A day (or two or three) in the life of...

Since we had the family visiting from OK, we took advantage of the opportunity of having us all in one place to go have a family portrait done. On such short notice (I thought of this about 3 days before they flew out), all we could book was Sears, which I would say is overpriced for the photo quality but beggars can't be choosers, right? Trying to get a good shot of 6 adults and a baby takes many tries and you have to end up settling for one where at least no one looks stoned, irritated and has their eyes mostly open. Done. Anywhow, point was to just get us all in a picture together and that was accomplished. Yay! (disclaimer: I'm not really that much taller than Lisey. If you pay attention to the lower section of the pic, you'll see I'm standing on a lil step stool for effect. I liked being taller for 10 minutes of my life) Christmas morning itself, was awesome. Even with lil Izzy not getting the concept of Christmas yet, it was so fun watching her tear open present...

If you have 7+ minutes to kill and feel like watching a baby... wait, not just any baby. Baby Izzy, eating solids (no more spoon fed purees for this miss independent...) for the first time, feel free to check  out the clip below. She stuffs food in her mouth and grunts and growls at us, yet she breaks it all up with smiles and laughs. She is a strange bird. That, my friends, is my girl.  Here's hoping she eats like this until the day she dies. I'd take her to the finest restaurants in the world and be just as proud as I was today. ps - background commentary and laughter by Cowboy, Tia, Lisey and Grandma Dana. Fun for the whole family.

Cowboy came into Izzy's room as I was watching her try to roll off the changing table w/her legs dangling off and he swooped her up and was saying "That's not good, Izzy. You can fall and hurt yourself" and she laughed. He put her in her crib and said "ok, you'll be safe here in the corner of your crib". Well, she just stayed there in the corner, facing the wall and holding onto the railings. I ran and got my camera and she was still just hanging out in the corner. I would have thought she'd book it out of the corner. ((shrugs)) I don't know why these pictures cracked me up, but they did, so here ya go.   I'm over it.... Get out of *my* room. I'm going to sit here and figure out how to break out of this corner... And then we lowered her mattress and showed her how to stand against the railing. It's all about mixed messages, people...

We tried taking Xmas pics for a card this week and it just didn't really go well so we're accepting that we've failed at the Xmas card sending this year. We'll have to make it up to peeps next year. I love getting cards and love sending them but this year my head is just not on right. On the bright side, here's one of the adorable pics that we took of lil miss Nugget. It's the only one she really smiled in. I have about 15 of her scowling at me. Those would make great grinch card pics! This one could have been good if only we had a better camera, better lighting, happy dog, happy baby, non-pointing me and, yeah, just could have had some potential. sigh. fail. Holy crap, where is the time going? Christmas is just 10 days away! Izzy's Grandparents (and GREAT Grandma!) are arriving in town in a week. Before then, we need to clean, clean, clean. Do groceries (I got us a box of peppermint Jo-Jo's and some choco-orange sticks, MIL!). Get home a pinch mor...

Izzy is in a profound baby thoughts, kinda mood today.  Tia Mish, she would like to see you. Please let us know when you're back at home so we can slip into the rotations to come hang out w/you. Okie? Feel better, stat! Te amamos!

So I've been working out pretty consistently for the past few months. Some weeks better than others but I do go at least 4 times a week and it's now paying off! Halleluah! Man, losing baby weight is a helluva lot more difficult when you're over 35. No_joke. So, I'm finally down to 135! This is huge because my pre-preg weight was 129. So, 6 more lbs and I'm pre-preg. I'm starting to finally see the results though that means my couple of post-preg pants are all baggy yet my pre-preg pants are tight enough to ensure a textbook muffin top. That didn't stop me from wearing a pair of muffin top inducing jeans last Friday into the office. I mean, I wore a flowy top over it so that noone had to witness the chub spillage and I walked a bit slowly, taking short steps due to the circulation constriction but I was in pre-pregnancy jeans, dammit!  So if I can only keep this up during the holidays, or at the very least maintain, I'll be ecstatic. Because I just can...

I've been pushing all of my 'To Do's' out of my line of vision by focusing on Izzy. Every time I start thinking 'oh crap, I have to buy presents... what do I get for [insert anyone here, really]?', I quickly switch to "awww, I love our Nugget. She was so giggly and happy today. How crazy that her gummy smile is no longer..." and then I stay totally un-productive. Woops! That will have to change this week. I have massive amounts of work to do and massive amounts of home stuff to catch up on (make more batches of food for Izzy, laundry, clean, Xmas cards, Xmas shopping, prepping for Cowboy Family Xmas). Lots to do, Peeps... Here's happy baby w/her Mima yesterday. She was all smiles and babbling yesterday morning. We went to Starbucks w/Izzy and Cowboy for brekky and she was just the hit of that joint. People were stopping by to talk w/her and getting entranced by her smiles and one lady came and asked us if she could take a picture of her to send t...

Wow, a LOT happens in 2 weeks! Since last blog post, we went to Mexico (5 days away from our Nugget made for more anxiety than I was equipped with handling), came back to a different baby, discovered her tooth sprout and have fallen doubly in love w/Izzy.  When we dropped her off with my Mom (before our trip), I cried. When we'd call to check in on how she was doing, I'd cry. We Skyped w/her at one point. I cried. I went to pick her up, I cried. It was really just much more than I had ever anticipated. She's such an extension of us and though it was a nice vacation for Cowboy and I, it was just not the fun that I had anticipated. Ah well, we tried. :) So, as we were Skyping with Grandma/MIL last night, Izzy was just doing her usual gnawing on my finger but it was more intense than usual and suddenly I felt a sharp ridge against my finger. O_O A tooth!!! Sorry for squealing into your computer speakers, MIL. :) I was so excited and Izzy was staring at me and my excitednes...