Little Raindrops

Posts Tagged ‘Jen’

Dearest Heron,

Hello, sweetie! It’s been so wonderful spending time with you these past two months! You’ve grown so much and have been such a joy in our life! At your five month doctor’s appointment, you weighed 17 lb 7 oz (72nd percentile) and were 25 inches long (25th percentile.) You are sitting up on your own and reaching for toys, rolling over, passing objects from one hand to another, and babbling nonstop!

You love your brother Rhino so much. Whenever he’s around, you watch him, smile at him, and laugh at him. You can be in a terrible mood for me, but Rhino can almost always cheer you up! He likes to play with you and tickle you. You aren’t yet too interested in playing with him, but I’m sure soon you two will be having so much fun together!

In the past two months you’ve had your first Thanksgiving (but no turkey for you!), have met your Aunt Jen, starting attending the nursery in church, and had your first Christmas and New Year’s! You loved Christmas, playing with (chewing on) all your new toys and crinkling the wrapping paper. You also like going to the nursery in church where you can swing and watch all the other babies and toddlers. You usually get a little hungry and I come and visit with you, but I’m told you are usually very calm throughout church. Your brother liked nursery at first, and then eventually had some separation anxiety for a few months, so I won’t be surprised if you start to experience the same feelings soon.

You are starting to sleep better throughout the night. You still sleep in bed with Mommy (Daddy works at night so he never gets to sleep when you do.) You used to stay up with me and sleep downstairs or wait to go to bed until I did. I’ve just started being able to put you down at seven in the crib where you’ll sleep for a few hours before I come up to bed and snuggle down with you.

Daddy and I (and Rhino!) love you so much and can’t wait to have more fun with you next month!

Lots of Love,
Mommy

Rhino dearest,

The past two months with you have been a joy, as always! You are such a sweetheart, a bright little boy, and always make us laugh! You didn’t have a doctor’s visit this month, but did have a WIC appointment where we were able to get your height and weight. At 22 months you were 26 pounds, 12 ounces (44th percentile) and 32.75 inches tall (22nd percentile.)

Your vocabulary has really taken off these past few months! You say all sorts of words like shoe, boot, two, hat, cheese, snow, car, plane, up, down, juice, hair, eye, nose, mouth, chin, and thank you (“dat doo”). You don’t string words together to make simple sentences yet, but I have the feeling that’s coming soon! You still use your words together with sign language symbols, but we haven’t taught you any new signs lately.

Some exciting things have happened these past months! Your Aunt Jen came to visit and had such a good time with you! You entertained her a lot with your dancing, silly playing around, and guitar hero strumming. She tried for ten days to get you to say Aunt Jen, but you wouldn’t even try it. Then, after she left, you were looking at photos on our digital frame and saw a picture of her, pointed, and said Aunt Jen. Daddy was on the computer and looked up with surprise, and asked if that’s what you had said. It was pretty clear. Too bad you couldn’t do that a few days earlier for your aunt! We did lots of fun things with your aunt while she was visiting, like shopping, going out to lots of different restaurants, a wonderful Thanksgiving, checking out the Aviation and Science museum, visiting the fish market in Hachinohe, going to the beach to see shipwrecks and horses, and playing games. She can’t wait to see you again!

We also celebrated Christmas last month! It was your second Christmas and was a little more exciting for you than your first Christmas. You enjoyed getting advent treats every day in December, loved all the sweet goodies we munched throughout the month, and really loved the tree and would consistently try to blow out the lights and take down all the ornaments! You received some wonderful gifts from all the people that love you, including a tricycle, a Mr. Potato Head, a huge box of Lego Duplos, some wonderful wooden puzzle toys and lacing beads, lots of snazzy clothes, and your favorite ball – a Blue’s Clues ball! It was a fun, quiet Christmas and you seemed to really have a great time!

You are still such a good big brother and are really bonding with Heron. He adores you so much and you make him laugh when no one else can. You shower him with kisses, want to hold him, and share your toys (by forcing them into his little hands) and your sippy cup (though he doesn’t care for that yet!) You two are so sweet together and I’m looking forward to the days ahead where you will play together!

Thanks for another fantastic few months with you, Rhino! Daddy and I love you more and more each day and can’t wait to have another great month with our big boy!

