Party!

We ended our week, and spent much of our week getting ready for, Baby Bechtel’s Shower.

We all pitched in to celebrate the arrival of my brother’s first child and Rose’s first little cousin. Justin did a marvelous job at a diaper tractor. I planned the games and activities for the shower and Rose contributed her cuteness :)

We have also started planning Rose’s 3^rd birthday and sent out some invites this week…now I really need to work on all the fun stuff :)

When we weren't busy with party planning, we spent lots of time together and being silly.

I’m not sure what Rose has planned for herself down the road, but if she ever decided to be a mommy, she is getting lots of practice in. This kid has crazy baby playing skills. She makes sure they have bibs on, blows on their food, wipes and places clean diapers on their bums, and rocks them to sleep. Sometimes it feels like I have an in-home child care :) 

We also played outside…with babies!

 

Rose also likes to act like her mama...and I LOVE it :) 

Here she is typing her 'work' while watching her baby

And she insisted on putting in her 'eyes' like mommy :)

My two favorite moments this week I didn't capture in photo or video which would have been even better L

-After some encouragement and mommy promising to catch her, Rose had enough courage to slide down her slide, and she LOVED it! I asked her how many times she wanted to go down and she would hold up her whole hand and say ‘5’….10 times later she said ‘5’ again J

-Saturday after it started raining and we had to come inside, Rose found her bouncy balls (2 of them) and LOVED bouncing them off everything in the house (luckily nothing was broken!). She especially enjoyed when her release was off and the balls flew in different directions.

Sunday we had a great time at Bruce and Kate’s Baby Shower

 Before the people...yup so it was a sportsman's club, no extra charge for all the dead animals :)

After all the people...I think there may have been more people at this shower than at my wedding reception ;)

The expectant couple!!!

Justin made an awesome diaper tractor

I was the hostess for the shower and in charge of the games. Luckily we decided not to play too many games because of the large group of people. Everything seemed to go well and Baby Bechtel received LOTS of great presents!

Here is my happy family :) 

(Rose was enjoying a cupcake and has some blue icing on her face to prove it!)

You say Good-bye, I say Hello

Life is full of lots of changes/transitions, some of the time those things are unpleasant…but they can also bring great new things! So let’s be positive J

In Early Intervention, 3 is a HUGE deal. A child is no longer eligible for services that are provided in the home and must transition either to the BCIU or outpatient services. Rose has been with her speech therapist since she was 10 months old…she has become like part of our family and I can’t believe it is almost time to say ‘good-bye’ L

I am also not really sure what is going to happen at 3. Rose will continue her current outpatient therapy and we may increase that to twice a week. We are also going to see what the BCIU offers for services and decide if we want to use those services also.

We are also discussing starting Rose in preschool, probably just 2 or maybe 3 mornings a week, but this will be a HUGE change for her…and us!

Since we are going to give preschool a try, we have decided to skip the spring session of our music class. We completed 3 of the 12 different sessions and can always start up again, but want to have some more time on the weekends for other activities as a family J

All these things are happening because our baby is turning 3! I could go back and retell Rose’s birth story like it was just yesterday and it really is a great story ;) There have been so many changes and transitions in our lives since that wonderful day; it all seems to be happening so fast. We love every minute with our sweet girl!

This week wasn’t exceptionally busy. We made the best of all changes in weather, enjoyed Nana’s birthday, and had lots of fun just being together J

 Rose doesn't let a little rain stop her from spending lots of time outside...she just makes sure to accessorize with a cute umbrella!

And if the weather is a little chilly... add a fun hat ;)

 This is a picture Justin took of Rose on their way to grandma's house. She has been refusing to leave the house in anything but her PJ's and also usually samples daddy's lunch!

Tuesday was Nana's birthday, so we took this picture for her! 

Wednesday we all got to go out to eat to celebrate Nana. 

 And on Friday we went out for ice cream to celebrate the end of the work week!

I guess I didn't realize it until putting all these pictures in this post, but we went out to eat A LOT this week... Saturday after Rose's nap we headed to Trader Joe's and grabbed a quick dinner, with a Frosty, on the way home. 

When we weren't eating out, Rose was very busy playing! 

I think Rose has a favorite cartoon: Doc McStuffins. Rose then enjoys pretending she is a doctor and checking out all her stuffed animals and herself :)

Rose is also very helpful! Lately she has decided to set the table for us...what we all actually get to eat with can make dinner fun!

