Random Reunion Photos

Here are some random photos I took with my camera while everyone was here this weekend. I tend to capture weird moments, but those are my favorites.

I was asking Cai to show me his super saian powers (Dragon Ball Z, anyone?) but he got distracted by the TV in this one.


This is Misti chopping up the pineapple with her tomahawk.


A lot of the kids got super sunburned. Here is Eli being treated with some kind of home remedy that Anna concocted. Apparently it worked really well.


Lia holding Pepper.


The pineapple went fast. Here is Veronica licking up the juice from the cutting board.


Ian playing with his tractor.


The Henderson brothers having a jam session. In the video they are just singing random words they're making up on the spot at the end of a Jack Johnson song.





Pepper had fun playing the congas.




Summer helping Pepper kick Josh's butt.





Heather making cute little notebooks with the girls.


Random shot of Pepper.


Here Cai is demonstrating his super saian powers. My favorite part of the video is Ian trying to join in.




Cute sisters Heather and Ivy showing me their notebooks.


I love Ivy's face in this picture.




Ian again.


More notebook making


Cambrie climbing the steps.


Dishing up some rice and stew that Anna made.


Pepper on the dining room table.


She loves to suck on hard surfaces.

Henderson Family Reunion!

As most of you already know, Caleb and Cassandra got to come back to the states for a visit in the middle of their Peace Corps service in Uganda, so everyone took this opportunity to get together and hang out with them. This was pretty much our last chance to see them before they come home around November of 2011. Even Heather and Majed and their kids drove up from Arizona to see them (despite a lot of adversity on the trip.)

This was the first time the entire Henderson clan has been together in the same place since Aaron and Amanda's wed
ding (I think... I wasn't even in the picture yet then.) So of course we had to take some pictures.

The chaos of having so many people in the same living room...

Starting to get situated for the group picture...

Almost there...

Success! This is the complete family, minus Mike, Billy, Kiysa, and Bubba. Pretty good.

And for fun, here's one of just Marti and her eight kids.

Lots more pictures to come, when I have time!!!

21 Weeks Old

I can't believe our baby is 21 already! (nyuk nyuk nyuk.)

She's been a little bit more fussy this week, I'm not really sure what's going on. I think she's just frustrated because she wants to crawl so badly but still hasn't figured it out.

Pepper and Tako-chan are good friends by now. She loves it when I make Tako-chan sing and dance for her.

(I've been wondering... do you think those two dots on Tako-chan are eyes or nostrils? I can't decide.)

She is a champion eater of baby food. She is so good at opening her mouth wide, chomping down, and swallowing. We're so proud of her.

We've almost completely switched her from 0-3 month clothes to 3-6 month clothes. It's really fun to dress her up in new outfits.

One of her favorite games is sticking her hand in one of our mouths and watching us make a fool of ourselves chomping on it. She does it over and over and watches in fascination.

She loves people-watching and does really well in a noisy room full of people... which is pretty much how it was all weekend! She especially likes to watch people's mouths as they talk. Also loves watching other little kids.

She is such an angel when she's sleeping. Aww.

She always grabs the spoon with her hand when I'm feeding her, so I usually let her hold it and suck on it for a while after each feeding. She's really good at putting it in her mouth.

Josh loves Pepper.

20 Weeks Old

I'm sorry about the lack of video in the previous post. I tried uploading it at least 6 times, which took like 6 hours each time, and Google wouldn't let me upload it. I have no idea why. But I'm trying a different approach now (uploading to YouTube first, then embedding it on the blog) so check back on the "rolling over" post later because I haven't given up on that video. It's really cute.

Update: video has been posted!


Pepper is definitely not an "infant" anymore. She's a "baby." She has really good control of her head and hands and legs. She'll grab anything and stick it into her mouth. I think she likes to see how many fingers she can fit in her mouth at one time.

These pictures are from when I went to the park with Amanda and Cambrie and Ian. It was Pepper's second time on this swing. The last time she was on it she could hardly see over the rim. She's gotten a lot bigger. She gets really calm when she swings. But you can tell she likes it because every once in a while you'll see a little smile.

One of the bigger events to report this week is that she's started eating baby food. She didn't really like the mashed food very much, but Misti gave us some boxes of Gerber baby cereal and Pepper loves that stuff. She's gotten really good at opening her mouth and sucking everything off of the spoon. It is so cute. I've realized that we don't have enough bibs. Like, at all.

Her rolling over and scooting around is another milestone, I think. She's been rolling over randomly for a while now but now you can tell she does it deliberately. And she's gotten a lot faster at it. I think she'll be crawling really soon because she can get up into crawling position, on her hands and knees. She just needs to work out some kinks in her coordination.

Everything she does is so adorable. She has huge eyes, a huge mouth (especially when she smiles), a double chin, big fat rolls on her thighs, and a mohawk. I've never seen a cuter baby in my life.

Rolling Over

Finally got it on video.



She is progressing so quickly I can't even keep up with her. Minutes after this video was taken she got tired of rolling over and decided to start scooting around the bed instead. She kept going for a while and we had to keep repositioning her so she wouldn't fall off. I think she'll be crawling really soon... she knows how to get up on her hands and knees and everything.

That was yesterday. Just barely, as I was working on this blog post, she was on the bed next to me under the blanket. I thought she was sleeping because she was quiet but nope... she was slowly scooting toward the edge of the bed under the blanket and she fell down the crack between the bed and the wall. I didn't even know she fell until she started screaming. Luckily our bed is not that high and she didn't get any scratches or bruises.

I'm kinda sad that she's growing up so fast.

Vegetables and Other Stuff

We've started feeding Pepper a little bit of food. Here are some of our first attempts on video.

Carrots:


Potatoes:


So the lighting in our room isn't the greatest and neither is my 4-year-old point-and-shoot camera so it's always a bit of challenge figuring out the settings for the best photo.


This picture was taken with the "food" setting, haha.


This is probably the best setting, if Pepper stays really still. In my dreams.


Such a cutie!



I shot one of Cambrie too, since we were babysitting her and she was being really good and cute.


This video is to show her crawling progress. She kinda got nervous in front of the camera though.

19 Weeks Old

We finally measured Pepper again... she's at 22 inches now! That's four inches more than at birth. I'm sure she weighs a lot more too now but the scale here is currently running out of batteries or something... the other day it told me I was about 60 pounds, haha.

She seems very determined to start crawling. She works really hard to move her limbs around and can get her legs under her and everything but she doesn't quite have the coordination yet. You can tell that she knows exactly what she's trying to do because she'll watch the other kids crawling for a while, then try to copy what they're doing.

As I'm typing this it seems like she's made even more progress already. I set her down on the bed and she's trying really hard to crawl again, and she has successfully scooted forward a couple of feet already! I think she's just barely realized how to push herself forward with her legs. Go Pepper!

We haven't started the baby food yet but we do give her tiny bites of random food and she seems to enjoy it a lot.

She can't sit super solidly yet, but she can sit well enough that I can put her on the counter or the table within close distance while I do paperwork or something.

More good news: she's started sleeping 8 hours straight some nights. Yay! This is the first time in 4 months I've been able to sleep that long all at once. It feels so good.

She is so happy and talkative and funny. We couldn't have a more perfect baby.



I don't know what it is about putting multi-legged sea creatures on your head that creates so much joy, but it always does. (*Hatsuho and Chris ;)