Dancing Queen

The first week of August Annie started taking her first dance class. It's a combination tap/ballet class and she LOVES it! She loves the cute little outfits, the tap shoes, the props--pretty much everything about it! It is fun to watch her get so excited about something at such a young age. This picture was taken of her on the morning before her first class. And yes, she always looks this cute.

Annie Turns 2!

Birthday morning on her new pony

Opening presents at home that night

Checking out the tigers across from where we had her party

Feeding a giraffe

Opening presents with a little help from Dad

As a Mom I am constantly amazed at the personalities that my kids exhibit. Annie is and has pretty much always been an animal lover. If we're out shopping and she sees a bird, she runs toward it. If she sees a dog, she wants to pet it. Because of her love for animals we decided it would be fun to have her party this year at the zoo. The area where we were set up was directly across from the tigers. During the party he must've seen something because he started roaring like crazy. It was kind of creepy, but also really cool. We were also right along the backside of the giraffe exhibit and right next to the area where you can go and feed the giraffes. Annie and Ryan both went up to feed them and while Annie absolutely loved it, the whole thing freaked Ryan out and he decided he'd rather not be a part of it.

All in all it was a great day. I know Annie won't remember this party as time goes on, but it sure was fun to watch her thoroughly enjoy her day!

Annie's First Day of Nursery

May 30th was Annie's first day of nursery at Church. She had actually gone in with Ryan a couple of weeks before and they let her stay, but we took a picture to commemerate her official first day. She absolutely loves it and goes right in, sits down and starts playing with the puzzles. I'm sure it's a little easier to adjust with her big brother close by. Mom is thrilled--it's nice not to have to wander the halls with her for two hours since she usually can't sit still. Yay for nursery!

Spring!

At the beginning of the month I decided it was time to have pictures of the kiddos done, and they came out adorable! I can't believe how much they look alike or how big they're getting, but the pictures are proof!

Happy Birthday, Annie!

It doesn't seem possible, but our Annie turned 1 on Wednesday. We had a low key dinner with both sets of grandparents and our friends the Kastanis', followed by cake and ice cream. Annie had an absolute blast and she and Ryan both loved all the new toys.

As an added bonus, Annie got to have her Grammy and Papa here from Monday night until this morning.

Some things Annie can do at age 1:

~take 2 steps

~climb on and off of the couches

~NOT climb out of her crib! (a victory for me since Ryan was already climbing out of his before this point.)

Happy Birthday, Annie! We love you so much!

Happy Halloween!

The kids had a great Halloween. On the night before we went to our friends, the Hicken's, for a fun Halloween party. Ryan loved running around with all of the other kids--he is such a little social butterfly. On Halloween night we went to a few houses in our neighborhood then over to Grandma & Grandpa's. We couldn't get Little Miss Annie's Minnie ears to stay on, but she was cute nonetheless.

Hope everyone else had a great Halloween, too!

Annie Update

First of all, Annie is doing great.

On the 14th, she went in for an endoscopy and a sigmoidoscopy. From our very first appointment with the GI doctor, I had been very pro-endoscopy, so we were very glad to finally be getting something done.

A week and a half before the procedures, I stopped nursing because I felt like I needed to know how much Annie was actually eating. It was a little scary to discover that she was only eating 14 ounces of formula a day, but at least I had a baseline so I could see if and when we started making any progress.

Anyway, on the day of the procedure, Annie ate 20 ounces of formula. Initially I thought it was a fluke, because the day before she could only eat juice and jello and I figured she was starving. However over the next few days see continued to eat 20 ounces a day, and after a few days, worked her way up to 32 ounces a day, which is where she should be.

The biopsy results showed that she has acid reflux and she is on medication to help heal her esophogus. We haven't been back to see the GI doctor yet, but Annie's pediatrician thinks that she may have had some kind of blockage that got cleared out with the endoscopy.

Regardless of what happened, she is definitely on the mend. Yesterday I took her to get weighed and in 7 days she gained 8 ounces!

She has always been a happy, active baby but I have been amazed at the increase of energy she's had in the last week or so. Thanks to all of our friends and family for their concern and prayers for our little Annie bear.

So Cute!

So this picture may not seem worthy of a blog post, but I think the story is too cute. Annie was on the floor playing with her little stuffed cow (thanks, Aunt Sabrina) while Bryan and Ryan were watching TV. Next thing you know, she had gotten the cow under her head and was facing the TV, so it totally looked like she was completely comfy, watching whatever show was on at the time. And don't you just love that smile and those eyes? I'm so glad I have a little girl :)

Update

Ryan loves his baby sister!

Apparently it's cool to wear sunglasses in the bathtub!

You can definitely tell they're related!

