Tuesday, July 29, 2014

a healing heart

my FIL had heart surgery today
so b and i spent the last 5 or so hours
in the hospital waiting room.
once the doctor came out and told us that
it was a little bit worse than he thought,
but still a success,
we all let out a big sigh of relief and i packed up
brette to take home for a nap before she we had a meltdown.
the rest of the family stayed and waited for him to get through
recovery so they could see him.
i heard some stories about dear old dad-n-law that i
had never heard and learned a few new facts about his life.
that's always interesting.
but mel, to me, is my dessert partner.
we equally love anything sweet and often times,
we can convince each other to go back for seconds
even though both our spouses are looking at us like,
really, fatty?
we just cackle and add ice cream.
i'm really happy things went well for him today.
brette definitely needs lots more time with her grandparents.
 
we're waiting on ronnie to get home from work
and then we're headed back up there so we can visit him.
it actually ended up being a nice day with my in-laws
and i got to spend some quality time with family from
out of state that had never met brette.
of course she dazzled them.
and ps - if there is an award for best behaved kid
in a waiting room - - this girls wins.
thank god.

 
 
 
all in all,
today was a good day.
 
pray for a quick recovery and
lasting health for ronnie's dad
and my indulger-n-law.

 


Sunday, July 27, 2014

our trick pony

we've been busy over here
teaching brette the weirdest tricks.
she has three new ones.
1 - if you put out your pointer finger and say
ET phone home,
she will touch her pointer finger to yours.
i think it hilarious.
 
 
our next, and even weirder trick,
(this one ronnie taught her)
is if you say superstar
she will raise her arms straight above her head.
oh hey, its mary katherine gallagher.
 
 
her third and final trick is mimi's fault.
she started singing brette the "little green frog" song
and now brette sticks her tounge in and out
like a lizard. all. day. long.
 
 
so yeah.
our kid is cool
and easily influenced, what?
 
 
 
ps- our house has had two showings and one scheduled for tomorrow.
keeping out fingers and toes crossed.
 
 
 

Thursday, July 24, 2014

family ties

i've had a few extra hours at work in the last couple weeks
and my sister-n-laws definitely came to my rescue.
sheri, ronnie's sister, watch b for a few hours
during a morning training session.
its nice that brette got to spend time with her and her kiddos.
looks like they had some fun together.
 


 
then the next week my other sister-n-law, jaime, 
watched b for two whole days while i was at work.
(a combo of more training and my mom being gone on vacation)
i was a little worried that brette would throw down
the gauntlet since she's so used to sleeping in her own crib.
but luckily, jaime found a way to easily put her to sleep.
thank jesus.
 
and i love getting these photos throughout my day
so i can see how much fun b has with her two cousins.
i think they are going to be best friends.
 


 
these two really helped me out and gave brette fantastic days with her cousins.
ronnie, on the other hand, who is totally used to having brette
and knows her schedule,
sent me this on friday:
 
 
he took her on a bike ride when she was supposed to be napping.
idiot.
poor girl had to sleep sitting up.
 
 

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

fsbo

for those of you who don't know real estate lingo
fsbo = for sale by owner.
ronnie and i are officially going to try to sell our house.
 

i found a site that lets me list our house for free (yay!)
and it goes on all these other websites too.
 
Zillow
HotPads
Yahoo
Frontdoor
Zillow Mobile
HotPads Mobile
Backpage
ByOwnerMLS
Enormo
Oodle
Trovit
Zumper
Lovely
Trulia
Others
it lasts 60 days and then i have to renew it.
but i'm trying to be optimistic.
hopefully it will sell within that time frame.
i think if it goes longer then that,
we will either take it off the market until next spring
or list it with a realtor.
 
i guess this is just a shameless plug
for all of you locals that read this
to spread the word.
but also, i'm am really excited at the possibility
of moving somewhere new.
if i could pick up this house and take it with me,
i would.
but we've decided that dream of owning some acreage
outweighs how much i love this house.
 
 
now i have to get back to cleaning.
this place is going to be spotless!
 
