Outings

So I have been trying to take Jenna out more. The problem is that I'm so worried about her getting sunburned. The summers here are gorgeous; I have absolutely no complaints about the weather here June through September (it's the rest of the year I have a problem with). But we did finally get some baby sunscreen for Jenna, so that makes me feel better. Here is a picture of Jenna in her Baby Bjorn, which I modified so that she could face front, although I couldn't find any instructions to do so and just folded it over in the front. But it works well enough, and Jenna enjoys walks so much more now that she can actually see what's going on.















I took her to a church play group at a park near here last Friday. She seemed to enjoy it (she can be a pretty serious baby, but you can tell when she's a bit excited). She loves to look around at everything, although she's still more interested in things rather than people. But she's getting better at paying attention to people, too. Anyway, I took some pictures of the park, which is right near the Puget Sound.

But I Don't WANNA Be In The Boppy!

So I put Jenna in her Boppy pillow on our bed the other day, b/c I had to do something real quick in another room, and I wanted to make sure she wouldn't be able to roll over. Anyway, I hear this rhythmic grunting from the other room, and I totally thought that she was just filling up her diaper, but I came back in the bedroom, and she was literally trying to propel herself out of the Boppy. Things sure are different around here now that she knows she can change her position if she puts her mind to it. I think we need to start baby-proofing pretty soon! Ugh.

More Rolling Over

Here is a video of what sometimes happens when Jenna doesn't get enough oomph while rolling over. Pretty funny.



And here is what it's typically like now when we go to change Jenna's diaper or clothes. It's pretty much engrained into her head to roll over automatically.

the sort of latest

A week ago Saturday we went to the stake center to play a little softball. Braden had a blast, while I watched Jenna...which was fine, since I'm not quite feeling up to running around. I did bat once, though, but I flied out.

The pitcher for the other team was one of those "I'm really a fast pitch player, but I'm going to pretend I can do slow pitch", so it took forever before I actually got a pitch I would consider swinging at, and even then it was pretty lousy. Ah well. Braden was so excited to play, and I love watching how excited he is about it. We didn't have softball the next week, b/c there was a pioneer day celebration. I was telling Braden how I really don't have any strong feelings one way or the other about Pioneer Day, since I'd never even heard of it until I was 18 and in Utah. I mean, it's cool that the pioneers made it to the Salt Lake and could settle down in peace, don't get me wrong. I guess if you don't grow up with a holiday and no one around you makes a big deal out of it, it's not quite the same thing to you as it is to someone who did grow up celebrating it.


Jenna sleeps on her tummy about 9 times out of 10 now, I would say. And that's pretty much her prerogative, unless I want to go in her room and turn her over 50 times before she falls asleep...and I don't. I go in every so often to check to make sure she's breathing and not face-planting, but for the most part I just let her be. She actually sleeps much better on her tummy...much more soundly.

Bath Time!

Jenna is such an amazing baby. I gave her a bath this morning and her reaction to being put in the water? none. Her reaction to some water dripping down into her eyes? none. Her reaction to being taken out of the warm bathwater and carried across the room to her towel? none. In fact, I think she really liked the whole experience.

-Braden-

Vacuum Cleaner

We wanted to see how Jenna would react to the vacuum cleaner being turned on. You have to look closely, but you can see her eyes get a little bigger, and her eyebrows furrow a little. That's about the extent of her reaction to just about anything. What a mellow baby! :)

Grinning Baby

Jenna loves to smile when she's on my legs facing me. She looks up at the ceiling and just grins and grins. We think she sees one of her friends from heaven. She also does this on the changing table, of all places! (Thanks to Carolyn for telling me about the video embed feature on YouTube)

This Is How Jenna Rolls

So Jenna started rolling over completely on her own as of two days ago. Then yesterday, she performed her trick many times, including 3 times in a row when I put her down for a nap when she didn't want to go to sleep. And now today, she does it routinely. Since she doesn't know what to do once she gets onto her tummy, she gets frustrated after about 30 seconds and starts crying. We have now reached the point as of this morning where Jenna sleeps any old way she wants to (unless she wants to get onto her back from her tummy once she's rolled over). I have to say that I'm still not very comfortable with her sleeping on her stomach, so I've already rolled her onto her side twice today, trying not to wake her up while doing so. She is really getting to be a pro at this. And when you roll her over, she just repeats it, especially if she's upset or getting hungry...forget trying to keep her on her back. This does, as you may guess, make changing her diaper a bit more challenging!

