Back in the Saddle

First of all, let me point out that my girl had has hair. That is one adorable palm tree on top of her head! Also, we were out of town for the better part of 6 weeks, then we all immediately got sick upon our return home. More on that later. I'll do my best to catch up, or at least give the reader's digest version of what we've been up to. In the meantime, enjoys these pictures from the county fair! She lobed the chicken hatching tent and the pig races. But who doesn't love to watch's pigs run for an Oreo??

New Trick

Little Miss is making strides. She is on the go go go all. the. time. She's decided that she either doesn't like the feel of the laminate floor on her knees, or it is too slippery for her locomotive needs. She has come up with this solution. Don't mind my voice, I've been sick!

When it Rains

The original storm was a week and a half ago, when these pictures were taken, but there is still water hanging around everywhere. Storm after storm rolled in for over 24 hours. We got more than six inches of rain in those 24 hours. I walked around that next afternoon and took these pictures within a few block radius of our home. 

This is about 2 whole blocks submerged. At the end of the block, those are indeed two cars submerged up to their handles. This was a lot of water, people. A lot of water. In fact there is (and was) so much water that there is still a flood warning posted on the weather sites for Illinois. Check out the Daily Herald article that talks about all kinds of damage.

To be honest, it was kind of scary. flooding has never been something I've had to worry about natural disaster-wise. Earthquakes, yes. Fires, yes. Tornados, yes. Flooding, not so much.

Our basement was fine until the power went out for 2 1/2 hours and the sump pump quit working. We got a little more than a 1/2 inch of water in the basement. Fortunately the floor is just painted concrete, and all we lost was a few boxes. But it was eye-opening. I think I learned a bit about preparation, and even a bit about how I might feel if I lost some possessions. We definitely have a long way to go as far as personal preparations go. Perhaps I'll write about that some other time though.

Nine Months- ish...

As promised in her official 9 month post, here are some pictures. They aren't in the same outfit as the others, but they were taken at the right time. We've had a rough month, health wise. She's had two bouts of pink, a cold, and I've been battling the worst cold of my life. I went so far as to go to the doctor and get a strep test-- it was negative. 

9 months

Since we accidentally skipped the 8 months post, I'm not going to delay on this one. I haven't taken pictures yet because the Little Lady got pink-eye, then had an allergic reaction to her antibiotics. She's always beautiful to me, but I'll wait another couple days to take and post pictures. She'll thank me someday.

She talks. She has her own words, and she conveys meaning. "mumm-mumm-mumm" means feed me now or I'll eat your face. That is a literal translation. "Muh-muh-muh" loosely means she wants more of whatever I just took away from her. She says mama and dada in context about 50% of the time, which I figure is statistically significant. She probably means them. She shrieks when she wants Luna to come in the room or come closer. That rarely works.

She rolls all over the place, she can now do a scooty little crawl and can get just about wherever she wants. She hasn't tried the stairs yet, but my days are numbered. On three separate occasions she has been on her back or tummy, then when I turn around she is sitting back upright. So she can get up on her own now, but I'm not sure how she does it.

She's still tall and skinny; around 17 lbs. She eats lots of things, but her favorite combo right now is a mix of sweet potato and cauliflower puree. It smells like feet. She loves it. She also loves to pick up and eat steamed broccoli on her own. I wouldn't think these things are strange, but she hates bananas, she turns her nose up at apples, and she has recently refused pears and peaches. She is on the road to not eating fruit like her Dad. I'm doing my best to derail that one. I'm trying to be creative in what I feed her, but as a first timer I'm afraid I'm lacking.

She's still a happy little camper, and I love this little girl.

Vegas Baby!

We did it! We scoured travel websites for weeks looking for the cheapest hotel we could get, we stalked Southwest to find cheap flights, and we crammed 4 adults and 2 babies in car seats into a Honda Pilot to drive from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. It took a lot of effort, but we made it. 

Our first family vacation with our very good friends, Daniel and Jess, and their hunky little man! We for sure won't plan a road trip like that again- next time we'll just rent a minivan or a suburban. The two tall men got to drive and ride shotgun while Jess and I traded sitting in the middle between the two babies, and sitting in the back with the luggage and strollers. But we made it, and it was fun!

We were all trying to make this trip happen on a budget, so we stayed in the Freemont on the Old Strip. We figured since we weren't spending any money drinking or gambling, we could get away with being pretty cheap. It worked, but in terms of accommodations it is true what they say- you get what you pay for. It wasn't as bad as the Motel 8 -or whatever it was in Des Moines, Iowa that we had to stay in- but it sure wasn't Caesar's Palace either. 

