Happy Birthday Archer!

Around 3:00 AM Wednesday morning, May 12, Camille began to have contractions. After a long morning, Camille called Jarad around 11:00 AM and said it's time to get ready to go to the hospital. We arrived at the hospital at 2:30 PM. At 11:30 PM, Archer Teuvo Niemi made his entrance into the world. He was 7 pounds 12 ounces and 20 inches long. Mother and son are doing well and returned home on Friday, May 14th.

Here's a few more pictures from the hospital:

Counting from 1 to 10...

Avalon can now count from one to ten on her own. Back in January, Mummi started counting with Avalon and Avalon would repeat each number after her as shown in this video taken on January 20th.


Then we started to read Avalon a book called "Numbers" where Avalon would repeat each number that we said as well as make the animal sounds. This video was taken on February 9th.


Now Avalon says the numbers first before we say them. She especially enjoyed counting on the swing as we'd count the number of pushes that we gave her. At first we started counting to three, but quickly realized she enjoyed and was able to count all the way to ten. This video was taken on April 1st.

Baby Shower for Baby Boy Niemi

On April 15, Camille's friends from Family Student Housing and her Tuesday playgroup threw her a shower for the new baby boy. It was lots of fun! Thanks to Brandy and Jo for organizing the shower and all the wonderful food, games and prizes. The theme of the shower was Wild Animals. Brandy made some really yummy and cute monkey cupcakes, and Jo made a really cute diaper cake and the invitations.




We also played some fun games including a game to see who could fold the baby boy socks the fastest. Here's a picture of Brandy who was the first to take on the challenge. In the end, Camille won! :)


We received some really cute baby boy outfits as well as a swaddling blanket, sun hat, and bath toys.


And some really great home-made gifts, including bibs, onsies, a blanket, burp clothes, and even some hair clips for Avalon.


And here's a picture of Avalon modeling one of the bibs we had purchased earlier.


Thanks again to everyone that attended and for all the wonderful gifts! We can't wait to introduce you to the new baby when he arrives.

Mickey Mouse

Avalon loves Mickey Mouse! We introduced her to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse show on TV in February and now she gets really excited whenever she sees Mickey Mouse, who she calls "M-Mouse." She now also knows the names of all the other characters. And she has started to interact with the show by saying the major words to open the clubhouse. Check out the videos below. During the opening song, Mickey Mouse turns on the lights, so she also says "the light, M-Mouse, the light."



Camille's parents came to visit in early March and brought her a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse sticker book, which she loves. I think she had finished most of the stickers before they left, but she still takes the book out on a daily basis to look at the pictures and to color.



For Easter, Camille's parents sent a little stuff Mickey Mouse and a bib, and Jarad's parents gave her a deck of Mickey Mouse cards. She likes to match up the Mickey Mouse stuffed animals with the Mickey Mouse on the bib and on the TV. And she likes to match up the characters from the cards with each other as well.





And here's a video we took on February 9th when Avalon first got really excited to see Mickey Mouse and danced to the theme music, which she was already familiar with from one of her CDs.

AVP Beach Volleyball in Santa Barbara

The AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour was in Santa Barbara this past weekend. Jarad and I are big fans of volleyball and went to the tournament on both Saturday and Sunday. We always watch the AVP tour on TV, so it was so much fun to be there in person! We brought Avalon with us on Saturday and again on Sunday morning, so we couldn't stay for as many games as we would have liked, but I think we still got our fill of volleyball. We did get a babysitter for Avalon on Sunday afternoon, so we were able to see both the men's and women's championship games. Here's some pics from the weekend.








We also got to see most of the players that represented the US in the last Olympics, so that was really neat too! On Saturday, we watched an early match featuring Misty May-Treanor (Olympic Gold Medalist) and Nicole Branough. It was a good match that they won in three games.



On Sunday morning, we watched part of a semi-final match featuring Olympic Gold Medalists Phil Daulhauser and Todd Rogers. On Sunday afternoon, we came back without Avalon and saw the men's championship final where Rogers/Daulhauser beat Jake Gibb/Sean Rosenthaul. Todd Rogers is from Santa Barbara, so the stadium was packed.

Rain puddles

Jarad's parents visited again in April and after the rain, Mummi (Grandma Niemi) said Avalon found a puddle and loved running and playing in it. This, of course, didn't surprise us because she seems to love the water: swimming, bath time, playing with the water table, as well as her new favorite "wash hands," which means playing with running water in the sink. So when it rained again on April 20th (which apparently is unusual for this time of year), Avalon and I went in search of a puddle and found a pretty good one. Check out these videos of Avalon playing in the rain puddle. What fun!!

Puzzles

Avalon loves puzzles! She received a couple of wooden puzzles for Christmas, which she mastered right away, but still enjoys playing with them all the time. We also go to the library because they have lots of puzzles for her to try. She is really good at the basic wooden puzzles now and loves to do them. At the library, she finishes a puzzle and then says "more, more!" She is also very good at shape sorters now too and she is starting to identify the shapes by name too. Here are some pics of her working on various puzzles at her class and at the library.






She has tried the ABC puzzle a few times and she does get some of the letters now, but still hasn't finished the whole puzzle yet. So this one is still a challenge.