Playdate

Five Months Old

Every mother probably thinks this, but these pictures still don't really capture her personality! Her newest development is actually swallowing rice cereal, rather than just playing with it in her mouth and she feels oh-so-grown-up in her high chair. Suddenly, she is aware when the rest of us are eating and enjoys being at our level.

A special treat today--Jonathan's meeting was canceled and he came home early. Mali and Brinn had played all morning with their friend Jack and right after he left, there was Daddy! Ah, the perks of a snowfall.

Five on Friday

Our friends, The Larsons, have started a tradition of posting "Ten on Tuesdays", a list of ten fascinating facts about them that week. I'm not sure we have ten to talk about, but here's a shortened version:

1) My Uncle Carlos is recovering well from a succesful surgery, although he still has many challenges to overcome. Thanks for your kind thougths and prayers.

2) Mali has become quite a girly-girl lately. She loves wearing her cross necklace that her godparents gave her at her baptism and then showing it for others to admire. Below is an after-bath picture of her in her new pink daisy towel.

3) Brinn ROARS loudly when she's excited. Mali likes the fact her little sister can do a decent lion impression.

4) Both of us gave us desserts for Lent, and I guess that means Mali is too, since there will hopefully not be any in the house.

5) We are compltely addicted to politics right now. Even Brinn got to get up out of bed to watch the primary results. (Only because she needed to eat). Thankfully, that was before Ash Wednesday, so we were able to celebrate "Super Fat Tuesday" with White Chocolate Raspberry bars, compliments of my dear friend and superb cookie-baker, Ruth Meyer.

Prayer request

A favor to ask of all of our faithful blog-followers: Please keep our Uncle Carlos in your prayers as he is hospitalized, awaiting surgery, and suffering from congestive heart failure among other ailments. He and my Aunt Pam are tough cookies, but they both need our support right now and would definitely appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers. Thanks and we will keep you posted!


(That's Uncle Carlos holding Mali at her baptism)

Friends and Neighbors

We had a really memorable afternoon this weekend when our former neighbor Becky came to visit. Our other neighbors surprised her by introducing them to their baby daughter whom they had adopted since Becky's move. This was particulary special as Becky and her husband Nick are in the middle of an adoption themselves. We keep being blessed by watching our friends' families grow, and these "expansions" are some of the best.

Here's the pictures of the girls together: Brinn, Mali, and Elizabeth.

Silliness

Attention all Michigan readers:

Don't forget to go out and vote! Preferably for Mike Huckabee. Not that we intend for this blog to be our own political soapbox, but any candidate that both voting members of this household agree on deserves a shout-out.

However, if you are looking for a blog that has great political (and religious and social) discourse check out Gene Veith's. His posts are always insightful and the comments take on a respectful, thoughtful debate.

Four Months Old!

Our smiley little girl is now a quarter of a year old. She celebrated this milestone by trying out a little bit of rice cereal and having a better hair day than her sister. She's still on a bottle strike, but she occasionally sleeps through the night making all of our days easier.

My promotion

"Tomorrow is my last day of work."

A friend of mine recently started a blog post with that same sentence and it certainly caught my interest. She went out to list her reasons for resigning, and summed it up by saying that while quitting work may not make sense to many people (with or without kids), it made sense to her. Knowing her and her husband, who is probably keeping his fingers crossed that she'll make more of her yummy cookies in her time home, I'm sure it's the right decision for them. I'm so happy for them.

And now it's my turn. It now makes sense to me and to our family. For the past two months or so, I've been attempting to work part-time, still doing social work consultation at Head Start centers, like I did before Brinn was born. The so-called life-work balance has yet to take form. Brinn refuses a bottle. Mali came down with Fifth disease. Regular night-time sleeping has not been occurring. Jonathan's job requires his 100 percent, as well as us as a supporting cast. Our baby-sitters are wonderful (I'm not just saying this because they read this blog), but I missed any time with the girls. And even though I was only scheduled to work PART-time, my job exists FULL-time and it was often on my mind. It is difficult and frustrating not to be able to do a job well. I NEED to do the job of parenting well.

Of course, this is bittersweet. I work for an amazing agency (how many non-profits can be described in that way?) and for the best supervisor in the world. They have been unbelievably gracious with this transition. I will miss them, and the work. While contemplating this, I read another friend's blog post about her resignation (by the way, I didn't ask anyone's permission to quote them, so I'm not identifying my sources). She explained "I'm glad to be sad about leaving. Because if I was glad to be leaving, then that would be sad. I've always felt very blessed to have my job...doing something meaningful, and getting to work with some pretty great people. Very blessed indeed"

We are all really excited to begin this new phase in our lives. I have lots of ideas of how to spend my time at home and with my girls. Maybe I'll finally make a few of the updates to this blog that I've been thinking about. I'm actually going to a puree-party next week to learn how to sneak veggies into recipes. (Does that sound like fun or what?) This is a really good move for us--just look how cute my new bosses are!

