This and that

Raegan and I enjoyed another day of girl time, as Zane will be with his mom until tomorrow evening. We started off our morning with a houseguest:

My mother-in-law wanted to go out of town for today and tomorrow, so she asked if we could watch her dog Wes. Also known as Eeyore. :)

After Raegan's morning nap, we went to Cotijas, which is one my favorite Mexican restaurants. We discovered that Raegan is CRAZY for refried beans. By the time she was losing interest, it dawned on me that her intense and instant love of them probably had something to do with the lard in them. I was thinking of them as the refried beans that I eat at home, which are essentially mashed up black beans. Oh well. I'm sure she's old enough to handle it. I also gave Raegan several sips out of my glass of water, which is one of her new favorite things to do. At home I've been letting her have a couple sips a day out of my water bottle with the lid taken off. It's gotten to the point where if she sees me drinking out of my water bottle she'll open up her mouth wide and just stare at it. I need to keep trying out the sippy cup with her, because she's not interested in it for anything more than banging. Anyways, it was very nice to hang out with my mom and eat a deliciouso chimichanga.

After Raegan's afternoon nap (during which I changed my layout on my blog instead of doing laundry like I should have), I used the strawberries that my mom gave me from their patch to make a smoothie. I love baking and cooking, but I don't typically use my blender for very much. It had some kind of brown goo on the outside of it. Like a pop had exploded in the cabinet. I checked the cabinet and couldn't see anything. Strange. So after I washed the blender, we tried again. It turned out pretty tasty. I wanted to add banana, but I only had one left, and I wanted it for a snack later tonight. :)

My mom ended up with waaaaay more strawberries than we did!

Yummy!

My helpers!

After smoothies (which Raegan did not get to try because I'm keeping her away from all milk products until she's a year old because of Luke's allergy to milk), we went outside to enjoy the beautiful 80 degree weather. I blew some bubbles for her, which she thought was hilarious. I also got some video of her outside, but am having a heck of a time getting them to load. So I guess pictures will have to do for now, because I need to be getting to bed. Tomorrow morning we're driving to Herrington with Granny to pick up the half a pig that we ordered a couple weeks back.

Playing outside (i.e. trying to pull up fistfuls of grass)

Practicing for time at the lake!

Where's Daddy? I thought he would be wakeboarding behind this thing!

Lazy Monday

Ah. Lazy Monday at home. This wasn't my original intention for the day, but the downpour this morning and afternoon changed things for us. When Raegan and I left the house this morning (Zane is at his mom's until Wednesday evening), it was very overcast and there was some thunder. By the time we got across town it was pouring. :( We raced into my work anyways. I had to look at my new classroom (with a bathroom and a ton of bulletin boards!!!) and decide where on the walls I wanted to put up tackstrip.

Then we came home so Raegan could take a nap. Poor baby has a cold, so it was a short one. Eating was kind of unpleasant for her also - it's very hard to eat and mouth breathe at the same time, you know! She did entertain herself trying to eat puffs while I cleaned up the kitchen and unloaded the dishwasher. I had us all ready to go to the store, and when I opened the front door, it was raining again. Blast! So we just stayed inside and played. It was perfect weather for napping, so when Raegan went down for her afternoon nap I decided to take one myself. I. Love. Naps.

We finished off the day by finally making it to Walmart, then running out to my parents' house for awhile. It was nice to just sit and visit.

So yeah, not the day I had planned, but it was still very nice. :)

New things

Things Raegan is doing now:

She imitates just about every noise you make, as long as she can figure out how to do it. If you click with your tongue she'll click back at you. If you blow raspberries, she'll blow these GIANT spit bubbles. (That's her favorite noise to make right now). If you stick your tongue out at her, she'll do it right back at ya. And this week, if you say, "Mamamamama" or "Dadadadada" or "Buhbuhbuhbuhbuh" to her (several strings of babbles in a row) Raegan will say it back to you. It's so cool!

Luke also discovered that if you whisper to Raegan, she'll start babbling really quiet, and if you yell, she'll start yelling too. Isn't she just so smart?

Still no crawling, dang it. But she does scooch all over the place (when she's inclined to do so) and she can get up on her hands and knees and rock for a second. She stands holding on to the coffee table, and she's cruised along the coffee table a couple times.

She's starting to eat more solids, but still isn't anywhere near that 3-4 jars a day that her pediatrician said she should be eating. However, I'm not going to shove food down her throat, so she'll do it when she's ready. I say, Raegan's 50th percentile for height and 55th percentile for weight and obviously smart, so she's doing just fine. She still much prefers nursing, although I would say she's up to 1 to 1-1/2 jars a day of baby food. Last night she actually ate some bits of banana flavored puffs and seemed to like them. Or at least, after she ate one and made some faces, she went back for more. That's a first! She'll eat more solids when she's ready. I know she's getting good nutrition since I'm still nursing, so I'm just not worried.

