sonja's birthday party

we had fun celebrating sonja's 1st birthday last week. on her actual birthday we had a family celebration at home. riley helped me make chocolate cupcakes, decorate the house and pick out a few small gifts for her. we had so much fun getting everything ready for our sweet sonja! she loved her cupcake and we had fun thinking about her birth just 1 year ago.

then on sunday we had a family party for her in seattle. my family and tyler's family were able to be there and we had a yummy lunch, cake and presents. it was so fun to celebrate with the whole family. (we missed you rachel and sarah!)

i took sonja to her 12 month doctors appointment on monday and i got some of her stats. she weighs 18lbs 11oz and is 27 1/2" long. both in the 20%...we have a petite one! her head, however, is in the 95%! she is wearing some 6-12 month and some 12-18 month sizes. her feet are tiny...she still fits into 0-6 month shoes.

sonja is such a delight. she smiles and babbles all day long. she loves her sister and is generally happy. she is a speed crawler and is walking along the furniture and when we hold her hands. she loves to climb and is starting to love to pull everything apart! she can sit and play for a while, especially in riley's room. it is so adorable to see the two of them playing next to each other. sonja loves music and has even started dancing and waving both her hands up and down when she hears it. she is still taking 2 naps each day, but seems to be transitioning into 1. she still just has two top and two bottom teeth, but is working on a few new top teeth. everywhere we go people stop and admire sonja and her bright white blond hair and big bright blue eyes. she really has a way of drawing people in and seems to be quite social.

we love you sonja! you have added so much to our life in this last year. we are excited to see you grow this next year into a toddler!

First day of Preschool

Riley had her first day of preschool this morning. She did about 4 months of preschool last fall until we decided to pull her out. It was pricey, got in the way of Sonja's sleep and I was not really wanting to start the whole school routine until we absolutely had to. I'm really glad I decided to do that. It's given us lots of time to just be at home playing this past year. It's amazing how much difference a year can make though. Riley has been really ready for school these last few months. She's needed something more than just being home with me. So today could not come soon enough! She just went for 1 hour, then Thursday she'll start in with her normal schedule. She was very excited last night, but definitely had a lot of nerves mixed in too. She had a little trouble falling asleep and we even had some tears (although the tears were mostly due to Tyler's travel schedule).

Both Tyler and I were able to take her to school this morning and she was all smiles. She was especially excited about finding her cubby and being able to put her sweater in it. She was very brave and walked right into her classroom to her teacher. We were very proud of her and all I could think was, "When did my little baby get so big?!" It's always a mixed bag of emotions, watching my kids accomplish new things in this world. But mostly just very exciting and fun.

She was excited to see me when I picked her up and the teacher said she did great. She complained of a tummy ache today, which I hear and read is normal for any kind of change in a kid's life. After an afternoon walk to the park, she told me her tummy was feeling much better. She crashed at 7 tonight, a sure sign of a good day.

happy 1st birthday sonja

we are so excited over here that our little sonja drew is 1 today! she is a true delight and this past year has been full of so much joy. more on her 1 year stats later.

we love you sonja. we can't wait to see what you do with your chocolate cupcake tonight!

Movement

There is a lot of movement in our house...

Sonja started crawling a few weeks back and she is on the move. She is pulling herself up onto everything and taking walking steps along the furniture. She is so curious about everything and we think it's so cute! She's very proud of herself and has used her new skills to transport herself into Riley's room where she loves to demolish and take apart all kinds of things. It's adorable to see them "playing" together. Much more of that to come, I'm sure.

Riley is officially riding a bike now - no training wheels - a regular big girl bike. She's been on her balance bike for several months and lately she was showing signs she was ready to make the transition. Tyler scored a $10 craigslist bike and brought it home last Tuesday evening. After dinner we ventured out to the front and after a few tries she was riding on her own. It was amazing to watch and made me so proud (teary even!). The best part was how excited Riley was. She was so so proud of herself and was having so much fun. It's now been 1 week since we've had her bike and she begs to ride her bike morning, noon and night. She can start completely on her own and is getting really comfortable with it. I swear by balance bikes...the transition to a regular bike was completely seamless.

So you could say my life has changed - I am literally chasing after Sonja in the house and Riley down the street!

lummi island

this past weekend tyler's mom visited us from spokane. after an awesome dinner on the patio and a post-dinner walk on friday night, we decided to head to lummi island the next day for an adventure.

we had a big saturday morning breakfast then loaded the truck with bikes and snacks and made our way to the lummi island ferry. it took about 10 minutes to cross and once on the other side we took off on our bike ride - a 7 mile loop around the north end of the island.

tyler and i were on our tandem, pulling the girls in the trailer and melinda was on my road bike. it was a gorgeous ride. i was loving every minute of it. the weather was perfect - sunny but not too hot and the views were spectacular. the girls were content in the trailer munching on snacks and enjoying the ride. we stopped about half way along the route to tour the willows inn. i've heard great things about it, especially the chef, so i wanted to check it out and possibly add it to my list of "places to go with tyler after i'm done nursing" list. it looked wonderful and i hope to be able to stay a night there someday.

we finished our ride at the beach store cafe restaurant, right next to the ferry dock, where we enjoyed lunch on the deck. we played on the beach a bit before we loaded up and caught the ferry home.

what a fun adventure! we ended the day with mallard ice cream for riley and dinner at jalapenos. thanks for coming beba!

4th of July weekend

we had a fun 4th of july weekend...tyler had just returned home from a week of traveling so we were thrilled to get him back friday night. we spent the weekend biking, playing outside, pool & dinner with friends then a bbq and fireworks on the 4th. here are some pictures from our weekend.

Teddy Bears Picnic

A few weeks back, on Father's day actually, Riley had her first ballet recital. To say that I was a proud parent is definitely an understatement. It made my heart swell to see my little ballerina on stage...hair, costume, makeup and all...very serious and performing her dance. She loves to dress up, loves to dance and in general loves to be a little girl.

They performed at the Mt Baker Theater and leading up to her recital, Riley kept exclaiming, "I get to dance on the stage at the Mountain Baker Theater!!!" (as a side note, one of the cuter things that Riley does is call Mt. Baker "Mountain Baker"...this started when Tyler took her skiing last winter) Anyway, she was thrilled at the idea of it and could hardly wait for her big performance.

My parents came up from Seattle and Tyler made us an awesome dinner of homemade bacon & onion hamburgers, homemade sweet potato fries, grilled veggies, green salad and i made this strawberry shortcake for dessert...everything turned out perfect and the dessert was seriously amazing. We had dinner, dessert then went to the show. Riley sat with us during the whole first half of the show as her class was the first act after intermission. It was at least an hour of sitting and she barely moved an inch. She was mesmerized by all the ballerinas and dancers. I was thoroughly enjoying myself as well - I always wished I was a dancer. I hear that the dance studio has classes for adults and that the adults can perform in the shows...watch out...you might just see Kari and I next year on stage dancing in our tutus!

Riley's class danced to The Teddy Bears Picnic song and when it was finally their turn and I got to see her perform it all felt worth it...the classes, the rehearsals, the amount of money I had to continually shell over for this performance...it was so fun and Riley was very proud of herself afterwards too. She did great on stage, although she had about a 10 second moment of completely zoning out and staring into the crowd. Other than that she was right on track and did her dance. We bought her a bouquet of pink carnations and gave them to her afterwards. It was a fun evening...something I know we will do again for years to come.