St. Louis

At the end of June, the Haigler ladies (myself, my two sisters, my daughter, and my mom) mobbed the Dallas airport and flew up to St. Louis, MO to visit some relatives. My maternal grandmother (below on the left) had yet to meet Josephine (who was named after her mother), and it was high time we snapped a 4-generation photo from that side! (Insert another parenthetical phrase because three in the first paragraph isn't enough!!)And by that I mean, snapped a good three dozen photos in an attempt to get a decent one of all four of us. Josephine's fascination with being cheesy for the camera has long since been replaced by a fascination with not being cheesy for the camera. So they mostly looked like this: We also got to visit with my paternal grandmother, who had made us all personalized keychains! If you look closely you can see one in the picture below:Just kidding. You can't really. How long did you look for? :-) You'll have to take my word for it-- they were really cute.

Below is 3/4 of the Moffatt clan-- also meeting Josephine for the first time. That's my dad's sister, her husband, and eldest daughter. They also relieved the St. Louis airport of the Haigler mob, drove us back a few days later, and even let us borrow their car the whole time we were there! Thank you!!!
Back on the south side, we had the delight of meeting Josephine's great cousins. Last time I was there, Isaiah was still about a month away from being born! Here he is now, three years old with his little brother Elijah and their grandmother (my mom's cousin Donna) and Josephine with hers.
My Uncle Bob (one of my mom's brothers) put in several hours of driving in one day just to come up and see us. It was quite a treat!
The picture above and the one below are scans of prints my grandmother sent me. I really like the face Josephine's making below. On the right is John, my grandma's husband. He and Josephine had a good time smiling at each other over breakfast.

Below is a photo of Janell and Darla with my grandmother and Uncle Bob. I think this is the only picture we got of Darla, because she was a behind-the-scenes heroine during the whole trip-- taking pictures, herding us through the airports, i-phone-apping us around the city, and comforting Janell at the end through what is always a painful separation from her grandmothers. Plus, the bags we had to check were free because she travels so much for work, she was always on hand to watch Josephine if needed, and she's quite the World Cup enthusiast, which was fun. In short, Darla's awesome. :-)My mom's cousin Mary Beth (Donna's sister) also came over and later put together adorable photo books of the trip for my mom and grandmother-- the perfect keepsake.
Josephine escaping from yet another photo op...

And lastly, here's a rather telling photo of endless grandmotherly patience, even at the end of a long journey, waiting in the airport with an exhausted toddler. All told, our flight experiences were really quite good, despite being redirected to Oklahoma after a failed landing in Dallas. Josephine screamed during the ascent on the way to St. Louis because she had drainage, but really did quite well the rest of the time. It was only a moderate squirmfest.

So on whole-- a very worthwhile family vacation. It went quite smoothly, and it's just wonderful to see relatives that we don't get to visit with very frequently. Hooray for the Haigler mob! :-)

Behold, a Starfish Graduate!

A couple pictures from the final day of swim lessons (June 17th)... The last day even had an awards ceremony where each baby got a certificate and patch, which I'll eventually sew on to the dinosaur towel she inherited from Sean. Her first accolades! (Well, other than the certificate she got for being born.)

swim lessons

This entry's like the last one. I'm still not going to attempt to catch the blog up-to-date on everything I've been missing, but I'm making an exception in the natural order of things. There's just something about Josephine in a swimsuit that everybody needs to see IMMEDIATELY.

That's right. We put the kid in swim lessons. Since this was purely for our own amusement, her enjoyment of the experience seems irrelevant, but everyone has asked how she's doing. So, I'd say fairly well.
There's been a little bit of this:


And a fair amount of this, as well:

She's in the city's Starfish I class, which is taught by our friend from Mosaic, Jenny, who has two little girls and has been teaching lessons a long time (she's holding the noodle-bridge below).
In general, there's a lot of singing little songs like hokey-pokey and testing of the parents' ability to not drown their child during all the fun and games. :-)


Josephine's not a real big fan of floating on her back. Helps if you drag her through the water quickly at the same time.

