EDWARD UPDATES

For updates on baby Edward go to:

www.littlebabyedward.blogspot.com

Baby Edward

The proud parents!

Baby Edward

Baby Edward Andrew Menken born 2/10/09 at 24 weeks. One pound 0 ounces. 11 1/4 inches long

His foot - only about one inch long

His face is covered by the blue "shades" and blue hat. He also has in a yellow ventilator tube.

Sweet Sisters!

Baby Sophia is Here!

put me back!
Daddy's little girl.


Lily kissing her baby sister! They will make quite the pair.

Don't Mess with Christy!

Not that this has anything to do with babies, the main theme of our blog, but Greg thinks this is the coolest thing. Two weeks ago Greg and I went with another couple from church and went shooting at a shooting range. Our friends that we went with own quite a few guns and I was given the opportunity to shoot them all. I shot a couple .22 pistols, a .22 rifle, an AR-15 (the civilians version of the M-16), a .410 shotgun, a .44 pistol, plus Greg's .357. Considering I hadn't even touched a gun since I was ten, when I went on another shooting trip with an uncle, I thought I did pretty well and I actually enjoyed shooting. I even hit a huge total of three clay pigeons with the shotgun! I certainly wouldn't ever want to be forced to shot at someone or something to save my life, but a trip to the range was pretty great! Here's a video of me shooting the AR-15 and a few pictures with other guns.

I Give Up!

After looking through all of my posts of the past year, my keen deductive mind has noticed a theme! Can you guess what it is? I'll give you a hint... it has to do with being too busy and/or too lazy. Give up? We'll that's what exactly how I feel. I give up on trying to keep this blog up to date with the daily grind of Lily. I tried for a while, I really did. But life got in the way. You'd think that after doing daily data entry for my mom, providing childcare for a neighbor for 30 hours each week, subbing one day each week, oh yeah, and caring for a child of my own, I'd at least have an hour or so each week to update this window into to the Swackhamer family happenings. But alas, it has not been so easy! So instead of continually posting apology after apology and giving excuse after excuse as to why I haven't posted in months, I give up and am here to inform you of my new policy. As of today, I am no longer fretting over writing the perfect, slightly funny yet informative, discourse. It all boils down to this: I'm not promising anything. I may find time to write each month, I may not. It might be a lengthy entry telling you all about the latest milestone, it might just be a sentence or two with some pictures. Don't give up on me, I will update the blog from time to time, but I cannot guarantee that it'll be in any regular sort of time frame.

That being said, here's a brief description of what Lily is up to. As of the past few months, everything is all about Elmo! As soon as she wakes up, it's the first thing out of her mouth. It actually comes out sounding more like Eh-mama. If we go anywhere near a television (in our house or someone else's), she points and says that magic, but somewhat annoying word. If we are shopping and the store dares to have anything resembling the little red monster, she does crazy repeating Eh-mama over and over! What is it about this little character? EVERY toddler I know either is currently in love with Elmo, or has been in the recent past. I don't get it. But the 20 minutes of "Elmo's World" on Sesame Street everyday makes her so happy! In addition to Elmo, Lily is enjoying her new found world of running. She runs all over the place, and though due to excess speed, she falls more often than not, she continues none the less.

What else can I tell you? Right now she's working at gaining her independence and it's driving Greg and I nuts! Everything from diaper changes, to getting into p.j.'s, to eating dinner has become the battle of wills. I know that every child goes through this, and given that most kids are not killed by their parents during this stage, I have faith that we will make it through this, but Greg's not so sure. Her new search for individuality has not been helped by the incoming teeth that seem to put her in a grumpy mood half the day. We call her "Grumpy Pants" for a reason! She currently has twelve teeth and has two more trying to push their way through. While I will admit that we've had it pretty easy up till now, I understand why parents want to drug their kids during the teething years.

However, even with all the changes and new things, we are LOVING watching her grow. It seems that each day Greg and I agree that she's more fun today than last week! We give you our love. If Lily could see you, she'd send you a licked palm (a.k.a blowing you kisses)! I'm sure as soon as I publish this, many things will change, but this has been a short snippet into the exciting life of Lily, complete with a montage of random pictures ranging from our visit to Arkansas this past November, to sledding at Christmas, to her latest goofiness. So enjoy!

Falling Behind

That seems to be the theme for the past few months, I'm falling behind. Whether it's dishes, house cleaning, laundry, calling my brother or in-laws, or just simply getting those 40 winks, I seem to be falling behind on it all! Again, I deeply apologize that I have not been better at keeping up with this blog. It seems to come in waves. Some times I'm so good at keeping it updated that I run out of things to update, and then before you know it, almost four months have gone by and I haven't updated it at all. But here's the latest and greatest about Lily and the fam.

As of the last posting, I have finished school. Those last few days of each school year are always killer. That kid that's been pushing your buttons all year is just about to make you snap. Those parents who disagree with the grades you gave their child, because even though their child can't do basic addition and subtraction, they have always thought of their child as a straight A student. The principal that is asking you to fill out a million and one forms, plus get all of your testing finished, plus get your room packed and cleaned out, plus not remind the kids that schools ending by actually doing some fun end of year activities. Yes, it's those last few weeks that are the real reason that you need two and a half months off afterward. But this year was especially hard, given that it was my last school year for a while. I'm now onto the great adventure of being a stay-at-home mom!

Lily has been changing in leaps and bounds as well. We can no longer call her the "toothless wonder." She now has six teeth. Four on the bottom and her two front teeth on top (with two more almost in, right beside them) She has learned to crawl extremely proficiently, which has added all sorts of fun and interesting twists to our days. She's been pulling up on everything and has now even learned to stand without anything holding her up. She can manage it for a longer and longer period, but eventually comes crashing down again. She amazes us with how much she changes even just day to day. Greg is positive that she's going to walk in just a matter of days. I don't know about a matter of days, but most likely by her first birthday. Can you believe she's almost a year old already? We can't!