Christmas Reflections

Merry Christmas, or more precisely, a blessed Epiphany. We are slowly adjusting to our normal home routines after a wonderful Christmas trip with many celebrations. In many ways, we felt this was our best Christmas-tide ever. The girls adored spending so much time with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins as well as friends we don't see often enough.





We also tried to maintain our own family Christmas tradition (now two years in the running) of celebrating the twelfth day of Christmas this Saturday. After a fun-filled trip to Ikea with Grandma Sandy we had a family dinner together and let the girls finally enjoy all of their new toys. Here are the rest of the pictures from the past few weeks.

We've also started something new this year...a book that my friend Ruth sent me suggested to save Christmas cards throughout the year. Each day (or week, or whatever) choose a card that you received and pray for person or family. What a way to purposefully remember loved ones throughout the year! We're hoping Mali will soon join in this too...the other day at breakfast she asked to pray for her friend Jack and then for her friend Adi. We had been talking about Jack earlier in that meal but her suggestion of Adi was pretty spontaneous. Hopefully they both had good days that day!

2007 to 2008

Happy New Year! (And happy engagement anniversary to us) I LOVE this holiday! We had a fantastic time celebrating last night at a neighbors' party and then had a birthday/New Year's brunch this morning. Entertaining certainly is different with children. I think we may start this tradition of an 11:00 am party, complete with pajamas, champagne, and football.

On our drive back from Michigan the other day, we reminisced about the past year. Here are a few recaps of things we've learned:

1) Life is much better and also much more challenging with two children. Mali was born to be a big sister.

2) As Mali came into her own (and Brinn will soon do the same), we came up with our own philosophies about disciplining our children. Setting boundaries, teaching skills, enforcing consequences, infusing humor and hopefully grace...what a responsibility.

3) Jonathan dubbed 2007 as "the year of craigslist". It is amazing how useful and addictive that site is. We can't imagine our life without our minivan now. Or having the clutter around that I managed to get rid of thanks to craigslist.

4) Speaking of clutter, we also learned how to simplify our schedule and household more this year too. Weekly routines were essential during the hectic times of 2007. We definitely recommend the tips we learned from flylady.net, even if the website itself is over-the-top cheesy at times.

5) Did we mention that having two kids keeps us on our toes? While attempting to slow down during the season of Advent, we made more decisions regarding life simplification. (More on that in another post).

6) Finally, and most importantly--pregnancy tests can be wrong! On New Year's Eve 2006, we were disappointed with a negative test. However, weeks later, my growing belly alone was proof that Brinnly Ruth Ward was on the way. I knew those cravings meant something!

What did you learn over the past year? Advice welcome!

Texas in December

Merry Christmas! But before we get to that post, here are our pictures from our trip to Austin. Enjoy!

(I would make a comment about having our pictures up before the Kurths, but if it wasn't for them, we would have no idea how to store pictures, or even what a blog was).

How to take a family Christmas picture

1) Convince your husband that this is a worthwhile way to spend a Saturday afternoon and that it won't be taking him away from football. And no, he is not to wear any Big Team team t-shirt.

2) Find a time when every member of the house is awake and ready to smile.

3) Bribe your neighbor to come over to help with the process. This is a good time to break out the snacks.

4) Attempt to arrange a baby and toddler on the couch with the parents. Convince the toddler that this not time to play with her toys or the neighbor or the camera.

5) After many, many discarded attempts, call over another neighbor, have him hide behind the couch to jump out and "suprise" the baby and toddler to hopefully catch a spontaneous-looking smile.

The result:

Three months old!

Big news this month: she moved into her big-girl crib in the room she shares with Mali. They both love it (as do their parents). If Brinn wakes up in the middle of the night loudly enough to wake Mali too, Mali is ready with the offer of a binky and stuffed animal to share. She also did great on her first airplane trip and had fun in Texas. More pictures of that trip soon. Overall, Brinn is smiley and happy and actually beginning to develop a regular sleep/feeding schedule. And she's still our snuggler!

