secret for success??

I'm on the quest for the perfect Christmas card picture, without much success. We tried on Saturday and she just wanted to run around in her dress, play with her halo and pull the background down. Here are a couple we caught, but they aren't Christmas card material, though they're funny!

I tried this morning with a different tactic. She did better because I gave her things to play with, but she was so enthralled with them that she didn't look up and smile!

These are the best I got, after cropping, but her hair is so messy that I don't want to use these. So we'll have to try another day.

It was lots easier last year! She was so happy with the ribbons and paper that she couldn't help but smile! I had a hard time choosing because there were so many good ones.

I guess the secret for success is to photograph a younger baby or older child! Since that's not the case, maybe success in this situation is to settle for imperfection!?

B-O-O-T-S!

I've mentioned before that she loves listening to Laurie Berkner's CDs. We have several from the library--as kids' music goes, it's pretty tolerable for adults! One of the songs she likes best is called B-O-O-T-S. They spell it out and stomp their feet in boots at the same time (there's a video to go along with it on the noggin website). Well, today she found her boots again in the closet (she loves them!) and wanted to put them on. As soon as I put them on her she started stomping her feet like in the song and doing her imitation of "B-O-O-T-S!" It was hilarious....you'll have to take my word for it, though. I don't have pictures.

An update on her health....she's getting better after a bad few days of coughing (often waking VERY early in the morning and not able to get back to sleep). She still has a runny nose and still coughs when she wakes up, but she's definitely better. But now Daddy is sick. It was a rough couple of days. But this week should be better.

tagged again

Emily tagged me (well, she tagged anyone who wanted to be tagged, and since it's hard to think of things to write about, I took her up on it!) for another meme....





What were you doing ten years ago?
1. Teaching first grade in Greenwich, CT. It was my second year of teaching. Man, was that already ten years ago??? I'm old!

2. Living in a mansion in Greenwich with a family from school--anyone who doesn't know that whole story should ask me about it sometime. It was quite an experience!

3. One semester away from finishing my master's degree program.

4. Babysitting, housesitting, and pet sitting for anyone who would pay me (yes, I lived in a mansion, but I made very little money, lived in the richest community in America, and was paying for grad school!)

5. Visiting friends in NYC (only a 40 minute train ride) whenever I could get down there--that's what I miss most about living out there.





What were you doing one year ago?

1. Celebrating the fact that I'd helped my daughter make it through seven months of life!

2. Still waking up a couple of times a night to feed her.

3. Wondering whether my house would ever be clean again (I still wonder that, come to think of it....)

4. Getting excited about celebrating our baby's first Christmas.

5. Tutoring a 6th grade boy in math once a week. (I wonder how he's doing!?)





Five snacks you enjoy

1. Ice cream (esp Graeter's Strawberry Chip)

2. Cape Cod potato chips, or the cheaper Meijer brand knock offs, which are almost as good

3. Nachos with lots of melted cheese, and sour cream, guacamole, and homemade salsa on the side

4. Frito Lay's "Muchies" mix--it has pretzels, doritos, cheetos, and sun chips in it--super healthy, eh?!

5. Milk Chocolate...in just about any form

Gosh, this is making me WAY too hungry!





Five Songs you know the lyrics to (uh oh, this will be embarassing....)

1. My Favorite Things (from The Sound of Music)

2. Castle on a Cloud (from Les Miserables)

3. Do Re Mi (also from TSOM...see #1)

4. We are the Dinosaurs (by Laurie Berkner....a kid's CD we listen to in the car constantly!)

5. It's a Hard Knock Life (from Annie)

(Can you tell I watched a few musicals growing up??)





Five things you would do if you were a millionaire

1. Give a lot away

2. Build my parents their dream house nearby

3. Build our dream house also nearby

4. Build myself a scrapbooking room in my dream house so I'd have room to spread everything out and leave it out when I wasn't working on it.

5. Travel with my husband (and eventually our daughter)





Five bad habits (I confessed a couple of these a few weeks ago the last time I was tagged!)

1. Being on the computer too much

2. Checking my email too much

3. Watching TV every evening

4. Eating the snacks listed above

5. Deciding not to exercise on any given day with a lame excuse of why





Five things you like to do

1. Scrapbook

2. Shop (only for good deals!)

3. Play with my daughter

4. Hang out with my husband

5. Read





Five things you will never wear again

1. Legwarmers

2. Stonewashed denim

3. Jelly shoes

4. Overalls

5. Heels (not that I ever wore them much, but since my husband's the same height as me, I won't wear heels to make myself taller!)





