Snow Day

Camryn was so excited to play in the snow this past week.  Only it was too cold to be out there more than 15 minutes, which is about how long it took us to get her all bundled up.

Here she is lying on the ground.  I asked if she was making a snow angel and she said "No.  Daddy pushed me down."  Ha!

Look how red her little cheeks were.  We originally had the scarf wrapped around her face but that didn't do much since she spent most of the time on the ground or tasting the snow.

Meanwhile, Darcy has had a packed 2 weeks.  It didn't take long after she began crawling for her to begin pulling up on just about everything and now climbing stairs.  Although, she struggles on the stairs unless it's during naked time.  The clothes don't give her enough friction and she slips too much.

She's definitely feeling like a bigger kid. She's going after all of her sister's toys and wants to play with her more.

I brought out all of my old Barbies for Camryn to play with and Darcy made it her mission to taste each one's hair. It took an entire day but I think she was successful. Ha! Actually that night was the first time she pulled herself up to a stand. Camryn had moved all of the Barbies up on the couch and Miss D pulled herself right on up to see what was going on.

The next day Camryn had finished playing with them and put them all back in the box with the lid on loosely and then walked away. Darcy pulled herself up, popped off the top and looked inside.  I was watching from the kitchen and yelled "Hey!  Darcy Rae!  Are you supposed to be doing that?"  She just looked at me and started laughing. 

One of her favorite spots.  We're constantly pulling her off the TV.




Pulling herself up by her chair. I guess she was looking for puffs that she left behind from a previous meal.

Here's Craig with his girls.

New tricks

Darcy has learned a new trick. She started crawling on New Year's Eve and goes a little farther each day.

In fact I actually experienced for the first time since she's been born the feeling of her moving away from me. The stinker is so clingy, and still is most of the time, but she is getting more comfortable with her new skill. The hardwood floor still poses a challenge. Here she is chasing after one of Camryn's balls. Forgive the length (2 minutes, I think). I need to learn how to use the editing software better.  NOTE: If the screen isn't showing up, try refreshing your screen.  That worked for me.

Tonight she started feeling a little more certain of herself and she's aiming for higher ground.

And then Cam saw the camera turn on so she requested to jump in! LOL!  Darcy's face is like "hey wait! I'm still here!"

And a couple other random pics. This was Camryn's idea of entertaining Darcy for me for a few minutes the other night.  She grabbed all of the toys around the room and made a colorful circle for Darcy.  Ha!  She looks content at least.

New Year. New Attitude.

OK. This is going to be a good year.  No, a great year!  Tonight I was looking at upcoming race events and planning out my training schedule for the April half marathon. I began to get excited for the potential this year holds.  So in the spirit of tradition, I have made resolutions.  I never make them.  This is the first year I think I've actually put them in writing.  Here are my 2011 resolutions (in no special order).  I'm keeping this list short so it's manageable.  (I haven't forgotten that I have a 7 month old in the house.)

1.  Get a job.
2.  Pray more. 
3.  Take time with Camryn once each day to reflect on what we're grateful for in our lives.
4.  Eat more fruit.
5.  Drink way more water.
6.  Run two half marathons.   

Here's wishing you all luck on your goals for this year.

Goodbye 2010!

While there were many highlights of the year, Camryn's first dance recital, Chris and Jessica's wedding, the LONG awaited addition of little miss Darcy Rae, Jon and Liz completing their adoption paperwork for a new little nephew or niece, and a much-needed weekend to visit Jeff in San Diego, the overall mood of the year, at least for me, has been BLAH.  I really, really hate to say that. I mean, I just mentioned so many blessings. I'm sure I sound completely ungrateful for what's been given to me this year. I don't mean to.

My life is just not complete without work.  I'm going on 10 months unemployed and have become one of those ugly statistics.  I have no balance in my life right now and it makes for some tough days emotionally.  Hard to keep it together.  And there have been some days (more than I care to mention) where I've been a complete you-know-what to be around this year.  My poor family.