We spent a lot of time walking that first day. We started out at the Fashion Show Mall and meandered over to M&M world (yesssss...) On walkjogrun.net it was well over 5 miles that we pounded the pavement. The babes were fantastic. Little Miss had a great time looking at everything. She was happy in her stroller, happy to be carried- she was just happy. She even napped when she was supposed to. It was fantastic. Jess's Little Man was great too. He is still little enough that he can sleep whenever he wants to. I must say though that she and I are the most impressive ones by far. We are veteran nursing Mamas now. We fed those babies in the atrium of the shops at Caesar's Palace, in restaurants, and on a bench outside M&M world. We got a kick out of it, because while we were inside no even looked our way, but outside (we were sitting near a sidewalk) people were staring at us even though we both used nursing covers. The irony was not lost on us. 

The boys in front of a fountain of Apollo 

Little Miss's first movie! It was a 10 min movie at M&M world. Don't worry the 3D glasses are sanitized

We stayed for 3 nights, and decided that the second and third nights we would trade babysitting and each couple would go see a show. I wish I had a picture to commemorate it, but it was our first date with just me and Alex since Little Miss was born! We saw Cirque du Soleil's Mystere, and it was a-maze-ing. I spent the majority of the show with my mouth hanging open. It was the cheapest Cirque show, but man it was fabulous. What a fun way to start dating my husband again!

Day two was more walking, but not as far, and at a much slower pace. 

Outside the Venetian

The buffet at The Paris

A major part of our trip centered around the ability to purchase a pass that would let us into buffets all over the strip for 24 hours. We planned it so we had a later dinner one evening when we purchased the pass, then we were able to eat breakfast, lunch and an early dinner the next day, all for one price. The mistake that we made was going for the closest buffet the afternoon of the second day. While it was fun to take pictures of the flamingos at The Flamingo, it was a costly mistake for me. It was a good thing we went out for our date the night before because I got si-i-i-ick. Fortunately it didn't affect Daniel and Jess's  date night. 

The Fateful Flamingo

By the next morning I was feeling well enough to curl up in the back of the car and go home back to SLC, and we left without much of a delay. 

We had a great time -food poisoning notwithstanding- and loved being with friends and family. 

Goodies

I've been on a peanut butter dessert kick lately, so tonight we're making these peanut butter graham cracker balls:

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and I am impatiently waiting for the peanut butter mixture to freeze. They have to be better (for you) than the version with 3 cups of powdered sugar... right??

Great-Grandparents

I was lucky enough to know some of my great-grandparents. My maternal grandmother's mother lived until I was 19, and her father until I was 23. We visited them each summer for many years and I well remember walking through their gardens and pastures. I love the pictures that I have with them, and of them. 

Little Miss is lucky enough to have six of her eight great-grandparents living, and I'm so glad that I get to take pictures of them with her. On a recent trip, we got to meet up with both sets of Alex's grandparents for pictures. 

Little Miss already met my grandmother and her husband, and I can't wait to introduce her to my grandfather  and his wife too. 

7 Months

It's getting harder to get a picture of this little gal just smiling these days. She is so curious and expressive. It is so fun to watch her go through so many ranges of emotion and watcher her consider new things.

She's a champ at rolling, she's still working on getting her teeth in, and she's doing great with solid foods. Pears and prunes have been her favorite so far, with green beans being tolerable and rice and oatmeal cereal being simply unbearable, even when mixed with delicious things. She had learned to stick her tongue out, she can use a straw to get a drink (but not a sippy cup...) and she loves to try to feed herself. 

She loves:

bathtime, as always

watching Luna run around

chewing on everything

sitting up

peek-a-boo

walks in the stroller

being tossed in the air

teething crackers

She laughs at:

Daddy's duck noises

being tickled

Luna running around

bouncing, jumping tossing her around

She hates:

baby cereals

being sleepy

being left out of sight

She is also getting a little shy these days. When someone new talks to her she'll turn her head and put her hand in front of her face, or she'll turn her head into my shoulder and peek around a them. It is very coy and very cute!

Writing Prompt

Sometimes I need encouragement to write, as it does not always come naturally to me. So  this little beauty on Pintrest caught my attention.

Hands down, I pick a zoo. I love the feeling that you can walk around and experience a slice of another part of the world. I love the sounds and smells of different animals. I love to study the way they move, the way they communicate, both with one another and with their human caretakers. Watching and spending time with plants and animals is food to my soul. While I love to be transported by a good book, or a good piece of art, there is nothing like being around animals.