Five favorite toys

1. My laptop

2. My laptop

3. My laptop

4. Did I mention my laptop?

5. Does my daughter's Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Home count? I play with it every day...





Five things you hate to do

1. Play with my daughter's Fisher Price Laugh and learn Home every day (just kidding....it's my favorite of all of her toys that we play with)

2. Clean!!!!! But especially the bathrooms

3. Scrub stains out of my daughter's clothes. It takes forever to do a load of her laundry!

4. Exercise

5. Get up early (I'm a morning person, but not before 7 AM)

don't touch

Can I just record that phrase and have it playing on a loop throughout the day? Because that's all I seem to say lately. For some reason she's developed a huge fascination for electrical cords. She's tried to touch them now and then over the last year, but not like she's been doing for the last week. It's so frustrating! She knows she's not supposed to...she looks at me as she does it, just to see what I'll do. Ugh.

Have I mentioned that I've been tutoring? I started a couple of months ago to tutor a fifth grader, Shelby, in math. She's lots of fun and is very bright and excited to learn, so I'm really enjoying it. On Monday night we worked on long division, which she had just started and was having trouble with. It took her awhile to get the hang of it but by the end of the hour she was doing great on her own. When her mom came to get her she asked, "Are you understanding it?" She said, "Yeah, Mom, she's good. She gets into my head!" It was funny, but also nice to be appreciated! A 19 month old doesn't express appreciation very well, so I don't get much of it lately (she's 19 months old today, by the way....what a big girl!).

black and white

I was fooling around with some pictures yesterday, trying to find some that would look good as black and white (in our frame shopping extravaganza last weekend we bought some black frames and need to come up with some pictures to put in them). So here are a few of the contenders.

Whattaya think? Yea? Nay?

In other news, our little one is sick. It's been a big kleenex fest here the last few days. She runs everytime she sees me heading for the box, but what kind of mother would I be if I let her nose run down to her chin all day?? When she drinks and eats you can hear her pausing to take these huge breaths because while she's chewing or drinking she can't breathe. Poor thing.

And happy birthday, Jack!! (my little brother)

a chip off the OTHER block!

Since yesterday's pictures elicited such a response, I thought I'd stick with the theme and show you that although she really resembles me, she also looks like her Daddy. Here are some comparisons. Daddy's pictures are the ones in black and white, in case you didn't figure that out!

a chip off the old block

I don't have very many baby pictures of me here at my house--my mom still has them all. But I have a couple scanned on my computer from a project I worked on for my parents' anniversary this past summer, and thought I'd put them on here for you to compare me and my little girl. What do you think? She's definitely mine, don't you agree?? I'll try and get some when I'm home at thanksgiving and put them on, but this should whet your appetite. These are both with my great grandma. I'm the one in the pink in the first one and the red in the other. She and I are roughly the same age in the first two pictures. In the third picture, I'm almost three, but I can already see the resemblance in what she looks like now.

randomness

There's nothing exciting to tell you about today, but to fulfill my NaBloPoMo responsibility for the day, I'll share some random thoughts with you.

*Last week they tore up our sidewalks to put in new handicapped ramps. We spent many hours staring out the window at the big trucks and machines working.

*This week they're tearing up our streets! We've already spent much time this morning staring out the window at the big trucks and machines working. If I had a boy, he'd be in truck heaven at my house! As it is, she's every bit as interested, so it's providing great entertainment.

*Last week was the first full week without a morning nap. She just kind of gave it up on her own (I thought she never would--how many 18 month olds take two naps a day?). Since naptime was when I took a shower and got dressed, I had to institute a new showering policy. Around 9:00 every morning I've been taking her up and putting her in her crib with toys to play with (toys she doesn't ordinarily play with so they're more fun). She plays while I get ready. She's done pretty well with it, although when I get out of the shower I usually hear her yelling, "All Done! All Done!" every couple of minutes until I come get her.

*Right now as I type this she's watching "Jack's Big Music Show" on Noggin--it's probably her favorite half hour of the day. They're singing, "March, march, march, march...." and she's marching right along with them. She's very into music, dancing, jumping, and so forth.

*This morning for breakfast we had Honeynut Cheerios. There's a bee on the box (partially because it's honey, and partially in advertisement for the new Bee movie that's coming out). All through breakfast she kept looking at the box and saying "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz." It's one of her favorite "animal" sounds.

*After breakfast we went upstairs and I was putting clothes away in her room while she was playing in the guest room (that's where the CD player is and she likes to go in there and dance, plus she has some toys in there). Her pumpkin costume was laying on the bed in there, and she got it down and was carrying it around. Then she brought it to me and kept holding it up to me. I finally took it from her and said, "Thank you!" Well, she held out her arms, waiting for me to put it on her! So I did. Then she stooped down to get the hat and held that up to me, too. So I put that on her. She got the biggest smile on her face, and then ran into my bedroom to look at herself in the full length mirror, cracking herself up at how funny she looked. She ran around upstairs with it on, dancing to the music, for quite awhile. I guess Halloween isn't over at our house (well, it is now, because after we took it off I hung it up and put it back in the closet).

See, I told you it would be random!
Have a great day!

fall back...

