From our little Butterfly...

Happy Halloween!

Balancing Act

Our Wednesday

5:45 - Wake up call!  My dear girl is up and at 'em (did you know I used to think that saying was actually "up and adam"??), so it's time to drag myself out of bed.  Honestly, I am pretty zombie-like at this point.  Go to the bathroom, splash water on my face, try to wake up!  Thank goodness hubby is still home to play with Eliza for a few minutes.

6:00 - Okay, I'm more awake now... check email, throw a load of clothes in the wash, then relieve Daddy so he can get ready for work.  Play with mah baybee!

7:00 - Say goodbye to Daddy, then breakfast time!  Eggs and pancakes today.  My mom joins us (and brings aforementioned pancakes - hey, I made the eggs!).

8:30 - Naptime.  Eliza and I nap together - this is such a guilty pleasure.  I know I could be getting work done, but I just need the sleep so badly.  I will not apologize! :)

10:00 - Wake up.  Laze around for a while before getting out of bed, we play the tickle game and sing.

10:30 - Get ready to leave the house: both dressed, diaper changed (Eliza, lol) and we're off.  I drop Eliza off at Grandma and Grandpa daycare, and I could go study.  I have a presentation to work on that's due tomorrow.  I go off to the coffee shop (well, actually, to a restaurant inside a grocery store that also has a coffee shop).  Work work work from about 11:00-1:40, then I head home.

1:50 - Quickly use the bathroom (first time since this morning!!), go downstairs to throw the clothes in the dryer.

1:55 - My mom drops Eliza off.

2:00 - Put Eliza down for a nap.  She's asleep by 2:10 or so.  Go wash breakfast dishes, then start a load of dipes in the washer.  Start dinner (I love my crockpot!!!).  Answer annoying student emails.  Work on presentation.

3:00 - Eliza wakes up fussy (=still tired), nurse her back to sleep, put her back in crib.  She wakes up.  Repeat.  She wakes up again.  Still seems tired... try again.  Nope, we're awake now!  Change diaper.  Play.  Read books.  Play with toys.  Listen to music.  Sing.  Crawl around and harass cats.

3:30 - Oops, forgot about clothes in the dryer - go downstairs and get them, hang them up (hmm, kind of wrinkled...may have to iron later - dangit!).  Start 2nd wash on dipes.

4:00 - Head over to my parents' house to visit new kittens.  Play with kittens!  Work in my parents' kitchen on my laptop while Eliza plays with Grandma, Grandpa, and the kittens.

5:15 - Go home and finish dinner while Eliza plays on the floor at my feet.  She hits this time of day and is NOT OKAY with playing by herself, so I carry her around the kitchen or she either plays in the cabinets or hangs onto my legs while I pivot around her going from the stove to the sink to the fridge. Good thing our kitchen is so tiny!  

5:35 - Daddy get home (early today!).  Eliza and Daddy play while I finish up dinner.  

5:55 - Eat dinner.  Yum!  

6:20 - Eliza tells us she's "all done".  Wash hands and face.  Run water for tub.  Daddy gets his guitar and we sing (Sloop John B was tonight's selection).  

6:25 - Daddy takes over for bathtime.  I go clear the table, was the dishes, clean the counters and stove.  Listen to Eliza and Daddy in the bathroom laughing, singing, reading books, playing "where is Eliza's nose/ear/eyes...".  Stop to appreciate this awesome life.  Start 2nd rinse on dipes.  Change my clothes, get Eliza's PJs and nighttime diaper ready.  Grab towel, go check on bathtime buddies.  

6:45 - Get Eliza out of the tub, diaper and PJs on (no small feat these days, she HATES this part of her day).  Bedtime!  

7:15 - Eliza asleep.  Put dipes in the dryer.  Share a little dessert with hubby.  Make tea.  Sit down with laptop to start working.  Procrastinate and blog instead.  

8:13 - Okay, it's really time to work now... 

I love this life.  I love it so much.  It's a balancing act, but it's such a good, fulfilling one - especially on days like today when the balance was fairly even between work and play.  I am a lucky woman!

(Also: I realize how very VERY lucky I am to have my parents - they watch Eliza for me when I am at school and when I need to get work done.  What would I do without them???)

So I Don't Forget

A few things I forgot!

Eliza is 11 months old... and...