We have lots of fun planned over the next few weekends with a baby shower, some family activities, and Justin and Rose's birthday :)

outside and play dates

We started out the week enjoying a very beautiful Monday evening outside including a meal completely grilled by mommy :) Rose is sooooo happy to be outside! There is such a difference in her attention and play when she is outside and she never wants to come in...

I have been keeping busy in the evenings by crocheting the first afghan for us. I have made several afghans for family members recently, but except for a few afghans from life before marriage, I hadn't made any for our home (it might be done before all the snow is gone).

When not outside Rose makes sure to check on Tahnee and Meow, who she has taken over feeding every morning. I guess she thought Meow was lonely and so she shared some of her favs with him :)

Tuesday after I picked Rose up we went to see one of my co-workers who recently had a little girl placed with her in foster care who she is hoping to adopt!

Friday Rose and I were off again to spend the evening with our pastor's children while he and his wife enjoyed a nice dinner out. Rose was very slow to warm up, but eventually got into playing with a toy vacuum. Justin brought us pizza and we enjoyed several hours with three kids, but were happy to only be taking one home :)

Rose has really been into dancing lately, here she and daddy are having a dance party before we left for church. 

Rose is also working on mastering the swing this year, I think she's doing pretty well, but as she has only had her cast off a little more then a month, everything makes me nervous. 

We ended our weekend together with a new train layout, I'm not sure who has more fun...daddy or Rose :)

There's only a few more days until the official start of spring bring on the warm weather!!!

'big girl'

It was a wonderful week! Don't get me wrong, it included some tears, oh no's, mommy taking deep breaths, and daddy seriously considering moving into the garage, but it was a good week :)

Rose continues to amaze me, make me laugh, and give me wrinkles all at the same time with her developing personality. 

Here she is impersonating how mommy works. 

We also had Rose's 1 month post-cast check-up on Wednesday. We started off the day having breakfast with Nana, that was a really nice treat for all of us! 

 The doctor was very pleased with Rose's progress and while she still has a couple of degrees to go to regain full range, he said she will get there and he has no concerns :) YAY! 

Since we were soooo close we also made another trip to Trader Joe's. We got some favorites from last time and a couple new items including these apple fries....amazing!!!  (I also mistakenly picked up veggie corn dogs rather than the turkey corn dogs we got last time...I'm not sure how that's gonna go....) 

Oh and I have been trying to encourage some block and building play...Rose had other ideas of what to do with the blocks :) 

So here's the two things Rose does love the most right now, her babies and kitchen...with SOAP!

Rose is approaching the big 3...and our little baby is not looking (or acting) much like a baby. There are very few things that we have as part of our routine from when Rose was a baby. One of those things we had left was the crib. It seems somewhere between 1-3 years most children are transitioned out of their cribs and into a bed. After redoing our bedtime routine with Rose around 10 months, she has been sleeping so well and never tried to climb out of her crib, we decided not to mess with it :) Rose will be 3 in April so we decided to get a 'big girl' bed. Since Rose is already able to safely climb in and out of our bed, we decided to skip over the toddler bed and just get a regular bed. I looked around at different options and thought a daybed would suit the space in Rose's room. We looked around and found one at IKEA that looked great. We had never been to IKEA before and so headed out after our trip to the farmer's market on Saturday. 

Rose took this pictures of some yummy strawberries from the market :)

I am not going to recount the trip to IKEA, right now we would probably rather forget it. Someday when we read over this blog post and think about the trip, the retelling of the potty stops and trip to Target will seem better when recounted to Rose with a few embellishments ;) 

Anyway, we probably had the quickest ever shopping trip to IKEA. I think we were in and loaded up within an hour. I really want to go back and just browse around!

Luckily, Rose loved the bed I had in mind, so that part was easy. So we said 'good-bye' to the crib and 'hello' to a Rose's first 'big girl' bed!

Rose insisted on orange sheets...I shouldn't be surprised since she had an orange cast. They didn't have any at IKEA, so Rose picked out the sunshine pillow which she calls 'orange'. Sunday we went out for lunch with Nana and Papa and then did some shopping. I ran into BBB and found Rose her orange sheets!!!

We are super happy with how the bed turned out and Rose is sleeping like a 'big girl'!

After lunch and shopping we went to Pheobe to visit my grandpa who needs some rehab before returning home in another week or two. Rose was very helpful in taking great-grandpa to the church service.  

We also found this beautiful origami bird mobile, this picture doesn't do it justices...it is REALLY huge!

We just had  a busy and fun weekend! I love spending every moment with my little girl :)