The fall time change used to be a much anticipated weekend for us....an extra hour of sleep!! Who can argue with that? All of that changed last year when we found that time changing also meant schedule changing for a little one. I remember it taking a long time to get back to normal last year. So today my little 18 month old alarm clock went off at 5:15....not the way I was hoping to spend my extra hour today! We decided to let her go awhile and see if she'd go back to sleep. SHE DID!!! She slept until 6:45 (which actually felt like 7:45, so that was more than acceptable!). I was pleasantly surprised. Her nap this afternoon left much to be desired, though. Usually she goes down between 12:30 and 1:00. Today I put her down at 12:30, thinking she'd be exhausted because it would feel like 1:30 to her. Well, she talked and squealed and cracked herself up for a good 20 minutes before falling asleep. And then woke up not a half hour later! Again I decided to let her go to let her put herself to sleep. This time I was out of luck. She ended up screaming and crying, so I finally, after waiting a half hour, hoping she'd go back to sleep, got her up. She was happy as a clam, though, and was great all afternoon and evening. Strange! I put her in bed at her normal time (even though it would feel later to her) to hopefully get her back on track. We'll see when she wakes up tomorrow.

where did it go?

Saturdays just fly by. Today was no exception. I was putting my little one to bed just a little bit ago and realized that I hadn't done my daily post yet. Whew....I'm glad I remembered, or my reputation would be blemished already on day 3!

Here's today's play-by-play:

8:00 AM - Trip to Kohl's for the Super Saturday Sale to buy a sleeper for you know who.
9:00 AM - Home to bundle up said little one and go outside to rake leaves, while Daddy cut the grass, probably for the last time of the season.
10:00 AM - take one soaking wet little one in the house for a change of clothes (those leaves were wet!!) with one exhausted Mommy (raking leaves is certainly good exercise!)
11:00 AM - Start cleaning the house with little one in tow.
12:00 PM - Lunch, while watching the Buckeyes.
1:00 PM - Naptime, while Daddy and Mommy cleaned (and watched the Buckeyes), but then started talking about putting pictures on the walls (after living in the house for 4 years we chose today as the day to finally do something about this) and decided which pictures needed to go up.
2:30 PM - Naptime over, leave for another trip to Kohl's to buy frames (which I saw on sale this morning when I was there) and to Walgreens to get some pictures made into the right sizes
4:00 PM - Home and start putting up pictures (hammering, measuring, leveling...) with our little one continuously in the way and touching everything she wasn't supposed to. Note to self--don't try to put pictures up (or any other time consuming project) with a little one who needs attention. It was a BAAAAAAAAAAD couple of hours.
5:00 PM - Realized we had all landscape pictures and needed more people pictures, so I made my THIRD trip to Kohl's of the day to buy more frames. I like Kohl's, and all, and love that it's right around the corner from me, but I've definitely had my fill of that place for awhile.
6:00 PM - A random dinner of broccoli and roast beef (wanted beef and noodles, but didn't have any noodles, and wasn't about to make another trip to the store!!!) in the midst of picture hanging and a frustrated toddler (but we'd made it this far, we had to finish).
7:00 PM - Bathtime, after a frustrated session of "Let's put your toys in the toybox!" That game doesn't go over well....we're working on it....slowly.
7:40 PM - Collapse at the computer (but there's more cleaning to do downstairs....so I'm staying up here where I can be in denial and type away instead!).

I feel like I've worked non stop all day, but there's not much to show for it (except for picture overload on the walls!!) Want some stimulation for your eyes? Come on over to our family room. There are pictures everywhere. Too many, if you ask me, but my husband is happy.

life gets in the way

There are so many things I want to get done on any given day, but everyday life always seems to interfere. So I try not to have very high expectations of what I plan to accomplish each day. If I keep my little one happy, empty, load, and run the dishwasher, pick the toys up, get dinner on the table, and maybe get a load of laundry done, then anything else I get done is icing on the cake, as far as I'm concerned!

All that to say, I meant to post the dedication pictures days ago, but like I said, other things got in the way. So here they are.

This is during the actual dedication. Up in front with us in the orange shirt is my friend, Alisa, who prayed for R and for us.

We didn't get any pictures at the church so we tried to take some when we got home. This one wasn't too bad, while Daddy was trying to figure out the right settings on the camera.

But by this one, she had had it and needed a nap! So no happy family picture like we had hoped.

After a nice, long nap she enjoyed playing outside with her cousins and friend, Kaden. Here she is in the leaves with Kaden.

day 1

Okay, so it's day 1 of the posting every day of November attempt....we'll see how successful I am!

Here are halloween pictures from last night's trick or treating adventure. I had a bunny costume for her, but I bought it last fall at a garage sale and thought she would grow more than she has (we all know how little she's grown....) so it was gigantic on her. My mom and I bought this costume last year after Halloween on clearance, so she was a pumpkin again, even though I didn't want her to be a pumpkin two years in a row. Oh well. She could've cared less!

