8 Months Old

She is quite the character now! She has mastered the "army crawl" and loves the ability to move from place to place. At our weekly moms' group, she spent most of her time creeping along the floor instead of gigggling with the other kids like she normally does. She had places to go, I guess. Her other new development is that insists on feeding herself. This is quite difficult, as she does not have any teeth. So we attempt to spoon a few bites of pureed food into her mouth, but mainly she prefers that we spoon it onto cheerios or Kashi crackers and let her go to town with those. Maybe a quirk of a independence-seeking second-born child? If Mali doesn't need help eating, neither does she!

Happy Mother's Day

Ward Cam Up and Running

Check out our blog's newest feature--online albums. Click on any of the titles on the right to see our most recent photo fun.

Happy 30th Jonathan!

One year ago today, we were living it up with our friends, The Kurths, in sunny Califorina. But now, neither family can imagine packing up four kids and traveling cross-county, so we settled for a calm day at church and home to celebrate. We did manage a grown-up night-out party on Friday night, complete with staying out until past midnight! But it seems fitting to ring in the new decade in the place that we love best, playing with our girls, and enjoying a dinner of scallops, basmati rice, broccoli, cake, and of course, cheerios. (There's always a baby in the house!)


And it wouldn't be a birthday celebration without taking the chance to say how grateful we are to our husband/daddy. Jonathan's love and devotion to his family is apparent to anyone who knows him, and we learn more from him and his example every day. So, even though our waiter at the birthday party didn't know we were together the other night until we asked for the check, I can't imagine any part of my life without him. We love you, birthday boy!

(And by the way, the cool new place to be is our backyard, complete with a firepit!)

Neighbors and Sassiness

We had a fun send-off party for two of our neighbors this week. They invited us all over a mere few hours before they drove off, so we came with grocery bags and bartered over taking their condiments and perishable foods. We wouldn't want them to be burdened with packing too many bottles of wine, would we? Here's an action shot:

While we were there, Mali was trying to get my attention by calling "Mommy" across the room. When that didn't work, she resorted to "Kaethe, Kaethe!", which certainly attracted everyone within earshot. Especially those of our neighbors that think that everything she does is adorable. Now, we had had a long discussion earlier that day about how Mommy's name is Kaethe, much like her friend, Kaeta, (pronounced the same), so I'm hoping that is what triggered it. Regardless, I hoped we corrected her effectively, although there definitely was a lot of giggling involved.

Five on Friday

Earth Day, Ward-Style

Happy Earth Day! Wherever you may fall on the climate-change political continuum or what your personal carbon footprint is, we can all agree that we're called to be good stewards of the earth. We are by no means experts in that area, but here are our top five tricks that help us be earth-friendly.

1) Breastfeed. Not only is that importantly from an eco-friendly standpoint, it also conserves mom (or dad's) precious energy from not climbing stairs in the middle of the night to prep a bottle. Or buy formula. Check out our friend Karianne's recommendation of a cool nursing cover with an even cooler name here.

2) Buy resuseable bags for carrying groceries. I think they sell for about a $1 each at most stores and we got ours free at Whole Foods a few years ago on Earth Day. They also make for far less trips from the car to the house.

3) Plan out your eating habits. Again, this is a work-in-progress for us, but I've found if we plan our weekly meals ahead of time, we can eliminate extra stops to the store, use up the food we make, and overall eat better. We do try to eat vegetarian at least once or twice a week for the health/financial/environmental benefits. We also love our summer CSA produce delivery. And we never, ever, pass up our leftovers from a restaurant.

4) Drive green. No, we aren't cool enough for a hybrid, but we do love being a one-car family. We sold our second car before we moved to Pittsburgh, and I remember a co-worker at the time telling me that doing so would make us closer as family. He was right--it truly is a lifestyle choice as you learn to adapt to each other's schedule. Admittedly, this is much easier to do in urban Pittsburgh than in other places. We're so grateful for the reasonably priced and accessible bus transportation that allows Jonathan to get to work every day while I get to have the car for errands and socializing. And having a van does make carpooling easy. (We didn't buy it just for the looks!)

5) Have a baby. (We tend to do this every year or so) Save all of the gift bags from the generous presents you receive and use them for gift-wrapping throughout the year. Obviously, some occasions do call for more appopriate and thoughtful wrapping, but for the past two Christmas holidays we've used only those baby-gift bags to exhange gifts with all of the Shunkwilers.
(NOTE--as there are no babies expected in this family before Christmas 2008, we do plan on purchasing gift wrap this year. Or maybe we'll just use those Whole Foods bags)