Don't mess with us (we're going to Texas)

We're off for a family vacation to Austin. We are really excited to eat barbeque and meet up with the cast of Friday Night Lights. (Maybe that last part is just wishful thinking)



Every Friday night we watch our childless neighbors leave for a night out of happy hour and dinner. (No diaper bags! No sippy cups!) We wave and smile at them, knowing that soon it will be bedtime here and we can break out the dessert and watch our new favorite show. It's a small consolation. Did you know that the actor playing "Smash" went to Carnegie Mellon? I'm going to make Jonathan wear his CMU sweatshirt just in case we run into him.

Oh, and while we're in the area, we'll see the Kurths, meet baby Jonah, and be honored to stand as his godparents at his baptism. It's a good thing they live very near where FNL is filmed so we could fit them in.

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Michigan. The minivan performed wonderfully in transporting two little girls and all of the gear across three states. The girls did relatively well on the drive. We had two dinners, one with each side of the family and it was so great to introduce Brinn to Berrien Springs. Another highlight was finally meeting Adison Hildebrand and our "Thanksgiving Friday" tradition of hanging out with her parents.




Click here are the rest of our Thanksgiving pictures.

And, speaking of holidays, here are our Halloween pictures.

17 Months Old

Can we brag about our toddler for a few minutes here? She is changing every day recently. Her vocabulary is taking off! New word yesterday: "meat". That's a pretty useful one since she eats that and everything else in sight. One of our favorite words to describe her is "bold". She eagerly attacks the world with such enthusiasm she often wears us out. She loves, loves, loves taking a bath, seeing animals (especially Grandma's cat),saying "hi" to anyone crossing her path, laughing at her own jokes, playing with older kids, and of course, her sister. She (like her parents) is a child of routine and is proud to be able to anticipate what is happening next in the day, whether that is praying before bed or pushing her daddy out the door in the morning. Oh, and she can do a killer buffalo impression.

Recent quotes from Mali

While getting dressed for church--
Kaethe: Mali, you look so cute.
Mali: Yeah!


Picking Jonathan up from work, Brinn sleeping in her car seat--
Jonathan: Hi Mali! I'm so happy to see you!
Mali: Shhhh! (Then pointed at Brinn and wouldn't even look at Jonathan!)


Looking forward to seeing her friend Jack--
Kaethe: Jack's coming over!
Mali: JA!
Kaethe: That's right, "Jack". You two are such good friends. He's probably your best friend. Who is your best friend, Mali?
Mali: Sister!
Kaethe and Jonathan: Awww...

Two months old

Ten pounds, eleven ounces! Still gaining about one once per day!
(Unfortunately, these pictures don't capture her precious smiles).





And yes, she's also the proud owner of a Daddy with a beard. Mike, I think you might lose this one. I like to think that the free time he has from not shaving in the morning he can use for diaper changes.

Another fun fall weekend

We have been really taking advantage of the beautiful Pittsburgh weather this fall. Seriously, I think the climate here is wonderful. Here is an album of the past few weekends we shared with visiting family.

Our girls

Jonah Howard Kurth...

has arrived! Our friends, Derek, Karianne, and Kaeta have a brand new little boy in their family. We are so thankful for a safe and uncomplicated birth. However, we're a little thrown off that he's a boy. None of our friends have had boys recently. In fact, when we heard that the Kurths may be going into labor, I said to Mali "maybe baby Greta is here" (Greta being a name that they were considering for a girl). Mali gave me a confused look...and made the sign for gorilla. We had been calling the baby "Greta Gorilla" ever since then. And now we have to get used to saying "Jonah".

We'll be travelling to Texas in December for his baptism. We've never had a baby godson before.

Now back to making the wedding plans for Brinnly and Jonah...

Happy Halloween

Lots more pictures to follow!

October 27, 2007 (A contrast)

October 27, 2001

Six years of marriage
Five different full-time jobs
Four homes together
Three years of graduate school
Two beautiful daughters
One (still) happy couple

All Smiles

This picture doesn't quite do it justice, but Brinn has been charming us all with her smiles lately. It is especially fun to watch her beam at Mali. Speaking of our big girl, we have another reason to smile around here--Mali has been practicing using the potty! Obviously, she's way too young for official potty-training, but when we got it out for her to become used to it, it worked! We'll spare everyone the details, but we're already counting the money we're potentially saving on diapers.

Here's a picture with us and Ann, our wonderful midwife who caught Brinn. All good at the six-week check-up as well.

October 27, 2001

Six years of marriage
Five different full-time jobs
Four homes together
Three years of graduate school
Two beautiful daughters
One (still) happy couple!