She had a great time running up and down the sidewalk of our cul de sac. I did a lot of chasing while Daddy stayed and passed out candy at our house. We didn't leave our street, but she had a ball. She kept going back to one house on the end of the street that had dry ice blowing steam around their yard. The lady there kept giving her more bags of Gerber puffs (she had those for the little kids). She kept carrying them around and didn't want to put them in her bucket. Every once in awhile she'd plop herself down and play with her loot in the middle of the sidewalk. She'd then run back home to see Daddy, play a little more with what was in her bucket (she'd take it all out and then put it back in), and then want to take off again down the sidewalk. She enjoyed seeing the other trick or treaters, too.

finally....

For all of the 18 months of her life we've been trying to do her baby dedication at church, and today it FINALLY happened! For one reason or another every time they had them (they do them 4 times a year), we couldn't do it. We'd sign up and then something would happen or come up to make it inconvenient and we'd cancel. So I finally decided a few weeks ago that we're going to do it, no matter what, before she's no longer in the "baby" category (she really isn't now, either, but some people would still call her a baby).

Before church she was running around in the hallway with her cousins, who had come to see the dedication, and was just crazy with excitement. I was so scared that she wouldn't stay still while we were up in front of the church with hundreds of eyes on us, wanting to get down, fussing, and causing a scene. Well, she couldn't have been better. She was quiet and stayed in our arms (in the middle of the prayer she wanted Mommy to hold her, and not Daddy, and reached for me, so I took her, but other than that she was just as sweet as she could be. We took her to the nursery after that and she did just great. I was so relieved!

Afterwards we had lots of fun having lunch at our house with family, along with her dear friend, Kaden, and his mom (my dear friend, Allecia, who surprised me by coming to the dedication!). They all played outside for the longest time, having fun in the leaves and on the swingset. It was a beautiful, fall day.

I have pictures, but they're not downloaded onto the computer yet. I'll put them on tomorrow.

tag, you're it!

My friend, Emily, tagged me on her blog for a meme, so I'll try to follow through. (A meme is like a question or a theme to post about, and then you "tag" other bloggers to do the same thing.) This one asks you to list 6 habits of yours...

1) A habit I've gotten into since being a stay at home mom is to watch "Good Morning America" in the mornings. When my little one wakes up, I get up too, bring her downstairs, get her a cup of milk, which she inhales, and turn on Good Morning America. She sits on my lap drinking her milk and waking up, while I wake up watching the news. She then scrambles down to the floor and starts her day of playing and bringing me books with Good Morning America on in the background. We usually go eat breakfast and go back upstairs to get dressed while it's on, so it's not like I sit on the couch for two hours to watch it, but it's always on and I'm in and out, getting caught up on my news that way.

2) A VERY bad habit I have is to get on the computer a bazillion times a day. When we just had the desktop it was easier to avoid because it's upstairs in an extra bedroom, and I wasn't up there very often, but now that I have a laptop and it's readily available, I get on it way too much. It's nothing important....email, reading blogs, checking what good bargain toys I can find on Craig's List, or other equally unimportant tasks. Once I put my laptop away for a week and found I got a lot more done that week--and I know I should probably just keep it put away during the day, but I can't bring myself to do it. Now R has discovered it, too. Whenever I open it up, she wants to crawl in my lap and see the various sites I have bookmarked for her. She likes the Noggin.com site, where she watches music videos on the "Jack's Big Music Show" site. She especially loves Laurie Berkner's songs. Since she's discovered these, I've gotten several of Laurie Berkner's CDs out of the library and we listen to them in the car all of the time. They keep her much happier while we're out and about. She also likes to watch that little video clip I put on here a few weeks ago with her picture on it, participating in various "adventures." She asks to watch that over and over! Another site is an alphabet site where they say the letter and an animal that starts with that letter. My little girl is already a tech junkie and she's not even two years old....

3) When I put R in her high chair to eat breakfast, lunch, or a snack, I try and get some task done in the kitchen. Usually it's emptying or filling the dishwasher. In the afternoon when she has a snack I'm always getting something prepared for dinner. It's the only way I can make sure she's not going to be hanging on my legs while I'm busy.

4) Hmmm...I'm having trouble coming up with habits. I guess I'm not a creature of habit. Here's one: At 4:00 every day I start making dinner. My husband gets home around 4:45 and he likes to eat then. Otherwise, he snacks and then isn't hungry for dinner, so over the years that we've been married dinner has become earlier and earlier. We joke that we're just like the older couples who go to Bob Evans at 4:00 for dinner. Often someone will call around 5:30 or so and ask, "I'm not interrupting your dinner, am I?" and I've just finished up cleaning up the dinner dishes!! When we go to dinner with someone else or go visit someone, we're always starving by the time we have dinner around 6:00....a more "normal" dinner time!

