Hats and stuff

Recently, Rebekah has taken a liking to putting things on her head. Some things more conventional than others. I still don't know how she gets around with the bowl on her head...it completely covers her eyes, but she's still able to walk around without running into things. She's a cutie.

New Friend?

This last week, Rebekah and I went to the park after story-time to get out the wiggles. There were a lot of kids there playing, but Rebekah, of course, had to go down to the basketball court and try to get her hands on a ball. There was one little boy there, probably about 5, who was dribbling a ball around the court. Rebekah was fascinated and wanted to try it out. She kept following him around as he kept trying to avoid her. His caregiver suggested that he share the ball with Rebekah. His motivation was not to share, but in hopes that sharing would rid him of this little girl following him. After Rebekah gave the ball back, the boy continued dribbling the ball around the court only to find that Rebekah was still following him. In a firm voice he told Rebekah that she couldn't follow him. He then told his caretaker that his teacher said that "no one was supposed to follow him" because "no one should be behind him." His caretaker tried to pacify him stating that "she just wants to follow you around." He couldn't understand why, stating "I keep looking back and she is smiling at me and I'm not even smiling back!"
Poor girl...looks like we're going to have to buy her some more balls.

Our walks to the Pond

Unfortunately, I didn't actually take any pictures of the pond, but Rebekah is a better picture anyway :o). Just thought I'd add some photos of our memories in our current neighborhood before we move from it. It's also nice to see how much Rebekah is growing.

Row Row Row your Boat!

This is a new game she likes to play. She dumps everything from our basket or her toy chest and sits inside pretending to drive the "car" or row in the "boat". Rebekah has taken a liking to cars, boats and other vehicles. I don't understand where she gets it. I swear that I do everything in my power to get her to like dolls, playing house and the "girly" things, but she will have nothing of it. Trips to the park are prime examples of this. I'll take her to the park to play on the structures with all the other little girls. I'll encourage her saying "oh, this looks like so much fun!" and "Don't you wanna go down on the slide?" I'll have her attention for only a second before she's running down to the basketball courts where older kids are playing while yelling "Ball! Ball!" with the biggest smile on her face. She is fascinated with bikes, too. She loves watching people ride them and loves to check them out when they're parked. We love our little Rebekah and wouldn't have her any other way. (especially Daddy).

A busy little girl

Rebekah, like most little ones these days, loves playing with anything electronic. She loves carrying around her cell phone pushing the buttons and listening to all the neat sounds. We usually charge her phone every other day or so but the other day, we couldn't find it. As we were putting Rebekah down, we kept hearing a cell phone ring. It was strange because it wasn't either of our ring tones, and Rebekah's cell phone is deactivated. Every so often that night, we'd hear it ring for about a minute, then stop. Eventually, Scott found the phone hidden under a chair. Rebekah had set an event on her calender and the alarm had been going off. It's pretty amazing (and a little scary) what she has and continues to figure out.

A little late, I guess

So Rebekah has been walking for a little while now, and we finally got around to posting a video of it. At this point, she walks about 60% of the time...we assume that it is only a matter of time before she ups that percentage. Hope you enjoy the video!

Round and Round

This is one of the many games Rebekah likes to play with the spinny chair. Others include spinning Daddy IN the chair, spinning the chair on her own, or running around in a circle with the spinning chair until she falls. After about 5 minutes of her hard gut laughing, we decided that this might be better on a video...Great parents, I know...She's hoarse in the video because she had already been laughing for quite a while, but you can still get a taste of our pride and joy!

Cold in the snow

So we thought we were getting away from the cold and snow by moving down to Charlotte...not so. Of course, being Charlotte, everything was closed and Church was canceled with the whopping 1.5 inches that we got. Not quite the 22 inches up there in Maryland, but hey, we still could have measured it with a yard stick! We bundled up and went for a walk before realizing that it was way too cold for that. We just took a picture and went back inside. Yeah, we've become wimps since Boston. I'm okay with that.

Merry Birthday Happy Christmas!

This Christmas our little angel Rebekah turned one year old. It was a great day for her--she had blueberry pancakes for her birthday dinner (she hasn't tried cake yet) and she got a bunch of new toys and clothes from grandparents and some books from her parents. Here is her new bear:

Here is her trying on her new hat from Uncle Jim and Aunt Jessica:

Here is her chasing her 75ft bouncy ball from Grandma and Grandpa Blood:

Here is her opening her gingerbread man:

Here is her on a mountain of her presents:

Here is her with her new music table from Grandma and Grandpa Bear:

Here is Rebekah with her new ball popper from Grandma and Grandpa King:

Imagine-On!

We went to a childrens library called Imagine-on the other day and had a good time reading and playing. Rebekah really like interacting with people and loved seeing what everyone else was doing. She even tried to talk with one of the other kids there...it was very cute. We love our little princess!

Family Pictures

Halloween is upon us!

We decided to dress Rebekah up as a bunny by default. I know we weren't very creative, but what else are you going to do with a bunny costume you get at a baby shower? On any other day, we would never allow Rebekah to suffer the humiliation of being in a bunny costume....cept maybe on easter...maybe...She still makes it looks cute :o).

Yeah, its been a while...