• When asked "what does the cow say?", she now replies "Mooooooo" AND, when you ask her what a puppy dog says, will answer you "Wooof"! 

• Eliza can now sign "more" (in addition to "all done" and "milk")

• Eliza tickles us - we play a back-and-forth tickle game that is soooo fun and so cute.  She laughs and laughs and laughs - we can barely breathe we laugh so hard!

• She is definitely saying "duck" now.  She pointed to geese and said "duck" the other day, and she saw a duck in her book and said it, too.  

• When we sing the song "The Wheels on the Bus", we do motions that go along with the song, and she is starting to do them too!  She can't quite get the "wheels" action yet, but she moves her arms in little circles when we start to sing, so she is definitely getting there.  It's sooooo adorable!

• It is so cute to watch the wheels turn in her head when she figures things out.  She is always thinking, she is always learning, and at an amazingly fast rate!  It's so cool.  

Fun Fall Weekend

We are embracing fall around here - it is by far my favorite season, and it's hubby's second favorite (winter is his favorite - yuck!), so we've always enjoyed doing many fall-related activities.  And this year, we get to include Eliza!  Watching her experience all of it is so much fun, we soak up every minute of it.

This weekend we took a trip to the pumpkin "patch".  It wasn't really a patch, it was more like a greenhouse full of rows and rows of pumpkins.  They must have grown in a patch at one point... anyway, MORE DETAILS, right?  There was also a little petting zoo on the property with goats and sheep and a cow so we introduced Eliza to the animals.

She wasn't too sure about this goat:

Then we went inside to pick out our pumpkins.  Eliza seemed to really get a kick out of the entire process... here she is trying to decide between two pumpkins:

Then she decided she REALLY liked this one, so she gave it a hug:

(sorry honey, that one is like $12...)

There were soooo many pumpkins to choose from that Eliza was apparently mesmerized by the selection:

And finally, we have a ($5) winner!:

It was a fun little trip.  Then we went and had Pho to round out our beautiful fall day.  Life couldn't get any better.  I feel like the luckiest girl in the world :o)

11 Months

Baby girl:

There are no words.  I sit here nearly unable to write down what I feel as we near your first birthday...to tell you how much I love you and how much better my life is because you are in it...I can hardly express it, it is so powerful and wonderful.  Words do not do it justice.

Today, you turned 11 months old!  And today I wondered both how this could be true already, and how it is that it was only slightly less than a year ago that my life was turned upside - in the best way possible! - by you and that beautiful, strong cry you let out as you entered this world.  I will never forget that cry.  It made me so happy to hear it, it makes me cry (happy tears) just thinking about it.  That cry meant you were strong and healthy and alive - and finally here!

I want to tell you how very deeply I love you and how completely whole I feel when I rock you in my arms after you've fallen asleep every night.  I want you to know that I love you so much that it hurts to think of life any other way.

It is scary, too.  I now know what people mean when they say that having children means to live with a piece of your heart outside your body: vulnerable, exposed... leaving you forever unable to protect it every single second of every single day, when that is what every fiber of your being is desperately screaming at you to do.

So.  On to the good stuff :)

• You, my dear, are one amazing, silly, beautiful, smart, SMART - no really, I mean scarysmart girl!  You blow us away every single day with what you know.  Today, we think you said "Duck".  Seriously!  You pointed to... well, you actually pointed to a goose, but whatever, details... and you said "du...ck".  

• You are a master crawler now!  You are so fast and agile on your hands and knees.  And you're starting to cruise on the furniture, too.  This is how you ended up with quite the tongue gash this month.  You hit your chin against the coffee table as you were standing up next to it.  But, you are just fine now, and still as fearless as ever.  Mama is afraid to let you stand by yourself, but I'm trying not to hover too much - you need to learn to do it on your own, and mama knows how important that is.  

• Eliza, you have a will of steel.  You tell us when you don't like something, and you make sure we hear you!  You screech in protest and arch your back.  It's dramatic and can be very persuasive, though we as your parents can't bend to your will every time.  That's our job, you know.  And besides, that's what grandparents are for.

• You love your kitties!  Have I mentioned this before?  I think so, but it is just so cute I have to say it again.  You hug the kitties - even more than you hug us!  You put your head down on their backs.  It is soooo incredibly sweet.  You are such a sweet, sweet girl.

