"Circle, Square, Triangle"

Hannnah surprised us yet again and for journal purposes I just have to write it down. She was playing with Grandma Geri and her new favorite toy (thanks to Mimi!) yesterday morning. This cool "Learn and Groove" table by Leap Frog has a section on it with a circle, triangle, and square that when pushed say which shape they are. Hannah pushed the circle and after it said circle she repeated "ciiirrcul". My mom immediately called me to come quick because Hannah just said circle. I didn't quite believe her and wanted to hear it for myself and sure enough, when she pushed the circle she said "ciiiirrcul". Soon after she shocked us with that she pushed the square and after hearing it she repeated "sqwaare". That took us back and little and we were quickly realizing what a miracle we were witnessing. But what finally knocked our socks off was when she pressed the triangle button, heard it, and immediately repeated "triiiii-ain-guul". How in the world does a 9 month old hear something with 3 syllables like triangle and repeat it without having a mouth to observe or any prodding or constant provocation? She is our little miracle, in every way possible. But she hasn't been a one hit wonder with her shapes. She frequently says circle and square while playing with the toy, although she only said triangle the once. Jake didn't quite believe us until he heard her say circle and square herself. We actually caught one of the times on video camera (which I will upload soon). In the video Grandma Geri actually points to the shapes without pushing the button and asks Hannah "What is this?" and without delay Hannah immediately responds "Ciircul sqwaare!" It is adorable. She is adorable.

She may be an early bloomer when it comes to vocalization but this little one was quite happy with just scooting around the past couple of months. Today however, she started crawling a lot more often! But if she is really excited about her destination she jumps on her belly and grunts and heaves her way over with her arms and feet. Just within the past couple of days she has also started standing up while holding various objects around the house and moving across the room holding on. This evening she stood up holding onto the TV stand and worked her way around the couch to the ottoman. Yesterday she also climbed up the 2 steps leading to the kitchen from the sunken living room. We are so proud of our little munchkin! She is learning new things every day.

9 Month Stats

Hannah had her 9 month check up today. She is one healthy and happy little girl. Here are her stats:

Height: 30 inches 97th%

Weight: 20 lbs 15 oz 75-90th%

Head: 47 cm 97th%

And lastly, here are a couple of fun pictures we took while out to dinner with my mom and brother. Hannah was extremely excited when these pictures were taken, and it was all because of some water in a straw.

"Hannah"

Last night Jake took Hannah over to a picture of her on the wall. Hannah smiled, pointed her cute little finger straight to her picture and said "Hannah" as clear as day without any prompting. Jake, Mimi, and I heard it, and we were completely awestruck. She amazes us everyday.

9 Months Old.....Really???

Hannah is just 3 months from 1 year. My baby is growing up so fast :-( Hannah continues to learn new things everyday and surprise us with her level of understanding and communication. She has such a sweet and caring personality. For the past month she has been giving out kisses either on her own, which is usually right when we need it, or upon our request. I will say "Can Mommy/daddy/her bear/the phone (if someone is on it) have a kiss?" And she then analyzes if she really wants to and usually leans forward and plants a juicy open mouth kiss on us/the object. Usually I say "thank you" when she kisses me and on a few different occasions she responds with "Dank oooo".

She know's what the hand gesture waving means because I was on the phone with her uncle David and he said "Hi Baby Hannah" and without being prompted by me she looked at the phone and waved to it. She is also queen of mimicking: There have been times where she has repeated us when we have said "Hi". If a loved one says "Bye Bye Hannah" she has been known to say "Buuuuu-I" and wave at the same time. One time I had a big yawn right after waking up in the morning and she looked at me and repeated the same loud noise, she cracks me up. She also sometimes say's "Aww Dun (All Done)" when she is done eating.

Hannah has quickly become a daddy's girl. It started a couple of Sunday's ago when she didn't want to go to mommy, she just wanted to be with daddy. Jake would try to hand to her to me and she would start fussing until I handed her back over to daddy. Sometimes Hannah will ask for daddy when he is not home. This is how the conversation goes: Hannah will say "Dada??" And I respond with "Dada's at work." And she responds with "Ohhhhh". Usually she asks me a couple of times in a row and always responds with "Ohhh" when I tell her daddy's at work.

