Weeks 44 & 45

As usual, life has been crazy around the Looten house! Although, if it's always crazy, does it count as crazy anymore, or is it just normal? Either way, we're BUSY! :) And Miss Laney is busy right along with us!

Two weekends ago, on July 11th, we got to do another youth event, and one of our favorites- Camp Nowhere. This is a really fun event, where we spend the weekend pretending we're at church camp- we have food, swimming, recreation, chapel- everything that makes a good church camp, only we do it in a weekend. This year we went to the house of a family at church; they have a nice lake, and a great place to play capture the flag, have a bonfire... everything we needed. We had a great time, although Laney and I didn't spend the night (not quite ready for sleeping in a tent yet).

While hanging out in the barn during Camp Nowhere, the family whose house we were at let Laney borrow their walker. She loved it, although she didn't really get the hang of it in the short time we were there! At least it kept her contained, which is getting harder and harder these days.

Hanging out with James... who decided to put stickers on her forehead while we were decorating school boxes for our service project.

Enjoying the sun with Ruth and Jordyn, next to the lake!

This past weekend, Josh and I took off a couple of days and headed to Springfield for a long weekend. We went to SDC on Thursday, and just hung out and relaxed Friday. Saturday, we went to visit Great-Grandma De & Great-Grandpa Don for dinner. We had a great time, and it was lots of fun to see cousin Leila, who is almost 4 months old now! One of the fun things we did was on Friday, we went to lunch with Grandma & Grandpa Looten to a Japanese restaurant that cooks the food right in front of you and the guy does all of the flipping of spatulas and banging and such. It was a neat show, and the food was great. Laney was FASCINATED by the chef!

At Silver Dollar City... Elena spent several hours passed totally out in her stroller... with her horsey close by, of course.

Just a few more inches until she can ride The Lost River!! :)

Blackberry topping on a funnel cake is YUMMY!

Back at Grandma & Grandpa's house, hanging out with Leila!

Grandma let Elena ride on the rocking horse that she got from Silver Dollar City when Uncle Tim was a baby. Still works great, and Elena LOVED it!

Elena was pretty fascinated by Leila... and Grandma was loving having them both together!
And so was Grandpa!
Hanging out with Great-Grandpa Don...
and Great-Grandma De... with the dog, OF COURSE.

While we were visiting Grandma & Grandpa Looten, Elena got to try out the high chair they have. Unfortunately, she decided she didn't want to sit in the high chair while we were eating, and she didn't want anything to do with the pieces of fruit or veggies that we tried to give her. Instead she fussed and cried until we took her out. Well, that told Mommy and Daddy one thing: time to break out the high chair at home!! And the doctor told me to start giving her some little pieces of table food, so we started really trying those, too. On Sunday it looked like this...

That's oatmeal and cantelope strewn about, but NOT eaten!

But, by Tuesday, it looked like that... (and, yes, that's a happy face).

So, Laney LOVES peas (much to her father's dismay, because he HATES them)! I think she mostly likes them because they're easy to pick up and eat. We gave her some green beans, too, and she hoovered those. She's not big on the fruit yet, but I think that's more of a texture thing- fruit tends to be juicier, and harder to get off of the tray. She looks like such a big girl, though, sitting in her high chair and eating regular food! It's hard to believe she's growing up so fast!

In other fun news, this week has been the week of the Boone County Fair, which means that Aunt Ruthie had to show her sheep. So, of course, we went out to watch! And visit the sheep...

Laney even got in the pen to pet them, though the sheep were not very cooperative- they kept moving away from her.

The goats in the next pen, however, were very curious about her, and she got to pet them. They even licked her hand! (After which Mommy whipped out the Purel!)
After the show, Laney even got to RIDE on Daisy, Aunt Ruthie's sheep!

Well, as you can see, it's been an exciting couple of weeks for Miss Lena. In all reality, though, the excitement has been much less about what we've been doing, and much more about how fast Elena is growing and changing. She is already starting to stand on her own for a little while at a time, although she usually tries to stand on her tiptoes and then loses her balance. She is a crawling maniac, says "Uh Oh," which is adorable, and LOVES to shred things (kleenex, paper towels, paper, you name it- not quite as adorable).

She has two teeth now, both of her front bottom ones, but I don't see any sign of the top ones coming in, which is a-ok with me. She's gotten pretty good at not biting me when she's nursing (after several head whacks and screaming sessions), which is a major blessing! And teething hasn't really been that rough on her. She's been a little fussy, and had some trouble sleeping at night (although some ibuprofen usually takes care of that), but overall she's been just a great baby even through teething. We go back next week to have an ear recheck, since there was fluid but no infection at her 9 month appointment.

Anyway, as I get closer to her first birthday (I know, I know, it's still a month and a half away, but it feels really close) I get more and more nostalgic about how quickly she changes. At the sheep show this week I was thinking about last year's show- when I was still pregnant. I remember it was on a Tuesday, and I had gotten an ultrasound that day, because I got one every Tuesday. They had pointed out all of the hair she had again (yeah, what happened to that?!), and I remember showing off all of the black and white pictures. Now it's an actual baby!! Hard to believe that she used to be inside me... now she is so much her own person, with her own (very strong) personality (God help us). We've been working on hitting, because she likes to flail her arms and whack us in the face. She sure doesn't like being told no... but I think she better get used to it!

Parenting really fills me with a whole new kind of joy and fulfillment. I was elated on Tuesday, when she started eating those peas and not fussing in her high chair. I was so excited I called Josh at work, and then my mom, and said "I WON!" I never thought I'd be so thrilled to see someone eat a dozen peas! Being a parent is definitely a perspective & life altering experience!!

Well, that's probably enough rambling... I know you guys just want the pictures anyway! :) Hopefully that was enough for you (though it wasn't the 32 like the last post). And look for another update next week... if the weather's good, we're going to break out Laney's pool on Saturday!!! :)