5) I guess the TV shows we watch are habits....though right now now many of our shows aren't on. We watch Lost, which doesn't start until February, The Amazing Race, which starts in a few weeks, and recently have become hooked on 24, through watching them on DVD. We've been reserving them at the library, but they only give you 5 days to watch them. A whole season (24 episodes) in 5 days?!?! We actually did it once....it was insane. We were watching episodes non stop and got so sick of it that we were so relieved when we finished. That show is so intense. Last night we finished season 3. That one we were able to renew several times because no one else was waiting for it, so it was much more relaxing to watch an episode or two in the evenings (well, relaxing isn't really the right word for such an "on the edge of your seat" show, but you get what I mean). I've recently started watching Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice, but my husband doesn't like them, so I don't watch them every week.

6) At 7:00 every night we take R up to take a bath. Her bedtime has become a habit, which has been so helpful in making sure she goes to bed easily. She goes to bed so well, without fussing, and I'm so thankful.

So there you go...maybe you know me a little better now. I'm supposed to tag people to do this, too, but I won't. If you read this and want to do it on your blog, great. If not, don't worry about it.

picture page

I said I would make you wait for the pictures....but I changed my mind. So here are lots of random pictures from the last several weeks that haven't made it into the annals of this blog.

A couple of weeks ago when I did that market research/jury thing, Daddy took her to a nearby park that has a farm. He took some pictures while they were there. It was a cold, dreary day, but she had a great time seeing the animals and playing with pumpkins (even though she couldn't lift them up...after lots of trying, Daddy said!).


We went to the zoo this weekend. They have a petting zoo over in a section we hadn't been to yet. We fed her obsession for animals by letting her pet the goats (poor goats....being chased after by hundreds of small children...probably not very fun!).

She tried to give most of them a hug....without much success.

She plopped herself down next to one and started playing in the straw, and then started poking the goat with the straw!

This is when we were looking at the fish. I like this one because she was looking up at me, showing me, excitedly, what she had found swimming in the tank.
She found this tiger outside of the area where they have the actual tigers. The real tigers were sleeping, so she found this tiger much more exciting!

Just chilling out in her stroller after seeing the tigers....

They had a hay maze set up, which she loved. Here she is in the maze. She didn't care much about the fact that it was a maze...just about picking up the hay...every piece of hay she could find (and it's a hay maze, so there was a lot of it...trust me! It took us a long time to get through that maze!)

A couple of weeks ago on a warm, October day, I took some pictures of her playing outside. Every so often she'll lay down in the grass for no reason and just look up at the sky. I guess she's pondering life, or something equally as deep, but anyway, here she is, my philosophical, pondering daughter!

One of her favorite pasttimes is picking up sticks (and leaves, rocks, acorns, and anything else she can find) and bringing them to me. Notice her excitement....she seriously gets this excited over every single stick! Wouldn't it be nice to be that easily entertained?!

A couple of months ago I bought her some winter boots at a consignment sale I went to. I later found out that they light up--she's the one who discovered that when she started playing with them. She loves these boots. I had to hide them in the closet so she'd stop playing with them, but every time the closet gets left open, she finds her way in there and gets the boots out. One morning a couple of weeks ago she brought them over to me and sat down to try and put them on her feet. It was hilarious to watch her try. I finally gave in and helped her do it. The result was hysterical--PJs and boots (2 sizes too-big-for-her-boots, at that!). If any of you have ever seen pictures of me when I was little, you'll notice that she is the spitting image of me in this picture!! One of these days I'll scan some pictures of me in to compare.

A few days ago I read that instead of finger painting with regular finger paint with children this young, you can have them finger paint with pudding. That way if they try and lick it off their fingers, it's okay. So I bought some chocolate pudding and tried it this weekend. Here are the results.

First she just put her fingers in it and enjoyed the way it felt. I tried showing her how to move it around and make a picture, but she wasn't interested.

Next she decided to bring the plate up to her mouth to test it out. I'm sure glad this was pudding and not paint!

She liked what she found!

go tribe, go!

Yeah, I'll bet you didn't know I'm a closet Indians fan....well, only in October when they make it this far and I know how important it is to my dad, who's waited his whole life to see his Tribe win it all in the World Series. So here I sit, Weed, the most unlikely to ever sit and watch an entire baseball game....or any sporting event for that matter....watching Game 7 all by myself. Aren't you proud, Dad!?!?

So, several of my friends have blogs, which I love to read. I'll admit that I get sad when I check them and they haven't updated (which I know the one or two of you that read this also must feel when you check my blog and don't see new pictures or stories of you know who!). Anyway, my friend, Emily, posted recently on her blog that November is NaBloPoMo, which apparently is "National Blog Posting Month." Who knew?!?! NaBloPoMo has a website, and those who participate promise to post to their blogs every day in November. So she asked if anyone else would like to try it. I said I'd try, but I don't promise that every post will be full of excitement or interesting news! Who knows, I might have to resort to posting song lyrics, which I once wrote in my weekly language arts journal in 8th grade (for which I got in HUGE trouble, even though I wrote "do not read" at the top of the page, which was supposed to ensure that my teacher wouldn't read it....yeah, right, Mrs. Klinger!!!)

