Going to the playground

A week ago, it was finally warm enough to take Whitney to the park for the first time.  She has been to the park before, but she was too small last summer to do anything but sit on our laps.  This time, she loved playing on the playground with the other kids.  Will and I both had a great time chasing after her and just watching her have fun.

Here Will helps Whitney go down the slide.  She wasn't too sure about slides at first, but I think she enjoyed them after the first couple of tries.

This time Will and Whitney both went down the slide.  Will had to kind of scoot them along because it is not quite meant for adults. 

Whitney got pretty good at climbing up the steps all by herself, but a couple of them were too high and required our help.  She really liked climbing to the top of the playground, maybe she just likes being the tallest around since she is use to being the shortest at home.

There was a little spot with numbers in all strange positions.  Whitney played with it for half a moment and then wanted to go back to the rest of the playground.

There is a little "store" section where the kids can pretend to be at a store and can "sell" things to people.  Whitney played with it for a little while, but you cannot actually push any buttons and that is just not any fun if you cannot push any buttons.

You can kind of tell if you look really hard at the left of the page that Whitney met a little friend at the playground.  He was just sitting on the playground stairs and looked to be just a little older than Whitney, so the two of them just looked at each other for a little while.

Finally, Whitney sits of this big rock where she can feel like the king of the world, or the queen of the world.  It only required a little bit of mom's help to avoid any jumping off the rock.  So Whitney had a lot of fun at the park.  She learned how to walk on the unstable wood chips and the grass, so it was a good balancing exercise.  Unfortunately, it got a little too chilly and windy, so we left the park early and ended up having our picnic on the living room floor.  But it was good that Whitney was able to get outside for a little while.  Hopefully, warm weather will come back and we will be able to play outside more often.
 

mustaches and socks

We have just been watching Whitney grow up everyday here in Cheney. But we would like to say congrats to Emily and Scott on their new arrival. I am glad that everyone is healthy and strong. We have a couple pictures of our little girl.

With her new outfits that Whitney got for her birthday came some cute hair scrunchies. We use to be able to put them on Whitney all the time, but now it is a major struggle. I hope she gets use to the idea of wearing them again. Anyway, one day I put on a purple one to match her purple shirt and it stayed on for about 10 minutes. This picture kind of portrays how much Whitney tries to take them off because the scrunchie is all loose and her hair is crazy from Whitney trying to get the tie off. Don’t worry, I didn’t make her keep it on once she got it off.

So we have a new favorite activity of Whitney that we have had to prevent. She likes to throw things into the kitchen garbage. One day I put some extra big socks on her and she took them off pretty quickly. I didn’t really care because it was a warm day, so I let her play with the socks. Eventually, I wanted to put the socks back on and could only find one. I searched our whole apartment for the missing one and finally gave up and put new socks on her. Lo and behold, several hours later when I open the garbage lid to throw in a wrapper, there is the other sock. Luckily, I just took out that garbage that morning, so it wasn’t sitting on something gross. But now we keep the lid kind of locked so Whitney cannot just toss away anything she doesn’t want. I decided to get a picture of Whitney holding the trouble sock.

Will got this little puzzle ball in a package from his mom a couple of weeks ago. The ball comes into pieces and you have to put it together again. Whitney really likes the little pieces; the other day we caught her with the black piece in her mouth in such a way that she looks like she has a moustache. It was cute.

I don’t know what this look is that is on Whitney’s face, I just know that it cannot be good. She has either done something she shouldn’t or is about to do something she shouldn’t.

Whitney practices her kissing skills on her toy monkey or toy baby. She is always giving kisses to everything. The other day we were at a party with some people in our ward and she went up to some other guy and kissed his foot. Fortunately, this other guy has a baby Whitney’s age, so he didn’t mind having his foot kissed. I think he was just surprised.

Whitney has gotten very good at playing fetch. We have her well trained. Now, we can always get Whitney to get us a book or a bear or her baby or whatever. Of course, you would think that means she always listens to us, right? Definitely not. I think she must have selective hearing because she never seems to hear when I tell her ‘no’ when it is something she really wants, like the TV wires or the lamp. But we are still working on it. Hope everyone else is doing well.

