Happy Easter

Bill had an amazing idea the other day and we finally executed it this evening.  Well, he put the hooks in a week or two ago, but tonight he actually got out one of our hammocks and hung it on our back porch.  He spent a good while enjoying it, then I took a turn and Spencer decided it looked fun and hopped in too. So.much.fun. This is going to happen more often. Our back porch is kind of a postage stamp in size, but it's absolutely perfect for hammocking. 

And Happy Easter to everyone! We had a lovely day filled with speaking in church, giving lessons, having Easter dinner with some lovely friends, and just generally enjoying life.  The weather is beautiful here. Spring is finally really hitting us, not just peeking out here and there, and I'm so very, very excited to see this place bloom. There are tracts and tracts of forest that I can't wait to see full of leaves. Yay for Spring and new life and celebrating the joys of the gospel and our Savior and Easter and all the good things in this world.

She's 7 months

Time in the rest of my life doesn't seem to be going that fast, but it just blows me away that Genevieve is already 7 months old.  How is it possible that she's closer to a year than her birth?! Slow down baby girl! I'm not ready for you to leave babyhood yet.

And now for the picture overload. :)

This lady is the cutest not so little baby girl on the block. She's still got red hair. It's starting to fill out a bit, but it's still pretty short.

 She loves her daddy, her mommy, her brother, and that's pretty much it.  Sorry family, friends. This little lady is particular. She doesn't mind being held by other people, but she does not share smiles. She's loving as can be at home though.

 She still has Spencer wrapped around her finger, minus the sharing toys part. He doesn't do that so well. But kisses? Hugs? Yeah, he can't help but give her them all day long. When she's asleep he's always asking where's Genevieve? He can't wait for her to get up and play with him. I have no idea what he did before she was born.

 She tilts her head to the side in the cutest way these days, like she needs to see a different angle on the world.

 She LOVES to stand. Stand her against something and laughter will just bubble about of her. She's just tickled pink with her new ability.

Neither of them have any personal space.  Spencer's newest fun thing to do is "body slam" her, or be body slammed by her.

 She loves anything soft and squishy, blankets and stuff animals especially. She curls them up in her chubby little fingers and is so happy.

 She sits!  And she does it really well.

 I'm pretty sure she's thinking of something diabolical to do here.

 She loves to laugh.

She's chunky, chunky, chunky. We haven't been to a well baby visit for a while, but I'm sure she's still up in the top percentiles for everything. She is just huge for her age.  Those thighs are to die for. She's got cuts in her shoulders, and a squishy belly and rolls on her back and she is squishable beyond all reason.  

She's wearing 12-month clothes these days and some of them aren't even big on her.  She loves to eat. I haven't fed her anything she doesn't like. If she can pick it up, she's willing to try it. We feed her a mix of baby food and then whatever we're eating, and she's in heaven. She still hasn't cut any teeth, but they're coming. We can see them filling in beneath her gums. 

She's totally chill. As long as she's full, not sleepy, and has something to interest her, she's set.  She still takes three to four naps a day and sleeps 11 hours a night. She does wake up at 6:30AM, much to my chagrin, as that is when I try to work, but at least she's happy when she wakes up. 

She is pro at moving backwards and spinning in circles on her stomach. She gets so frustrated when she pushes away from her toys, but she hasn't started moving forward at all yet. I'm sure she'll figure it out soon enough.

So there we have it, Genevieve at 7 months. 

Spring Break

I've never had a Spring Break in college, save for the first year I was at BYU when the 2002 Olympics were in Salt Lake and we had a week off during that.  I went on a road trip to California with my roommates to one of their houses. It was awesome. We couldn't afford tickets to any Olympic events, so we partied elsewhere. :)

So what are we doing in this inaugural year of spring breaking? Nothing yet! Bill doesn't really have it off. He doesn't have any classes, but still has tons of work to do.  Oh the woes of a grad program. Just kidding. I tease. This should be a great week, if for no other reason than Bill's more relaxed because he has time to work on things.  We'll come up with something fun to do to celebrate.

So in other news, guess who decided they can sit unassisted now? Spencer!  Oh wait, I mean Genevieve. :) She's a rock star sitter now. She still falls sometimes, but she's doing really well. And isn't this one of the cutest dresses you've ever seen?!  We had a little cream sweater over it at church, but it's warm, so she's going without for the rest of the day.

Bill's mom sent Spencer and Genevieve some adorable new clothes.  By complete coincidence a dress for Genevieve and a shirt for Spencer are almost the exact same material as shirts Bill owns.  So here's our first installment of twinner clothing Daddy and Spencer style. 

Spencer loves being read to more than pretty much anything else in the world. He has eight books that are random nursery rhymes in these tiny editions and he stacks them all up and runs around with them.  He has them memorized and will tell us bits and pieces of them when prompted.  Reading together makes for such a sweet picture.

