As I sit typing to you now from home while on bedrest, it is a mere 2 1/2 weeks before the arrival of our second daughter on April 17th, 2009 at roughly 7:30am.
So let me try to give you a recap of the past 9 months. Here goes...
Ryan and I went to our 10 year high school reunion. Interesting night. I got to be the designated driver this night as I was about 6 weeks pregnant by this point. And Ryan fully took advantage of that.
MacKenzie had her first birthday! We celebrated up in Post Falls at Grandma and Grandpa Haynes' house with Grandma and Grandpa Lovchik, Great-Grandma Hawley, Aunt Wendy, Aunt Shirley, Aunt Robin, Aunt Erica, Uncle Scott, Uncle Kurt, cousins Josh, Jon, Nick, and Robbie, and Dania was there as well.
As Grandpa Haynes' birthday was the 21st of August, we had a cake there for him as well. I'm not sure he enjoyed having to sit next to MacKenzie, though. This was her first time with sugar, and she thoroughly enjoyed it.
We drove to Seattle from Spokane and Mac got to meet Jamie, Erica, and Kelly! This was their first time meeting her! All were very excited! It was also MacKenzie's first ferry ride. As you can see, ferry rides are pretty windy.
When we got back to Texas, we were greeted with Hurricane Ike. Luckily we managed with only some lost power for 4 days, one shingle gone, and a fallen tomato plant. The house being built 4 down from ours was not as lucky. Here it is a few hours before the storm was due to hit.
And then here it is a few hours after the storm had passed. But, no one was hurt, and the house was rebuilt and just recently sold.
Here is Mac in her fairy costume for Halloween. She still wasn't walking yet. She would walk behind her walker, pull herself up and cruise, but no steps on her own. She loved those little pumpkins.
She also found another favorite pastime. Swinging! Big smiles whenever we played on the swings. And a few feet away is a lake in our community that has ducks. And she loves ducks. She actually loves all animals...even though she calls them all the same thing...doggy.
The tunnel and the tent. On a trip to IKEA, we picked up this blue tunnel and a little polka dotted tent. Neither seemed to impress her at the time, but Ryan sure seemed to enjoy them. While even now she isn't as impressed by the tunnel, she LOVES the tent. Maybe we'll have to use the tunnel as a kind of dog agility training program.
Here is another of MacKenzie favorite pastimes. Climbing and destroying. She loves to pull things down from the pantry. This is about a week after she started walking on her own. When we found her with the glass jar of sugar, we decided that the pantry needed a little child-proofing. Unfortunately, we forgot about those two tubs on the floor that she is climbing on. Those are full of dog food. We only discovered her affinity for such a delicacy when she came to us with a mouthful and two handfuls.
And here is quite possibly the best babysitter money can buy! The dog crate! Not just for crate training your great dane anymore. Almost every day we find her playing inside either this crate or the much smaller version for the weiner dogs. She doesn't have a preference, each are loads of fun.
A trip to the beach. Grandma and Grandpa Lovchik came down in early December and decided to go to Galveston. Galveston was directly hit by Hurricane Ike only 3 months prior to this picture.
You can see some of the devastation in this shot here. That giant lump that Grandma is helping Mac walk on is actually one of thousands of sand tubes that the beaches of Galveston are built on. The storm unearthed these giant things all over, looking almost like beached whales or giant worms. But Mac still had a good time, and Galveston continues to rebuild.
Ahh, the first picture with Santa. As you can see, it did not go over well. Her body went into fully rigor until she was given back to daddy. This was taken at Fluor's annual children's holiday party. She enjoyed the rest, the food, the balloons, the songs, but Santa...not so much.
Here she is on Christmas morning. She got a trike from Grandma and Grandpa Lovchik and a wagon from Grandma and Grandpa Haynes. While she is still trying to figure out the trike, the wagon has a daily ritual of taking her and daddy to the mailbox. Ryan insisted that the wagon must be the big-wheeled metal one, instead of the plastic one. That way it was ready for off-roading. Currently that consists of going up and down curbs...which Mac loves.
The bouncy castle. Mac was invited to our neighbor's grandson's 4th birthday. Where we discovered her love of bouncing. Ryan crawled inside as well, so that he could help her climb up to the top of the slide that is to the left of her in the picture. While Mac had a blast, Ryan decided he is out of shape and maneuvering through a bouncy castle is a lot of work. Needless to say, they only went down the slide once.
Planes and doggies. The perfect day. We volunteered for a doggie walk to benefit the local animal shelters. It was actually held on one of the runways. So we took Emma, our great dane, to the walk and did a mile around the runway. MacKenzie was so in awe of the amount of doggies, that she didn't make a sound for almost the entire 2 hours we were there. There was 20 minutes of "doggy, doggy", then nothing. Not a word. She was in heaven.
You wonder how close we were to the planes? Well, the next runway over from us, was an active runway. Suprisingly, it didn't freak out any of the thosands of dogs. I'm not sure I can say the same for the people landing in those planes, though.
The swingset. We just purchased this from a friend at work a few weeks ago. Now that MacKenzie has moved over to the bigger kids class at daycare, she has a large playset in her playground area. So we thought she might like one at home, too. And she certainly does.
Every night when she comes home, she goes to the back door and wants to go swing and slide. An added bonus is that there is a pool attachment that connects to the bottom of the slide. So now that the weather is reaching the 80's on the weekend, we can attach the pool and all cool off in the backyard. It is sturdy enough that even the dogs can get in the pool if they want.
So yeah, 9 months happened. MacKenzie is now 19 months old. She walks, runs, talks, and throws tantrums! But in our opinion (Ryan and mine), she is the cutest and best little girl in the world...tantrums and all.
This is a picture of her from a few days ago. Ryan was trying to give her some mac & cheese and she refused.....that is until we discovered that she wanted to eat it with a spoon herself! She had never really shown any interest in the spoon except to bang it on things before, but apparently some of the other kids in her class are now using a spoon to eat, and she has certainly picked up on that. It's still a work in progress. Most of the time she will lay the spoon down, load it up, and then try to transfer it to her mouth, but she's getting better. And she has wanted the spoon everyday now. She's just growing so much. Unfortunately, what Ryan did not catch in this photo is what she did with the spoon when she was done eating. She is very interested in phones recently....and any object can become a phone at any time. Including her spoon. It promptly went into her ear (unwashed of course) and she started her phone conversation, which always consists of "yeah, yeah, yeah."
So from here on out, I will attempt to remain somewhat updated. I'm sure there will be a little hiatus as soon as the new baby comes, but I will try my best.
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