Fun on the Farm

We had a day off from school so we drove to the country to visit Dewberry Farm.  I went a few years ago on a field trip with our life skills class and was glad to be able to return with Audrey.  Despite the pouty look she is sporting in most of these pictures, I think she really did have a good time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

No matter where we take her, nothing beats the fun of playing inside a cardboard box!

 

A Renewed Spirit

This weekend was life changing and something that couldn't have come at a better time.  Mom, Karen, Stephanie and myself spent a day and a half at a Women's conference.  The messages were heartfelt and it felt like each lady was talking to me individually.   The music was amazing too.  It was the perfect kict start I needed to crack open my Bible again.  I hope to be able to experience something like this again. 
Audrey got to spend some time with her daddy while we were at the conference.  The first night she gave him a bit of time at bedtime but here's a picture Neal sent me on Saturday.

Really mom, another picture?

The toddler.

It rained all the way home from San Antonio.  I forget which speaker it was that spoke to us about "blessing our curses."  So instead of cursing the rain, I thank God that our water bill will be lower this month since we haven't had to run the sprinklers as much.  ;)

Audrey Lately~Communicating Edition

Audrey still pretty much only says Mama, Daddy, and Mack mixed in with lots of her own little jargon, but her receptive skills are developing full speed ahead.  She's really good at following simple directions like "Drink your milk" and seems to understand in and out.   She's learning how to get her messsage across by showing us and using gestures.  When she gets hungry, she walks to her high chair and tries to climb in it.  The opposite of that is grabbing her tray and pulling it back down when I assume she's done eating.  That one is actually a little funny because she gets this determined look on her face like "lady, I'm not done eating!"  After her bath every night, we read books and do puzzles in her room to get ready for bed. When she's ready, she walks over to her bed, pulls out her blanket, and hands it to me.  Although I sometimes wish she'd let us rock her to sleep, I'm thrilled that we can lay her down awake and she puts herself to sleep. The girl is also developing a love of shoes.  One of her favorite things to do is get shoes out of her closet, bring them to us, and hold her foot up.  She loves to have shoes on her feet!  Speaking of shoes, she's now the proud owner of a pair of black Mary Janes that squeak.  Might be the cutest pair of shoes ever. 

Dear Blog

Dear Blog,
I'm sorry if you've been feeling neglected lately.  I need to get better at updating you since my sole purpose with keeping up with this thing is so that our family can  remember all the great (and not so great) times we had when we were all young whippersnappers.  I'll try to do better.

Sincerely,
The brains of the operation

Catch-up

So what have we been up to the past month? 

School started.  Audrey was so happy to see her friends from last year.  It's so cute to see her interact with her classmates.  This picture was from the first day of school and both Audrey & Makenzie are missing their right shoes.  Trendsetters!

Mama's back in the running game. 

Being goofy with Nana.

Who needs all those fancy toys when you have a cardboard box?

We're fans of the carousel.  We rode it twice that day and she cried both times we took her off of it.

Ready for church. 

Somebody was a fan of the train too.

The new game in our house:  Where's Audrey?

I guess I forgot to do a 11 month post too. 

  Audrey has a quite a big bag of tricks now:

• She wakes up in the morning and hands me her pacifier.  Big girl only uses it to go to sleep and sometimes in the car.  We keep one in the cup holder of her car seat.  If she happens to get it for the ride, she puts it back in the cup holder when the car stops. 
• Twinkle, twinkle is one of her favorite songs and she can "twinkle" her hands when we sing.
• She loves books and turns the pages as we read to her.  Yes, the book is usually upside down but she knows what a book is and what to do with it.  I'll call that a success at this age.
• This one is a little funny, but she comes crawling when I turn the bathtub water on.  She hears it and makes a beeline to the bathroom.  She was terrified of the big bathtub the first few times, but now its one of her favorite things.
• She spent a few weeks taking 2-3 steps at a time, but is now walking across the room unassisted.  It's cute to see her toddle around. I'm sure it won't be so cute when she learns she can run from me.  I'm still in the anti-leash camp but it's still early in that game.
• And the big one.......NO MORE BOTTLES AND FORMULA!  She has been eating pretty much everything we eat for a while now.  3 meals a day plus snacks.  We gave her milk last week and she chugs it out of her sippie cup like a college kid at a frat party.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

I've been trying to think of a way to start this story for 2 days now.  I've come up with nothing.  This would fall into the "keepin' it real" and "mama said there'd be days like this" category.   A few days ago I was unloading the dishwasher with my little helper.  She crawled away with her turbo speed and went to see what the dog was doing.  He was less than pleased when she reached for his dog bowl.  He bit her and we made our first trip to urgent care.
She cried for about 5 minutes after it happened then was her usual self.   The doctor sent us on our way.  We've got to keep her hand wrapped up until it heals to keep the grossness away. 
So here's the thing.  This was not a surprise.  We know that Mack is super territorial when it comes to his food.  This isn't the first time he has bit someone near his food bowl.  We thought were doing good keeping her away from him while he was eating.  She's fine but now we know that we seriously can't let her out of our sight and the food bowl needs to be picked up when he's not eating.  That's something we already knew but unfortunately had a not so great little reminder.

Turns out the City of Houston has pretty strict laws regarding dog bites.  The ER told us they have to report all bites to animal control.  No problem there. He's up to date on shots and our family dog so I wasn't too concerned about that.  We left to go to Beaumont for one last trip before school starts. I got a phone call from animal control while were out of town.  They had come to our house to get the dog because he either had to be euthanized or quarantined for 10 days and if I didn't have him there in 24 hours, I would be getting a Class C Misdemeanor.  What, excuse me?   I forgot to mention that Neal was out of town during all of this.  Since we didn't have Mack registered with the city with a dog licence (who knew that even existed), he had to be quarantined at the city shelter for 10 days.   With baby in tow, I turned him in and filled out paperwork.  One more week until he gets to come home.  Oh and it's costing us $225 for having him quarantined. 

I can officially say that parenting is no longer easy.  The first 10 months were a breeze.  Even the crazy newborn stage wasn't hard.  I secretly gloated when others would tell me how hard they thought having a baby was.  God definetely has put me in my place.  I've learned that moms are the worst when it comes to judging other moms.  I'm including myself in that group.  No more judgement from me.  

I also believe it is no accident that our little series of unfortunate events happened this week.  You see, I just started a self paced Bible study about giving God full control.  Holy cow, He's got my attention!   We also have an issue going on with our house.    The drain pan from the AC in the attic has been overflowing for 2 weeks unbeknown to us.   Water has soaked one of our walls and a good portion of our wood floors.  Totally minor, but last night the pizza guy delivered our pizza to wrong house and it took a small act of Congress to get another pizza delivered.  Poor baby girl was starting to eat her gauze on her hand so I fed her something else.  Now I'm wandering which one of our neighbors accepted the first pizza last night. 

So we're rolling with the punches and not letting our praying knees get lazy.

But in the meantime, when did our infant turn into a little girl???????

New Territory

Yesterday we experienced a new "first."  Baby's first tantrum in public.  We tried a pair of shoes on her at the mall and it's safe to say that she wasn't too thrilled.  Cue the screaming at the top of her lungs.  Of course, we were on the opposite side of the mall to where the truck was.  So we made the walk of shame with a screaming baby all the way through the mall.  The funny thing is/was that we went to the mall to ride the carousel.  Needless to say, the carousel had to wait until another day. 

 

This girl is in to everything.  She's found several new "hiding" places in our house.

Even though she's keeping us on our toes lately, this little thing still has us wrapped around her chubby little fingers.  She's got a heart of gold and her giggles are a sound I hope to never forget.