Silence cannot be trusted...

The other day I was trying to get some things done and Rachel was pestering me for something to eat. I got her a bowl of applesauce and kindly asked her to go eat it by her sister on the floor. Audrey is a lot more content when someone is nearby as she plays on the floor. A few minutes later I realized Rachel had moved to the other end of the house and was browsing through some books. Audrey was being very quiet playing on the floor, so I decided to go investigate. This is what I found:

Rachel had followed my instructions by eating on the floor by her sister, but she failed to finish her applesauce before she chose to do something else. Audrey took advantage of the opportunity by getting applesauce all over herself, the quilt, and a few of her toys. You quickly learn as a mother that silence isn't always a good thing... :)

Gimme, gimme, gimme!

Audrey is a girl who knows what she wants and isn't afraid to let you know. It's been quite the battle recently to keep her from ripping up the hymnal at church. :) When she gets really excited about something her fingers wiggle like crazy. The other day Rachel and Andy were playing Phase 10 Dice and Audrey liked the sound of the dice being shook up. She definitely wanted to join in on the fun!

The Hague Temple

Yesterday after church the girls were in pretty good humor and the weather was decent, so we decided to go see the temple. Rachel loved the bridge that you had to cross to reach the entrance of the temple. She went back and forth, back and forth. We took roughly 40 pictures of the girls by these flowers - thank heavens for digital cameras. Unfortunately Audrey was too interested in the grass and Rachel was done with smiling at the camera. So, this is actually the first picture we took: We kept on trying to get a picture of Audrey by herself, but she wouldn't give us the time of day. Finally, once I tossed her in the air we were able to get a smile:

Nothing like...

...a lazy Saturday morning watching BBC CBeebies and drinking some water and milk! :)

Two down...

Audrey's second tooth has finally, just barely, popped through. The first one popped through a couple weeks ago, but still has a ways to grow. I guess it was hard enough to get through the gums and now it's taking a break. We'll see how long it will take for the teeth to actually be able to be seen in pictures. So, she's got her two bottom teeth over with and quite a few more to go... :) Fun stuff! I am definitely sad she won't take a binky. I would take the days it takes to get a binky away from a toddler over these lovely days of teething. :) I don't know if it was the binky, or if it was just Rachel, but most of the time we wouldn't even know she was teething. One day we would just discover a tooth had come up. I guess I wouldn't be able to truly know what it's like to be parent without this wonderful teething process! I'm hoping the rest are a bit easier for Audrey, but I'm not holding my breath...

An Explosion of Firsts

This past week Audrey has had a ton of firsts. She started off the week by giving me a high five when I'd put my hand up and say, "high five". So cute! :) She also managed to master feeding herself cheerios. Yay! On Tuesday, she mastered drinking out of her sippy cup by herself. Since she's never had a bottle before, I think it's pretty impressive that she's mastered this in only a couple of weeks. And she's pretty proud of herself as well... And most importantly, she started chanting "mama" Friday morning at breakfast. So cute! I was finally able to get it on video by the end of the day. As you can tell "mama" is morphing into other sounds as well. She has no clue what "mama" means, but it's still music to my ears! :)

I took Audrey to the doctor on Monday and the nurse was so impressed that she could sit up by herself. I don't think it's super surprising for a 7-month old to sit up unassisted and Audrey's been sitting up unassisted since she was 6 months old. Anyways, the nurse commented that she was going to be an early crawler and would be walking before she turns 1. I told her I hoped not! :) I don't know if she understood why I'm not all that anxious for my baby to be mobile early. I guess it has something to do with plane rides planned in the next couple of months... We all know how tricky plane rides become once little ones become mobile and they aren't quite old enough to be reasoned with! :)

Enjoying the spoils...

One of our favorite things about having visitors is all the surprises that come along with them. We (mostly the little ones) are definitely spoiled whenever we have visitors. Thank you to those that brought and sent a little something. Rachel calls her walkie talkies "hockey talkies". We're working on it... :) Here are some pictures of the girls enjoying their new stuff:

We love visitors!