Love always,
Mommy

Well, Jen went back home yesterday. On one hand, it’s nice to get back to our day-to-day routine, but it’s always sad to see our visitors go. We are on the other side of the world from all of our family and know we won’t get to see them too often while we’re over here. I appreciate so much that she took her time and saved up to take this extravagant trip out here. We aren’t in a position financially to do too many expensive things and travel, but I hope she enjoyed our cheap, local version of Japan! I know she liked hanging out with the boys and Rhino adores her! We had a great time just vegging, playing games, and sharing TV shows (she introduced us to Arrested Development, Community, Lie to Me, and suggested we give Fringe a try — we should be busy for a while!) I was happy to have a crafting/knitting buddy around, too! Jen had been meaning to learn how to knit for a while, so we worked on that. We practiced by making swatches and dish scrubbies, then looked through all my books and magazines for favorite projects. We both fell in love with a sweater in last summer’s Interweave Knits that we both will have to work up to. I’ve never made a sweater and haven’t done much color work, so that will be a big project! Anyhow, we had a great time with Jen, but of course time goes so quickly. I really hope she will be able to make it out here again before we leave so we can show her Tokyo and more of Japan and she can see the boys in their next stage (a walking/talking Heron!)

It’s been a while since we’d been to the Misawa Aviation and Science Museum, but our first visit was so cool that we just had to take Jen, too!

We had fun talking through tubes, looking through lenses, checking out aircraft, control tiny planes, playing catch in a spinning room, getting strapped into a crazy contraption, jumping, chasing the pretty lights on the floor, and of course, pressing ourselves against the giant pin board!

It’s such a fun museum and Rhino got a kick out of a lot of the exhibits. I think it will get only more fun as the boys grow older and can understand more of what things are about. For now he had fun trying to jump on the blue cushion, feeling the different temperature coils, and playing in the really cool aviation-themed play room. There was also a tube that Matt, Rhino, and Jen sat in that shot them upwards that he definitely did not love. As soon as the doors shut he started screaming. I didn’t take Heron in, so I don’t know quite what it was like, but I’m told it was very loud as they bounced up and down in the tube. I guess that wasn’t the best idea for little Rhino!

I had heard that there is a beach near us with real shipwrecks that people go to hunt for sea glass and fishing floats. We had never been to Shipwreck Beach, in Noheji, on Mutsu Bay so it seemed like a good time to go with Jen!

We found the beach without much problem, despite some questionable directions. It was much, much colder in Noheji than we had anticipated. It was a short walk from the parking lot, past a gigantic mound of shells, to the beach and by the time we arrived at the ships we were all pretty chilly. We spent about five minutes checking out the wrecks before heading back. It was just too cold and windy. We are definitely looking forward to returning when the weather is a little more tolerable or we are better prepared. It is definitely an interesting beach!

We were all ready working our way up the hatchet and decided to keep going, to the tip – Cape Shiriyazaki. This is a fishing town where wild horses roam the beach. We weren’t exactly sure where to go to find horses, so we just made our way to the water. We found a gathering of horses. They strolled down the road, grazed and drank, and some even came right up to the car. We ate our bento lunches in the car as we watched the horses. Rhino was most interested in the water and would point out the window and “wow” at it. It seems the horses made him a little uneasy. Jen chose a favorite horse, which she named Raja, and Matt liked the shrine on the rock on the coast. It was too cold still to go out, so we drove past the horses and headed home.

It was a great outing and I’m looking forward to going back up along beautiful Mutsu Bay!

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Need directions? Check out How to Get There: Shipwreck Beach

We drove down to Hachinohe on Wednesday to check out the fish market. We showed up and stood in front of the door, but it didn’t open. We couldn’t read any of the writing on the door. A handful of Japanese people walked right up to the automatic door like we had, looked around for a moment, and left. We finally found an employee to ask in our extremely limited Japanese. Matt managed to figure out that Wednesdays are the only days they’re closed. Woops!

We went back this morning and made it in! Jen picked out some sake. We don’t really know anything about sake, so we couldn’t help much. The decision was made based on price and how pretty the bottle is. There are some very pretty sake labels! When we last went to the fish market, Matt and I tried squid ink cake. This time Jen and Rhino tried it, too. Yum! We also had some delicious, tiny dehydrated shrimp and saw lots of cute treats. Rhino was startled by a merchant showing off his live crabs. He danced to the music playing through the building and entertained the shoppers. We have to remember to go back to do actual shopping. A lot of the fish looked so good!

