Great Loves

Hi guys, Daphne here.



















I thought I would let you all know a few of the things that I love right now. These things can usually keep me pretty happy, and since I'm discovering that people will bend over backwards in order to keep me happy, I need to make sure everyone knows about this list.

First of all, I totally love my mom. She is so beautiful and wonderful and always smells good, even when it's 107 out. She feeds me and laughs at me when I'm not even trying to be funny. And she says I am soooo cute.

Speaking of funny, I love my dad because I think he is one of the funniest people ever! He blows on my tummy to make me laugh. He holds me upside down until Mom says, "aahhh!! no!! her head might pop off!" He carries me around the backyard so that I can smell the flowers or pet the chickens. Dad says he was never a cheek pincher until he met me, but now he wants to pinch my cheeks all day long. He also smells good in 107 degree weather, but I think that's because he takes a cold shower every 5 minutes.

I also love my dogs, but you knew that. I like the chickens OK; I think they're pretty entertaining to watch but I tend to get jumpy when they're too close.













I like going for walks and swinging. I love playing with my toys, and I love squeezing my stuffed animals. I have one animal that looks just like my dog Lola, and I'm usually confused because I think it is Lola! But this Lola doesn't lick my face, and she holds still so I can hold her.

I love, love, love the bath. If I'm ever grouchy, someone just needs to throw me in the tub and I get super happy.

I love people watching, so if you're ever trying to feed me in a public place, know that I get pretty distracted and would rather just look around.

I love my purple bedroom, and my huge bed that I can roll from one end to the other in.

If I'm sitting on your lap at meal time, I love to grab at everything within reach. My mom says it's getting hard to hold me and eat at the same time, since I just want to grab her food, her fork, her glass...basically anything she doesn't want me to have. She tries to distract me with baby toys, but I'm much smarter than she thinks and am not easily swayed from what I really want.

One of my better qualities, if I do say so myself, is that I am a super cuddly baby. If you hold me I like to nestle right in and get cozy. I wouldn't mind if you wanted to hold me all day long, in fact. Unless it's 107 out. Then I need a little space.

Can You Say H-O-T?

Seriously, it is warm out there.

David filled our teeny tiny pool (which actually belongs to the dogs) with water yesterday so that the water could warm up. Today Daphne donned her new bathing suit. Then the fun times began.



























Daphne's not one to show a huge amount of emotion, but she seemed to enjoy her first swimming experience. I think she was mostly confused on why she had to take a bath with her clothes on.

Definitely Not a Baby

It just seems like once they pass 6 months your baby is no longer a baby. 7 months just sounds so old. We might as well go buy her a car.

We went out to Hanger to get Daphne some new braces since she outgrew her first ones. She entertained herself with the paper on the table.













David took this picture while we were there that highlights the fact that Daphne looks absolutely nothing like me:




















She had her first taste of avocado. She apparently loves it since she ate more than I ever seen her eat in one sitting. And green is totally her color. The picture where green mush was coming out of her nose was too blurry to post here, so I'm sorry that you're missing out on that darling sight.



















Since Portland reconfigured their precincts, David was able to start working near our home. Now every so often he comes home for supper, plus it's easy for Daphne and I to go meet him at Starbucks. So to cap off our day, we fought evening traffic to go spend some time with him.














Daphne's been showing intense curiosity in the way big people drink, so I got her a sippy cup to start experimenting with. I'm not sure she really got anything, since it's one of those spill proof kinds where the baby actually has to suck the water out instead of it just pouring out straight down his/her throat, but she seemed to enjoy her new toy.














I don't think I mentioned that we moved Daphne to her crib this past weekend. My goal was for her to be sleeping through the night before we moved her so that I wouldn't have to go stumbling down the hallway in the wee hours in order to feed her. But she started rolling over in her tiny bassinet and getting stuck, so we moved to the big bed despite the fact that she refuses to sleep longer than 4 hours at a time. Now I lay her down in her crib where she promptly rolls over onto her tummy and goes to sleep. For 4 hour increments.

Between the sippy cups, avocados, and big beds, this is one baby who is too quickly moving from baby-hood to big girl status.

Daphne's Got a New Toy

One great thing about Daphne having an early bedtime (and since she hasn't taken a third nap lately, early means 5:30 or 6:00) is that we can spend our evenings working in the yard. Summer evenings are the best; so peaceful and warm, and thanks to the baby monitor turned up as loudly as it can go, also filled with the sound of Daphne's heavy breathing.

We have this area of our yard that is basically a barren wasteland. Nothing grows because of the maple tree that sucks every nutrient out of the soil. We've played around with various ideas on making it a little more lovely, but nothing seemed perfect until someone in our family came up with the genius idea to hang a swing from the nutrient sucking tree.

Now our wasteland is no longer a waste and Daphne can have all her friends over so that they can fight over our one swing. Perfect.