 If you're happy and you know it poke your nose! And then he did it and I got it on camera.  Awesome!

All four of us wore green today to church in a totally unplanned move on my part.  Brilliant!  We also made some impromptu green cloverleaf pancakes this afternoon to celebrate the day and get Spencer interested in eating them. It was a success on both counts.

Spencer loves to sit on the counter when we're cooking. And who needs pants on a Sunday afternoon? I submit they are totally optional when you're 2.

 And last but not least, these pictures are uncannily similar. If you scroll back and forth fast between them, you realize their noses are in the exact same spot in the pictures. And you can see how both similar and different my kids look.  They have the exact same nose.  Spencer has my ears, eyebrows, eye color, and skin color, but Bill's eye shape. Genevieve has her own special ears, Bill's lips, my eye shape, but Bill's eye color, and Ashman no eyelids.  Like what's the point of wearing eye shadow? You certainly won't be able to see it. :) She has way squishier cheeks than Spencer, but that might just be the age difference. Oh, and they of course both have Bill's chin. Genevieve is super pink. She's going to fry in the sun if she doesn't have sunscreen. It goes with the red hair, which is starting to come in a tad thicker, though you'd never know it in a picture. It's far too light. Both Bill and my side have skin color like that, though neither of us do. But even with all the differences, they still look so much alike. Genevieve looks more like an Ashman baby and Spencer more like a Jones baby, but yet they still manage to look uncannily similar. But really, who cares whose features they have, because I happen to think they're the cutest babies in the world!

Happy Spring Break!  Do something fun on our behalf, okay? :)

This and That

We went on our first hike in ages and ages this weekend, to Yellow Branch Falls. It was absolutely beautiful and totally worth the 1.7 miles out and then back.  Bill and I are not in fantastic shape for hiking with heavy babies to carry yet, but we'll get there.  We all had a great time.

The falls. They were huge. 

Genevieve enjoyed the ride for the most part. She alternated between checking out the sights and sleeping.

Spencer had a grand old time. At one point he jumped into the water up past his ankles without seeming to realize he was going to.  He was quite surprised when he was suddenly all wet. :) We hiked back with him barefoot in the hiking backpack. I guess I'll bring an extra pair of socks the next time we head to a waterfall with him. Hahaha!

A nice lady took a family picture of us. Someday we'll teach our kids to look at the camera and smile, but we certainly haven't succeeded yet. Pay no attention to their lack of expression. They loved it.

Genevieve trying out the hiking backpack. She loved it.  Of course, Spencer still uses it, so she may not get that much time in it for a while yet. We have a similar picture of a similarly happy Spencer when he was about four months old. We're behind with Genevieve apparently. She's already six months.

These are Genevieve's besties.  The Gund and the lion. She adores them, particularly the Gund. They started out Spencer's, but he doesn't care about stuffed animals except his sock monkey from his GiGi. She loves them though. And yes, she is finally sitting, or starting to. She topples sideways and backwards still, but she can sit for a while as long as she's not distracted. 

"Guys, do you realize how awesome this toy is?! So soft! So cuddly! I can suck on it all day long!"

She's already getting all the little boys with this look. 

Spencer LOVES to color. And yes, he lines up his crayons or colored pencils  like this all the time. Sorry, son, for the perfectionist tendencies. 

And then sometimes he misses the paper. That's why he doesn't use markers except under close supervision.

Dinosaur socks!  He loves these things.

Genevieve at 6 Months

Genevieve loves to chew on things.  Anything she can hold easily in her hands goes straight to her mouth and she's as happy as can be.

She is super easy going about being poked, prodded, having a hat put on her, etc. She adores Spencer, so whenever he pays attention to her, she's in heaven. Tonight he straight up laid on top of her, and she just grinned and waved her hands at his face.

It's a tad scary how much attention she has for movies.  She'll be a techy kid, just like Spencer, I'm sure.

She loves to take baths, particularly if we give her a foam letter to chew on. Sometimes we even put the two kids in together. 

She's serious about her food.  Apple slice and finger in the mouth. It can't get better than that.  She was so mad when she dropped it. Now that she's 6 months old, she'll probably get to try lots of new things to suck on.

Genevieve is totally uninterested in going places fast.  She just decided to start rolling a few weeks ago and she's most content hanging out on her stomach with a toy in hand.  She's getting better at sitting, though she can't sit on her own without toppling over after a few seconds, most often when she sees something she wants.  She is just barely getting the idea maybe she could move toward things, and is starting to push off with her toe occasionally. 

She loves to talk. Since she doesn't look like me even in the slightest, maybe she'll just pick up that trait of mine instead. :) 

She's still got red hair, albeit not bright red.  It's starting to fill in, but it's so light it's still hard to see in pictures. She's as fair as they come and has skin that is going to burn like crazy. She's a chunker too.  She weighs close to 17 pounds and is wearing 12 month clothes for the most part. 

As always, we love her to pieces.  She's just a doll.