So anyway, I'll try to post something every day in November...any of you blogging friends of mine out there who read this blog want to try it, too????

I have pictures to post and stories to tell of several different events, but I'm on my laptop and the pictures are on the desktop upstairs....hmmm....maybe I should save them for November! It'll give me something to post! :) I'll keep you waiting for those!

storytime, take two

After the last fiasco, we haven't been back to story time at the library. But this morning we went to a story time I had signed us up for at this nearby church. They have an indoor playground and the kids got to play and do a craft and listen to stories. We didn't go the first week because she was sick. We didn't go last week because I was at that all day market research thing last Wednesday. So today was the first time.

Well, suffice it to say we won't be going back.....

She was WAY too young, even though it said for ages 1-5. Most of the kids were about 4, it looked like. Of course she wouldn't sit still for the stories. She just wanted to run around, touch other kids, and jump up and down making noises. The playing part was fine. The craft part was disasterous--they did leaf rubbings with crayons. She just wanted to hold all of the crayons and drop them and pick them up, drop them and pick them up, run over to someone else's stash of crayons and do the same thing... I expected her to put the leaves in her mouth like she tries to do at home....thankfully she didn't go that far. We ended up leaving before it was over, though, because I just felt like she was such a tornado in this otherwise orderly storytime. They were about to do another craft with clay, and that looked like a disaster waiting to happen for us. They have a waiting list of people wanting to be in it so I told the lady to go ahead and ask someone else to come the rest of the times because she was clearly too young. The lady was very nice, but readily agreed with me!! (She said, "But I'm glad you tried it!") I was so embarassed. I know I can't let my daughter's behavior be a reflection of me, but I can't help but feel that way. And when she doesn't behave well I feel like it's my fault and I've not done a good job of teaching her. But then I remind myself that she's 18 months old and behaved just as most 18 month olds would. And she hasn't been in those types of settings--how can I expect her to sit still and listen to a story when she's never done it before and her attention span is nowhere near what a 4 year old's is? My expectations are unrealistic. I can tell myself all of these things, but it still felt like everyone was looking at me thinking, "Can't that mother control her child?" and "what is she doing here with such a young and noisy little girl?"

We went to the mall after that (partially to cheer myself up!) because I had something to return and a coupon for a free chik-fil-a sandwich. So I made the return, went looking for some mittens for my little one (I'm having a horrible time finding lavendar mittens to match her winter coat and that fit her!!) and then we went to the food court for lunch. I got her a kids meal of 4 nuggets and milk--it was her first ever kids meal. She ate two of the nuggets, a couple fries and drank the milk. She liked looking all around and playing with the straw and the board book that came with the kids meal. After that she got to play in the play area for a little bit until she spit up her milk on one of the animals, right in front of a set of 9 month old twins! I had the mother of the twins watch the spot so no one got into it, in order to go get a wet one to go wipe it off and then I figured she probably shouldn't play any more, in case it happened again, so we came home.

Whew! What a morning. Sometimes I wonder why I venture out....

a different world

Today was a different day in the world of weed. It didn't consist of staying home with you know who like a normal Wednesday. Today I had to get up like any normal working adult and go to "work," but it wasn't really work, either. I got a call last week from this market research company with whom I'm registered. They call me from time to time to answer questions and sometimes, if I qualify, they ask me to come in to be a part of a panel to discuss whatever it is they are researching. (Okay, in actuality, this is only the second time I've gotten to go in). They pay well and it's an interesting change of scenery. Last time it was just a couple of hours in the evening to talk about area hospitals. This time it was an all day affair. Daddy took the day off and had his first-ever full day with our daughter all by himself. He was great....and so was she! He took her to a metropark in our area which has a working farm, so she got to see pigs, cows, chickens, a horse... but was most enthralled, apparently, by the windmill and the group of fourth graders who were there on a field trip!

Anyway, my day was spent on a pretend jury, where I had to listen to both sides of a pretend court case in the morning and deliberate in the afternoon, and then discuss our impressions of the whole thing. They gave us boxed Panera lunches and lots of snacks (to keep us awake from sitting so long, I assume!). It held my interest and was a change of pace, plus I got paid for a day of "work," so that was great.

All in all it was a nice day, but only because it was different--I'm glad I don't do it every day and I missed my little one like crazy. I'd much rather stay home and get paid in hugs and smiles (well, most days, anyway!!!)

one and a half?!

When did my little girl grow up so much? As of Tuesday she'll be 18 months old. I can't believe how the time has flown, and yet it seems like she's always been here with us, too.

In honor of turning 1 and 1/2 we had her pictures taken today. She hasn't had them taken since her birthday. When I compare these to the one she had taken on her birthday, she definitely looks like a toddler now, while she still looks like a baby in the birthday picture. What a big girl.

