3 Steps

I have successfully taken 7 consecutive steps now 3 different times! Oh the excitement! Once I do this Mommy runs like a crazy woman for the camera. She caught me today walking, but I'll warn you... it's a hot mess. I got 3 steps in, but trust me... there will be more video of me taking numerous consecutive flawless steps... just you wait!

PBS KidFest

This past weekend Mommy and Daddy took me to the PBS KidFest in Salem. It was absolutely crazy! There were CRAZY people EVERYWHERE! We got there just in time because by the time we had had enough, there was an obscene line all through the building to get in.

Mommy was so excited... she got to meet Mr. McFeely. Whoever that is. Mommy says he's from a super awesome show from when she was little... "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood" or something catchy like that. It was fun enough... I got a cool picture with him. Look how cheesy Mommy looks.

While waiting in line for that goofy guy, I got to pretend I was riding in a trolley. So cool!

Since I waited in line with Mommy for a picture with her friend... I made her wait with me to meet... CLIFFORD! What is up?! I'm the coolest kid in the world! Clifford is totally my homie now!

Oh I also got to meet my all time favorite muppet type character... COOKIE MONSTER!!!! I growled at him too. :)

Quilts

Rachel here. There is a church here in town that helped to organize an international quilt project for the victims' families from April 16th. Hundreds of squares were created in orange and maroon colors from places as far away as Australia. Volunteers put in countless hours putting the squares together and creating these beautiful quilts. We ventured on over to the church and were truly touched by what we saw. Reese even managed to make some friends with some lovely older ladies. :)

11 months

Rachel here. It's funny posting this now because in less than 2 weeks MY BABY WILL BE 1! I can't believe it!!!!!

Reese here. Okay, anyway.... oh Mommy and her babbling... about 2ish weeks ago I turned 11 months old! This was the best picture Mommy could get:

because all I wanted to do was this:

So... I'm doing tons of super cute things these days. I'm waving like a mad woman. I wave at old people, young people, dogs, even ceiling fans. They are all my friends and I do not discriminate... I like to spread the love. I also spend much of my past time clapping. This highly entertains my parentals. I clap... then they clap... then I clap back... silly adults.

Added to my two bottom teeth are two new friends... two front teeth! I'd like to take a moment to send a shoutie to them... Hey guys... thanks for helping me bite! The right one is making an appearance much faster than the left, but he's chugging along nonetheless. Don't you dare try to feed me because I like to do all of it all by myself. Mommy likes to give me: little pieces of meat, cheese, crackers, fruits, veggies, bread, bunnies, pasta with a little Parmesan cheese sprinkled on it (one of my favs!), little raviolis, and various other treats. Nothing CRAZY yet like milk. I'm on my last can of heinous formula though, so there is indeed a light at the end of the tunnel.

Signing is coming along smashingly. "Milk" is by far my favorite thing to sign, but I'm picking up on "more", "sleep", "diaper", "eat", "all done" and Mommy is trying to teach me "doggie". I'm pointing at EVERYTHING though asking her to tell me the words. It's lot of fun. When Mommy says/signs "all done" I actually make the "ahh" and the "duh" sound! Yay for me.

Mommy and Daddy have bought me some utterly amazing toys in the last year, but I fancy the simpler things in life like Mommy's purse. I LOVE HER PURSE. She has loads of fun stuff in there. We're talking keys, sunglasses, lip gloss... Mommy even caught me playing with her tampons. (This is not something I would usually share with the world, but the crinkling of the wrapper seriously kept her entertained for at least 30 minutes!) Just this afternoon Mommy caught me riding it like a horsie.

Mommy took away my bottles. I don't know what she was trying to pull over on me. The first day... I fought with all my might not to drink from that cup. I had about 3.5 oz that day. Needless to say the next day I decided to stop playing games and grow up a little. I now only drink from my sippy cup... it's actually quite liberating.

Now here's my biggest news... can I get a drum roll please.... I CAN WALK! Well sort of. I've been taking a few steps here and there, but last night I made a whopping voyage of 6 consecutive steps. WATCH OUT WORLD!

Mrs. Brittingham

Mommy's very good friend, Kristen, from high school was married last weekend in Maryland, and we were lucky enough to be able to attend! I got to hang out with Mommy's friends Callie, Stephanie, Kara, Lisa, and Misty... we even met a new friend Katherine! It was super fun!!!!!

