Nine months and then some

I had wanted to get this post up sooner, but we're having battery problems with our camera, so it took me a while to get the pictures! Anyway, Ruby had a big week last week. She is now 9 months old--or as I put it, "she's been out as long as she was in!". (Of course that isn't technically true, but close enough!) Our little bugger is cute as a button, as you can see, and into everything, as I'm sure you can imagine. I think that she has started experimenting standing without holding on to things, which has resulted in lots of thumped heads this week. She recovers pretty quickly and the cuddles are short lived as she wants to go, go, GO!

I think that the funniest thing that she has started to do is this little head wiggle. It looks just like the nod that people from India do--kind of a side-to-side rolling shake. It's the funniest thing. She especially enjoys bopping along to the music. Probably one of the reasons that she does it is because we have to put all of her long hair up into a pony tail most days so it isn't hanging down in her face. That little pony dances all over the place when she does her head shake, which I'm sure feels very interesting to her!

Ruby has graduated whole-heartedly to finger foods and loves eating potatoes and meatballs, red bell pepper, and especially CAKE! Ruby's friend, Carter, had his 1st birthday party last Saturday and Ruby really enjoyed the cake. She thought that Carter wasn't eating his piece fast enough and wanted to help him out when hers was long gone. Mommy vetoed that plan though--one slab of sugar is plenty for this little girl!

Claire has set the bar pretty high for Ruby's birthday party this coming May! She made two beautiful cakes (it was Danny's birthday too) and lots of delicious appetizers. We even had punch--YUM!! Ruby's party gift was an adorable stuffed giraffe munching on leaves and a bottle of bubbles. Hopefully it will soon be warm enough that we'll get to play with the bubbles outside...

For those of you that have been wondering and wondering, we did finally get the Christmas movies mailed out last Monday. I know that one person already got it, so hopefully the rest of you should be getting it soon. Jared was trying to figure out a way that we could post the movies on the blog, but it seems that to get the file sizes small enough the quality is just horrible. This year we only sent the movies out to our immediate family, but I suppose if you are really desperate to see pictures from our last year and Ruby's first 8 months you can email me and I'll send you out a copy! It really did turn out very well, especially the movie. Jared slimmed down several hours of Ruby moments to an excellent 15 minutes complete with music track and some effects. He really enjoys doing that kind of thing I think--it challenges his creative side.

So, in one of the last posts I asked about "Toddler Talk", which I then found out is actually, "Toddler Wise" and is part of Ezzo's series. So, as soon as I heard "Ezzo" I started to get a bit worried. Back in Moscow several of our good friends had warned us away from the Ezzo series, but then we also know lots of people who have used it and really think that it has lots of good parenting techniques. I decided to do a little research on the internet to see what people are saying about the series, and found that people really fall into one of two camps, "Absolutely love it and wouldn't use anything else!" and "Ezzo should be put in jail for child abuse and his series banned!". So, we're still not sure if we're going to do the course at church or not. I think at this point our decision will primarily be based on if we have time for it. We have come to the conclusion that there are probable good principles to be gleaned from the course, though we need to be careful not to blindly use all of the techniques without thinking it through as to whether it would be effective or appropriate for Ruby.

Several other exciting opportunities have presented themselves in the last week as well. First, Ruby and I are looking forward to twice a week play time with Carter while Claire takes Danish classes, starting today--yeah!! And second, Erik, our pastor, approached me after choir practice about the possibility of me starting a MOPS (Mothers Of Pre-Schoolers) group at our church. I have done some research on the organization and it really sounds like a great group that would have the opportunity to reach out to the community, especially those moms that have babies under 1 year, as they are on maternity leave. While I do really like the idea of the group, I'm not sure that MOPS itself will materialize this year. It is a fairly expensive program that I'm not certain our church can support at this point. I thought that instead we may be able to start a monthly or twice a month meeting on a Saturday morning or afternoon. This way the working mommys would be able to participate as well. Also, if it was on Saturdays we could have a rotating crew of daddys doing the childcare instead of having to hire professional childcare workers (as MOPS suggests). Anyway, it's in the works so keep it in your prayers. Copenhagen is filled with people that need to hear the Word and feel the love of a church family.