July 2011

Devin stayed home from work one Friday to play with this fat little cherub who adores him - can you blame him at all?

Becca's favorite word is "wub" - I like to tell her that I "wub" her too. Her bouncing jowls reminded me so strongly of something from my past that we made this Friday video:

We were invited to a party at Devin's friend, Ben's, apartment - to watch the Women's World Cup.  Afterwards we went swimming in his pool and Becca impressed everyone with her breath-holding skills.  Devin is really pleased that she likes water so much and hopes she becomes a swimmer.  She still loves bath-time too, especially when duckie is on the menu. 

We spent part of the 4th of July weekend in Sugar Land.  There were no fireworks because of a fire ban (so depressing!), but Alaire and I found some pretty spectacular fake eyelashes and about bust a gut taking distorted pictures together. I have included only a small percentage of the photos - we kind of went overboard... 

Becca turned six months old! She is growing so fast.  

Becca takes her eating seriously.  And her messes. 

That must be the reason she's at the top of her "class"...

More eating pictures; no wonder my left wrist hurts almost non-stop!

Becca is such a happy baby and she makes us happy too.  We love to try to make her giggle:

We are such lucky parents - Becca has a relatively easy time teething.  We were so excited to see that first tooth! Watch carefully:

My family went to the Cabin and Mom decided to have a little Family Symposium where everyone presented on a different uplifting topic; she asked me if I would prepare something on education.  Devin and I were quite amused with our morning's worth of effort to add some humor (I didn't put the whole presentation on, but following are some pictures, bloopers, and clips we hope you get a laugh out of - I remind myself of Nanny McPhie in the last one):

As a totally random story, we have some scallywags for neighbors.  These rascals are thieving from us!  However, we cannot appeal to the law for help, because I'm sure rodents are above (or beneath?) the law.  Due to the severe drought in Texas, you may see that our sad attempt at a garden (and a lawn) by most accounts has failed.  We tried to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers.  I'd like to blame it all on this dearth, or even on that pitiful contraption of a Topsy-Turvy - but maybe I didn't inherit my parents' (or grandparents'!) green thumb.  Anyway. I digress.  Back to that furry creature you can see on the corner of our back porch; he has our second-to-last surviving tomato (of the perhaps 6 or 7 we grew)! I didn't even know squirrels ate tomatoes...we figured he was desperate.  It was intriguing to watch him, until he went for the last tomato - then I got mad and chased him off. 

Speaking of squirrels...(since they're so fascinating and all) I forgot to post these pictures back in April - this shows you how hot it was in College Station even a few months ago; this squirrel didn't budge as I got closer - it was just too hot!

About the same day as the tomato-stealing incident, Becca's second tooth came in, and she also finally started to crawl!  She had been doing her seal-like move across our slick hardwood floors for so long, that we wondered if she would ever crawl normally, but she did it.  

Besides Becca's milestones and strange squirrel stories, most of July passed much as the past few months had, with the same sort of activities.  Some new additions were that I joined a book club (it turned out to be more of a "hey-moms-let's-escape-and-have-a-girly-chat-night" most of the time), and we also had a friend get baptized, which was really neat to witness.    

It's a good life we have!