Amy and Ken visited us this week and it was so much fun to see them. They were only here for a little over 24 hours, so we made the most of our time with them. We hope they enjoyed their little tour of Amsterdam and a few other things around Holland. We were pretty lazy when it came to taking pictures, so I'm stealing all of these from Ken. :) Amsterdam definitely deserves a thumbs-up, especially since we're here! :) Rachel enjoying a ring pop she got from Amy. When we told Rachel weeks ago that Amy was coming out to visit and asked her what she'd like Amy to bring her, she was pretty quick to request a ring pop. She even talked to Amy on the phone to ask for one and Rachel's not that willing to talk on the phone that often.

We took a canal boat cruise and as we were cruising along we came across this musical act. I've been on 4 canal boat cruises in Amsterdam and have never seen this guy before. Audrey on her first canal boat cruise in Amsterdam.

Rachel ready to run through the pigeons at Dam Square.

Audrey just being absolutely adorable in her stroller. She really is a pretty good trooper to be dragged around all day without a crib to nap in.

Rachel fascinated with a ladybug. Amy was kind enough to let Rachel carry this little camera around Amsterdam and take pictures. She was pretty cute following Ken around and snapping pictures. She definitely got people's attention. We all held our breath when Rachel was running down the sidewalk and went for a tumble. Luckily she thought of the camera and it came out of the fall undamaged. Rachel just added to her collection of scrapes and bruises. We chilled for a little bit in Vondelpark and some cute pictures were taken.

We spent a good amount of time exploring Amsterdam Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday morning we headed out to Zaanse Schans to see some windmills and then to Muiden to see a castle. Both stops were fairly quick. And of course, once again Amy and Ken took all the pictures. So, hopefully they'll post some on their blog when they get a chance. We're glad they fit us in to their Europe tour. It's always fun to spend time with family! :)

Apenheul

We had some decent weather on Saturday and nothing to do, so we decided to take a drive to Apeldoorn (about an hour away) and visit a local monkey park. Apenheul Primate Park turned out to be a lot of fun. I was thinking we would last 2-3 hours max, but we ended up spending a good 5 hours exploring the park. It's basically set up like a zoo with it's main attraction being primates. There was a petting zoo with various animals and there was an aviary as well. But we were there to see the primates. And we definitely saw all kinds of primates! The larger primates were of course behind glass or gates, but most of the small monkeys were free range. Our first stop was to see some squirrel monkeys. There were nets and ladders above our heads for the monkeys to move around on. They of course jumped from tree to tree and were all over the place. We saw lots of baby squirrel monkeys hanging on to their mommy's backs.

After the squirrel monkeys we went in search of some lunch and came across some very friendly Golden-headed Lion Tamarins. For some reason the park was really quiet in that particular section so the tamarins didn't have any fear making friends with us, especially Audrey.

At one point there were 3 tamarins on the stroller tray, but I didn't get a picture of that. After some lunch and some play time at a fun playground, Audrey took a little nap in the stroller while we continued to explore the park.

We checked out the gorillas, the barbary macaques, and the orangutans. With the help of her daddy, Rachel decided to see what it was like to be a monkey. All throughout the day they had feeding schedules of different primates. We made it to one feeding, the feeding of the gorillas. It was somewhat interesting (probably would have been more interesting if we understood Dutch a bit better). But we enjoyed a little bit of a break from walking and watching the gorillas fight over their food. We caught the tail end of a presentation in the "Madagascar" area. There was this cute little family of lemurs:
They look pretty harmless, don't they? Which they are, but one still gave me a scare. I was standing there watching this cute little family and all of a sudden the mama or the papa (I don't know which) decided to jump on top of the little fence right in front of me. I didn't realize the goal was the fence, I thought the goal was me, so I flinched a bit. But hey, everyone around me good a good chuckle! Below you'll see a picture of some type of monkey (not sure what type because they just wandered throughout the park and we never saw their official exhibit) that was kind of freaky. They were very brave and very loud. There were 3 of them wandering the park together. They'd just walk right along with everybody else.

After we were monkeyed out the girls enjoyed a few rides on the carousel. It was Audrey's first carousel ride and she enjoyed it.

As we were leaving Apenheul you had to walk through a park area to get back to the car. We decided to plop the girls down and try to get some pictures. So much fun trying to get them to look at the camera and smile at the same time. Oh well, they're still pretty cute. :) Looking at me (Andy was taking the pictures):

Rachel actually looking at the camera and smiling:
Audrey actually looking at the camera and kind of smiling:

We definitely had fun checking out all the different types of monkeys. Rachel would get so excited every time she spotted a monkey. She really got into. :) She keeps on talking about going back to the "monkey park".