Trying out squash for the first time


I just realized that it's been a while since I've blogged, so I thought I'd post some new pics and let you know what we're up to. Annie turned 6 months last week, which I still can't believe. She is sleeping awesome and continues to be our little angel baby. She is so good natured and mellow, and such a calming presence in our home. I took her in for her shots on Thursday and even though she is continuing to grow, she is now only in the 5th percentile for her weight! We just tried out solid food for the first time yesterday, and she is pretty unsure about that at this point.

Ryan is doing great. While Annie is allowing us to have nice quiet nights, Ryan definitely is not. Hopefully it's just a stage, but he is up every single night, at least once and often more. It's tiring, but chalk it up to parenthood, right? He is talking like crazy and coming up with new words every day. It's so fun to watch, and he is quite entertaining.

We recently began converting part of our garage into another room. No, we're not having another baby, but we need more room! We have it framed out and the window has been installed and the stucco done on the outside. It will be nice to have some storage and a place to put my sewing maching and scrapbooking stuff so I don't have to pack it up everytime I use it. We're hoping to have it completely done in about a month or so.

That's about all that's new here. It's been crazy hot, and keeping Ryan entertained indoors is proving to be quite a challenge. It should be an interesting summer!

Annie's Blessing

Yesterday was Annie's blessing, and we were excited to have family together to celebrate the special event. My parents came down from California, and Bryan's sister and her family from Portland had coincidently planned to come into town for the weekend. My sweet mother-in-law hosted a wonderful brunch at her house afterward, and my mom made Annie's beautiful dress. We enjoyed showing off our sweet little Annie Bear and not to be outdone, Ryan was looking pretty dapper himself!

My Sweet Angel

Bryan snapped this picture of Annie and I napping the other day. I haven't taken a lot of pictures of her (or anyone!) lately, but I think this one captures her sweetness. She is SUCH a good baby--so mellow and happy. Now that she's smiling and cooing, it's even better. I absolutely adore this little girl--she is my saving grace on hard days, and just looking at her always brings a smile to my face.

Annie is Here!

So our sweet baby girl has finally arrived!

Ann Elizabeth Colby was born Tuesday, November 18 at 1:41 p.m. She weighed 7 pounds 4 ounces and was 20 1/2 inches long.She has tons of silky black hair and seems to be a very mellow little girl. She is an amazing eater and a good little sleeper, so we couldn't be happier.

Below are a few photos from her first couple of days. Enjoy!

Construction Update

So today was the day of the final tape removal, and we now have absolutely perfect pink and lilac stripes adorning the walls of Miss Annie's room. I will say that it has been quite a process but after the purchase of many, many quarts of paint in various colors to find the perfect ones and many, many steps of a very meticulous process taken on by Bryan and Perry, I couldn't have asked for a better outcome. It is absolutely perfect and I couldn't be happier.

Obviously the room itself is still awaiting its fair share of work. Bryan is going to start on the floor this weekend and tomorrow we'll pick up new blinds. But it's definitely beginning to resemble to room of a little princess!

Under Construction

 

So the work on Annie's room has finally begun in earnest. When we prepare for a new baby, we utilize the opportunity to completely remodel the room--new flooring, new baseboards, closet organizers, blinds, everything. So it's a huge undertaking, but in the end we have rooms that we hopefully won't have to mess with at all for a very long time. As you can see we're doing stripes (pink and lavender) and that's a huge job as well. Luckily our friend Perry is a pro at cool paint treatments and he's helping Bryan out. Getting the right colors has been kind of a nightmare, but we're finally there. Hopefully next weekend we'll get the painting done, then Bryan can start installing the bamboo floor. I think it's hilarious that our kids end up with nicer bedrooms than ours...

Pregnancy Comparison

25 Weeks, 4 Days pregnant with Miss Annie

25 Weeks, 4 Days pregnant with Ryan

So I was recently going through my pictures and I found a photo of when I was 25 weeks, 4 days pregnant with Ryan. Since I hit that milestone with Annie today, I decided to take a picture to compare. While I'm on track to gain 1 pound more with Annie than I did with Ryan, I don't think I look nearly as huge, at least not yet!

Name Update, Part 2

OK, so we are 100% set on Ann for our little princess's first name. Her middle name is another story however. My big concern with Marie is that people will call her Ann Marie, which I do not like. I have always loved Elizabeth, however, and this weekend I found out that Bryan's great-grandmother's middle name was Elizabeth. So we are definitely leaning toward Elizabeth at this point. Stay tuned!

Name Update

So it looks like we've got a winner...Ann Marie Colby and we're going to call her Annie. Ann is after my grandmother and Marie is my middle name. Bryan and I have always liked Katherine and Victoria, but somehow this one seemed to fit.

It's a Girl!

As you can probably tell by the insane new pink background, we're having a girl! We had our ultrasound this morning and she is in the 50th percentile for everything they measured and looks great.

As far as names, we're thinking Katherine Ann (we'd call her Kate), Victoria Ann (we'd call her Tori) or possibly just Ann with a middle name to be determined.

Anyway, we are thrilled and just wanted to share our fun news!