At the end of June, Lily, my mom, myself, and several other family members all trekked out to lovely Lubbock, TX for my cousins wedding. From there Lily, mom, and I went on to Little Rock to visit Mike, Sarah, and Eden. We were able to stay for a week with them. It was great to see them. We even made it up to Searcy, where we saw my grandmother and walked around Harding's ever-changing campus. But after a week we said a'du to Little Rock and drove the 16 hours back home. Lily was a great traveler, much better than we were even hoping she'd do. But I think by the end of it, she didn't want to see her car seat or another car again! Since then we've just been hanging around the house, going to lunch with friends, etc. It's been great to be home and I look forward to many more days of it!

As of a week ago, the school year started without me. While all my teacher friends were scrambling to get all their last minute vacations in, I spend the days on play dates. When all of my teacher friends were getting their rooms (and their patience) ready for another year, I was walking down 16th Street Mall. It felt so weird not to have that last minute rush. But so far, I am enjoying being home with Lily a thousand times more than I ever liked teaching. But just to keep my teaching teammates happy (and to give myself that teaching fix I know I'll need at some point this year) I have agreed to substitute this year. It should be fairly easy, as I've restricted myself to only fifth and sixth grade at Deane. I figure that in sixth grade, I know the kids, and in fifth grade I know the curriculum, so it will be fun. But keep me in your prayers, as I know how my students treated substitutes!

Now that you've been given the quick update, enjoy the latest pictures of Lily.

Side Effects Include...

Have you ever noticed on those commericals for obscure medications that sometimes the side effects are worse than the illness the medication is supposed to be treating? You know the ones... "Have seasonal allergies? Take Xarcom. Side effects include vomiting, weeks of diarrhea, extreme muscle weakness, facial ticks, rapid facial hair growth, halitosis, fallen arches, and the desire to listen to Michael Bolton music ad nauseum." Well the Swackhamer family seemed to have all taken Xarcom this past week. OK, OK, so we didn't take some strange purple pill; but we did all have sicknesses that made you want to get into the fetal position and cry for your mommy. (And fortuantely, we didn't have EVERY side effect listed. There was absolutely no Michael Bolton in our house.) Lucky for Lily, hers was actually around! On Thursday of this past week I managed to get some stomach flu type virus and the cycle began. First, you're dog sick, feeling like you've never have been and never will be that sick again. In fact, death sounds a little better than how you currently feel. You have this for about 24 hours. Then the next day while you feel better, you are so weak and dehydrated from the day before that you look like you're about to die. Then by day three you seem to be well enough to go back to work and by day four, you're completely fine, like you were never sick in the first place. Well this cycle started with me on Thursday night. I then passed it onto Lily on Saturday afternoon. She cycled through and gave it to Greg on Sunday night. By Tuesday my mom and our baby sitter's daughter both had it. We were contemplating quarantining the Swackhamer family. We're hoping that we don't give it to anyone else, or get it back from anyone! So to help cheer us up and give everyone else a laugh, after all laughter is the best medicine, I've included a few pictures that always make us laugh. Here's to your good health.

Aren't We a Beautiful Family?

These pictures were taken on Easter in my cousin's backyard as the rest of the family was preparing the yearly Easter feast. (Notice I got out of helping by "needing" to have family pictures taken!!) Yes, that is snow on the ground. And while that was a tad chilly for Lily's sleeveless Easter dress, I wanted to show her off. We received a total of about an inch of snow on that Sunday. It made for a nice backdrop for some pictures, though.

Who Needs Recycling?

Most children have certain foods that they don't all together enjoy having to eat. I'm not a big fan of kidney beans or collard greens (nor apparently anything that rhymes with "eens"). My brother, Mike, has never enjoyed the taste of broccoli or sweet potatoes in his mouth. The Ripperton boys don't seem to like anything! But I assumed that with Lily, things might be a bit different. Perhaps because Greg seems to like pretty much everything, perhaps because she's a baby and has a very limited diet as it is. But I assumed that Lily would eat whatever I put in front of her. While in a certain way that's true, at least everything I put in front of her does end up in her mouth at some point, she has come to greatly dislike anything resembling baby food. Give her pureed carrots or sweet potatoes, a grimace appears on her face and the food is immediately spit back out. Give her guacamole or mashed potatoes, she can't get enough. But clearly this isn't exactly hurting her, as she weighed in at just over 17 pounds and was 28 inches tall at yesterdays check up.

But lately, the food of choice is paper, any paper. If she can get her hands on paper, she eats it like a starving Ethiopian that's been given a doughnut. So we've decided that in our house recycling is no longer needed. If you need to shred some junk mail, give it to Lily. If you no longer need those pesky bills, give them to Lily. If you need to find some place to dispose of your old phone books, give them to Lily. While I joke about actually giving her all this paper, my guess is that she would attempt to eat it, if only given the chance. So a word to the wise, if Lily is going to be at your house, hide any paper that might one day be of value to you!

What's up Waskally- Wabbit?

Isn't she beautiful?

Snowmen at the end of March?!?

There we were, preparing ourselves for another spring break full of sunny walks along the trail, nice spring breezes to cool down the house, sunglasses, short sleeved shirts and shorts, and what happens? A brief reminder that we still live in Colorado, not Hawaii!

We woke up this morning to a few inches of snow on the deck and snow flakes drifting down to join their buddies already landed.

But hey, it's one more excuse to get Lily into her snow suit and hat and go romping through the snow. She seems to have enjoyed it a bit better than the last time we put her in snow, but she's still not so sure about this cold white stuff.