Thursday is Flower Day

This semester Alan is in a floral design class to fulfil his Arts general elective credits. I talked him into it because it means that once a week he gets to bring me home flowers. The lab started this week, and this was his first assignment. A wrapped bouquet with a planned out color scheme, or something like that. All I know is that now I have pretty flowers on my kitchen table. :)

Fun in the Tub

Abs That Rock - The outtakes

I just finished up a post about the abs class I'm taking on The Skinny, a blog my walking buddy and her mom started. To look at the post I made, click here. Long story short, I ended up on my kitchen floor doing exercise moves while my dutiful husband recorded them from me. These are the clips that just didn't quite work...

Sigh...

What a day... and it's only 2:15pm... We have been very lucky so far. Elsie has made it her entire life, a whole 9 1/2 months without ever getting sick. Until today. It started around 3am when right after I feed her she puked all over the bed. Maybe not all over, just all over my side of the bed. Luckily she went back to bed without a fuss, and I spent the rest of the night on the couch. This morning she woke up with an incredibly stuffy/runny nose. How do I teach a kid to blow their nose? I've been using a nose sucker, but she really hates that.

Poor kid is pretty miserable. She has a hard time eating just because she has to stop and breathe through her mouth and she isn't used to that. She's been really clingy all day, so we've just sat and snuggled a lot. She finally went down for a nap, but that was a trial because it's hard to sleep with a stuffed up nose.

It's times like this that I feel so helpless as a parent. My poor daughter feels lousy and there's nothing I can do to make her feel better. All I can provide is comfort, and maybe a nice warm bath tonight, but that doesn't take away what's making her feel crappy. Sigh...

Alan's new laptop

We've finally saved up enough to buy Alan a new laptop. He desperately needed it; his old one was so slow the only operating system that would work on it was Ubuntu (Linux). It made it really difficult for him to work on school work or lesson plans on it because he would have to convert all the files to be able to print them off, and that would mess up the format... Really, he just needed a new laptop. After researching his options, he finally picked one out and it arrived yesterday. He was really excited and spent the day playing with it. Elsie was happy too, and wanted to help him set it up.

My cute kid

The little sneak, I look away for a second and she's found some way to get into trouble

Here she is showing off her dexterity by closing the pop up toy. She also likes to sing and talk into tubes... I think she likes the sound it makes.

Penguins?

Nine Months

Nine months today! Elsie finally has a tooth coming in. One of her bottom front teeth just broke through this morning, and I think the one next to it is about to come soon. She is quite the little chatter box. She is always talking and singing to herself or to anyone that will listen. Alan is convinced that she said "Daddy" twice last night, but I'm a little skeptical. She has finally figured out how to army crawl around, so anytime she is on the floor she is scooting around on her belly. She also really likes to walk around with our help. When sitting on someone's lap, she will grab their fingers and wiggle off their lap to make them walk around with her. She sure is a cute little thing.

Christmas Break at a glance

Lots of Elsie running around in her walker and getting into things...

Lots of eating...
Lots of playing on Grandma and Grandpa's floor...
New family pictures taken by Becky.

Decorating sugar cookies...
Christmas morning

It was a good Christmas

More eating with Grandpa... I think this is similar to the one above, but it's cute too

Bedtime stories

Geocaching with my dad's new GPS

Celebrating 2 years of marriage

A few rough nights with Elsie... She finally has a tooth coming in

Vacuuming with Grandma

Lots of new clothes

Elsie helping me sort through all her new clothes

And finally, Elsie meeting Tucker and Digby.
It was a good Christmas break. I'm glad we got to spend so much time in Oregon. The drive was long, the packing a headache, and the unpacking even worse, but it was worth it.

Away on Holiday...

Long time no post. Oh well. Our little family has been spending the last two weeks at my parents house in Oregon, and we've had a great time relaxing. Elsie has been having a lot of fun getting to know her Oregon grandparents, and she has them thoroughly wrapped around her little finger.

I've got a lot to catch up on...Christmas and all the activities we've had going on around here, but I'll save it until we get home. We have a long drive ahead of us tonight, but it will be good to be home and get back into a normal routine.

Just for good measure, here is a little video clip of Elsie's first time in a swing.