Which would you pick?

Featuring...

You guys. I've been featured... My most globe-trotting friend, Erica, has featured my stencil wall over at the Girly Side of Travel. Check it out!

Erica has lived the life that many of us dreamed of. After getting her undergrad in biology, she taught in Japan for a few years. She took frequent trips with her students to all sorts of exotic places, and recently returned from a 3 month trip around the world acting as a translator on a cruise ship. She's eaten foods I can't pronounce, and I imagine has more stamps in that passport of hers than any 20-something-year-old should! I don't get to talk to her or see her enough, but I sure do love to hear all of her amazing stories. Basically I'm honored that she loved my humble little wall.

Check out all of her amazing travel experiences here! And Erica, next time you head through the Suez Canal, take me with you. As long as it's safe.

Image by Erica, from her stay at the Red Sea. Sooo jealous. 

Getting the Word Out

I am excited to announce that some good friends of mine are starting the road to adoption. They were some of the best next-door neighbors we could have asked for, and not bad cooks either. No seriously, we did a dinner group with them and we ate together once a week, with each couple trading who made dinner. It was awesome! They have started a blog, and are looking for a way to contact a possible birth mother, so I'm doing my best to get the word out!

So if you know of anyone, there is a fantastic couple (actually, there are so very many) who are unable to have their own biological children that would make dedicated and loving parents.

Friends, keep your ears open, and pass the word along if you can.

Meet Walt and Tiffany at their blog: http://waltandtiff.blogspot.com/

And take a look at those gorgeous faces!

Use it up, Wear it out

Have you heard that phrase?

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.

That is my new unofficial motto. My grandparents grew up in the Depression. Papa was born in 1908, and Nana was born in 1916. So not only did they grow up during the Depression, but my Papa had finished 8th grade and left his parents home to be on his own . By the time the Depression hit, he was a young single man. My Dad was, in his own words, the "tail-end-Charlie" of the family. Papa was nearly 50 by the time my Dad was born.

Nana and Papa fascinated me as a kid. They were amazing examples of hard work and thrift; Their basement had row after row of home-grown, home-canned fruits and vegetables (the spiders kept me from examining things too closely- i have always been terrified...). They kept a good sized backyard garden late into their 80's. Papa had a shop, and was one of the handiest men I knew. Nana was quite the accomplished poet, and was an amazing cook and seamstress. Though I never heard them say the phrase, they lived by it: Use it up, wear it our, make it do, or do without. (I did hear several "eat it or wear it" stories however...)

We live in a different time now, but I would still like those values to be a part of my life: thrift, economy, creativity, and hard work. These values aren't just steps to take, though. They make up a lifestyle. I'm trying to figure out how well I live up to this lifestyle. How much do I consume? How much do I waste? How much do I spend? What example am I teaching my daughter? How can I do better?

There is a lot of pressure today to consume more, to be busier, to get exactly what you want and to have it now. I don't want to fall into that trap.

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Lamp

I've been inspired by this lamp. 

Actually, I was inspired by a large and very shiny brass lamp that Alex snagged from next to the dumpster at our last apartment. It has that same hammered texture, but it is 90's shiny brass. I'm trying to figure out if I should try to distress it and make it look a little weathered, or find a way to make it look silver.... I really like the silver look. I just need the courage to crack open a can of spray paint. I hear good things about Krylon Looking Glass, but it says it is for glass, not metal. 

What think ye?

A Christmas Present to Myself

When we were looking to move into our current rental, one of the first things we asked the realtor was "will we be able to paint here?"And this is why:

 

This is from the kitchen looking into the dining room/living room

From the living room looking into the dining room/kitchen doorway. 

I was too horrified to take more pictures of this. I wish we had the pictures from the listing actually. The place is in good shape other than the original paint choices. These colors were repeated in the bedrooms upstairs: the master being the same intense blue of the kitchen, Little Miss's room the same green, and the office was the same camel color. Now to give our landlords credit, they agreed that they didn't pick the best colors, and told us that we were welcome to paint (I suspect they were a little relieved actually) as long as we picked more neutral colors. 

So before we moved in, we picked some colors and got to painting. This was accomplished over a looong weekend (thurs-sunday), mostly by my Mother-in-Law who graciously flew in to help us, and a few other dedicated friends. I did as much as I could, but 3 month old babies take quite a bit of time. I became rater adept at cutting in though, if I do say so myself. 

