Eating is fun!!

Pippa is getting pretty gung ho about solid foods, here is a start at many messy face baby photos to come!!!

Road Trip - Oregon Coast

After a week or so in Portland we decided to drive back along the coast. We spent a day exploring Corvallis - a town that has won several "green" awards and has one of the lowest carbon footprints for its size in the US. We like the cute downtown and the neighborhoods around Oregon State University, as well as the extensive system of bike routes. It seems like a great little town to put down some roots in....so I think we'll research the potential employers here a bit.
From Corvallis we drove out to the Oregon coast at Newport and started our slow and winding - and oh yeah, Gorgeous - drive toward home. We had plenty of cool photo stops and a picnic by a lake just south of the Oregon Sand Dune national recreation area.
We took 2 days to get from Newport to Sebastopol, CA, stopping to explore here and there along the way...

Road Trip!!! Day One

We embarked on a 1,000 mile, each way, road trip this August from Santa Barbara to Portland. It was a great success...even though temperatures were 100 degrees and up the entire time!

Day 1: We left early in the morning, and by "early" I really mean late at night! It was tough to get up, but we had almost 3 hours of driving behind us before the sun came up! Around lunch we made it to Sacramento so we took a long break at the CA state capital. We walked around the capital building and gardens and checked out the Fireman's memorial there. It was a great place to have a picnic and let Pippa run around.

After a few hours we were on our way, headed to our first night's stop: Chico, CA.

Pippa's debut at the beach!

We took Pippa to Butterfly beach this past week, she loved it! Patrick is hopeful for a future volleyball star!!

Banana pop

OK, not sure if you've seen this new way to feed stuff to babies or not...but it is basically a mesh bag on a stick that you put food in to let them bite and suck on so they safely get a little bit of food at a time.

We gave PJ a bit of banana in this bag today. She was excited at first and loved banging it on her high chair, but was unsure of the banana. She eventually came around and loved it. Solid foods are fun!!!

Camping June 2009

We braved a family camping trip with Pippa earlier this month...I have to admit I was hesitant...but we all ended up having a great time! Pippa especially loved being outdoors so much and was entertained by a constant stream of live action from her 4 cousins.
Our first night sleeping in our 2 person backpacking tent proved to be a challenge for Patrick and me, although PJ didn't seem to notice! We upgraded to a larger 4 person tent for nights 2-4 and were much more comfortable. Pippa had her own tent for daytime, she enjoyed hanging
out and playing with toys in there.
We ate well, hung out by the river, did some tubing (boy was it cold!!!), hiked among some huge sequoia trees, and lounged by the campfire. I can't wait until next year!

Pippa Jane Arrives!!

Well, November 29 was my due date...and the day our baby girl decided to make her appearance! Patrick and I decided to take a long walk on the beach that morning, then still feeling antsy we decided to go downtown to do a bit of shopping and have lunch. During lunch I sort of realized I didn't feel all that great..and that maybe the contractions I was having were no longer the braxton-hicks kind. We decided it was prudent to be a bit closer to home if this was "it". This photo is me right when we got home from lunch, about 2:45 in the afternoon...and only about 5 hours from when our daughter was born!!!

Everything happened so fast; once the contractions started they came on strong and close together. Patrick waited about an hour to call our midwives thinking we'd be in for a long day and probably night, but when the first midwife, Alice, arrived around 4:30 I was so far along that instead of all the stuff to help me through labor she got busy setting up for the baby's arrival!

A few short, but intense hours later our baby girl was here!

Pippa Jane Redman

born 11/29/2008 at 7:50pm

7 lbs 1 oz

20.5 inches