's Lauren hanging out on the couch watching me as I folded laundry.

Have a great rest of your week!

Love,

Mindy and Lauren

Happy Father's Day and 5 months old!!!!

We had a very busy weekend around here! Since Chad's mom was still in town Friday night, he and I went out to dinner just the two of us. Believe it or not, this was the first time we'd gone out alone since Lauren was born. We just hadn't wanted to be away from her before this. We enjoyed a long, leisurely dinner at my absolute FAVORITE restaurant...The Melting Pot. Man, I love that place. We topped off our romantic dinner with...shopping at Wal-Mart. I never realized how much easier it is to shop when you don't have kids with you. Wow. We had a few things we needed to pick up and it felt good to walk off that huge dinner. When we got home, Lauren was already asleep and Grandma said they'd had a fun and busy evening together.

On Saturday, Lauren had her first bites of rice cereal! I had mixed emotions about this. She's only ever had breastmilk--she's never even tried formula. It makes me feel so proud to know that until this point, my body has provided 100% of her nourishment. Now she's turning into a big girl and is ready for cereal. Her first tastes were met with grimaces and she ended up pushing most of it out with her tongue. By the time we were finished, I think she had more on her face and bib than in her tummy.

Danielle- I took this photo for you because I thought you'd love her pink and orange tank top. I'll save it for your little girl that you'll have some day :)
Lauren loves her toes and is constantly reaching for them now.
Let me explain the next three pictures... It was Sunday night and the NBA finals were on (see below).
But instead of watching the basketball game, Chad was bathing his daughter!
That's how he chose to spend his Father's Day evening. Don't I have a great guy?

Lauren's first tractor ride on Daddy's mower (the engine was shut off--it's too loud).
Happy father's day!!!
Love,
Mindy and Daddy's love bug :)

School's Out for Summer!!!!!

We had kindergarten graduation this afternoon and it was a huge success. The kids looked adorable--last year, we had a class grandma sew us 60 caps and gowns. The kids were very excited to get to wear them. Now that school is out, I have to spend one day in my room working on report cards and then I too am done for the summer. Yay!! Now I get to go back to spending all day with Lauren. There's nothing else I'd rather do :-)Here's my sweet-pea taking an afternoon nap. She likes to snuggle up to her blankie and the crib bumper. It's pretty cute~

I thought this was cute :-)

Lauren got a high chair last weekend, so I think baby cereal is in the near future!

We're getting pummeled with heavy rains and flash-flood warnings. Luckily, our house is built into a hill and sits higher than the road, so we're staying dry so far. We're keeping our fingers crossed. Have a nice weekend!

Love,

Mindy

Toes, tornadoes, and a new tree!

"Westin, want to taste how yummy these are?"

Oh, great. Aunt Holly is already teaching Lauren about credit cards.
For my birthday last week, my mom and Chad got a cake for me. Lauren was SO excited to see the candles lit up on it. We had to hold her back to keep her from putting her hands or feet in the cake.
Also for my birthday, my friends Beth and Sara bought us a tree to plant in honor of Lauren's birth. Now we can watch it grow as she grows. Chad got a small window of time between thunder storms today and planted it in our backyard. Sorry, I didn't get a picture of the finished product but I will try again soon.

Lauren's latest discovery is her toes! She can reach them now when she's laying on her back. With a little help, she can grab onto them and almost get her big toe into her mouth. It's pretty cute :) She's doing quite a bit of rolling now and can roll from her back to her tummy as well as from her tummy to her back. In fact, due to the rolling, I stopped swaddling her when she's asleep. I'm afraid of her rolling onto her stomach and not having her arms free to push her face away from the matress. So, I cut her off "cold turkey" from being swaddled and have had some crazy nights as a result. Last night she got up at 1a.m., 2:15a.m., 4a.m., 6:00am and 6:50am., at which point Chad got up with her so I could sleep in a little. I think she wakes up frequently because she startles herself somehow. Luckily, I'm done with work for the school year this next Friday and won't have to work again until the last week of August. That will allow me some time to nap when she naps if necessary. Any suggestions for getting her to sleep through the night again? She did it really well for awhile there, but when I went back to work in early May, she decided to start getting up in the night again. Almost like she was getting back at me for leaving her all day :-( I'll start her on infant cereal in the next month or so, so maybe that'll help? We'll see.

We had a crazy weekend, weather-wise. I had to work in my classroom for most of the day yesterday (Saturday) and ended up getting stuck alone in the school during a tornado warning. It was 4pm, the sky was purple and black and the tornado sirens were going off. Unfortunately, it was too far for me to drive home safely and the idea of being alone in the school during a tornado freaked me out. So I quickly called my teacher's aide, Erin, who lives just a few blocks from the school. Luckily, she was home so I ran out of the school, jumped in my car, sped through several stop signs (I didn't see any other cars on the road, so I figured it was okay to skip the stop signs) and drove straight to Erin's house. I made it there safely and waited out the storm with her and her husband. Chad was at home safe with Lauren and they camped out in the basement for awhile. It rained so hard that we had flash-flooding. So when I tried to finally drive home, I couldn't find a route home!! I ended up going back to Erin's because I literally could NOT get out of the city. Every road I tried was blocked with flooding and cars just floating around. I finally made it home around 7:00 and was relieved to make it home safely. Now today we've had horrible storms again all day, but no tornadoes like yesterday. It was scary!

Tomorrow will be Lauren's last day at daycare for the school year. Chad's mom is driving up from Indianapolis tomorrow and will be staying with Lauren for the rest of the week. Chad's got a really busy week with grad school Monday and Thursday and a business trip to Kansas City on Tuesday and Wednesday. Unfortunately, he won't actually see his mom hardly at all during her visit this week.

Have a great week!

Love,

Mindy and the smiley one

Hangin' out poolside in our backyard!

Here's Mommy's Little Swimmer~ She loved it! I warmed up the pool water in the sun for most of the afternoon before putting her in it. It was only about two inches deep and she started trying to splash with her feet and hands. The pool comes complete with it's own ring toss game. I think it'll be awhile before she learns how to play ring toss. She was simply trying to suck on them. She doesn't quite sit up on her own yet, so she was getting some help from Daddy in the pool.


I love this picture. You can tell how much Lauren has just fallen in love with Westin. I worked in the driveway assembling pots of flowers yesterday and had a wonderful little helper to keep me company.

Check out her long legs seen in the exersaucer picture above!

Everything now goes into her mouth. Everything.

Lauren's feet now hang off the end of the bouncy seat. She's getting so big!
Enjoying the jogging stroller.
See, Lauren?!?! We promised you it wouldn't be 20 degrees below zero and snowy every day around here. We meant it :) Yay for temps above 70. Finally!

While Grandpa Lucas was trying to feed Lauren a bottle recently, she was babbling and acting like she was carrying on a complete conversation. She kept her finger on her head the whole time...deep in thought :)
Holly was here for this past week to visit my family and to see Lauren again. A friend of hers in Nashville has two little girls and a baby boy on the way. She told Holly she had a few little girl outfits to give me since she won't be needing them now. Wow! Her kind donation of gently-used clothing filled up my coffee table and left me pleasantly overwhelmed. Lauren now has enough clothes to get her through the next year (or two)!

Lauren's Grandma Lucas is here now to watch Lauren for the rest of the week. I work this week and next, but I'm DONE next Friday (until Labor Day weekend). Woohoo!

Have a great week!

Love,

Mindy and her lil' swimmer