Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Some recent photos of Avalee...

Down here in the Boro we are fully immersed in the busy time of year for both Travis and I. 

Spring has sprung at a certain big-box DIY retail store (it also sprung all over the state of GA somewhere around mid-December when we started having eighty-degree days again, but that's another rant!), which means long hours for Travis spent dealing with customers who don't know how to calculate square yardage, can't read labels or signs, and want something for free whether they deserve it or not.  Additionally, the store has gone through several transitions (the death of an associate; the replacement of the store manager) over the last couple months, which has had Travis working 14-15 hour days, 6-7 days a week. 

It doesn't help that Spring in the dance world is recital time.  I've been busy busy busy with choreography for my own studio, as well as the one I freelance for on Mondays and Wednesdays, and my studio recently performed our first all-praise dancing benefit concert! The show incorporated praise music, ballet, a live band, and several vocalists--including a beautiful original arrangement of The Lord's Prayer by a certain musician who live in my house--and it was a huge success, raising over $800 for the local theatre in Vidalia.

Aside from work our days have been filled with running around after our cruising 9-month old.  The child hauls herself around on two of the cutest, chubby litte legs with such efficiency that we often find ourselves looking at the spot Avalee was in approximately 23 seconds ago and saying, "Where's the baby?!"

To make up for my lack of blogging skills, here are some pictures of our daily life lately. Enjoy. And for goodness sakes, someone figure out how to get these pictures to look right on my blog!

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I'm adorable, and always into something! For example...

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My parents are so impressed by my love of walking while using the laundry basket like a walker!
But......this, normally turns into....

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THIS...oh so subtly edging toward the stereo and entertainment center...
which normally turns into...

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THIS. My new favorite game. Pulling out ALL of Daddy's play station games.
And closing the cabinet door on my fingers at least five times a day.

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I may also have a future as a musician. I'm turning into a regular Houdini.
Look closely at this picture...that's a fully-footed sleeper I'm wearing.
How I got my whole entire foot out, four snaps ABOVE the foot...???

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I'm regularly finding new hiding places.

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And dressing up. Here I am as Uncle Edmond.
My fancy little Roper boots I got for Christmas for Grandpa T almost fit...only they wont zip over my fat calves.
I wear them anyway.

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I believe in a neat and tidy eating experience.

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And I love my Daddy.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Guest-Post #2 at Midnight Mommy!

Head on over to the Midnight Mommy blog to check out my second post in my three-part "Babywearing Myths" series! Thanks once again to Midnight Mommy for hosting me!

Click HERE to read about importance of a carrier that provides an ergonomic seat!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Cloth Diapering Detergent Favorite Country Save Giveaway at Midnight Mommy!

Hey, Fellow Cloth Diaperers! Head on over to the Midnight Mommy blog to participate in the Country Save detergent giveaway! Country Save is a favorite in the cloth community, so enter to win a sample of your very own!

Guestpost at Midnight Mommy!

I'm having a "15 minutes of fame" kind of moment here, guys!  I feel very honored to have been included on the Midnight Mommy blog as a guestposter this week!  That's a blog with over 500 registered followers that chose me to do a 3-part series of guestposts!  This makes me mildly famous, no?

Make sure to take a minute to browse around the blog--there are many great articles and posts to be read! And plan to check out my next two posts, which will published over the next two Mondays.


See! I am using my degrees! :-)

Friday, January 20, 2012

'Bye-'Bye Baby!

Avalee is in trouble.

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She is a bad baby. She has done something bad. Well, not just one thing. A few actually. I don't know what I'm going to do with her, but lately I've considered baby boot camp (they have that, right?), eBay and/or Craig's List, and am open to trades. What did she do, you ask?

She has started to grow up.
I, of course, am handling it with grace and dignity. I'm sure you can tell.

Since Christmas, my baby has started hitting developmental milestone after developmental milestone with such enthusiasm and vigor (Yay her!) that she can often be found practicing her new skills in her crib sometime right around 3 a.m. (Yay me!). Aside from the interruption in sleep cycles these milestones have brought, they also have really thrown me for a loop. I kinda thought I had a little more time before my baby started doing all this "big kid" stuff--she is only 7 months afterall!

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Um, yeah, so my baby is quickly becoming not a baby, and here's why. . . in the last 4 weeks--read that, 4 weeks!--Avalee has:
  • Learned to crawl. Fast.
  • Learned to sign for milk when she's hungry.
  • Learned to clap.
  • Learned to wave.
  • Pulled herself, by herself, to standing.
         (And, can I get a drum roll, please...)
  • Said her first words. As in plural. Words.
ALL AT SEVEN MONTHS OLD.

Yes, I realize that a lot of this sounds fairly insane, and before you think that were some of those overly-gushy first time parents who think that every tiny thing their child does is "Ah-mazing!" and counts little babbles as words, I will remind you that I don't want my baby to be doing any of these things! I want her to stay little as long as possible! (I should explain that I  saw how quickly my little brother (6) grew up while I was gone to college and vowed not to push for and anticipate every single milestone with my own baby. I want to savor this tiny amount of time I have with this tiny little baby who will soon be a tiny little person. I hope someone besides me sees the humor in calling my 20.5 lb seven-month-old "tiny.")