NYC

New York was kind of a let down. Mommy and Daddy have been there a few times before, but never with me. While they love me VERY much... and while they love my stroller VERY much... they do not love pushing me through the VERY busy streets of NYC in my stroller. Mommy found herself in Central Park for much of our visit because there was actually SOME space where there weren't TONS of people.

While there we pretended to go to the Bronx Zoo. I say pretended because we got there 3o mins before they were closing. Look at all the animals I could have seen! They were incredible!

Instead I saw this:

And frankly... it was a bore.The next day Mommy tried to make it up to me by taking me to the Central Park Zoo. I was once again not intrigued... she had just slammed my finger in a door (because all the hipster New Yorkers weren't much help), and I was extremely tired. I did however LOVE the polar bears!!!

After a little nap I started to feel more groovy and took in some of the sites...

Next time... I'll be walking... maybe that will be easier???

Stay tuned tomorrow for more updates!!! There is tons more to post! :)

Crayons!

Daddy had business in NYC, so as always... we decided to make a mini vacation out of it! On our way up to New York, we decided to stop by the Crayola Crayon Factory in Easton, PA. We got to watch how crayons were made back in the day and how they are made today.

I'm not gonna lie... it was rather intriguing. The Crayon man even let us hand roll a red crayon all by ourselves (this is how they did it waaaay back when people walked to school, up hill, both ways, in the snow, with paper wrapped around their feet for shoes or something...)!

I got to suck on markers that Mommy's sure millions of other kids have sucked on and now I'm going to have neon green snot trickling out of my nose... I mean color... with these magical nontoxic non-drawing off the paper markers with Daddy, and then Mommy and I played with some modeling clay that you could color!

It was pretty fun, but my favorite part was this play area they had for smaller children. There was this amazing ball machine that you put the ball in and it traveled all over the place... over your head even!

I L.O.V.E.D the Crayola Crayon Factory!

Baby friends

I got to hang out with two super cool babies the weekend of the Georgia Tech football game (which we won... as Uncle Aaron would say "JAM!"). While Mommy hung out with her friend Erin from college and Mel (Mommy's other friend Meredith's best friend from back home but Mommy's new blog friend... ah the internet!), I got to play (well ride around in strollers for an obscene number of hours) with Brett and Lila!

While it was lovely for Mommy to sit around and talk with other mommies, it was quite a long and restless day for us babies. Just look at us by the end of their visit:

ME: Seriously Mom! GET ME OUT OF HERE! BRETT: UGH!!! You women and your talking... yeah yeah poop... blah blah sippy cups!!! L.A: Brett SERIOUSLY... I quit listening HOURS ago!

You guys come back and visit me really soon... but this time... leave the mamas at home. ;)

PS... especially you Brett. Hubba Hubba! (Brett giving Reesie a kiss... so cute!)

Norfolk Zoo

While in Tidewater, I made sure to keep super busy. My Grandpa and Pearl took Thursday off to spend the day at the zoo with me! I've seen many people write about the Norfolk Zoo and how nice it is. I will say... while half of it was under construction, it was a really cool zoo.We were super close to some of the animals... the giraffes in particular. Look at this great shot Mommy got! She didn't even have to zoom in!
All in all it was a lovely trip to the beach area to visit my family. Can't wait to see them all again in October for the big day!

Now where was I?

First of all... I'm so glad to be back (so is Mommy... I think she was dieing a slow death from not helping me document my life story)!

Now where was I? Ahhh yes... Mommy and I had driven all the way to Tidewater by ourselves, had arrived after almost hitting a deer at 848 am, and had survived a hideously cracked windshield. I had gotten sand in my eyes, and frankly was very upset about it. I needed something to make myself feel better... what makes women/young babies feel better? SHOPPING of course. Who better to go shopping with? NANA OF COURSE!

We picked Nana up early in the morning and headed to the mall.... okay the mallSSSS. :) Mommy bought me lots of new clothes for next summer (on SUPER sale!!! she does love a sale!!!) and then we headed to dinner with some of the Wharton side of my family. I had such a great time! It was WAY past my bedtime, but I was quite content with my family and a nice juicy lemon. :)

We're BAAAAAAAAAAACK!!

But the Hokies are playing right now, so I have NO TIME for blogging shenanigans...

HOWEVER you should definitely check back in the morning/afternoon because I have SO MUCH to talk about!!!

Sadly...