Here's Daphne in her first swing ride with the before mentioned genius:















Brynner thinks we put the swing up just for him to chase whoever is swinging. I'm sure getting kicked in the head a few times will cure him of that habit.

Too Bad it's 95 Out

Now that we've gone completely modern and joined Facebook, I have to remember to continue to post pictures here! I don't want to bore all my FB friends with seeing duplicate pictures, but I don't want to leave out the non-FBers with all the cute ones...whew, it's so hard being a part of the 21st Century.

We took Aunt Lori to the airport today and she brought Daphne this super amazingly cute hat. All I can say is...so super amazingly cute. I love a hat with a huge flower on it. It matched her outfit today and I wanted her to wear it, but in keeping with preventing heatstroke in my baby, we'll save it for a chillier day.

Daphne on the Farm

Ahhh, summer is here. Picking berries has to be one of the best parts of this season. I remember my first summer in Portland and having no idea where one would go to pick fruit. I was too used to going to our backyard, or Grandma and Grandpa's backyard, to pick what I wanted. Although David and I have our groove down on where we go now, I think it's always better just to be where it's comfortable and familiar. And free. (I still can't believe people will pay money for blackberries.)



















Daphne's Great Grandmother Roth got unexpectedly sick and spent last week in the hospital, so we went down yesterday to visit and help out around the house. I was so happy that raspberries needed to be picked, so David, Grandpa, Daphne and I got to work. David and Gramps worked really hard, I picked the easy ones, and Daphne snoozed.


























Daph had her first experience with baby pigs. She liked them.



















A rainshower over the weekend kept the combine from running. I was disappointed because I wanted Daphne to go on her first ride. So instead we walked around the fields and watched Grandpa do some plowing.

































While there are lots of perks to city living, mainly Panera and Trader Joes and stores open after 6PM, sometimes it's nice to trade in pavement for fields, streetlights for stars. Daphne's blessed to get the best of both worlds.

Starbucks Baby to the Rescue!

She's here whenever you need a little pick-me-up.

Evening Blues

Daphne (like lots of other babies, I'm sure) is very fussy in the evenings. If we're home I try to become as entertaining as possible in order to keep her distracted from her grouchiness. Usually this means going outside. We go for a walk, or talk to the chickens, or play with the dogs.




















It's during these evening outdoor times that I've noticed how in love with our dogs Daphne is. She adores them. They, on the other hand....not so fond of her. It's not that they don't like her, it's more that she does nothing for them. She doesn't throw the ball, which is the best thing you can do if you want their favor. And her version of petting them is to grab their noses or twist their ears.

So remember that Daphne is grouchy to begin with when we head outdoors. Then imagine she wants to play with the dogs so badly, but they could care less that she wants their attention. She lets her frustrations be known.



















But then the time comes when tiredness prevails and we head in for bed. And I cross my fingers, hoping that all the bedtime crying will not make hearing aids a need too near in my future.

Happy 4th???

Today started off with Daphne waking up at 5AM. This isn't altogether unusual; I just feed her and put her back to bed and she goes to sleep until 7 or so. But this morning she cried and cried until I finally gave up and got up with her at 6:15.

Yesterday she got up at 6:30. She took a 45 minute morning nap (should be at least 1 1/2 hours). She cried for an hour during her second nap until I just gave in and got her up (should have been 1 1/2 hour nap). We tried again an hour later and she slept for 1/2 an hour. It was 2:30 by this time, and I knew she wouldn't be able to stay awake until her 7PM bedtime. Well, let me rephrase that...she can stay awake, she's just crying her little baby head off for those 4 1/2 hours because she's so tired. Bedtime finally came and I put her down, where she cried for an hour before finally going to sleep. A bad day of sleeping yesterday meant a bad night of sleeping last night, meaning getting up at 5 this morning...needless to say, hopes are not high for a happy 4th.

I had given up on reading sleep solution books, mostly because they were frustrating me with all their contradictory information. But I keep hearing references to Marc Weissbluth's "Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child," so I'm going to give it a read and see if there are any last tidbits of wisdom I can find on teaching my baby some healthy sleep habits. The library had a ridiculously long wait to check it out, so I spent a huge $5.50 and bought in on Half.com. I'm desperate here, and have no patience on waiting on a huge line of slow readers before I can see what this book has to offer. My one consolation is that since so many people want to check this book out, I must not be the only person in the world who is struggling with a child who won't sleep.

So Daphne is not sleeping because she's so tired and she's so tired because she's not sleeping. It's a delightful circle we're stuck in. Today she has been laying on the floor looking very sleepy. And being very sleepy at Starbucks. And being very sleepy and not looking at the camera.













































But it's nice that she has a cute 4th of July outfit. Two actually, so we'll have to rotate them all day long.