Jen and I wanted to go out one night to karaoke. I’d never been, but it is a big deal here in Japan. I know of a place right outside the main gate that we decided to try. I thought it would be a bar with tables and a stage that you get up at and sing. I was definitely not going to do that, but I’d cheer Jen on! When we arrived, we found that they are private karaoke rooms. We purchased a room for an hour and some bottles of water, were given some microphones, tambourines, maracas, and a control. We poked at the buttons on the control for about ten minutes before asking for help. The attendant showed us the “English” button (which we couldn’t read!) so we could browse through all the songs and artists. Jen had some solos, we sang a bunch together, we did some Christmas songs, I actually sang a solo, and then the workers ran in and interrupted our song, grabbed all the supplies, and kicked us out at exactly 60 minutes! It was all very goofy and the room was super hot, but we had a blast! Each room has a small kiddie section with toys and books, so next time I’ll have to take Matt and the boys!

I know there are sake bars around that serve sake in a traditional way, I just have no idea where they are. Jen wanted to try some, but didn’t want to crack open her new bottle. So we went to the bar next to the karaoke place and ordered sake. They asked what flavoring and Jen chose green apple. They mixed the sake with soda and green apple syrup, which I have never seen before. I’ve only ever tried it in tiny cups and warm. I had no idea that it was served this way, too!

Thanksgiving around here has been pretty relaxing. I brined our turkey last night and roasted it up today and it was delicious! I made a couple of pies that turned out so-so, and Jen and I whipped up some side dishes. Matt prefers instant dressing rather than homemade and canned cranberry sauce to real berries, so that makes things a lot easier (though next year we will have homemade stuff, too.) I had a butternut squash that I had planned to use for some amazingly delicious butternut squash soup, but thought it might make a nice side dish instead. I made some carmelized butternut squash and it was okay, but no one else really liked it and I didn’t love it. I should have just gone with the soup! Rhino enjoyed his meal and tried almost everything, but really just wanted to eat cranberry sauce.

We decorated for Christmas after our meal. We have an artificial, pre-lit tree, stockings, an advent calendar, a nativity, and some other small decorations. We put up all the special ornaments I had as a kid and that we’ve collected since we’ve been married. We didn’t have a tree topper, so we went out to the mall to browse their disappointing selection. We found an acceptable plastic blue and silver star, gave it to Rhino, and he topped our tree. We put on some Christmas music and are starting to get into the spirit. Now we just need some snow!

Matt’s sister, Jen, flew in to visit us for a week and a half! She came in on Friday and we’ve been having a good time, just hanging. I’m so glad she’s able to be here and spend time with the boys!

Today was our church’s Thanksgiving Fellowship. It was initially supposed to be a meal for the singles on base who don’t have a family to celebrate with, but not many singles showed up, so it was just another great church fellowship! It was a long day – we had our Sunday School then morning service, followed by the fellowship meal, then our evening service was moved up to after the meal. The boys handled it well, though! At last year’s church Thanksgiving, Rhino was just starting to eat solids and enjoyed just a little bit of mashed potatoes. I was hoping this year he’d dig in more, but he just wanted a bite of bread and lots of cranberry sauce! The meal was great, as always. I like that we did it the Sunday before Thanksgiving this year rather than on Thanksgiving day. Last year we had two Thanksgiving meals because we had the Armstrongs and the Kisers over for dinner as well as a church fellowship. This was all a little easier! We love our church family and they have been really good to us while we are so far from the rest of our family. I’m thankful to have them another year here and so glad that Jen share in an important part of our life.

Happy early Thanksgiving!!

I see that my last post date is in October. I’ve been stopping by to write something for weeks, but really, I’ve just been intimidated. So much has happened in the past three months, I’ll never find the time to write about it all! Well, now that I’ve gotten down to it, I’m giving you the extremely abridged version!

I’m really not remembering much about November! A few things stick out, though. Rhino started crawling around, we got our first Misawa snow (and Rhino’s first snow ever!), we had two nice Thanksgivings (one with the church, then a second in our home with our friends), and we discovered we’re going to have another baby in July ‘09! This of course is very exciting and just the age spacing we were hoping for. Thanksgiving was nice, too, and not very hectic at all. Liz, Nicole, and I split up the responsibilities. Really, all I had to do was make up some cranberry sauce and veggies and provide a clean home. The food was all wonderful and we had a terrific first Thanksgiving in Japan!