I couldn't get her wispy hair to lie down, but I guess that's what toddler hair looks like for the most part, so I couldn't do much about it. I'm happy with how they turned out. I like the first one because it's a close up. I like the second one because I wanted one in that outfit, too, and she looks so cute sitting on that little wall (she loved sitting up there!). I like the last one because she looks like she's ready to take off and run any second, which is totally her!

Enjoy!!

her adventures....

Click below and see the exciting things she's been doing lately!

http://www.myabcadventure.com/index.htm?movieid=F1C35B6D-6AC6-4611-8517-1EC995A74227

ready for her close up!

I haven't taken any pictures in awhile so I pulled out the camera today and took some while she was playing outside.


Here's the close up....I think she's due for another haircut! Those bangs grow fast, just like Mommy's.

She finally learned how to climb into chairs by herself (and likes to do it over and over again).

Here she is getting ready to go down her new slide that she can climb herself (the one on her swingset is too big for her to do unless we put her up at the top and hold her hand to slide down).





But this is what she prefers to do on the slide:






And this is from a few weeks ago, when she decided to empty the basket of all of the books and climb in and out and in and out.

See the baby toys in the background? She LOVES to play in her bouncy seat. It was in the basement put away but made it's way back up to the family room because she crawls into it to read books! That yellow crib toy was for sale in my garage sale a few weeks ago and didn't sell, so she decided she wanted to start playing with it again.

dake ooo

What? You can't read that title? That's toddler-ese for "thank you!" (Well, my toddler, anyway.) She's starting to say it all the time now. She puts something in my hand and I say, "Thank you!" She then says, "Dake ooo!" Then she brings me something else and the whole way over to me she says, "dake ooo, dake ooo, dake ooo," until she puts it in my hand and I say, "thank you," again.

However, she also knows now that when you give her something she is supposed to say "dake ooo" too. She doesn't always do it, but sometimes she remembers. When I went to pick her up in the nursery today after church they told me that she said it when they gave her her snack, all on her own! Hooray! She's learning! Today Daddy gave her a bite of a cookie and she turned away and said, "dake ooo" to him without being reminded.

Today at the park she was picking up mulch (her favorite thing about the park, I think....forget about the playground equipment....she just wants mulch!) and taking it to various people, telling them "dake ooo" as she gave it to them. It was a riot for these total strangers to hold out their hands to receive a piece of mulch from my daughter! She's quite the sharer, my girl.

Speaking of sharing, she's good at it, except when it comes to Mommy, apparently. On Friday we went to the hospital to see my friend Christa and her new baby girl, Hannah. Our little one was excited to see the baby.....that is, until I picked the baby up to hold her. All of a sudden my little girl was green with envy and couldn't get my lap back in her possession fast enough. She didn't want to have anything to do with the baby after that--just Mommy.

But sharing mulch....she's a pro. Just don't ask her to share her Mommy.

(It's a good thing Mommy doesn't plan on having another little one for awhile!)

17 month stats

Height: 31 inches (50th percentile)...not too bad! Daddy's hoping she may be a basketball player yet!
Weight: 19 pounds (below the 3rd percentile)....yeah, I know...bummer. I SO wanted her to have made it to 20 pounds!!!!
Shoes: size 5 medium(I just took her to Stride Rite and had her sized....just thought I'd throw that in there!) She used to be a wide, which I couldn't believe, since I have always had super narrow feet. This time they told me she has narrow feet, but they're still kind of thick from top to bottom, so that makes up the narrowness and she can wear a medium. Let's hope that's always the case because I have always had trouble finding narrow shoes in my size.

The doctor told me to give her pediasure every day to try and up her calories. She also said it sounds like she's just too busy and distracted to take the time to sit down and eat. I'll say!

So there you go. My itty bitty girl is still itty bitty. Today she's wearing a sweater from last winter that is size 6-9 months, and it still fits!

the social butterfly

Today we went to toddler story time at the library for the first time. It's for ages 18 months to 3 years, and though she's only 17 months old, she's clearly too old for the baby laptime, which is infants through 18 months (there's no WAY she would sit in my lap), so I tried the toddler one, thinking they'd be used to little kids wandering around and not staying in a parents' laps. Well, there were all the other little boys and girls, sitting in their moms' laps, and then there was my little girl, becoming best friends with the librarian leading the story time, the mom sitting next to us, the little boy across the room, the big stuffed polar bear in the back of the room, and everyone in between. She wouldn't sit still for two seconds, except when the librarian was playing the guitar and singing a song. Even then she stood (but some other kids were standing too by that point, so that part wasn't so bad), but at least she was still. But as soon as the guitar was put away (and she realized that signing "more" wouldn't make him bring it out again and play a song just for her), she'd begin to wander to and fro, picking up the books around the room and carrying them over to me one by one, or up to the storyteller and putting them on his lap, or to the grandma across the room. She took someone's DVD from their stroller and brought that to me. She took someone's baseball cap and brought that to me. She went up to the felt board and picked up a felt balloon that had fallen off and handed it back to the storyteller (wow, isn't she helpful?). Oh my....she was "quite the social butterfly," as one mom leaned over and said to me.

