Captain Jack

My sister Jessie had her third baby, Jack Randel Chin, last Thursday. Everyone is doing great! Jessie has c-sections, and the first two times we waited in the waiting room for what seemed like hours before the baby was born, and it was pretty miserable. But this time with all the kids it was like a big party! I'm not sure if the nurses at the nurse's station liked it as well as we did, but none of us were too concerned.


Auntie Sarah and Captain Jack.


Sarah was smart enough to bring her Ipod for the kids to watch movies. And as you can imagine with Amelia and Molly both wearing their dancing dresses, there was quite a bit of spinning going on.


Claire was in such a great mood (which is the norm for her) that everybody loved holding her. In these pictures she's with Chris, her Great-Grandma Gay, and her Great-Aunt Josie.




What kid doesn't like wearing adult reading glasses?

Molly's New Doll

New Dancing Dress

My mom got Molly a new dress that Molly calls her dancing dress. It's excellent for spinning, so the name is very fitting. It's been hard to get it off her the past couple of days and it's getting pretty dirty, so I had to hide it in the depths of the laundry hamper so she can't find it until it's clean again. In these pictures she's all dolled up like a ballerina (at least a two year-old version) complete with buns and sparkly lotion. Now she just needs some ballet shoes and she'll be ready to charge for performances!

Claire's First Solids

Yes, that is mashed avacado and not rice cereal. I know that seems bizarre, but when we went in for Claire's four-month well baby check she had dropped from the 50th percentile in size to the 25th, so the doctor said it's time to beef her up a little so she doesn't fall off the charts completely. She said to add a couple of extra liquid feedings during the day, and a teaspoon or two of avacado would really do the trick. We've only tried it once and it didn't go over too well, as you can tell. She spit everything right back out. Hopefully she'll get better in the next try or two. After all, who doesn't like avacado right?

Oceanside

Chris's mom gets a condo on the beach in Oceanside every year, and she was nice enough to let us encroach on her for few days. We did a day at Disneyland and every other day at the beach. Molly was pretty crabby for a lot of the trip (we actually took her to urgent care because we thought she had Swimmers Ear - turned out nothing was wrong with her at all; she was just cranky) but we still had plenty of fun.





Molly eating the signature Disneyland sucker.



The Disneyland highlight for Molly was definitely the parade. She waved to everyone and everything that passed.




My nephew Danny couldn't get enough of Claire. He called her "Blaire-Bear" or "Baby Blaire" and it ended up sticking for her new nick-name.


I bought Molly a visor for the beach because I thought it would protect her face from the sun. Unfortunately she preferred to wear it gangsta style so not much sun protection there.


Molly took a nasty spill at the beach the first day we were there when a wave came up and took her back down with it. After that she wouldn't go near the water unless she was holding your hand, preferably both hands. But she still liked going down to the water; she called it "skating."






Sand crabs were always a highlight at the beach.


So was Molly's plumber butt.


Everything, including me, was so covered in sand all the time that Claire got a sample when she ate.


Not exactly a classic family picture but I love the girls' matching swimsuits!


The condos we stayed at have really spectacular grounds. They have a coi pond that Molly loved and it was so nice to be able to play outside in such beautiful weather.








The party didn't stop even on the drive home!

Fourth of July

We spent the Fourth of July in Fountain Hills and got a great view of fireworks from the street in front of my parent's house.

I know this isn't a great picture of anyone, but Claire's got such a festive outfit on I wanted a picture of it (she's the third baby that has gotten to wear it - I love hand-me-downs!).

Amelia and Molly have kind of a love/hate relationship, but that night it was all love!

Molly Swimming

Molly, Amelia, Colin, and Max started swimming lessons together and Molly has recently decided that she loves it! The first two days were non-stop crying (they have to jump off the diving board and dive off the side the first day, that's how intense it is), but Molly had a breakthrough the third day and couldn't get enough of it. The video of her (it's about five minutes long, we couldn't figure out how to get a thirty-second segment from it, but you can get the gist in the first fifteen seconds) is at Chris's parent's pool after three days of swimming lessons. I think she's doing pretty well for a kid who didn't like her head under the water a week ago!