Just a couple random pictures

This is the hibiscus plant that my sister in law gave me a couple weeks back. Isn't it beautiful? However, I think it's silly that the blooms only last one day. :)

Raegan sat on the front porch and entertained herself while I planted some flowers in our front flower bed.

Apparently Radar was very thirsty to attempt to drink out of Daisy's bowl while she was eating. And apparently Daisy was very hungry to not get pissed at the cat for invading her space while eating.

Check out the mohawk, dude!

Great Bend Zoo

Yesterday, the kids and I took a little road trip to the Great Bend Zoo. It's a really neat zoo. It's certainly not the biggest or best we've ever been to, but considering it was FREE I was really pleased with it. I would say it took us about an hour and fifteen minutes to get through, and it was pretty compact. The North America exhibit was partially closed, so we didn't get to see any elk or bears. We also couldn't find the lions or alligators, but other than that, everything was out. The monkeys were pretty cool, and we really liked the fish exhibit. Afterwards we went to the park for a couple minutes, then lunch and home. Total cost of our trip was $8 for lunch at Wendy's (God bless you, dollar menu!) and about $20 for gas (but if you have a vehicle that's not a gas guzzling V8 SUV, I'm sure that price would be lower!). It was a cheap way to get out of town for the day and try something new. I had an awful headache by the time we started home, so we didn't stop at this historical museum that I kinda wanted to check out. Maybe next time?

I think our next trip will probably be either the Exploration Place in Wichita or the Manhattan Zoo. (Can you tell I love putting links in my blog?!) We used to live in Manhattan, so obviously we've been to that zoo plenty of times, but not for almost four years now. They've also completely re-done the city park there, so if the weather will cooperate with us, it would make for a nice day. I would also really like to take the kids to the McPherson water park sometime this summer. The problem with water parks is they usually don't open until after lunch, and Raegan needs her afternoon nap very much. Or should I say Mommy needs Raegan to take her afternoon nap very much? :)

Some pictures from our day:

I wish I could have gotten a picture when this swan was standing up tall. His head reached over the top of the fence!

Raegan was too busy people watching to be bothered with picture taking!

The cats were huge! And very majestic looking.





Looking over my shoulder at Zane (i.e. Best Person Ever!)

There were skeletons of different animals at the entrance/gift shop building. I thought they were very cool.

Tons of birds wandering around - peacocks, ducks, geese, and swans.

At the park afterwards.

Raegan loves doing things with big bro!

Spray Park

Raegan LOVED our trip to the spray park (as did Zane, of course). We may have to frequent one of the three spray parks in town quite a bit this summer. (Much cheaper than our overpriced water park, that's for sure!) I should have known, for as much as she loves her baths. I'm excited for our baby swim lessons in a couple weeks! Hopefully the water park will be open by then....

Memorial Day weekend

Well, it was a busy Memorial Day weekend. The way weekends have fallen in the past, Zane has always been at his mom's for the weekend, even if Memorial Day is Luke's holiday. Obviously the weekends have shifted, because Luke also had Zane for all of Labor Day weekend and all of Thanksgiving break last year. So it was really nice to have the whole family here :) And Luke isn't working Fridays right now, so he had a four day weekend with us. Nice!

We had beautiful sunshiny (mostly) weather Sunday and Monday. Sunday actually ended up being very cool - I don't know that it got past 70 degrees? I had the glorious task of forcing Zane to go outside, because apparently going outside when it's nice out is akin to having bamboo shoved under your fingernails. I don't even have to be creative about torturing him, I just say, "Go outside." "Turn the TV off and play with your room full of toys." *In case you haven't heard, I'm an evil stepmom!

Raegan and I decided we were tired of hanging around slugs and we went to the park right down the road. She LOVES the swings. I put her inside one for a couple minutes, then took her out, and she actually started fussing until I put her back in. I'm really trying to teach her the sign for "more" to hopefully cut down on some of that fussing. After our trip to the park we went over to my in-laws for supper. The whole family was there except my father-in-law, and it was a great time.

Yesterday we went to Old Navy, where we got Zane some new flip flops and Raegan this tank top and these shorts. Too cute! One of the major downfalls of having a girl is that the clothes are always so darn cute. I really have to stop myself, but I thought she could wear them for the Fourth of July. Very necessary, yes?

We finished off the weekend by having my mother-in-law over for dinner last night. I made a pot roast and tried my hand at gravy-that-didn't-come-from-a-jar-or-package-mix for the first time ever. It turned out pretty good, thanks to a little advice from my mom. :)

We were sad that Daddy had to go back to work today. It's supposed to be VERY hot today, so I think after lunch we're going to go over to one of the spray parks for a little while. I went and bought Raegan swim diapers today - EXPENSIVE! The nice thing about Raegan taking two naps is that she takes one the latter part of the morning, so she doesn't need another one until 2:00 or 3:00. We can actually do things in the morning and the afternoon as long as we time them right.