Monday, August 31, 2009

Splish Splash!

Friday, August 28, 2009

Meet Huey


I would like to introduce you to Huey. He's a baby pygmie goat my in-laws are raising. He's so cute. I know this picture is terrible. It has an explanation, though--(if you don't care about the explanation, skip to the next paragraph):

Huey AND his mama are being adopted by my in-laws, but Huey needed to be weaned from his mother's milk, so Huey came alone until her milk dries up. The first day or so he cried and wouldn't eat and was as lonely as a little goat could be. So, the neighbors (who have Huey's mama) brought him a friend to stay for a couple weeks. It totally worked and now Huey is happy and eats his goat food. However, this goat friend named Ivory, is a grown male. Ivory has had his horns removed, but he still likes to butt, and sideswipe, and ram people. Jeremy loved wrestling with him--Jeremy laughing the whole time, and Ivory wagging his tail happily, too. But we all know it's not fun for a little girl to get rammed by a goat (trust me, it happened to me at Hogle Zoo when I was a little girl and I still am wary around goats because of it), so we had to always be keeping an eye on Ivory while we were visiting Huey. Thus we didn't get a great picture of Huey yet.

But check out Miranda's cute boots she gets to wear when she feeds the chickens and goats and dogs. She calls them her "frogs". We'll get a good picture of Huey and maybe his mama, too, soon. I also need to post pictures of the chickes--they're getting all fat and should start laying eggs soon enough!

Park Portraits

Miranda has gotten more brave over the summer, she is going down the slides all by herself now! She also tries to climb ladders and other things that are a little too advanced for her, so I have to stay close in case she loses her balance.
Brad likes being outdoors almost anytime, so even he has enjoyed all our trips to the park this summer.

He mostly just gets held or set on a blanket on the grass to play with toys or watch all the kids running around. Sometimes when it's not too busy, I put him in the baby swing. I love this picture of his tiny bare feet hanging over the footprints of the 'big kids' who swung before him.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Never, Sometimes, and Always

I Never:
Drink milk
Get to sleep in past 7:00 am
Play the piano, paint/draw, or speak Spanish anymore
Want naptime to end

I Sometimes:
Watch Oprah
Floss
Don't even care if my house is messy or dirty
Wish I had gotten a different Bachelor's Degree

I Always:
Check the obituaries online
Love when Jeremy comes home early
Pre-wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher
Wish we had trained our dog so I could take him on a walk without my shoulder getting dislocated

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Let's Go On Vacation

This hotel suite is in Costa Rica, called Hotel Costa Verde.


Monday, August 17, 2009

"Oregon Trail" and Other Goodies

I love my iPhone. I can't believe how useless my old cell phone was before compared to the iPhone. Let me just tell you about some of the features (since you were wondering, right?)

The GPS. Great for finding addresses when you're lost in Daybreak or where the nearest Little Caesar's is and how to get there.

Toddler Games. This is crazy cool for Miranda when I give her my phone and let her go for it. There are tons of things like flash cards and recognizing shapes and matching animal sounds to their picture.

Facebook. I can now be a star facebooker with the easy app. I don't know that I will be, but I can be...

Lose It! It's like a food journal that I enter all my food I ate during the day and how much exercise I did and it tells me how many calories I have left to eat in order to reach my weight loss goal. I lost one pound last week :)

Oregon Trail. Where my Ridgecrest peeps at? You know how we LOVED this game during 'computer time' in elementary school? Yeah. It's on my iPhone! I just got to shoot little squirrels and chose whether to ford across the river or take a ferry. Then little Martha got dysentery. Next time we'll shell out the cash to take the ferry.

And the best thing about all these favorite apps is they were all free ones. Even Oregon Trail. Although...Oregon Trail is the Free Version, which is just like a little teaser that only takes about five minutes to play so that you will buy the Full Version. I may have to shell out the five bucks to get the Full Version. But then again, how much time can one really justify wasting on Blogger, e-mail, Facebook, and iPhone apps to boot?