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At any rate, Avalee is now doing these things--rebellion already?!--on a fairly regular basis. She picked up the sign for milk between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I pretty much just started showing her the sign whenever I could tell she was hungry and when we nursed, and about a week later, she started to sign on her own at mealtime. At Christmas she was just starting to crawl, which was hilarious, as she would go two paces, get frustrated, plant her feet, and launch herself about a foot forward onto her stomach and often her face. Now, she is silently tearing through the house in search of tiny pieces of plastic packaging that missed the garbage, unsecured electrical cords, and shoes, glorious shoes, to eat. She clapped for the first time a couple days after Christmas for her Aunt Emily who pointed out to me that she was doing so! Now she claps any time you say, "Yaaayyyy!" or when she finds something particularly funny, which can be anything from being tickled to me sneezing.

Waving became the new "thing" somewhere around the second week of January. She waves when you wave at her. She waves when she wants your attention. She waves at herself in the mirrors at the dance studio. She waves while saying "Hi" and "Bye-bye" when you leave. And about that...the talking started with the usual "bababa," "mamama" babbling around Christmas time and me teasing Travis about how 99% of babies say "Da-da" first, but my smart baby's first word was going to be "Mama." Then she started making a sound that sounded an awful lot like "Hi" when she'd wave. And then one night one of my dancers said "Bye-bye!" to Avalee as she left the studio, and the darn child started waving at her and saying "Bye-bye!" Now her favorite thing to do whenever I walk through the studio lobby on my way to refill my water bottle is to screw her face up into the very most pathetic frown and desperately wail "Maaaammmaaaa!" Of course, these words are not perfectly articulated yet, but are clearly discernable and identifiable. She uses them fairly consistently and appropriately (maybe 75% of the time). In fact, we weren't really counting them as words but just normal babbling that sounded like words until Avalee's Thursday night babysitter pointed out that she was clearly connecting meaning to them. And Marlene is a speech pathologist.

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Then yesterday, as I sat working on the computer doing some, well, work, I looked up to see her standing at the coffee table. I grabbed my phone and snapped the worst picture ever, and twenty seconds later she fell over, hitting her face on the coffee table on the way down. Fun times. She did it a few more times last night, just to spite me, I think. And a couple of my dancers are going to be doing a brutal set of push-ups next week, because I walked out of the studio last night to see them letting her take steps while holding onto their fingers.

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She has also outgrown her infant seat and started (slowly) to eat a little bit of solid food.

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Geez, that's pretty much it, I guess. My baby is growing up way too fast; I'm so proud of her. I knew that she'd do these things eventually. I just wasn't prepared to deal with her doing them at 7 months. I don't know whether to clap for her (while saying "Yaaayyyyy!" of course) or cry myself to sleep. I guess I really am a Mama now.

And, just to prove we aren't making it all up...

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

The Moment When You Realize You Are A Bad Mother...

No, it wasn't when I dumped Avalee out of her infant seat onto the ground at eight weeks.

No, it wasn't when I let her fall off the couch at four and a half months.

No, it wasn't when I kinda yelled and scared for pants off when she bit me nursing for the first time and she refused to eat for eight hours even though she was obviously hungry.

No, it wasn't when I let her cry for a bit while teaching a dance class because I didn't have a babysitter that day.

And no, it wasn't when I told her she couldn't chew on the table, made her cry, and ran to take a picture of her pitiful mad face before consoling her.

These are all pretty normal things to have happen to a first-time mother (or any first-time parent for that matter), but some things, well, some things that you take care of for yourself on a daily basis should not be forgotten.

So, the moment when you realize you may not be as "good" of a mother as you think you are?

When you realized last Saturday that your baby hasn't had a bath in the two weeks since you arrive home from Thanksgiving vacation.

During flu season.

When she has daily contact with about two hundred other adorable, snotty-nosed kids.

Yep. That's when.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Another Avalee Photo Bomb!

Because I'm a horrible blogger...here's another photo bomb :-)

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NAPPING...

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...AND HANGING OUT WITH DADDY...

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...LEARNING TO ROLL OVER AND WIGGLE UNDERNEATH THE DINING ROOM CHAIRS...

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...AND NAPPING AGAIN (AT AUNT BETH'S BABY SHOWER)...

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...AND BALDING...

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...AND SUCKING ON TOYS...

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...AND PLAYING WITH THE TAG ON MY DIAPER...

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...AND NAPPING SOME MORE...

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...AND BOUNCING IN THE JUMPEROO...

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...AND DRESSING UP FOR HALLOWEEN...

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...AND CAN-YOU-BELIEVE-IT??? NAPPING!!!

It's been a busy month! ;-)

And, just in case Avalee ever needs help deciding on an occupation, she seems fairly well cut-out for a career in plumbing.

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