Favorite Toys

• Balls
• Playskool ball popper where she hits this button and the balls pop up like popcorn.
• Her stuffed bear's

Favorite Activities

• Reading books (she can actually turn the pages and point to objects on the page)
• Standing up by herself with the support of the couch/ottoman
• Mommy and daddy helping her walk around
• Hide and Seek (Jake and I take turns running around the house while the other person helps Hannah to chase us down and find us, she laughs hysterically)
• Peek a boo (always a baby crowd pleaser)

Words

• Mama
• Dadda
• Ball
• Hi there ("Hi Der")
• Thank you ("Dank oo")
• Bye
• Hi
• Num Num (she say's this when she's hungry)
• All done ("Awww Dun")

New Skills

• Pointing
• Going from skooting on her belly to pushing herself back to sitting
• Standing up in her crib
• Rocks back and forth on her hand's and knees more frequently, she will be crawling any day now.

Favorite Food

• Nursing
• Turkey Rice
• Rice Puffs
• Baby Mum-mums
• Fruits
• Yogurt

Her 9 month check up is next week, so I will report on her stats then. As far as we can tell she is still just as tall as ever and weighs over 20lbs.

All smiles on her 9 month birthday.

Playing with her most recent favorite toy, the Playskool ball popper. Thanks Mimi!

I love that dress. Thanks Grandma Geri! :-)

Hannah's 1st Pigtails! She looks so grown up with them...so I'm thinking I won't be doing them too often :-)

The view from the back.

Wearing her Boise State cheerleading outfit that Aunt Aubrey got her last Christmas. It fits perfect! Thanks Aunt Aubrey!

Giving her bear some kisses.

Ainsworth Family Reunion

A little over a week ago we flew to Reno so that we could attend the Ainsworth Family Reunion. We had a blast! The trip started out rough when we got to the airport Wednesday night only to discover that our flight was delayed by 2 hours.....which wouldn't be such a big deal if our flight wasn't originally scheduled to leave at 9pm. We didn't get to the hotel until about 1am and didn't get to bed until 3. You'd think Hannah would be sleeping throughout those late hours of travel....but no. She was very awake most of the time. The flight delay was the only bad part about our trip. We had a lot of fun with our Ainsworth relatives.

The reunion started on Friday so we had all day Thursday to play around at Lake Tahoe with my parent's and little (well, he used to be) brother David. We went on a cruise across the Lake to Emerald Bay and had amazing prime rib sandwiches on board. Hannah did really well on the cruise and liked looking overboard at the water. There were actors dressed up on the boat who represented different people from the time period when Tahoe was originally settled. We learned a lot of trivial information. For instance: Lake Tahoe has enough water to fulfill the water needs of the United States for 5 years. Pretty impressive if you ask me. We ate dinner at one of our favorite restaurants ever: Fire and Ice. It is a Mongolian barbecue, but quite upscale in comparison to most. We finished the night with Cold Stone. Have I mentioned that (to my great satisfaction) vacations in my family are mostly about food? Nobody goes hungry, and everyone is stuffed as happy as a clam.

Friday we ate breakfast (I had the best french toast ever) and then headed to Virginia City (I'm having too much fun with posting links :-) to meet up with more family. Before doing much you wouldn't be surprised to know that we found this awesome barbecue restaurant and helped our selves to some tasty pulled pork sandwiches. We met up with extended family at the park and had fun introducing everyone to Jake and Hannah. That night we headed back to my Uncle John's farm and helped ourselves to a yummy spaghetti feast. Did we have enough food yet? The answer would be "No", we stopped at Dairy Queen on the way home that night. I love how we love food.

Saturday we went back to Virginia City to meet up with my older brother Paul. He introduced us to one of my new favorite Mexican restaurants. After lunch we headed back to the farm where the reunion was taking place. They roasted a pig Hawaiian style in a pit. It turned out very tasty. We spent the majority of the evening just talking with family, taking pictures, eating dessert, and eating smores before we all went our separate directions. The reunion was quite a success with about 120 family members making it out for the events. It was the first family reunion in 7 years but hopefully we can make it a more frequent tradition in the years to come.