General Conference

  Well, this is going to be a post with no pictures, so if that is too boring, just stop reading and wait for the next post.  I just wanted to write some of the things I found interesting from general conference this last weekend.  On Saturday, Will and Whitney and I went to both sessions; we were in the loud room so Whitney could run around with the other children and no one would give us mean looks.  I liked Sister Jean Stevens talk about beholding our children and really paying attention to them.  I know that I fall short of doing that sometimes when I am too busy with dinner or whatnot.  But seriously, what could be more important than our children and helping them as they grow up?  I also likes Elder Oaks talk about our desires and how we need to prioritize.  He said that our desires shape our choices, so it was interesting to think about some of the things I desire and whether they are all worthwhile.
    On Sunday, Whitney was sick.  She had a horrible cough and runny nose and we thought just letting her sleep all day would be better than trying to pack her to church.  So Will went for the morning session and I went in the afternoon.  I really liked the talks during that session.  It was cute to hear the stories about Elder Scott and his wife passing love notes to each other and expressing real gratitude for what the other person does all day.  I also really liked Elder Robbins talk about the difference between 'to do' and 'to be'.  I know that I am always writing 'to do' lists, but I don't ever think of 'to be' lists.  That talk made me really think about what I want 'to be' and what I want to teach Whitney 'to be'. 
   So it was a great conference.  I love hearing the words of our beloved prophet and all of our church leaders.  I hope everyone else was able to enjoy the messages as much as we did.

Pictures and Personality

I am having a hard time trying to capture Whitney’s personality on camera. She will be smiling and laughing and running around, but then when the camera comes out, she stops her talking or singing or whatever cute thing she is doing. Oh well, I will keep trying. Here are a couple pictures of our cute baby.

We were given a footprint making kit when Whitney was born and we planned on using it rightaway. But then it went into the closet and got forgotten about. Well, I found it a couple of days ago as I was doing a deep cleaning. It was impossible to get Whitney’s print though. When I tried to get her handprint, she just squished the material in between her fingers and when I tried to do a footprint, she screamed because she didn’t like the coldness on her toes. What we learned from this experience is that you should always do those kits right after the baby is born because toddlers are too wiggly and impatient. Oh well, if you squint really hard, you can kind of see a foot.

This is a close-up of Whitney. I get a lot of these kinds of pictures because she starts walking toward the camera while it is loading up. But I thought this one was kind of cute because she has a little smile and she is showing off her bottom teeth. Will and I are wondering if she is getting more teeth because she is always putting her fingers in her mouth and she is extra whiny. Maybe she will eat better though once she gets her one-year molars.

 

We keep lots of books in our apartment and Whitney is getting quite good at pulling all our books off our shelves. She especially loves the cookbooks that are on the second shelf. Maybe she will be a chef when she grows up.

We got a couple of outfits for Whitney’s birthday that are meant for when she is older, like 24 months old. These are suppose to be shirts, but they are long enough to be dresses for probably a couple of months. And they make for very cute dresses. This is a picture of Whitney and I right after church. We even got Whitney to smile for a little while, at least long enough to take a picture.

This picture shows off Whitney’s personality a bit more. She grabbed a pen and then tried to run away as fast as possible. That’s her trick; when she has something she is not suppose to have, she runs as far away as possible as fast as possible. Of course, we are both faster than her and can catch her quite quickly, but she still tries to do it.

We finally got a picture of Whitney in her sunglasses, isn’t she cute? So this is what we have been up to lately. Whitney continues to bring us great joy and we love watching her grow up.

Learning and Growing

Whitney continues to amaze us with how smart she is.  She can point out her nose or her head or her teeth, but she won't do it for the camera, go figure.  She also really likes to beep our nose.  That usually starts out soft, but then she goes in for the kill and pinches as hard as she can.  Where did she learn that?  Here is a movie of Whitney feeding mommy.

When there is food that we don't want Whitney to touch, only to try, we just stick it straight in her mouth.  I guess she decided I looked hungry or something because she kept offering the food back to me and got upset if I wouldn't take it. 
Whitney received a couple of really cool presents from Scott and Emily.  She liked this ball toy.

Will also really likes this toy.  Every time he comes home from work, he turns it on and watches the balls.  I am not sure who likes the toy more.  But it is a really cool toy because the balls shoot out and it plays music  and all that cool stuff.  Thanks guys for the presents.

Here Whitney is holding her new sunglasses that she also got from Scott and Emily and she has her tongue sticking out.  I cannot get a picture of Whitney wearing the glasses because she likes to play with them more than keep them on.  So I will keep trying because she looks really cute in her sunglasses.  We are hoping these glasses will prevent her from stealing our glasses, but so far it isn't working.

Whitney just sits calmly on the couch.  She now knows how to get safely off the couch (by going feet first and facing backwards), so we aren't so worried about her falling off if we leave her there for a minute while we grab something.

Finally, Whitney has learned to read.  Just kidding, but she does really love books.  She is always grabbing them from off shelves and shoving them in our faces to get us to read them to her.  Thankfully, she does have a pretty good selection of books, so I don't have to read the same five to her over and over.  But still, how many times can you want to hear There's a Wocket in My Pocket or The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear?  I am glad she really enjoys books though because I think it is a great hobby to get into.  Anyway, things are going well here in Cheney.  Whitney caught the flu somehow and had it for 1 1/2 weeks, so we were cleaning up a lot of throw up for awhile.  But now everything is better and we are grateful.  Next year though, she is definitely getting the flu shot.  Just don't tell her that.  Lots of love to everyone from your good friends in Cheney.