Practicing hanging on to the edge of the pool:

Showing her how to blow bubbles:

Huffing, puffing, and clinging-- her most frequently practiced swim technique:

Wearing a life vest, just to get her used to the feel:

Swimming to the edge of the pool:

And then, of course, the occasional submersion. I made Sean do the initial dunking. It felt too terrifying.

But since then I've tried it, as you'll see in the video below. You're supposed to blow in their face to make them gasp for air and then you dunk. The dunk is supposed to be fairly slow so it's not horribly startling to them, which is IMPOSSIBLE to make yourself do. It goes against everything engrained into your soul. Sean and I both had a hard time being patient with the dunk.

Josephine hasn't cried afterwards, but she always looks really startled. I think a ton of water probably goes up her nose and makes her miserable, because it tends to result in her sucking her fingers and clinging a good bit. Poor thing.

Oh, but it's CUTE!!

apparently I'm about to be fired from "mom" role

My brother, the [rather presumptuously] self-appointed chairman of the board responsible for managing my parental oversight committee, has apparently placed me under investigation for negligence (again). This time "the board" is convinced I've either misplaced Josephine or am hiding evidence of her being in rehab for drug abuse, seeing as how it's been about a month since she's appeared on the blog. Fair enough-- I've been negligent-- of the blog, though, not the kid! Josephine is present and accounted for and doing quite well!

The defense submits Exhibit A, where in said "neglected" infant is fourteen months and one day old... the day when she finally has decided walking isn't such a bad idea.

(Okay, so really I am submitting Exhibits A through E, since this has been a LONG time coming, and there are many folks wanting to see it, including poor Sean who is in Atlanta. He's seen her walk, of course-- she's taken a few steps here and there for a while now. Three weeks ago she even took 5 steps, causing me to set up video cameras the next morning thinking her day had arrived! Ha! I've learned it doesn't matter the number of steps as much as it does that mental switch flipping and the kid deciding "oh yes, I think today I will do this for real." We've seen that confidence grow incrementally over the last week, and the night before Sean left, she went half of the rug in her room and wasn't chickening out QUITE as quickly as she used to when we tried to get her to do it again. But this afternoon was the first time where I was repeatedly standing her up and encouraging her to walk, and she was completely into it.)

So I admit, Mr. Chairman, I never would have posted a thing tonight if it weren't for the walking. And in reality I'm just as far behind as I was yesterday-- I have so much to upload-- and the house/yard projects I'm currently working on are, unfortunately, NOT near a stopping point despite my best efforts.
In short, no promises, but I really will tryyyy to catch up!

activity... and inactivity

These are from the very start of June.

First is a clip of Josephine pushing around the cart her Uncle Jason gave her for her birthday in April (this was taken just shortly before she started walking on her own). She used the cart to practice her walking a LOT. And the first time I saw her carry a "purse" (a small sack of toys), she donned it just prior to walking away with the cart, stopping to wave goodbye first. I had to laugh. From what I can tell, it's a moment every parent has repeatedly-- there's just something funny about realizing your kid "gets" something that you didn't previously think she had noticed or understood.
So anyway, this isn't a great clip, but I just needed to get a little footage of something I'd been watching her do endlessly.

[Unfortunately, I can't get blogger to upload this video,

and I've wasted entirely too much time trying.

I put it on youtube-- click here to see it.]

And second, a couple napping shots. These are hard to get with Josephine-- normally she's ready to pop awake the minute you open her door. But every now and then she's so out of it you can use your camera's flash, speak entire sentences to her in a normal voice, open her window blinds, and she won't twitch a muscle.

The moments she's out like this while I'm in the room probably total 5 minutes, in her lifetime. (Okay, I think when she was a newborn this was common-- but since being in her own room on a two nap schedule... 5 minutes.) I take and post these photos because those 5 minutes have been some of the most rejuvinating minutes of my entire last year! There's just something so peaceful about watching her sleep-- like her own rest is contagious.