December will take a while to describe. I had my first prenatal appointment and we saw the ultrasound of our 8 week-old little bean! Heart’s beating, there’s only one in there, everything’s looks fine, that was about it! Two days later we began our trip back to the States to visit with family for Christmas. This was wonderful, but tiring! I’m so glad we got to see all our family (though not as many friends as I had initially hoped. Everything was getting too hectic!) and have Rhino meet the rest of the folks that didn’t get to come out when he was born.

Matt wrote up a big post about the horrible details of the travel itself. He pretty much covered it all, though he didn’t mention how uncomfortable a 9 or 12 hour flight is for a pregnant woman with morning sickness. Airplanes definitely were not my friends. I won’t take this space to complain further about travel and how we never want to step foot on an airplane again (we can stick out Matt’s career here and retire in Japan!) All our destinations made the flights more than worthwhile.

We flew into LA, so we decided to rent a car and drive up to Lompoc to see our friends and recuperate for the weekend. We left at 10pm on a Friday evening and it’s an overnight flight across the international dateline to California. When I booked this flight, I just assumed: leave Friday evening, overnight flight, land Saturday morning. I know, now that I think about it, it doesn’t make any sense. When we landed in CA and the captain said that it was 2pm on Friday, I was so confused! I hadn’t planned to arrive on Friday! So, it was my first time going back in time! We picked up our car and, 3 seconds off the lot, Matt almost gets into an accident! We’ve gotten quite used to driving on the left side and very slowly in Japan. When we got on the freeway, Matt felt all nervous that he was going so fast! Well, “so fast” is 45mph and he definitely needed to kick it up a bit, as everyone else was going 80! It was scary interesting watching him get used to driving in the US again. We arrived in Lompoc, called everyone we knew, didn’t get through to anyone, so we stayed in a hotel. It was nice to just relax and decompress from the long trip by ourselves. On Saturday (the real Saturday, not the Saturday in my confused head) we met up with Wayne and Rena, the wonderful couple from church that took us in as their “kids” (theirs had all moved out) and led the Bible study we attended for 2 years. It was nice to spend the weekend with them, have a little group reunion with some other church people, and show Rhino off. We also met up with our friends Denna, Adam & Ty. We went out to for an Italian dinner to catch up and gab. They ordered a plate of pasta for Tyler (2), but we discovered Rhino is nuts for pasta, and pretty much ate Ty’s whole plate! That was the first we saw of Rhino vehemently demanding table food and it was quite amusing, though slightly embarrassing to be out in a restaurant with a baby who yelled for food as if we hadn’t given him any for months! After church on Sunday we went over to Jody and Roy’s to see their sweet baby girls, have some lunch, and catch up. The weekend was so short and we were fighting to stay awake during the day, so we didn’t end up doing all that I had planned. I couldn’t get a hold of Danielle and would have loved to stop by work (it was drill weekend), but it just didn’t happen. We drove back down to LA on Sunday night, got another hotel (oh my, another whole big terrible story, too!) and caught a flight to Dallas the next morning.

These descriptions will probably get shorter, now, as there’s still plenty more. Texas was nice. Papa was the only one to have met Rhino, back in March, so it was wonderful that all my uncles, aunt, grandparents, etc. got to meet him! Unfortunately, Rhino hadn’t gotten used to the time zones yet and had just started teething again, so he was pretty grumpy a lot of the week. We kept busy, though. We had a nice Mexican lunch out at the Tupinamba, a restaurant that my family always goes to when I come to visit! We got to see my brother, Matthew, who also lives in Dallas and finally meet his girlfriend, Adria. The five of us went to Ripley’s Believe it or Not, had lunch at Chili’s, and went over to their apartment for dinner and board games. Over the week we got plenty of gaming in — Sequence, Clue, Phase 10, Scattergories — and watched a couple of movies (Eagle Eye, The Other Boleyn Girl, As Good As It Gets). I also went with Grandmother and Aunt Pattie to a quarterly ladies’ luncheon at their church, which was really great! We had a delicious lunch, browsed through second-hand goodies to buy to support their Friendship House, and listened to a wonderful pianist and singer perform Christmas songs. Then on Friday, Papa took us out to the Granada, sort of his second home, with Matthew and Adria to see Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis. It wasn’t exactly our style of music, but it was nice to get out and see the theater and hang out with my dad and brother. We couldn’t bring Rhino, so it was his first time with a babysitter, Papa’s friend Kay. I was really worried that I’d get him to sleep at her house, leave, then he’d wake up and cry and never go back down for her. He did wake up a couple hours after we had left, and he cried for a little bit, then fell back asleep — I was quite impressed! Rhino got a few cute gifts from the Texas family. Papa got him some clothes, including a cute Dallas Cowboys onesie. Rhino also got a Bible stories book and a 2008 coin set. It was a nice time visiting with all the family and I’m glad they finally got to meet Rhino! We left Sunday morning for the next leg of our trip: New York!