That's all I'm going to say.  I'm hoping and praying for work in 2011.  And hoping a positive attitude adjustment soon follows.

See ya 2010.  I'm drop kicking you out the door!

Taking a moment to laugh

Tonight we had the entire family back in the house.  Camryn has been home for more than 24 hours after being pumped full of fluids to rehydrate herself at the hospital.  My stomach bug is gone.  And Craig picked up Darcy from his parent's house.  We got her out of the germ house in hopes that she would escape this crazy stomach virus.

Anyway, I had a period of about 15-20 minutes tonight that I have to thank God that I was able to laugh at. 

It started at the end of dinner.  Well at the end of Craig's, my and Darcy's dinner.  Camryn usually sits at the table for another 20+ minutes partially because she talks the entire time we're eating and when she is left alone to eat her cold food she begins refusing to eat whatever I've made.   (Oh, I remember stalling on certain foods with parents.  And holding my nose while eating cold peas so I wouldn't have to taste them.  And a list of other foods.  I was so picky.  I'm sorry guys.)  So...I was battling Camryn to eat and even out of the goodness of my heart reheated her dinner.  I was cleaning up the dishes, so when I noticed she was down to a few bites I came over to observe the grand finale.  I noticed she knocked half of her bite into her lap "on accident" and when I walked around the table, half of her dinner was on her lap and on the stinkin' floor!  I yelled at her to get upstairs and change her clothes.

When she came back down she asked if she could fix my hair.  I needed to change Darcy's diaper, so I said okay if you can do it while I'm cleaning her up.  So as Camryn is inserting at least 7 multi-colored clips in my hair I notice Princess Buttercup has a horribly nasty diaper and it has traveled up her back side.  I accidentally got some of it on the carpet, and she is so squirmy it was all I could do to get that outfit off without rubbing it all through her hair.  By this point she was flipped over rocking on all fours with her bottom in the air and I noticed she had something in her mouth.  Only I couldn't fish it out because I had poop on my hands.  I left her her in the buff while I ran to wash my hands.  Craig was able to get a piece of tape out of her mouth before I could get back.  I just vacuumed today too!  That figures she would find the one thing I missed.

After getting a fresh diaper on her I went to rinse off the crap from her outfit when I hear "mommy, I spilled your water all over the floor."  She grabs a towel to start cleaning up and I grab the carpet cleaner to clean off the poop on the floor.  As I'm scrubbing the carpet I look up and Camryn has moved from mopping up the water and grabbed a freshly cleaned mattress pad (that took 2 days to dry because it's the awesome pillow top kind) out of the laundry basket and is using it like a sled on the dirty wood floor.

Really?

Wow! I'm looking sweet!



She may look sweet, but look out!  She can be quite the little trouble maker. In fact as I'm typing this I had to get on her case for using the chair as a jungle gym. (Yes, Dad, I do that now. LOL!)



I'm done with this day!

 I'm not mentioning the Darcy vs. Mommy battle at bath time tonight that left me soaking wet but that wasn't part of the 20 minutes. :)

Tomorrow is a new day! 

Ice cream!!!!!!!!!!

First Snow... Thanksgiving...Decorating The Tree

We've had a busy weekend and it isn't over yet.  Tomorrow, Camryn and I are heading out for a "big girl" day out.  She asked to see Wizard of Oz at the Fox Theatre for Christmas, so we will be dressing up and going together.

But, before I get ahead of myself, we have Thanksgiving.  It actually snowed here on Thursday.  Not enough to stick, but I had to get Darcy outside for a picture of her first snow.  Keep the "where was her coat?" comments to yourself. We were only out there for a minute.

She thinks she's hot stuff!  :)

Camryn found her some people to play games with her.  She's turned into quite the little card player.  Here she's whipping Aunt Jessie and Uncle Chris at memory.

We put up the tree yesterday; but added the ornaments tonight.  Here's Darcy's idea of helping.  Yes, she's chewing on bubble wrap, but I promise I was keeping an eye on her. Besides she insisted on being in the middle fo things and this was a better option then the tissue paper which she can consume before anyone realizes what's happened.