Complaint #57

I think I've mentioned before how Europe isn't the most stroller friendly place. I've learned to deal with it though. The elevators are extremely slow, but it's life. When there aren't elevators around Andy and I can manage carrying the stroller up and down the stairs.

Well, this morning I headed out to the grocery store. As I was walking there I was hoping that the elevator (which has been broken for a week) was repaired. No such luck! The elevator I used last week was unavailable, because I had to use a department stores elevator to get to the floor in the mall that I needed to. But the grocery stores and drugstores are the only stores that are open on Monday mornings. The rest of the stores don't open until at least noon on Mondays. So, I thought, no sweat, I'll just try taking the double stroller down the escalator. I'll take Rachel out and then I should be able to manage the stroller with just Audrey.

I soon realized that wasn't going to work either - the escalators were being serviced. Wonderful, impeccable timing! So, I get both Rachel and Audrey out of the stroller, Rachel walks down the escalator (really just stairs) and I carry Audrey down while dragging the stroller behind me. Halfway down there was a kind man that grabbed the other end of the stroller and helped me down. Thank you - it's not often you see such acts of chivalry displayed! :)

I do my grocery shopping (not really thinking of how I'm going to get back up to ground level) and realize I now have two little ones in the stroller, 3 bags of groceries hanging off the stroller, and the basket underneath the stroller is full. Not a problem when there's a working elevator. I decided to go to the service counter at the grocery store and ask where another elevator was. The lady quickly told me around there was one corner and of course I had to inform her that it was broken. So, there aren't any other options.

I then took matters into my own hands. We went out into the parking garage, which we never have been and I just pretended like we were a car. We went up the exit ramp to the parking garage and made our way home. So, I was able to find solution and it worked. But it still bugs me! Am I being unreasonable? Could the department store have been asked to make it's elevator available on Monday morning? Shouldn't the shopping center have paid to have some security for the department store so nobody would run off with their merchandise? I really don't think I'm asking too much...

Okay, now I feel better, venting is wonderful. Now here's to a better afternoon! :)

7 months old

Audrey really needs to slow down. :) She's 7 months old, weighs 15 pounds, and is 26 inches tall. She has decided that her swing and bouncy chair are pretty boring. Audrey enjoys being on the floor playing with her toys. She still loves being outdoors. She gets so excited when I wheel the stroller to the front hall and open the door. Her first tooth has finally broken through, but it still has a way to go. It's her bottom, right tooth. Audrey loves cheerios, rice cereal, water, and tolerates baby food. She does this excited little laugh when I pull out the boppy or my nursing cover-up, so she still loves to nurse. She's doing 4-hour stretches between nursing during the day - wahoo! So, I have a bit more freedom. :) Audrey is doing better in the sleep department. She usually goes to sleep somewhere between 8:30-9:00, then usually wakes up for a feeding around 5-5:30, and then wakes up for the day somewhere between 8-9. A 7-hour stretch of sleep is so nice!!! :) During the day she's down to two naps; the length of the naps varies. Sometimes she'll take a 2-hour morning nap and then a short 45-minute afternoon nap; other times she'll take two 1-1/2 hour naps a day. She likes to keep us guessing! Audrey loves water - going to the pool or splashing away in the bathtub. She doesn't mind getting dressed in the morning, but at night she screams through the process of getting dressed. I guess she's tired at the point and just wants it over with. Audrey isn't showing any signs of wanting to crawl, which I am totally fine with. :) She has started responding to us when we call her by name. We tried to get some pictures of her today by some flowers. The best one is below - we didn't have much luck. But Andy got a cute one of her in her stroller just smiling away.