 
 

Thursday, July 17, 2014

never any doubt

my cousin is basically 20 years my junior
and when ronnie and i were picking on him playing with him
a few years back, he called me 2 things:
1 - big eyed freak
2 - big face
 
out of the mouths of babes.
 
so yeah,
my face is round.
always has been.
i own it.
so there is no real shock value to this old pic:
 
however ronnie's face is deceiving.
you would never guess that he started out
as this little chunky monkey.
but yes, lets all take a moment to relish in the fact
the he too is a big face.
 
poor brette.
she never had a chance.
those cheeks were destined to be extra large.
so here we are - - The Three Big Faces.
i'm working on a book deal.

 
 


Sunday, July 13, 2014

nothing to do

ronnie and i had big plans to go on an adult weekend to the lake.
we had food.
we had beer.
we had a sitter for this little beauty:
 
i was excited to get out on a boat and drink a few.
and then ronnie came home thursday night and
told me it was actually planned for next weekend.
what. an. idiot.
and just our luck,
we can't go next weekend because i have to work
and my parents (our sitter) will be out of town.
daaaaang it.
this left us with a whole weekend with no plans.
sometimes its nice to have a few days with nothing to do
but in this case, i was just pretty bored.
you know its bad when even ronnie is not doing anything.
this never happens. tater loved it.
 
we had a family birthday dinner on friday night.
washed the car on saturday.
ronnie took b on a few bike rides.
[his new birthday bike...
which then led to a new child carrier.
i swear, ronnie is a professional at spending
money on anything with wheels.]
 

 
i added to brette's gallery wall.
 
and ronnie started working on the landscaping
in our backyard that was torn out over a year ago.
(i am pretty happy he's finally getting around to that.)
 
but yeah,
nothing really cool happened.
and i'm still a little bummed that i'm
not burnt and slightly hungover.
oh well.


Thursday, July 10, 2014

done and done

i started this september 2012.
then may 2013,
july 2013
and july 2014. 
my our progression is complete.
 
 


Wednesday, July 9, 2014

magic

kids are magic.
they learn and adapt and change so fast.
i have to admit,
its a bit frustrating to not have my kiddo
naturally progress on my schedule.
crawling at nine months - - walking at 12 months.
that's the way i had it in my head.
but as you know,
every kid is different.
and every kid goes at their own pace.
i never thought anything was wrong with brette,
i just thought she was either
a- lazy
b- wasn't strong enough
or c- couldn't figure out how to
get herself moving.
but brette has had a magical few weeks.
something clicked when she turned one
and we've watched her learn so much in just the last few weeks.
she said her first word.
ah oh.
every time she drops something.
ah oh.
so stinking cute.
sure, she's been talking for months...
mamma, dada and she now says
mimi and all done.
but i'm not truly counting those because
i don't know if she knows what she's saying
or if she's just repeating what i say.
i think her language skills will be one of her strengths
because she seriously doesn't shut up.
we had her on the phone with ronnie's mom and
they had a full blown conversation.
ronnie's mom was sure that she was speaking in sentences,
she just needed the words.
 
next, and almost more exciting,
she is crawling and getting herself back to sitting!
holy cow, call the president.
this needs to be a national holiday.
a physical therapist came to our house on saturday
and did an evaluation on her.
in order to be qualified for the "first steps" program
you have to have a 6 month delay.
our PT didn't think b would qualify
so she showed me activities, exercises and positions
to help brette naturally learn how to move.
she said that brette has hips that turn outward
instead of forward, which is why her legs frog out
instead of move straight as she would need to crawl.
she suggested i order special shorts called hip helpers and
she said the best thing i could do for her is to keep correcting
her legs and do it over and over and over.
(here's a picture from the internet of the hip helper shorts.)
 
she also said we would need to work on her muscle tone.
so that's what we've been doing and it only took
two days for brette to figure this all out.
i feel [a little] bad that i didn't think to go through the steps with her before.
it seems like such a logical thing to do
and it obviously works. 
i only wish i had been doing this with her for the last three months
and then she probably wouldn't be categorized as "delayed."
even though now i think she was just learning at her own pace.
something i'm sure i'm going to have to get used to.

now?
on to walking!

jaime caught brette crawling this morning at their house:
 
and i made sure to catch her this afternoon.
she is non-stop and i love it!