Cam was so excited to hang up ornaments.  She was a huge help this year.  But she didn't want to stop for breaks when Darcy got bored.

Christmas pics

Rather than the normal dress up Christmas pictures, I went a different route this year.  The only thing that would have made the picture more true is Darcy pitching one of her fits.

Also took the opportunity to get Cam's pictures (finally getting her 4 year old pictures 3 months before she turns 5. Ah well.)  And Darcy turned 6 months this past Sunday.

Darcy is such a little stink.  She wants to be entertained at all times.  She's making motorboat sounds now which I find hilarious, has been sitting up for a few weeks now, which makes trip to the stores a lot easier since she'll sit up in the cart. And she wants so badly to move on the floor beyond rolling and scooting backwards on her belly.  At her 6 month check up she ripped the paper on the table to shreds and the doctor just looked at me and said, "her hands are so quick.  You need to child proof extra good with this child."  She weighed in off the charts at 20lbs.  And her height was 27 1/4".  I'm thinking it's time to move her to the next car seat.

Any bets?

So the little bug is now rocking on her hands and knees.  Started that new trick on Saturday.  Any bets as to when she'll start moving forward?  Cam didn't do this. She was an army crawler and didn't move on her knees and hands until much, much later.  So this is a new one for us at 5 1/2 months.

I'm going to say 3 weeks. 

Stay tuned...

If anyone still cares about October...

...here are some pictures.

I started the month out on a high note with an opportunity to skip town and spend some time with Jeff, Mom, Aunt Linda and Kai.  It was an enormous help to my mental state as I've been pretty down in the dumps about being unemployed and feeling kind of sorry for myself for being "stuck" in the house with a baby all day.  I know what you're thinking.  I won't get this time back, so I should enjoy it.  But I gotta be honest.  I don't enjoy 75% of the day.  Darcy is an absolute rotten baby.  So, many of my thoughts go to what would I be doing if I was working right now. 

Anyway...San Diego was a blast. Jeff looks great and I was so glad to get a chance to see him. Love ya Jeff!

He took mom and I to one of his favorite thinking spots.  We wound up climbing down an enormously steep set of narrow, winding stairs, passing surfers (with their boards) on our way down. 

Then on our last day, we went with Kai and Aunt Linda to a winery in Temeculah. So pretty! I really enjoyed the afternoon. Even the part where mom smushed a pesky bee with a napkin against her sandwich.

Kai loved, I mean loved the breadsticks. LOL!

Mid month my uncle passed away.  Mom, Dad, Jon and I took a road trip to Benton, MO to visit with family.  We don't see that side of the family much and it was good to catch up with everyone.

And then the pumpkin patch.  Camryn is such her daddy's girl.  We go to Rombach's every year, which is huge.  It never fails.  We walk in and Camryn picks out the first pumpkin she sees without even going through the gates to see the entire farm.  And she says "that's the one!".  To Craig's disappointment, I have to say no.  I just do. I mean, she hadn't even seen the ponies yet or the big displays that the owners have spent so long setting up.  She hasn't seen the jungle gym or stood in line for super sweet lemonade while fighting bumble bees to get to it first.  So, we kept walking.  And that's when I begin to enjoy the trip when I see Cam's face light up once she actually sees all the pumpkins. 

Here's farmer Cam.

Here are some other pics from the month, including the girls in their costumes.

Camryn was so proud of how her costume came together. She looked so pretty.  When trick or treating, she would get candy and turn around and spread her wings.  :)

And here's this stinker.  She was wearing a 9 month baby costume. It didn't have any legs to it. Keep in mind she is 5 months old here.  We had to cut off the bottom half just so she would come close to fitting in the costume.  And since it was cold we had to wrap her bottom half with a blanket. HA!

My apologies for such a long break in blogging.  It's been a crazy month and by the time the girls get to bed, I don't feel like doing much besides going to bed myself.  Hoping to be better this month and next.