Painting is fun but messy

One of Goody's birthday gifts from me was some watercolor paints and paper. I'm not exactly sure why we did not paint until now, but she really loves it. This was her first painting. She is really into mixing colors, layers, and painting circles. She does trianlges now, too.

Oh, and for whatever reason, she will NOT allow this to be posted for public viewing on the refrigerator. I've tried and she slides a chair over and takes it down every single time.

Invitations

These are the invitations I made for Goody's birthday party. Most have been distributed. I think they turned out pretty cute! In case you couldn't tell, the worm is a two!

Another "Missed" Halloween

Halloweed used to be my favorite of all holiday. I loved to go over the top with my costumes, spending hundreds of hours and unbudgeted amounts of dollars on my costumes. However, this will mark the 3rd one in a row without a costume of festivities of any kind for me (I take that back, the wonderful husband did organize a pumpkin carving party, so we did have jack-o-lanterns). In 2006, I was pregnant and probably throwing up. Last year, Goody was too young and we just weren't up to it. And this year, Goody came home from her baby sitter throwing up. I gave her a bath and showed her the unicorn costume and she wanted to wear it, so I let her. She was awake for about 10 minutes after I put it on, but she would NOT allow me to remove it or even unzip it a little. Here she is, proof that unicorns are magical, indeed.

New Hat

I made Goody a new hat. I think I'll post a tutorial soon on craftster.

Oops. I'll have to fix that this afternoon. Sideways baby.

Little Dress for a Little Girl

Our long-time friend Brad was married back at the beginning of September. Tim was one of the best men (Brad wanted all three groomsmen to be called best men) and looked so handsome in his tuxedo. So, of course, I thought Goody should look extra cute in a special Mama-made dress. I used a pattern that Tim's mother so graciously let me have. I love, love these vintage patterns. I will sometimes just sit and look at them all (I think I posted about this before). I photo-copied this pattern before using; it was already cut out and seemed so delicate, I couldn't imagine sticking pins through it.







It turned out great! I joke that the dress was built around the shoes, but I guess it isn't much of a joke. I loved the little orange shoes Nicole helped me find (at Williamsville, of course) so much I shopped for fabric based on 2 criteria: must match the shoes, and must match the baby's blue eyes. Those shoes were a hit at the wedding; when people realized her shoes were squeaking they would go totally nuts over it; and it didn't take Goody long to realize it either!

I found this Tracy Porter fabric at Joann's, 40% off with my coupon of course. It looks much more baby blue in real life. Here's a super crappy picture of it (after it was worn, of course):


I didn't take my camera to the wedding. It was all I could do to get home from work, get me and the baby dressed, and get to the wedding before it started! The wedding photographer did get a couple of really nice shots of Goody at the wedding, which was held at the beautiful Ohme Gardens. I'll be ordering some of those prints--along with some shots of Tim in his tux (when will I see that again?) and will post them then.

Come on, let's go!

We're making all the final arrangements for our trip to Mississippi! We're all excited to get a vacation. See you all soon!

Baby Girl Sized Furniture

Hmmm....what's this thing?

Is this how it works?

I think this is right!?

Update for the sake of update.

Not really much to report on these days. Just working and watching the baby. Now that Tim is back at an official job, the baby juggle has reached monumental levels. We also recently found out we are losing our baby sitter, who watches Goody for just 4 hours, twice per week. And since we live in such a small town, we still haven't been able to find a replacement. The trials of having a baby!

I've been diligently watching the price of airfare to JAN since December, and much to my dismay, it only keeps getting higher. We're still coming, even if it means we have to sell one of the dogs (jsut kidding...they're priceless). Especially since now, Misha lets Goody "ride" her. All I have to do is sing "Ride a little Misha down to town..." and Goody goes over and sits on her. So cute!

Little girl is walking all over the place now. On Tuesday, she decided "Hey, I can do this!" and now just motors around the house and yard and wherever!

Birthday!

Sure, it was over a week ago (Monday the 7th), but we're still celebrating being one!

Being one is almost like being a big girl...

But it still comes with its ups and downs...

Sleeping Babies

Not that I was happy for Goody to have been sick, but as I discussed with some other Moms, when babies are sick they revert to that super-cuddly or super-needy (depending on the caregiver's state of the mind at the moment) stage like when we still counted their ages in weeks. Here's one of Goody demonstrating the rare "asleep on Daddy's chest" technique.

Developmental Milestones

Okay, so these are probably not the milestones that your pediatrician is looking for, but they sure are cute ones. Goody has learned to 1)walk, 2)kiss, and 3)follow commands. The walking part she's been working on for a while now. She got a walker from her Mama and Papa at Christmas, and she loves to push it around the house. But last Wednesday, I was picking her up from the baby sitter, and while I gathered her things I put her down and she was standing there dancing (she loves music, by the way) and then just decided to go. She took about 10 steps before she fell down. SO CUTE!! I don't have a picture of her walking yet (and Daddy has the camera--he's in Haines, Alaska which I will post about next week) but here's a shot of her at her bookshelf. You can see she has no need to hold on to anything but the books!

For milestone number 2, last week she learned to give me a kiss. Daddy kisses took another couple of days. They are typically sort of open-mouth as we are still working on how to make kissy lips. Here she is kissing Spike (Snoopy's brother, part of the collection I had as a child).