Sunday we flew back home. It's always hard to say goodbye to family, especially since I know how much they miss "baby Hannah" when she's not there to melt their hearts with her smiles, giggles, and slobbery kisses. Speaking of slobbery kisses, both grandma Geri and David got kisses from Hannah, which is a rare commodity if you are not mommy. Grandma Geri got her kiss while we were eating lunch at the Mexican restaurant with Paul. Grandma picked her up off the table and stood her up on her lap facing away from her. Hannah turned around planted her open lips right on Grandma's cheek. Grandma said she wanted to cry because she had been wanting a kiss from her all weekend. Uncle David also wanted a kiss and she surprised him with one when he picked her up first thing in the morning. It was so sweet to watch both David and my mom's reactions when she kissed them. They turned to Putty in her cute chubby little hands :-)

Hannah did extremely well with all the traveling and flying. Our hotel was an hour away from the farm where the reunion was, so we were in the car or plane quite a bit. She was either sleeping or playing and only cried once (I couldn't blame her for it though because it was a windy road and I wasn't feeling too great myself). On the plane ride back to SLC we got several comments about what an amazing, happy, and beautiful baby we have because she did so well on the flight. I would have to agree with them, Hannah is such a doll, inside and out.

Kodak moment before getting on the boat.

Sitting on the boat after finishing our lunch.

Hannah enjoying the view from the boat.

Looking cute in daddy's hat.

The 2 greatest loves of my life.

Grandma Geri loving on her grand baby.

My baby Buddha.

Thinking about crawling.

My immediate family all together for the first time in 3 years (mine and Jake's wedding).

My brother Ron and his adorable son Daniel.

My dad with my brothers Paul and David having a great time.

Grandma Geri, Hannah and I.

Family In Town

The past couple of weeks we have been spoiled with visits from family. First my mom and David stopped off for a short visit on David's drive back home for his 7 week vacation from school. It was a lot of fun to spend time with them. We went to a Pioneer Day acitivity thing at a park in Provo, went out to dinner, played with fireworks, and had fun just hanging out. Here is a cute picture of David and Hannah.

That next weekend Jake's mom, sister, and niece came to visit for Aunt Kaye and Uncle Lynn's farewell (they leave on Monday for Budapest, Hungary). It was so fun to see baby Katelyn and Hannah together. They are almost exactly a month a part and they were so cute together.




The following weekend Jake's mom Lanette drove up to help us move. She did so much to help us. I don't think I could have done it without her. She did everything from hauling boxes down 3 flights of stairs to her truck and unloading it at the house to cleaning to watching Hannah so I could get something done. You name it, she did it. I don't think I could thank her enough.

8 Months Old

The past 8 months have flown by. It's weird because usually the days seem really long but the weeks and months just seem to come and go too quickly. Maybe some of you who are moms can understand that.

Hannah's Skills :-)

• She still doesn't quite have the crawling thing down yet but she can roll around to get where she wants. She also just recently started grabbing the carpet and pulling her self forward to get where she wants to go.
• Sometimes she sleeps through the night....and sometimes she doesn't. We're working on some consistency :-)
• LOVES to eat. Nursing, vegetables, fruits, meats, breads, cereals, you name it, she will eat it and love it.
• Laughs hysterically if you dance around and jump for her.
• Just got her own room, it's adorable.
• When Jake comes home from work her limbs start flailing and she says "dadada" in a really excited voice. She loves her daddy. Almost as much as he loves her.
• Sometimes say's words. When she wants me to feed her or hold her, or when she is tired she will start saying "Mamamama". When I leave the room at times she will say "maaa MA!" She's said "ball" on different occasions when she sees one without us saying anything. She has also said "up" if I ask her if she wants up.
• Waves "bye bye" or "Hi" if we wave to her.
• Loves to swim.
• Is so happy and smiley. Usually people comment on how happy she is. And not to mention beautiful :-)
• Has been sitting up on her own for 3 months now.
• Loves it when daddy turns on "Tigger and Pooh", she gets really excited.
• Loves to have family visit and watch little children.
• Is our pride and joy.