Okay, so these aren’t getting much shorter! Well, not to New York. We flew into Buffalo and Matt’s parent’s were there to take us down to Obi. Matt’s sister, Jen, was waiting at home for us and everyone was so excited to see Rhino (and us, I guess!) We got in pretty late, so we pretty much went straight to bed. The rest of the week was filled with a lot of family (Matt has a lot of family close by!) visiting and staring at, taking pictures of Rhino! We went over to Mom-mom and Pop-pop’s one night to meet up with lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.! Rhino got to meet Mitchell, a little boy just 3 weeks older than him. They were so cute together! Another night the church pastor and his family came over one night for dinner and games. Jen and I got a “sisters only” afternoon one day to go get lunch and tea and browse Jo-Ann’s. Jen, Mom and I had a cookie-decorating day! Matt’s brother Jason and his fiancée came over so they could meet Rhino and we could meet her! Later that week, they were married!! I got really sick the night before and couldn’t go to their wedding, though! It was tough, I spent about 36 hours curled up on the sofa or huddled in the bathroom. Rhino pretty much had a full day without Mommy, but he did really well with Grandma and Aunt substitutes! I was bummed to not be able to attend the wedding, but at least I recovered before our flight out. We also watched some movies (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Wall-E, and lots of MST3K.) We also had an early Christmas on the 17th. Matt got more MST3K, some anime, books, cross-stitching stuff; I got some great knitting books and some others; and Rhino received so many cute clothes and toys! They’re all wonderful, but the thing he definitely loved the most was Jen’s gift: a very cute little baby piano! Rhino had recently started really enjoying music and dancing anytime any song started: a commercial jingle, someone singing, 3 notes on a piano, someone whistling, etc.! So he would stand up at the piano, bang out a few notes, dance to his music, play a few more, dance, and on and on! Everyone loved watching him play! It was a fun early Christmas! We did it again a few days later at Aunt Ginny’s with Aunt Connie & Grandpa, too. Rhino got more wonderful outfits, toys, and books. Thankfully, Mom and Dad shipped everything to our home so we didn’t have to pack all the gifts out! We left for the airport Saturday afternoon, but our flight out of Buffalo had been canceled. We made the long drive back home to sleep, and got on an early flight Sunday morning for Colorado.

