Category Archives: events

April 5, 2014

We started the week by heading to Menard’s on a sunny Sunday. It was the first time Finn got out of his stroller and walked through a store, as opposed to being carried! He was quite proud of himself, gauging by the huge smile on his face, and loved pushing the stroller about. And he expended quite a bit of energy!

The weather is finally beginning to get a little bit warmer and my work is slowly picking up the pace, but I was able to get home one night early enough that we went out to eat together at Liberty Tavern. There was live music which we all enjoyed, but Finn especially, as he bounced around in his high chair.

Finn is growing by leaps and bounds and continues to babble and say new words all the time. He says things like more, uh oh, down, duck, daddy, dada, momma, doggie, dog dog, and nana (for banana) as a start. He’s very good at mimicking sounds and words and mocking noises. And when he spies you smiling at his cuteness, he often scrunches his nose and does his snorting trick – kinda like, yeah, I’m cute! We absolutely love having Debbie and Sammy come each day. Debbie has been teaching Finn things like shaking his head yes and no, where is your belly, hair, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc. He has the shaking his head no and pointing to his belly and hair mastered already :0). She often has a theme for the week, which is so fun to come home to art projects of painting, coloring, and so on. This week they made easter eggs and painted with their feet!

This weekend was a busy one, as I’ve begun working at Millcreek on the weekend and Kevin helped his brother Brett, and Missy, move into their new house! What fun (and a lot of work!). He had a good time and while he was away, Finn and I went to our friend Audrey’s 4th birthday party. It was loads of fun on a nice and sunny afternoon that we spent outside, and with his cuzzies to boot! Andy and I took the role of paparazzi and snapped lots of photos. Finn enjoyed chocolate cake and came home exhausted! Kevin ended up spending the night in Enon, so Finn and I had a mommy and son weekend. We enjoyed some cuddles, Sesame Street, and play time with the “doggies!”.

I’m excited that we are planning a fruit and veggie garden this year! We plan on planting a raised bed in the backyard, so while at Menard’s we bought some seeds and starter soil and on Wednesday night (4/2) we planted our seeds! We have started watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumber, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, butternut squash, peppers and in our window greenhouse we’ve planted chives, cilantro, and basil. Yummers! As of today, Sunday 4/6 they have all begun to germinate!

Finn ~ 31 weeks

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We had a pretty uneventful week until the weekend when we traveled to Dayton to celebrate at a couples shower in honor of Brett and Missy’s upcoming wedding! It was a nice afternoon capped off with a fine dinner with the family. Finn came along for the day and saw lots of family that he hasn’t seen for quite awhile.

On occasion I spot Kevin biting on a paper towel and I’ve noticed recently that Finn loves to bunch up the burp cloth or bath towel and shove it in his face. Here’s a perfect image of the two of them doing it at once – and this is a random shot, I did not stage this!!

Finn loves to hold his own bottle so much so that you can lay him down in the pack and play or his play pen and give him a bottle and he will feed himself! I still enjoy the cuddles and so does Kevin, but he does usually hold his own bottle the entire time. He will even take it out of his mouth several times and then put it back in when he’s ready for more. It’s really kind of fun to watch 🙂 For as long as I can remember he has always brushed his fingers on things – here is a perfect example of him doing it on his own lips:

He can move around doing a combination army crawl and real crawl with his belly off the floor and moving his knees. However, he loves to stand so much that he usually only gets as far as the first object he sees and then he stops and stands up. We usually find him standing up in his crib at the end of a nap or in the morning – or at the very least on his knees. He is actually getting really good at moving around his music table or twisting 180 degrees using his feet when he is standing between objects, like the couch and the ottoman. He’s gaining new skills each day!

The drive to work has been really pretty this last week with the sun shining on the trees along the river. I stopped one day to take a few photos. Here are a few along with some nice groups of plants in several houses at Millcreek. Things are looking good for our spring 2014 crop – I’ve captured these as I’ve been trying to get some new images for our upcoming catalog and website makeover project!

Have a great week!

Finn ~ 29 weeks

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Griffin continues to sleep really well at night – anywhere from 8-10 hours. We’ve been starting the night time routine of eating followed by bath time a bit earlier. He is typically in bed between 9:30 and 10 pm. For awhile now each night he migrates toward one end of his crib and most nights the “alarm” that is connected to a sensor under his mattress would go off. He had moved far enough that the sensor couldn’t sense his movement or breathing. I mentioned this to my sister the other day and she told me they had moved theirs to the area that Greta moves toward and I was like “duh!” why don’t we do that?! And it’s been great ever since! When he is awake he likes to be out and about moving around. He can get anywhere he wants, but isn’t yet full fledged “crawling” with his belly up off the floor just yet. However, he is always trying to pull himself up – like this!

Kevin’s “go live” date of October 1 came and went rather uneventfully! The weeks preceding he had spent some really LONG days (which more literally were days and nights) working to get things ready for the deadline. All in all the project is going quite well and we are all thankful for that. He has had a much less busy week this past week which has been great. He’s had a bit of time to rest and recover from the long days and we enjoy seeing him in the evenings! Since we’ve all been together for dinner we decided to give Griffin “real” food for the first time on Monday night – avacado! It’s a bit of a soft food, and just a wee bit messy, but that’s part of the fun, right?! He played with it a lot, smashed it and smeared it on the tray, put it to his mouth and licked it several times, and of course made some good funny faces. All in all hardly ate any – but had some fun in the process.

The President’s Cup festivities were happening this week in Dublin. Wednesday evening we headed over to Fore Fest in Old Dublin where they closed the streets and had a festival. It included 5 stages of live bands/music, food trucks, beer tents, and my personal favorite – a cupcake vendor that I learned about on Facebook, Little Star Cupcakes. They are delish! I had the pumpkin one, of course!

Griffin is talking and babbling alot more in the last week. Especially first thing in the morning or when he wakes from naps. Usually it is pretty quiet chatter but he can get loud when we feels like it!

Friday night was date night so we dropped Finn off at Chez Bethune and we headed to see Gravity in 3D at the Easton Dine-In Theaters.Saturday we had a fun family day. We started by going to pick apples and check out the market at Lynd’s Fruit farm. We picked Red and Golden Delicious apples. They are pretty tasty and were super plentiful so the actual picking only took about 5 minutes! We dodged rain drops in the car both before and after we picked. Then we spent some time at the market where they offer a huge selection of local produce, amish baked goods and cheeses, gourds, pumpkins, and pretty much anything you would think you might find at a farmer’s market.

While we were in the car feeding Finn we thought, hey, why not make a day of it and go to Young’s Jersey Dairy Farm in Yellow Springs to pick pumpkins and have some ice cream?! So we hit the road and called Grandma and Grandpa Armstrong, and Uncle Brett and Aunt Missy to let them know we were headed their direction. Everyone was able to meet us at Young’s where we spent a couple of hours taking in the farm happenings. All in all a really fun day!