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Destined for Entomophobia


"Entomophobia: a common fear of or aversion to insects and similar arthropods, and even other "bugs", such as worms. This condition causes a slight to severe emotional reaction, a form of anxiety or a panic attack."*

Yup. She's going to catch on to me. All this time I've been pretending I like bugs, but really, how long can you fool a toddler? Ants, potato bugs, lady bugs, even a daddy long legs here and there, okay. I'm fine with that. Kind of. Miranda--two years old and wonderful--loves bugs. She calls them "cute" and scouts them out all over the yard. She likes to hold them and she wants me to hold them and share in her joy of their bug-ness.

Don't get me wrong. I love that she loves them. I want her to grow up with as little phobic crutches as possible. What mother wouldn't want her daughter to be strong and brave?

But I'm afraid I'm already starting to ruin her. Example: She wants to hold ants. I'm not scared of ants, I just don't like them crawling all over me and I don't want to pick them up in case I squish them between my fingers. (Squished bug is almost as gross as live bug.) So, I get a paper, scoop up the ant with it, and drop it from the paper into her lovingly cupped hands. I even watch it wiggle around on her arm and call it "cute". So the other day, she sees a potato bug and wants to hold it. Without even asking me to get it for her, she starts running into the house to "get a paper".

Second example: Last night our family was sitting out on the porch enjoying the warm summer night. I look up above me, and there is a katydid on the house. I point it out to the family and back up to the door. Miranda and Jeremy are enthralled with it's faux leaf splendor. I am trying to protect myself and the baby, deciding whether to go off the porch or into the house. I know, I know. Katydids are the geeky-ist creatures ever. Mostly harmless, but let's be realistic--they do have WINGS. Later, I told Jeremy I was ashamed I was freaked out by it. I asked him if he thought Miranda noticed I was fleeing it's presence or not. He said she was totally picking up on my phobic cues.

What am I going to do?!? Is she destined to be scared of bugs because I TAUGHT her to ignore her NATURAL love of all creatures, including bugs?

*Excerpt from Wikipedia

Owl-phabet

Happy Birthday Abby! You are such a sweet little niece and I know since you are only barely two and can already sing the whole "ABC Song" that you will really enjoy these owls. They have all the letters of the alphabet on their tummies, plus an extra 'letter B' so you can spell out your name! Have fun spelling, sorting, and make believing. We love you!



I got this idea and pattern here. My sister and I loved the idea, but I had no idea how much time it would take. I think it was worth it, though. I love that they are tiny and I could use scraps of fabric and Fiberfill I already had--the only expense was a couple bags of random buttons I got from Wal-Mart for about $1.50 each. I still want to make a set for Miranda, I think, but maybe she won't get them until she turns three. He he.

Also, I wanted to note that the pattern calls for cutting out cardboard circles and then fabric circles to glue on to the cardboard, which you would then sew onto the bottoms. However, about the time I was finished sewing up all 27 of these (including the extra B) I wanted to hide my sewing box and not look at handstiching another thing for at least a month. I was just going to leave them with nothing on the bottom, but then they wouldn't stand up. My mother-in-law had the great idea of attaching buttons, which saved tons of time and sanity, and--in my opinion--goes really well with them. Bonus: now they make a little clicking noise on the table that Miranda loved as she hopped them around. Here's some more pictures of them on Flickr if you want to get up the motivation to make a set for your toddler. Here's a post-embroidered, pre-stuffed photo. I used a mini muffin tin to sort buttons, thread, and owls. Too bad the muffin tin only holds 24--it's the perfect size and maximizes the button 'click click' noise on the bottom!

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Busy Baby

This is how I roll.
I find stuff (and people) to drool on.

Sometimes this is only way Mom gets away with not holding me.
It's all in a day's work.
And it's about to get worse because I'm getting closer to crawling.

Happy Half B-day


My sweet baby is six months old already!