... my BRAND NEW computer is on the fritz. By the way... Rachel here. While we are working on getting it fixed we'll be taking a break from blogging. Sad I know. What will you do with your lives? Let's be serious... what will I do with MY life? I have so much to help Reese post it just seems unfair. Hopefully we'll be up and running again soon. Until then we'll be in NYC, a wedding in MD, and a baby shower in Richmond. Wish us safe travels!!

The good... the bad... the ugly...

...the beach. Rachel here. So I've seen on people's blogs their adorable kids in their adorable bathing suits, looking adorable as they are eating sand, on the beach. I felt like an awful mother. My kid didn't have adorable pictures of her eating sand. My family lives at the beach for goodness sakes, we'd been to Miami, and Reese had yet to even touch sand. That is until today!

We drove down to the oceanfront. Ah... a tacky tourist shop... I seriously hadn't been in one of those in years... Reese needed a bucket and shovel. I bought her sand toys and headed for the sand. The beautiful thing about VB (this is meant to be sarcastic) is our lovely imported sand that they ship in during the off seasons. Classy huh?! Well this new sand was EVERYWHERE, and they were out there with bulldozers trying to spread it out. It took me FOREVER to push that darn stroller through it! We finally arrive at a lovely spot very close to the water where there weren't too many people. FINALLY... There I was... putting sunscreen on my adorable kid, in her adorable suit, just waiting for her to take a handful of sand to the mouth. She didn't. That's cool... I got some great pictures of her anyway. And for the record we did have some mandarin oranges with chunks of sand all over them. Good enough for me. :)

Now here's the part nobody tells you about... your adorable kid will get adorably tired and get that awful sand in their adorable eyes when they rub them. That's when our trip to the beach was dramatically cut short. (We still had a blast though!) We then trucked it back to Grandpa and Pearl's and took a bath where we looked just as adorable as we did on the beach. :)

Dear Daddy

Dear Daddy,

Good morning! I'm having lots of fun here in Tidewater. (For those of you that are not my daddy... I'm in Suffolk/Norfolk/VB for the next few days visiting. Daddy was super busy with stuff at work, so the Moms and I peaced out.) Yesterday I got to see my Nana at work. I love my Nana. It definitely took me a SECOND to warm up to her, but all was soon well and we were like old friends. :) All her little lady friends thought I was the cutest! After missing 2 naps, however, I was quite the wild woman... flailing all over the place... bouncing like I had no sense. It hit me eventually though. Mommy took me right out of that place before we were in full meltdown mode. I was asleep before we even got on the interstate to get back to Grandpa and Pearl's. :)

Once we got back to their house I got to play around in the front yard. That was fun. I pushed my little hippo around and even got a grass stain on my butt! It was SO cool! Guess what else I did???

Yes that's me... your eyes can refocus now. I have my face in a dog bowl. How sanitary of me. What did Mommy do? She snapped loads of pictures of me. Nasty Mom! She should have rescued me. Don't you worry though... that wasn't the only mischief I've gotten myself into the short time I've been here.

Grandpa's shelf drawers were empty... can you believe it? He'll be happy I filled them with all of my toys for him.

Today Mommy wants to take me to the beach and to some superawesomecrazywaybetterthanwehaveathome mall, so I'm pretty stoked. :) I can't wait to tell you about it!

xoxo,

Reesie

86 the Duck Pond

So Daddy wanted to meander on over to the Duck Pond this afternoon. We packed up our leftover tailgating bread, I put on my super hot duck shoes (courtesy of Mommy's friend from college Lisa), and Mommy grabbed the camera.

We arrived at the Duck Pond and found a boat. What else do you do with a boat but jump inside and take some pix?! (Don't worry you gparents out there... the boat was on land... we wouldn't put a baby all by herself in a boat on the water for an awesome picture opp... more to come on that later...)

Boat... check. Now it was time to find some ducks. We found LARGE piles of bread crumbs in random spots around the Duck Pond, but alas... NO DUCKS. We spotted all of them crowded around a small island in the middle of the pond. All around the pond were groups of people fishing and small children wanting to feed them gobs of bread. Apparently they were not hungry or in need of company, so we took our adventuring elsewhere.

Where did we go you ask? :) We went to see the horsies of coursies!!! A baby horse came right on over to say hello to me. I was quite intrigued and smiled the ENTIRE time!

That was until they left. I wanted him to come back and visit me so badly, but he apparently wanted to spend time with his mama... I mean that's cool I'll just suck on the fence.

After the horsies we trucked it on over to the Smithfield Plantation House. Can you believe they are open for tours on a Sunday?! We skipped the tour, however, and headed right for these giant sunflowers that were in their garden.