We picked Behr Chocolate Froth in satin for downstairs, and the shade darker, Wheat Bread in eggshell for the bedrooms. 

Look! Luna even got into painting! What a good helper...

I love the Wheat Bread color. It is a warm gray, that looks a bit like putty, or clay in a nice cozy way. I would have put that downstairs too... but I can't remember why I didn't. There was a reason though. 

The original plan was to get a quart of a different color for an accent wall in the kitchen and one in the master bedroom. Not wanting to spend the extra $30 it would have cost, I decided to get creative. With the help of a friend- and by help I mean I stole her idea and borrowed her stencil for an extended amount of time- I decided to pull the trigger on the accent walls. I decided on a 12 inch stripe for the kitchen wall, and a semi-organic-modern type stencil pattern for the master bedroom. I decided to just use the extra paint that we had and go for a more subtle tone-on-tone look, rather than an in your face new color. 

The stripes on the kitchen wall took maybe 3 hours total. They were pretty quick, and I love the result. 

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I have at the moment, complete with my cookie-cutter Christmas decorations. I will post more later. 

The stencil took SIGNIFICANTLY longer. I think I spent a total of 15 hours on this, stretched over several weeks. I could have saved about 3 hours, but it took me time to refine my technique. I could have also saved some time had I been willing to shell out for a bigger stencil like the one here, but I wanted to keep this on the cheap. So I used that little stencil to make 210 tiles on the wall, along with about 30 half-tiles on the bottom and side borders to fill things in. I was dragging my feet for so long that I made a promise to myself that I would finish it before we left for Christmas break. So it was my present to myself. 

The part that took the longest was making the registration marks, but that was also the most important. It allowed me to do tiles at random and not wait for things to dry, like you see above. Had I been smart, I would have started at the top middle of the wall and used a level. I would have done the registration marks for the top row first, then filled down. What I actually did was start in the top left corner and work down and out from there. In the picture below, you can see how the wall bows a bit, which made things wonky, and I somehow angled upward, so that by the time I reached the opposite wall, I was off by about half of one of the tiles. In the picture below you can see the blue painters tape dots on the very  top stop about 6 in... thats how quickly I stopped being able to get to the top of the wall...

Fortunately though, there are no strong horizontal lines in this pattern, and when you look at the whole wall you can barely tell. Especially when I don't show you a picture of the top or bottom of the wall... :)

I LOVE the result, and it is motivating me to finish up some other changes I will be making. I already have fabric to make a couple shams, and Alex and I are talking about re-painting the (free) headboard and the drawers on the side tables. He even tossed out the idea of letting me paint them a dark gray-ey-purple-ey color. This is big people. This is big. 

6 Months

This may have been my favorite set of monthly photos to take, and s you look through, I'm sure it will be clear why. You will also notice a showcase of Little Miss's new talent. 

(My personal favorite)

 Here you see she notices Luna of to her right, who then deposits a gift. Luna I'm sure left the gift because I was making all kinds of funny noises to get these expressions out of Little Miss. 

 Little Miss takes it upon herself to examine the gift. Mom removed the gift. 

 Luna decides to make her own examination of baby. 

And we'll end with another favorite. :)

So the big update:

Little Miss is now accomplished at sitting up. She can balance for several minutes while she is calm, but if she gets distracted or excited- over she goes. She has also finally remembered how to roll over, and can do so at any time, albeit in only one direction and only from front to back. She rocks from side to side pretty well on her back though. She is also starting to grow a bit more fluffy hair. It's hard to tell what color it is- in some light it has a bit of a reddish tint (as do her eyelashes) but one thing is for sure, it's pretty light! We'll see if it ends up straight like mine, (please oh please!) or wavy like her Daddy's.

We've also started on solid foods. attempting to feed her solid food. That deserves a post in its own right.... Let's just say we've taken a few steps back, and she's doing ok. It helps if I just give her the spoon and let her chew on it. Otherwise it all goes in and right back out.

Things that make her laugh: peek-a-boo, being sniffed/licked by dogs, 'munching' on her belly (but not blowing raspberries), being tossed around, dancing, singing, and her reflection.

She is still as happy as ever. Can't wait to see what her 6 months stats are this week!

I forgot to mention her talking! She repeats buh and puh over and over again. She is blowing raspberries with her lips and her tongue, and generally exploring her voice. She talks most when she has a few minutes to herself either in her chair or on the floor. She is more fascinated by my face when I try to talk to her and she stops talking herself.