Here are two videos of her rolling over. The first one was two days ago, and the second was last night. It's amazing how much better she got at it in just over a day.

Kid Rite Of Passage Wholly Unappreciated

For our date night last Friday, I took Braden and Jenna out to Chuck E. Cheese, since I had some coupons for buy some, get some free tokens. I figured it was time that Jenna had her first taste o' Chuck E. Cheese, and Braden and I could have some fun playing Skee-ball. About 5 minutes after we got Jenna into her Snugli so she could look around, this happened:



Ah well. Can't blame us for trying. We promptly took the Schmenna out of her Snugli and back into her carseat. Then we played a couple of games, and I went to try out the "Jurassic Park Game and Ride". I put the token in, and Braden came over and said, "Here, Jenna's going to play, too". So he put her on the seat next to me (which was for two), and right then the unexpected "ride" portion of the game started up, bucking the seat upward, downward and all around rather forcefully. Needless to say, it startled the crap out of Jenna!! Poor baby! It startled her so badly that she was WIDE AWAKE for the rest of the time we were there. I thought she would go back to sleep within a few minutes, but I guess there's no going back to sleep after that! Anyway, we had a lot of fun with Skee-ball, in spite of the random token-eating lanes. I got back into my groove of many 4000's in a row, as if I'd been practicing all along. I guess it's like riding a bike, because I can't remember the last time I'd been to a Chuck E. Cheese. It was probably with Lauren, Dan and Dad, so that tells you a little bit of how long ago! (At least 13 years, if not more)

Good times, good times.

Baby Progress

I invite you all to go to this link to watch my baby girl surprise the heck out of me (this happened yesterday morning). Everything you see on the video, she did by herself. Yay!!
Jenna Rolls Over By Herself

Dear Sunkist,

Please explain to me why I should buy this product of yours, for lo, I am perplexed.



Just add everything!

How's this for another product:
Campbell's Tomato Basil Soup - Just Add Tomatoes, Basil and Soup! Tastes just like homemade!

Exercise and Baby BC

So we have been trying to exercise more. Well, really, I've been trying to get us to do so. So we went to the exercise room at our apartment complex a few days ago, and we are trying to go to the mall to walk around some. Thus, yesterday we went to the mall, put Jenna in her umbrella stroller and tried to avoid the overzealous overtures of cell phone salespeople. I just totally ignore them, even if they are obviously talking to me, but Braden will respond. He doesn't ever actually stop, unless he's curious about a pocket PC phone, so this really just encourages them to be even bolder when we come back around. One guy actually placed a box with a phone in it on the counter and said, "It's free. Take it. Take it! I'M SERIOUS!!" So we joked about how funny it would be if we did just take it and run away. :) Good times.

Anyway, Jenna tends to be a bit scrunched down when she's in her stroller...poor thing. We try to fix it as best we can, but it's hard out there for a Jenna. So when we got home and I changed her diaper, it was in a similar state:
Now granted, I suspected that this diaper might be too small when I put it on her, but I didn't expect it to turn Jenna into the Coppertone baby! :) Those were free diapers, but I won't be using them anymore!

4th of July

This is how our day went. Braden was trying to figure out how to get his supposedly 2GB MP3 player to actually play 2GB-worth of stuff. It would only play 1GB. So he emailed the eBay seller to complain in a nice way (you know, the "You seem to pride yourself on good customer service. I would hate to give negative feedback..."), and the guy emails back to say, "I hope you have proof". Umm, yeah...how? The joys of online selling/buying.

