Last Week's Photo Session

So last week during the long weekend, I decided to do a photo shoot with Jennifer.  She is wearing a dress that was mine when I was her age.  I have a picture of me in this dress when I was a baby on display in our house.  She is such a cutie.  (You can see a good shot of her two teeth in these pictures too.)

Lobsters and Teeth

Just a quick update to share our Halloween pictures with you.  We probably saw at least 200 kids in our neighborhood that night.  I had never seen that many kids in one night before.  Jennifer was a lobster that night.  She did really well in her costume.  

After a few agonizing days of crankiness, we finally have a tooth.  Hopefully you can see it. (It's her bottom right tooth)

Swapping Roles

So Peter and I have just finished our first week of having swapped roles.  He is now home with Jennifer full-time and doing some consulting and I now work full-time at InService America as an Account Executive.  It was been quite a transition for each of us.  I think it was harder on Peter than on me.  Leaving Jennifer at home wasn't has hard as I thought it would be.  Of course it really helps that I know she is well taken care of by Peter.  It is a little hard putting her to bed at 8:00 (just 2 1/2 hours after getting home).  But today is Saturday and I didn't plan anything on purpose.  I am just enjoying the day with my daughter while Peter is at work.  It really helps not having to worry about the house while I am home.  

So thing are changing with Jennifer.  She is in the process of getting her first teeth in.  The past few days have been spent with a clingy child, giving her tylenol and orajel.  Just the other week she also started sitting up by herself.  Its so nice to sit her on the floor with toys and be able to go to the kitchen knowing that she will be just fine playing.  Two weeks ago we also dedicated Jennifer to God at our church.  She has also started rolling over in her crib.  The picture here is how we found her a couple of weeks ago when we went to wake her up one morning.  Jennifer is now eating more solid foods and we are trying sippy cups with her every now and then.  It has been pretty unsuccessful for the most part, but we will keep trying it.  Right now she likes to hold it, but doesn't really want to drink from it.

Finally Peter and I are in the process of getting rid of items we no longer need.  We have already made over $100 on ebay with a lot more items to go.  It is quite enlightening and cleansing to get getting rid of this stuff.

The final picture is a gorgeous view of fall from our living room window.  I just love this area and getting to truly experience nature here.

Creative Juices

So I have pretty much given up paper scrapbooking for the electronic kind at Shutterfly.  I still have a need to be crafty though.  After talking with a friend at church the other week I got to thinking about making my own jewelry.  I decided to try making my own earrings.  It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.  Of course it helps that I like simple, yet bold designs.  So far I have made four different pairs.  I love being able to get the perfect earring for the different outfits that I have.  Even better, most of the time I can make them myself for less money than it would cost in the store to buy already made.  I have taken  a picture so you can see my designs.

Updates

Wow!  Time is really flying.  Summer is done now and Jennifer is just growing like crazy.  It's so hard to believe that she is 5 months old now.  Not too much has changed for Peter and me.  He is playing in the worship band at church twice a month and I am singing in the choir.  We have had a couple opportunities now to lead the worship service on Wednesday nights.  TLC for MomME has started at church and since I am still working part-time from home I am able to go to that.  I am meeting several of the other moms at church during this.  It's so nice to finally know the names of some people at church.  I have started a job search to go to work full-time.  There are several companies in the area that I am interested in talking to.  I already have 4 interviews lined up over the next 2 weeks with about 15 more companies to follow up with.  I think the beginning of November will be when we make our changes with Peter coming home and me going to work.  I will probably continue to consult for USO for a while longer than that.  A lot depends on when they hire their new director.

Now with Jennifer.  Many changes there.  She is rolling over both ways.  We have started solids including rice cereal, sweet potatoes, carrots and apples.  She seems to like them all; I just have to hide some of it in her cereal.  We just recently gave her "bunny" to sleep with and she has immediately fallen in love with him.  Every time we are in the rocker before going to sleep she sees bunny and gives him the biggest hug and smile.  Bath time is still a lot of fun with lots of splashes and playing with her rubber ducky.   Jennifer is still playing with her bear and in her bouncer, but we have now graduated to the Jumperoo and Exersaucer.  She just loves both of these.  Oh and she just loves seeing herself in the mirror.  There is so much to do now that we never have the same day twice.  It is just so fun watching her grow.  Her giggles are priceless.  The best are the giggle attacks that we both get every now and then (she does something to make me laugh and my laughing causes her to laugh and it just keeps going).

Visiting Family and a Found Thumb

So these past couple weeks have been pretty busy.  Peter's sister, Lisa, and her family came to visit.  It was so nice to have them here.  We finally have a house where we can host guests and it passed the test.  We were able to house Lisa, Todd, their three kids and Todd's mom.  I realized while they were here that I haven't spent that much consecutive time with Lisa like that before.  I have done that with Peter's other sister, Christy, but not with Lisa.  I really enjoyed it.  They were here for a couple of nights.  It was so nice having most of the Prantner kids together.  We did miss having Andrew and Miriam with us though.  The visit was extra special becuase it was the first time the new babies were together.  The babies ended up being spaced 4 weeks apart each.  It was amazing seeing how just a few weeks can make a difference in a newborn.  It is going to be really fun watching them grow up together.

This week has been spent recouping from the weekend and developing a normalcy again.  We are almost there.  It wouldn't have been so hard if Jennifer wasn't going through a growth spurt this week.  For weeks she has been sleeping from 9p-6a each night.  Well, this week she has decided to wake up at 3a and then again at 7a.  Needless to say this has totally thrown our schedule off kilter.  Now that I have realized what is going on, I have upped her formula so hopefully we will be back to normal soon.

Jennifer is changing so quickly.  She is loving her bath time and this week she has discovered her thumb (she was putting her fist in her mouth before).  She still doesn't have it quite right yet though (count the number of fingers in the picture).  For some reason the pointer finger always ends up in her mouth with her thumb.  This week she has also started to grab toys and put them in her mouth.  Last week I noticed that her hair is starting to lighten up.  It is turning a golden brown.  I think it will end up looking like Peter's when he was a little boy.  Only time with tell though.  She is growing so fast. 

Finally found the cord

So after moving about 7 weeks ago, we are finally getting unpacked.  We are down to about 5 boxes all of which contain miscellaneous items.  I told Peter that if we didn't use anything from the boxes, we should probably just toss them in about 6 months.  All that said, I finally found the cord to the camera so I have downloaded pictures of Jennifer.  She is just so cute!  Life is really fun now with her smiling and "talking" to us.  Work is going really well.  I am not having any problems getting the hours I need to in and Jennifer is cooperating with me.  There are times where she has to stay in her crib, but these times don't last too long and usually she will just look around or fall asleep.  Most of my work day revolves around her napping schedule anyway.  Since she is spending so much time in her crib awake, she has recently started falling asleep in her crib by herself without rocking.  That has just been wonderful.  I can put her in there after feeding her with a little bit of rocking.  If she wakes up when I put her down, she will fall back to sleep.  

So this week I found a horrible surprise.  I was trying to grow basil, peppers and onions like I did last year.  Well now that we are in Lynchburg there are new pests that I am not used to.  Since I grew stuff on our balcony last year, I had minimal issues.  When I went to water the plants on Tuesday this week, I found what seemed like 100 beetles eating my plants.  I had never seen so many bugs.  To make it worse they fly and kept running into Peter and me.  It was totally gross.  I have since killed them with insecticide.  Now I have to go assess the damage.  I think my basil is gone though.  Oh well.  I think I still have time to replant it if I want to.  We will see.  Gardening is hard this year with Jennifer having arrived.