And #3, following commands, is equally fun. I only just realized that she does for sure have language comprehension. You can tell her: give me a kiss, where's Rupert (she looks for him), come here, stand up, arms up, where's my nose (she touches it, sometimes not so gently), where's my lips, say bye or hi (comes with a wave and sometimes she says hi or bye), or throw it (either the ball or a toy for Rupert). She's learning so fast! Here she is waving Hi to Daddy while he was out trying to speed along spring in the back yard.

We've survived.

Well we are finally winding down a month of sickness. Tim is finally better, after having a string of illnesses ranging from sinus infections to norovirus back to a cold. Poor guy. And Goody didn't fare much better, as you see in the previous post. She's just winding up a cold now as well. I've still got a hacking cough, but I'm not totally debilitated.

I still can't get my camera to unload. What a pain. Most of my few spare "computer minutes" have been wasted trying to get the blasted thing to work. When you pay that much for a little plastic and trace metal box, you expect it to work properly for oh, I don't know, at least more the 3 months!!!

Anyway, Goody is awesome and has some new skills. I won't tell you more until I have pictures to prove it. I love her teeth. Although I think she may have an underbite. Nothing serious, it will probably go away when her top teeth come all the way in. Meanwhile, it is cute!

Sick Biscuit

Poor little Goody has been sick twice over the last week. Apparently, all children under 10 years old in this town are sick with this same thing....vomiting, vomiting, vomiting. Oh, and a few lucky adults, too. Fortunately, neither of us has caught it yet, and by the number of times Goody has puked on my chest, I'd say I have a pretty good immunity. She is better today and is snoozing on the couch right now, finally able to hold down some milk and a little pedialtye/apple juice mixture. Here's a cuter version of how she looks throwing up:



AND

Not a little piggy.

Poor Goody will have to look back one day and see that picture from the "new teeth" post. Here's one so you know she's still just a cute little muffin with more teeth:

Bananas for Monkey

Monkey

Goody Monkey

Monkey Biscuit

Monkey, Monkey

Monkey Moo

Silly Monkey

Sock Monkey

Little Monkey

Monkey Pie

So much for that!

Uh, please disregard my last post for just a minute. I experienced some technical difficulties getting the new pictures onto my computer. My Sony Cybershot is a great little camera; however, if I hadn't been in such a rush (long story about a shopping spree paid for by my employer), I would have done a little more research. Most notable, the software that comes with the camera totally sucks and I just had to unload the images (400+) one by one with the Microsoft camera wizard. Super awesome.

Anyway, the pictures are finally unloaded. All the way back to Christmas. I am tempted to post the most recent ones, of course, but I think I will just play catch-up and you all out there will have to wait to see the little Goody's new horse teeth.

Ok. ok. I can't do it. Here's a little teaser of Miss Toothsome, just as her new front teeth were coming in:

Now, let's rewind a bit...all the way back to Christmas. Goody enjoyed the presents (especially the ribbons and paper).

Everyone had a good time and learned new things like waving...

And shoveling snow...

And we all played and giggled and played...

Until we were so tired we could barely keep our eyes open.

No good reason

I can't come up with a good enough reason it has taken me so long to post. Oh, don't get me wrong, I have plenty of excuses I could give, but I think it just boils down to I just haven't really felt like it. Anyway, here I am again; maybe I will stick around a bit this time.

Of course I have a million photos of the little biscuit, most of which are still on the camera.

So I will make a commitment to those precious few of you readers out there: I'll post at least twice a week, and add a picture on at least one of those posts. Otherwise, what's the real point of this blog?

Holiday Cheer

I hope everyone is having wonderful holidays so far. I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year. Goody is at a fun age. To her, everything is so fun and new, and those little smiles and chuckles sure do make me happy.

Here she is at Thanksgiving, in the outfit from Aunt Nicole:

And here, just hanging out (the bow--this is the first time she's worn a bow! and New Balance tennis shoes also thanks to Aunt Nicole):

CHEEKS! They run in the family apparently:

A whole month?

Not too long ago, I mentioned to Tim that I hope the rest of our lives don't go by as fast as the last 8 months have. Sitting down to post to my blog, however, has clued me in to the fact that it is certainly going to. Last post was October 24??? How on earth did it go by so fast?

To say I've been "busy" is sort of a joke. Here's a brief summary:

1. hosted Tim's family for a week (which had its own surprises):

2. traveled to Mississippi with a 7 month-old baby:

3. went to Seattle for a meeting.

4. cleaned the house for an appraisal:

5. cooked Thanksgiving dinner for 12 or so people.

6. cooked Tim's birthday dinner for 12 or so other people.

7. hosted a baby shower.

All this plus I worked 40 hours a week, have a baby that crawls wherever she wants, watched someone else's baby along with Goody on one of my days off (ha!), and you might guess I'm a little worn out. Not too much crafting going on here, which kills me because Christmas is coming up and I had really hoped to craft some hand-made gifts. Maybe I should just start on next year's and I might actually have a doable deadline.

Fall is here.

We've still got some color on the trees here; I think the high point was probably last week. I caught a few pictures of Goody and Tim out throwing the flippy-flopper (like a fabric frisbee)for Roo.

I think Goody really enjoys these moments with her Daddy. She loves to watch the dogs play, and looking around at all the neat things outside.

And of course, I think Daddy loves the opportunity to play with all of his "kids".