Anyway, so Braden was working on that, and then we got word that his cousin was in town, so we went over to the parentals' to visit with them. Well, first we went to visit Braden's Granna, who had a stroke back in February. She seemed to be in good spirits, although it is sad to see her so different now. Her vision seems to be off these days, but she recognized that Braden was the only one who hadn't hugged her, saying, "That one over there hasn't given me a hug yet." :)

After our visit, we hurried over to one of our church buildings to meet up with one of Braden's classmates and her family, but they canceled last minute due to a long day in the sun and general tiredness. Trust me, we understand...our activities pretty much revolve around Jenna...if she can't, then we don't. :)

From the church building, we went to a park nearby to save spots for the fireworks. This was wholly unnecessary, since there were spaces up the ying yang, if you will, but we had fun playing what I deemed "Poor Man's Cornhole". Pretty much we had a Costco box in the trunk, and Braden cut out a square in the middle with a key. We then used his small beanbag and tried to get it in the hole. I stank at it, as usual. :) We tired of this and then graduated to playing catch with the beanbag. Jenna, as you may guess, did not participate, since she probably would have "caught" the beanbag with her face. "Yeah, but with your face?! Doesn't that hurt?!" "AARGH!! THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT TO DO!!" (A little Calvin and Hobbes)

Saving spaces did not end up being effective at all, since our sister-in-law and her family ended up not seeing us and parking way the freak down from where we were. When told by Braden that we were saving them a space, her response was, "What? There are like a million of them!", which made me laugh, since it was totally true. We then walked over to the playground for general kid fun-ness, and a friend from our ward joined us a little bit later with her four girls. She went a little ways away to talk to someone she hadn't seen for a while, and Braden and I were keeping an eye on her 2 and 4 year olds. Random ghetto fireworks were going off periodically, and all of a sudden the 4 year old starts running in circles around the playground (Note: this was not a small playground) yelling, "Mommy!! Mommy!!". So I'm trying to run after her while holding Jenna to tell her that her mom is coming right back and that it's okay. Since she doesn't really know me, this was totally ineffective. I told Braden to get her, since I couldn't really run with Jenna, but then the 2 year old wouldn't listen, either, since she had a crush on Braden and followed him everywhere. Trying to watch kids when they don't know you from Adam is a little frustrating! :) Anyway, luckily, their mom came back shortly thereafter, and it was discovered that the 4 year old heard the fireworks, was scared, and automatically projected that fear onto her sister, b/c the 2 year old must have been scared if she was (the 2 year old was fine, since she had Braden to coo at). I guess she's really protective of her. So it was a noble "running around and around the playground screaming for Mom". :)

It got darker and darker, but not dark enough for fireworks, and then all of a sudden some fireworks started going off in the direction that the show would come from. Since it was earlier than they usually start, everyone was looking around at everyone else and being like, "um, is this really it?" So after a couple of minutes, we decided that it must be, and sat down by the playground. (We couldn't find April, aforementioned sister-in-law, or any of her family) The "show" was over in such a short period of time that people were again asking each other if that was really the finale. And apparently it was. So, all in all, the show was kind of disappointing, but it was fun to get outside and let Jenna experience her first 4th of July. She handled it well; even when the fireworks were really loud, her eyes just got really wide. She ate right before the show, so her tummy was full. Here are some pictures of Braden feeding her. She's all bundled up b/c it gets chilly at night, even though it was 80 degrees during the day. What a cute little boy! :)

Video

So what I was trying to do was upload some videos we took of Jenna with our digital camera, but apparently that feature is only available on a draft version of Blogger. So my backup plan is to upload them to Google Video and then just provide the link for all you guys that would like to see them. We kind of forgot about the video feature on our camera and have been having fun with it for the past few days. One annoying thing, though, is that it only lets you film for 30 seconds. No pressure, Jenna!

I uploaded a video that was a little dark, but we could see it on our computer. However, when it was uploaded you can't really see anything at all. So I will delete that one. Here's one of Jenna all clean (don't worry, it's not X-rated) after a bath: All's Clean on the Bathroom Floor