Originally we had planned to arrive in Colorado two days early, rent a car, stay in Mama’s condo in Denver, and visit with friends in Fort Collins and Denver. By the time we got to Colorado, we were running out of money, car rentals were really high, I was lazy and hadn’t recently been in touch with any friends, we’d lost a day due to our canceled flight, and we were feeling pretty run down. Mama and Ron just picked us up from the airport and took us down to the Springs. I feel like a terrible friend, but it was nice to just relax at “home.” Plus, my sister, her husband and daughter were flying in just a few hours later so I’m glad that we were around to spend more time with them. We had planned to spend time with our friends Carol and Derik, who live in Omaha (and we used to work together. Matt went to tech school with both of them.) They drove down to the Springs for the weekend to see us, but it only turned into an hour that they came over and chatted after dinner on Monday. It was so nice to see them and of course I would have liked more time, things just didn’t quite work out. I’m so glad we at least got to visit for a little bit. Hopefully we’ll have another opportunity before too long! So with my sister in town, I finally got to meet my niece, Amelia! She’s 8 days younger than Rhino and I was so excited to see the two of them together. It was so interesting, they are such different babies! Rhino is a lot more vocal, interested in music and crazy about food. Amelia is all ready running around!! She likes to do her own thing a lot. They both play so differently, sleep differently, eat differently, cry differently — it was quite an experience! She is so beautiful and such a sweetheart. At 10 months, the babies weren’t really interested in playing with each other, but they did play next to each other! We joke that Amelia is sort of a “bully” — they would both be playing with toys, but she would always want to take whatever Rhino had instead! Rhino was very laid back about the whole thing and never really seemed to mind, haha! I wish we could have spent more time with Andrea and her family, but hopefully we will get to see them next year (when the babies won’t be babies anymore — waah!) Aside from watching babies in Colorado, we did actually spend time with Mama and Ron, too! Their dogs, Jack and Tilley, are very high-strung little wild dogs (but so sweet!) and we were nervous about how they’d act around the babies. We were all very surprised though, they were SO good! Whenever a dog would come up to Rhino, we’d say “dog” a lot and eventually Rhino would look at the dog and say “dauh” — he just wouldn’t say the ‘g’. I’m not counting it as a first word, but it was really close and he would do it everytime he’d see a dog! One night we were there, we went out to the Golden Bee, an English pub at the Broadmoor hotel. It’s sort of a Christmastime tradition that my Grandpa started years ago. The babies were really well behaved and loved eating crackers. We drove around afterward and looked at the light displays. We spent a lot of time at home, just relaxing, chatting, hanging out in the kitchen, watching TV, etc. Mama made some great meals that Andrea and I tried to help out with! Andrea made a delicious spinach tofu lasagna one night and Mama and I made a copy of the Olive Garden’s Zuppa Tuscana soup (my favorite!) Andrea and I made multiple visits to the Whole Foods — it was like Grocery Heaven for us! I wish we had more than our crummy commissary selection and expensive Japanese produce out here. Andrea found a Buddha’s Hand and was so excited, she bought it as decoration (I thought it was more appropriate as a Halloween decoration!) We never did use it for anything, but in the future she wants to make candied peels out of one. I found a kiwano that I had wanted to try since I found this sorbet recipe on one of my favorite foodie blogs. Well, we didn’t make a sorbet, just ate spoonfuls from it — and it was less than enjoyable! Matthew and Adria flew in on the 23rd, so now all us siblings were together with our significant others! It was quite a full house, but tons of fun. We had a great, salmon Christmas Eve dinner and filled up on Christmas cookies (Mama went overboard with the date rolls, oatmeal chocolate chip, pinwheels, hazelnut cookies, ricotta cheese sugar cookies, etc, etc.!!) before heading off to the candlelight service at First Pres. It was a beautiful service and I was so glad Matthew and Adria joined us as well. When we got home we opened all of the “grown-up presents”. Mama and Ron got each couple an awesome digital frame, which I love! We did stockings and “baby presents” Christmas morning, which was lots of fun! The babies got some adorable clothes, wonderful books, and some very cute Little People toys! Andrea, Michael and Amelia flew out the next day, so we got some time with Matthew and Adria. We all went to Cave of the Winds, which was amazing! With all the time we lived in Colorado, none of us had ever been and it’s just a few minutes from home. We left from Denver early Sunday morning for our long flight back to Japan.

The whole month was filled with such nice visits with family. I’m still getting all the photos from each location together, then I will post them to the gallery and include links in this post. I didn’t really take many pictures at all, though! I guess I was too busy with Rhino and visiting that I just didn’t think much about photos. Thankfully, other people got a few! The whole trip was very tiring and expensive (see Matt’s post!), but was definitely worthwhile! Unfortunately, it very well may be our only trip back to the States while we’re stationed in Japan. Mama and Ron, Jen, and Matt’s parents are all planning trips out to see us within the next 18 months, though!! I can’t wait to show them all the wonderful things out here!

Edit: Here are links to the vacation photos from California, Texas, New York, and Colorado!

Jen and I have decided to do craft-alongs together. I picked our first project: baby amigurumi owls from Liz’s Seriously Cute Crochet book. I love the little owls and there’s a pattern for a mother and a baby owl. The baby looked like a faster project, so we chose that. Mine took about 3 hours, including Rhino interruptions. It was pretty easy, but didn’t turn out perfectly. I like it anyway, though! Rhino really enjoys playing with it and I’m just waiting for him to rip off a wing with his teeth. I’m looking forward to making more in the future.