Oh, and I have to show you my new trick...

I can stand all on my own! Sometimes if you're lucky, you'll catch me standing up from sitting down while holding on to nothing at all! I've even taken a couple of steps. It's so fun to see Mommy and Daddy's faces when I pull these little tricks out from under my sleeve!

After the SPH it was on to the Horticulture Gardens at VT. Now this is where the picture opps got super scary. Mommy and Daddy were doing all kinds of crazy things! They were propping me up on rocks and around ponds... SCARY stuff, but I survived and got some cute pix in the meantime (Mommy and Daddy were always VERY close by!) . Oh AND I got to give the koi fish my leftover tailgating buns!!! Hopefully they don't perish. :)

Here is Mommy's favorite shot from the day:

Happy Gparent's Day

(You may have to click on the picture in order to read the sign.)

Let's go HOKIES!

Guess what people... the fooseball season has officially begun! What's that? Oh... wait... I don't think I heard you correctly... there was already a game? Huh? Oh you mean that unfortunately debacle from last weekend in Charlotte? Yeah... I don't know what you're referring to. ;) Stupid Steinspring and his stupid offense... not to mention that Sean Glennon... sigh... but I digress. :)

So as I was saying... I went to my VERY FIRST Virginia Tech home game! It was awesome. I got to tailgate:

No burgers and cole slaw for me... I'm just a baby... it was mandarin and strawberries on the menu for this little cheerleader. (Check out that skirt will ya? My Grandma got it for me! Thanks Grandma!)

Once we got into the stands I got a couple of lovely pictures with my parentals. Our attempt at the family portrait could have been more successful, but my philosophy is 'ya just can't win 'em all!'

I had another experiential milestone today... THE JUMP!!!! Unfortunately Mommy is having a hard time loading the video onto my blog, so hopefully we'll add that later. :(

Can't wait for the next game!

Sigh

Rachel here. Where do I begin. My baby is turning 1... next month. It's so bittersweet. I can't believe how small/immobile she used to be! Reese has come so far! She's standing on her own... long enough to get excited, but not long enough for me to run and get the camera to get a picture. :) Her nightly boot camp with Bryan is going well... she walks laps over and over with her little hippo walker. I just hope she's attempting to walk by her birthday for Bryan's sanity. Also... I could be wrong, but I believe she's getting her upper right front tooth, and Bryan said he thought he saw another little white dot on the bottom. UGH! I can't take all this growing and changing.

TWO CUTE STORIES:

1. Just yesterday, she shared her breakfast with me. Sigh. It was a waffle. So cute. She put a little piece right up to my mouth, I opened it, and she plopped it right in and gave me one of the biggest smiles ever. I proceeded to melt right then and there.

2. This morning she did the unthinkable. It was about 10:30... she still had about 30 min until her next bottle... she crawled right into the kitchen so I assumed she was headed to her playroom. I was slowly following her, when all the sudden I heard her start to whine a little. I ran in there to find her sitting on her butt, whining, and SIGNING milk. SHE WAS SIGNING PEOPLE! I've been working with her for months and months and months... and finally SHE WAS SIGNING! Bless her heart she was just pumping her little hand away. I looked at her and said (and signed) milk??? She immediately stopped crying and in it's place was the biggest smile. You better believe I immediately got her that milk buddy.

Oh I love her.

Ducks!

First off... Happy Labor Day to all! In honor of Labor Day (and the fact my Daddy didn't have to go to work), my Grandma and Grandaddy came to visit me. While they were here, we went on a very special adventure to... my new favorite place... THE DUCK POND! I had so much more fun this time than last time. Well, maybe not MORE fun, but I was far more interested in the ducks this time around. The bread wasn't half bad either!

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the little ducks swim all around and chase after our little bread crumbs. It was both sweet and slightly scary. There were a couple of times I thought there might be a domestic dispute between the mama duck and what appeared to me an intruder/daddy duck, but all was well.

I wanted so badly for the ducks to love me. I reached for them time and time again, but there was no interest. I'm willing to bet that once I learn to toss those crumbs like Mommy and Daddy I'll be beating those ducks away with a stick. Mommy tried to help me feed the ducks myself, but there is a little thing called coordination that I just don't possess. Frankly I found it much easier to put the bread crumbs in my mouth. :) I told her that I would just rather hang out with her (and Daddy, but he was the photographer, so I was waving to him)...

... and Grandma and Grandaddy...
... and a tree.
All in all it was a great day to start the fall season!