When everything "seems" same ol' same ol', we sometimes feel like there's nothing to write about. By popular demand, we've decided to post some newer pictures of Rebekah. She's decided to start standing now, so I know it's only a matter of time before she starts walking. During playtime, her favorite toy by far are her balls. She never gets tired of throwing, rolling, spinning, bouncing, and smashing them together to make sounds. She loves loves loves them.
On our walks, Rebekah loves to look at and stare down street signs. She seems to love words, even if they're not in books. When we walk around the pond, she also loves stopping at every other tree and bush and grabbing it. It's so much fun watching her learn and grow. She's also like her daddy in that she loves to feel the sunshine! Whenever we go outside and we get in the sun for just a moment, she just lights up and gives the biggest smile.
We love our little (getting bigger) Rebekah.

Fun Times

We don't really have anything to new to report. Rebekah is still growing and exploring the house. She is enjoying her walks a lot more now as she recognizes her surroundings and always looks forward to get to the pond where she can see the fountain. We realized that we haven't put up a video of Rebekah laughing, so we decided to make a post of it. Rebekah was being a little whiny so I decided to make her smile by tickling her to death. I wasn't sure if it was teeth coming in or something else that was making her uncomfortable, but laughter makes you forget just about anything, so hope you enjoy!

Movin'

Rebekah has been "army" crawling for a few weeks now and I thought I would add a video clip to show you all her progress. We're so proud of her! Yes, I understand that this leads to bigger and more complicated things, but it's still exciting seeing her progress and her ability to learn and grow!

Something finally worked....

So for a while now we've been working with Rebekah's torticollis. Torticollis is when some of the muscles in the neck tighten forcing the head to tilt. There are many people with much more severe cases than Rebekah, but we still felt that we needed to address it. We started by going to the PT. Most the the techniques she taught us we were doing already, so we didn't really feel like going to the PT was helping the cause. We continued to stretch her and give her lots of opportunity to play on her tummy. We saw progress, but eventually the progress flattened out. She was able to turn her head completely one way or the other, but she still had a tilt in the head. We finally decided to take her to a chiropractor. It was a wonderful experience. He was very helpful and made sure we understood what he was doing and why he was doing it. After just 2 sessions, we were able to see a dramatic difference. Here are some more recent pictures of Rebekah after the sessions. We love our princess so much!

A nice visit

This past weekend we were visited by Mary's brother and family. Seth was a joy for Rebekah, and she loved observing and learning from him. We played a lot of games and traveled around Charlotte for a little sightseeing. The dinners were fun for Scott and he was able to experiment a little with a few of the dishes.
Seth taught Rebekah how to eat. After we had been trying to get her to eat solid foods for weeks with little luck, Rebekah finally started opening her mouth to eat after she saw Seth eating his solid food. It was amazing to see how much of a size difference there was between the two, even though they are only 6 months apart. Rebekah also loved listening to her Uncle Jonny read books with silly voices.

Peas...thankfully not up the nose...yet

Today was our second attempt to feed Rebekah peas. She did a lot better than she did the first time. Its an entertaining video nonetheless. Enjoy!

Up'n At'em!!

It wasn't the most exciting thing for Mary (due to the fact that it means she's growing up way too fast) but Rebekah has been sitting up to play lately. She still loves her books and things that make noise, but she's moved on to putting things in holes, pushing buttons and pulling levers. She loves the toys from Grandpa and Grandma. Even now and then, Scott switches up the placement of the caterpillar to confuse the little one, but she still goes for the multi-lingual talking lady first. Scott has decided that with all of these videos, he is going to have to get an external hard drive to store them all. Hello Amazon! (unless there's somewhere cheaper...)

Wonderful Memories

So this will be our first entry I think where we don't just talk about Rebekah the whole time :o). Scott was able to go out to California this weekend to participate in the memorial for his late grandmother. Fortunately, there were a lot of good feelings and smiles and laughs during the weekend that made thinking of dear sweet Virginia all the more sweet.

After the memorial and reception, the family decided to spend the rest of the day at Jimmy's beach house in Santa Cruz. We were able to look through numerous photos of grandma, grandpa and the rest of the family when they were a lot younger. We also had some brotherly competition. I mean, come on, when don't we? So you guessed it, the ol' hit the can of soda off the arm of the chair with lemons game. I'm sure you've all heard of it :o). Jim was crowned champion of the match knocking it down 3 times while Scott only knocked it down twice and Kyle once. We also went down to the beach and had s'mores and did other 'beach' stuff. All in all it was a wonderful visit and a great time visiting family that Scott hadn't seen for quite a while.

On Friday we were able to go out on their first date of the year. Well, temple trips I guess are dates, too, but we're not out nearly as late on temple dates. We were able to go and see Phantom of the Opera. It was a wonderful night with magical music and performances. Scott enjoyed the Phantom singing the best. Hopefully we'll be able to see more soon. Maybe if Les Miserables comes to town.

This weekend we were also able to go to a block party for the 4th of July. It was a blast! Lots of food, fireworks and a 40 foot slide! Rebekah loved going down the slide with daddy. She had a good time watching all the other kids as well. She's definitely a watcher. We enjoyed the time together as a family but babykins was too tired to stay up for the fireworks so daddy took mom and baby home then went back for the rest. Hopefully next year she'll be able to last a little longer and watch some spectaculars.