Tuesday, July 8, 2014

summertime

i know when its summer
just from all the social events that get piled up.
 
 
royals game?
check.

it was ladies night and the girls from the old bank met up.
notice we are at the bar in the outfield? 
that's where we spent 95% of the game.
the other 5% was in the parking lot.
whoops.
 
 
wedding in st. louis?
check.
 

my roommate from college, suzy,
got married and all our sorority sisters gathered for the event.
ronnie stayed at home with brette so i spent
some quality time with my margie.
 
 
fourth of july with the fam?
check.

 





i think we had the best weather in the history of the world on the 4th
  like seriously, perfect.
we went to marceline,
where my aunt lives.
we spent the whole day outside,
except for when we were refilling our plates.
lots of food.
brette fell asleep around 8 so
we headed home and missed the fireworks
but saw tons on the highway.
i can't wait for her to
really experience this holiday.

 
ronnie's big 35th birthday?
check.
my mom made ronnie a blue goose pie.
(blueberries and gooseberries)
what did i do for him?
served up leftovers
with a promise to make it up to him.
 i swear, i'm a good wife.
 
 
lake weekend planned.
check.
 
and so on. and so on. and so on.
so forgive me that i'm mashing all
these events together,
i'll try to be better.
 
hope you're reading this from
the pool
or on vacation
or sitting on the back deck counting fireflies
or eating a popsicle.
somewhere you appreciate that
it. is. summer.



Wednesday, July 2, 2014

french silk x 2


kelly, my cousin, offered up decorations from
her daughter's party for brette's birthday.
and then she also gave me icing for b's smash cake.
and then her kiddo was my runner during the party.
and then kelly spent over an hour uploading/sending me pictures.
whew.
so i thought just saying thank you wasn't enough.
i decided to make her and her family a pie.
i was watching pioneer woman and she was making a french silk pie.
i had never made it, but it included a key ingredient
that i knew would make it a hit - - chocolate.
 it didn't look too hard,
so i thought i'd give it a whirl.
 
i followed all the directions and it was coming together nicely.
the last part of this pie is mixing in 4 eggs over a 20 minute period.
i had my big kitchen aid mixer going on high
and then i dropped A WHOLE FREAKING EGG in the mixer.
shell and all.
dammit. dammit. dammit.
so close to being done.
so i dug through the filling and picked out
as much shell as i could find.
but i knew i couldn't give that away.
what if someone got a mouthful of shell?
heinous.
i went ahead and finished the pie and let my dad eat it.
if its pie, he's in.
he'll eat anything and never found any shell.
so i remade the pie
(hopefully, it was as good as the first)
and gave that to kelly.
the lesson i learned?
crack your eggs in a bowl instead of the mixer.
at least until you are a way better baker than me
and confident in your egg cracking skills.
 
 
want the recipes?
 
 
 
 
 

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

say cheese!

ronnie was working when we had brette's newborn pictures taken,
so technically we don't have any family pictures.
i know, so weird.
so i demanded politely asked to get pictures taken when b turned one.
i really wanted some outdoor photos and
the lady who took b's newborn pics only does studio shots.
after some online searching, i found blair and thought
her style and price was juuuuuust right for us.
i got to pick the location and she met us there.
i decided on longview. 
we went into the park to take advantage of their old white picket fences
and their big grassy areas.
then we made our way over to the old pergola.
 
 
















 

 
aren't they gorgeous?
i can't get over it.
 
but...
you know the worst part about family pictures?
getting everyone dressed.
we need to coordinate but not too matchy.
and i only had to do three people!
i don't know how a big family does it.
i bought brette a cute little romper from crazy 8
that was navy, coral and aqua. 
we layered her look with a navy cardigan from carter's and
the coral headband is one i had from my baby shower.
we also bought her little gold sandals,
but somehow we forgot to put them on once we got there.
oh well.
ronnie and i picked our outfit colors off of her romper.
ronnie had on a plain aqua t-shirt from gap.
i really like their clothes for pictures because
you don't have to worry about big logos all over.
i borrowed my coral jeans from kassie and
bought a navy short-sleeve sweater from macy's.
i also took a change of clothes for b.
a little coral and navy onesie from target with a navy headband.
 
and i called it done.
i'm really happy how they turned out.
oh sure, i'm making some weird faces in some,
but brette steals the show.
a d o r a b l e