• You love music.  I will sing to you in the car or while I'm changing your diaper and it helps to calm you down (the car and having your diaper changed are two things you HATE, by the way!). Every night before bed, daddy plays guitar and I sing along and you love it.  You want to get to daddy's guitar, though, you loooove strumming the strings.  I think we know what we are going to get you for your birthday!

• You love to laugh.  When people around you laugh, you laugh too!  You are a happy girl.

• You dance!  You shake your little butt back and forth when you hear music - we call it "butt dancing".  Haha!

• We started ECFE this month and you LOVE IT.  The classroom fascinates you, and you especially like the other babies.  You explore every little corner and play with every toy - you also have a tendency to steal the other babies' toys away from them...!  And when the parents go off to our parent meeting and the babies stay behind with the teachers, you don't get upset at all.  Mama says goodbye and you just play with the other babies and the toys.  The teachers always comment on how cool tempered and relaxed you are when I leave.

• You are usually pretty fearless... but you really dislike loud noises.  You get scared easily when you hear something too loud, like when that little boy at the zoo yelled at the fish, or when mama screamed in excitement at some good news we got from close friends (oh, mama felt so bad!  but the news was so exciting!).

• Nighttime sleeping is still not your strong suit - you like to "check in" with mama about every 3-4 hours ;).  But, that's just fine.  I'll be here for you at night as long as you need me to be.  

• You are still nursing, and I don't see any signs of slowing down on that front anytime soon!  That makes me soooo happy, too.  We're lucky that we've never had any issues with nursing strikes or mama's supply dropping, or you losing interest.

• Back to the smartypants-ness: you know where your ears are, your mouth, your nose (and daddy's nose!), your feet, your shoes (and you know that your shoes (or mamas or daddy's) go on your feet), you look down at to your belly when we say "where's Eliza's tummy?", and you use signs to tell us "all done", "more" and "milk".  You still say "dada" to refer to both pictures of yourself, and to your dada :).  You can stack the blocks on the stacker toy that Anna got you, and you are an olympic peek-a-boo player.  

I love you, Eliza.  Even when I'm away from you for even one or two hours, I miss you and can't wait to see you again.  You brighten every single one of my days.  I can't wait to see you grow and change and become a little girl.  You are already on your way, and I am so proud to be your mama.

ps - okay, so there are a few words :)

Some Recent Paparazzi Shots...

Hello Again

I guess I have been busier than I thought.  I can't believe so much time has passed since Eliza's baptism, and since I last blogged!

And, as long as we're on the subject... I also can't believe that I'm designing a first birthday invitation and planning a party that will happen in only FIVE short weeks!  FIVE WEEKS, PEOPLE.  We're trying to decide on the scope of the first birthday.  The question is: two parties or one?  We were thinking one for friends, one for family.  That seems like a lot, but our house is so small, we can't fit everyone - friends and family - in our house all at the same time.  So, we're not sure what to do.  We'd prefer to have one big party, but it's just not feasible...  But two parties is a lot of work, so I'm back to considering just one party, family only, on her actual birthday.  I know it's "just" a first birthday, but I'm so excited to celebrate, there's a big part of me that wants to have a big 'ol party full of all the people who love Eliza!

So what's new with us?  Eliza is happy and healthy, busy as ever - and we are so lucky and grateful for this.  We had our first trip to the ER due to a tongue laceration that Eliza got when she fell and hit her chin against the coffee table -- she cut her tongue on her teeth.  It bled A LOT. OH LORDY, you have no idea how much blood can pour out of a child's mouth.  I almost lost it.  She, of course, was back to her normal happy(ish) self like 10 minutes later.  And even as it was happening and I was upset, I knew it could have been so much worse, and felt grateful that it wasn't.  We took her in just to make sure nothing needed to be done -- I mainly just wanted someone besides ME and my social science degree to look at this nasty looking cut.  We were in and out quickly, and probably talked about all day as 'Those Parents Who Worry Too Much' by the ER staff.  But, it calmed our worries and so it was well worth the $40.  A week later, her tongue is completely healed.  Way to go, stem cells!

We've got a fun weekend ahead with a trip to the BIG zoo planned!  I haven't been there in at least a decade, I'm excited to go back with Eliza.

Happy Friday everyone.  Have a great weekend!