Everyone was smiling and laughing at her; I'll have to admit that it was probably pretty funny to watch, if she wasn't my own, but as her mother, who is trying to teach her to be obedient, it was quite stressful and showed me that she has a LOOOOOOOONG way to go! Granted, she is only 17 months old and doesn't understand it yet if I say, "You need to sit and listen to the story or we're going to have to leave," but she'll have to learn it sometime. At what point, I wonder, will she start to understand? And how do I allow her to be her friendly little self and not squelch her love for people and yet get her to be a good listener in these types of settings? It's a good thing we've got a few years before school starts to practice all of these skills!!!

And while I'm at it asking questions, where in the world did she get this socialness???? It's CERTAINLY not from me! If you know me even a little bit, you know that I never have been and never will be a very social person. And though her daddy talks more than I do, he was always very quiet and shy around strangers growing up, he tells me. She doesn't know a stranger. Maybe it was all of that mexican food I craved while I was pregnant. Did all of the spice give her some extra spice??

I love my girl, full of sugar and spice and everything nice....I just need to get used to having a social butterfly as a daughter and realize that she's not me.

our little artist

Yesterday I went to MOPS (Mothers of Pre Schoolers) at a church nearby (not our church). It was nice to meet new people and to know my little one was being well taken care of in the nursery. They said she was having a great time every time someone would go check to see how the kids were doing. When I went to pick her up they gave me a piece of paper and said, "This is the picture she drew." It was a blank sheet of white paper with some tiny red dots down in the corner that she obviously had done by pressing a crayon on the paper over and over and over. They wrote her name up at the top. It's her very first work of art! I already have it hanging on the refrigerator and it will eventually go in her baby book.

The last two mornings she woke up crying. I've brought her downstairs and given her her cup of milk, which she drinks, and then instead of scrambling down to play like normal, she's started cuddling with me on my lap instead (she's never been much of a cuddler, so this is quite a pleasant surprise!!!). Yesterday I started singing to her and rocking her back and forth as she sat on my lap with her arms around me. As soon as I stopped, she sat up, signed "more" and rocked herself back and forth until I started again. Then she'd put her arms back around me and cuddle some more. She did the very same thing this morning. It's just the sweetest time! I wish I could bottle all of that sweetness up and let it out at the times when she's being so frustrating!!!

Her latest obsession is bubbles. Every once in awhile this summer I've pulled out the bubbles to play with outside. She gets so excited when she sees the little bucket. She tries at first to blow a bubble, but doesn't quite get the idea of how to do it, so then she proceeds to chew on the wands (one in each hand) for as long as I'll let her. I have to keep blowing bubbles, though. If I stop, she signs "more" over and over until I start blowing more. Now if we go outside without bringing the bubbles, she looks at me, puts her finger up to her mouth, and blows, as if asking, "Mommy, where are the bubbles? You know we're supposed to have them when we come out here!" She gets quite upset when I tell her we're all done with the bubbles and we'll play with them another day. She doesn't want to play anything else when we're out there if the bubbles are out, so I don't get them out every time.

one man's junk....

...is another man's treasure, or so they say. This was proven today. We had our first ever garage sale. A month or so ago we got a notice saying that someone in our neighborhood was organizing a neighborhood sale, and after first deciding against it, we eventually changed our minds and decided to give it a go and clear out whatever we could. We ended up finding way more than we thought we had....and lots of things we figured nobody would buy. My friend Allecia brought some things over, too, like a book called "Our State's Spiders" or something like that (it had the actual name of our state in the title, but I didn't want to write that, so you can figure out the title if you know where I live!). She said, "Who would ever have this book in their house????" My husband said, "Well, it's your book!" and we couldn't believe it, but someone actually bought it! Would you pay a quarter for a book about spiders found in our state??? Crazy.

It was funny to see what things went quickly and what hung around all day--many things we thought would go easily didn't go at all, or went only after we kept lowering the price throughout the day, and other strange things were snatched up in a second. In the end, we got rid of almost everything and made a whole lot more than we ever thought we would've. We boxed up the left overs and took them to a donation center, just to get rid of them. Our house is that much more uncluttered (though trust me, there still is plenty of clutter! I'm sure we'll have another one in a few years).

Our little one LOVED it. She got to play outside ALL day (it was a gorgeous day to be outside, too--low humidity, sunny...perfect!) and see lots and lots of people, dogs, and babies. We were constantly chasing her but she was very good and happy most of the day. It was a good, but tiring day. We met neighbors we hadn't met before and making money on your "junk" is always a happy thing!