And just like her sister, Audrey can turn it on and off pretty quickly:

The I-N-P

Today we went to the I-N-P or better known as the local indoor swimming pool. The acronym doesn't quite match does it? Let me explain. Last night Andy came home from work and informed me that he had to ride the train down to a client, so I would have the car. I then said to Andy, "Well, maybe the girls and I will have to go to the P-O-O-L". You all know that trick - spelling things out. I didn't want to disappoint Rachel if it didn't happen. Well, today was a drizzly day, so it was a perfect day for going to the pool. As soon as Rachel woke up this morning she asked me quite simply, "Are we going to the I-N-P?". Well, we have to give her credit for getting one of the letters right, but she didn't know what she was talking about. Before I know it, I won't be able to spell things out because she'll be too smart for it. Rachel, Audrey, and I had a good time at the pool today. There were several of the indoor pools open today, so we got to try out a new pool. We hung out in a smaller, more toddler friendly, warmer pool with a little slide. Rachel loved the slide and Audrey enjoyed watching her sister!

Mealtime Fun!

We definitely feel blessed to have two beautiful, healthy girls. However, we aren't blessed with babies that sleep good and eat good (unless it's mommy's milk). I still remember all the tricks we would do to get Rachel to eat when she was an infant. One of our tricks would be to put a cheerio on the edge of a spoonful of baby food and as soon as she would open her mouth we'd shove it in. We are starting to pull the same tricks with Audrey. She loves rice cereal and some fruits, but we haven't had any luck with vegetables. I think I just need to stop being so lazy and pull out the food processor to make her some food that hopefully she'll enjoy. I mean when you smell some of the baby food, you really can't blame her. :) Anyhow, here's a peek at how fun mealtime is around our place:

Laughing Away

Rachel didn't really laugh much when she was a baby. I remember commenting to one of my friends that she didn't laugh much. This friend, who has 4 little ones, just said it was because Rachel didn't have a bunch of silly siblings entertaining her and giggling around her. I have seen this theory prove true as Audrey laughs quite a bit. Rachel is definitely the best at getting Audrey to laugh and it's so much fun to hear her laugh away. Of course, whenever I pull out the camera the laughter stops. So, last night I attempted to get Audrey to laugh. It's not the best example, but it will suffice... Excuse my dorky laugh in the background and enjoy Audrey's precious laugh! :)

Number Sense

Rachel has really surprised me with her number sense recently. It's amazing how she figures these things out. I don't really make a point out of doing simple math/counting things with her. I should probably be better about it since she seems ready to figure these things out. The few examples I can think of all have to do with the numbers 2 and 3.

• A few weeks ago the girls were in the bathtub and Andy walked into the bathroom saying, "There's my cutie", as he was looking straight at Audrey. Well, he quickly corrected himself and said something to the fact that he should say, "There are my two cuties", because Rachel was in the bath as well. A heartbeat later Rachel corrected Andy even further and informed him that he had three cuties, because Mommy counts as well. Thanks Rachel! :)
• The other day we went to the park and I took along a bottle of water from the fridge. When Rachel asked for a drink she was surprised that it was cold. I told her it was cold because I had gotten it out of the fridge. So, then she said, "Well, that means there's two left in the fridge". And she was exactly right. There had been three, but we had one at the park with us. This one really floored me!
• This morning Rachel wanted to drink out of her princess cup because she had noticed a family that we went to the beach with last week had the same kind of cups. She said, "Ashley has one, Kate has one, I have one, and that makes three".

Summer Fun

I really need to sweep and mop the floors downstairs, vacuum the upstairs, and do some major dusting; but we've just been having too much fun! The weather has been really nice the past 10 days and we have been enjoying it. It's actually pretty hot - averaging 78 degrees - with lots of sunshine. It seems like almost every day we get together with Rachel's friends and have a blast. Here they are enjoying Ashley's pool one morning: Audrey didn't take a dip in the pool, but she enjoyed hanging out indoors.

Here's a picture of Rachel having some fun one morning. She's very patient as she waits for Audrey to get her morning nap. This particular morning she was riding her scooter around the house in style! :) Last Friday the weather was going to be questionable (chance of rain), but we didn't let that stop us. We met up with our friends at the local indoor pool. It was the first time I had gone without Andy and everything went great. Audrey loved her floatation device (if that's what it's called).
Today we went with a bunch of friends to the beach. The girls lasted longer at the beach today than they ever did on our trip to Greece. Audrey stayed busy playing in the shade and in the sand. Rachel had fun with her friends. She especially enjoyed Chase's company today. They were the two crazy ones that didn't mind playing in the cold water! :) Rachel also had lots of fun playing in the sand with her friends. We are definitely enjoying the nice weather while we have it and love having so many wonderful friends so close by. It's making this summer fly by! :)