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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

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!

 

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

done and done

i started this september 2012.

then may 2013,

july 2013

and july 2014. 

my our progression is complete.

 

 

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!