11 months!

i love you, my little hand.

too cool for school.


* finally sitting on her own! (as you can see) i know, i know, your baby did it at 6 months.
* sprouted her second tooth, on the bottom right next to her first one.
* loves books. i know she’s not actually reading them (or is she…) but she loves to stare at the pictures and turn the pages.
* still likes to snuggle. i can hold her in my arms and she doesn’t squirm away or anything. i LOVE this.
* almost 20 pounds (big girl car seat, here we come!)
* still a magnificent sleeper/napper.
* getting louder. she loves to yell at the tv (the rare times that i have it on of course…) especially if there’s singing. we were watching some opera special on pbs and this lady came on and started singing softly and penny goes “ah dah.” then the lady gets louder and penny goes “AH DAH.” then the singer hits this high-pitched long trill and penny starts freaking out and going “AH DAH DAH AHH DAHH DAHH!” it was pretty funny.
* her mom is really glad this monthly update commitment is almost over. next month post she’ll be a year! crazy!

(by the way, this is my 100th post. ah DAH!)

4 years old! (our marriage, that is)

4 (out of the many) reasons i love paul:

1. it feels like we've known each other forever. even when we were just friends and not dating yet, there was something so familiar about him that i always felt so comfortable and happy around him.

2. he's so kind and sincere to others. it doesn't matter if it's the first time or the twentieth time he's met you, he'll always remember your name and make you feel included in the conversation or whatever. or someone will be rambling on in a long, boring story and he'll just patiently listen and ask them questions. and whenever we go grocery shopping he always chats with the cashier purely because he thinks they're probably bored and would appreciate the conversation.

3. everyone likes him. he's gets along with everybody and tells funny little stories that make the old folks chuckle. he's so unassuming and never cares about being in the spotlight.

4. he's such a good dad to penny. she has a sweet temperament just like him and she just wriggles with joy every day when he comes home from work. some of my favorite times are just us three sitting on the couch and laughing at the little funny things that penny does. one of the things that always makes penny laugh is when paul throws her (gently) in the air and catches her - she LOVES it.

thanks for making the past four years the happiest of my life, paul!! i love you!

have you ever done this?

have you ever done multiple loads of laundry and then not put it away for 3 days? well, it looks something like this: i tend to do this alot...i start the laundry and then i take forever to put it away once it's clean. and then when i want to wear something it's most likely in the pile of clean clothes rather than my closet. paul HATES when i do this, understandably of course. he just doesn't understand that while i don't mind starting the loads, i HATE folding and hanging and putting them away (this coming from the man who organizes his t-shirts in rainbow order and then gets mad when i put a blue shirt in the red section). ugh, there's just so many other interesting things to do! like crafting...nothing makes paul madder (and by mad i mean a slight frown and a furrowed brow of disappointment) then when he comes home from work and i haven't got dinner made, the house is messy, and i'm sitting there in my pajamas working on some kind of time-wasting craft. (although, the other day paul came home from work and i had his favorite dinner ready: breakfast for dinner, mixed berry pancakes and eggs. yay me.)

i heard somewhere that clean people are boring people. i do like to be clean, but sometimes i just don't have the patience for it and if all i do is clean and i don't do something creative i might just slightly combust. i do clean when it's important, when it really matters - like before people come over or it's stuff that needs to be cleaned often, like the toilet or the dishes. and i do agree that a clean house makes you feel better when you look around but it's a constant, daily, annoying task to keep things looking perfect when you have zero storage, a baby and all of their baby crap, and about 12 tupperwares of craft supplies and you know no one's coming over that day and it's like BLAH who cares!

but don't worry - because i know you were really worried - i finally put away the laundry today.

oh, and i burned some rice. for pete's sake, who burns rice???
well, apparently it's very easy. all i wanted was to reheat my lemongrass chicken soup from our favorite thai place and make a little rice to go with it. i followed the microwave instructions exactly and i ended up making a burnt rice cake (it was seriously hard as stone) and ruined a perfectly good plastic ikea bowl and made our apartment have that icky burny smell. you dumb rice! who do you think you are?!

the cruise-in

every summer a bunch of old white dudes come up to logan with their antique cars. they fix 'em up real nice and get together for a little antique car fair called the cruise-in. our friends nate and claire were in logan for the weekend a couple weeks ago and went with us - pretty fun.

most of our pictures are paul standing next to a car.


you can't see it but there's a flux capacitor in there.

wow that car model is FIERCE.

isn't claire the cutest pregnant woman you've ever seen?

penny in her pimped out ride

10 months!

10 month stats:

* got her first tooth! came in on the bottom and it’s so cute and tiny!
* weighs a whopping 17 pounds (10th percentile) and is 28 inches long (70th percentile). yes, i feed her.
* still the laziest baby in creation – doesn’t crawl, doesn’t scooch around on her tummy because she HATES being on her tummy, doesn’t stand because she HATES locking her knees, doesn’t sit up by herself for more than 7 seconds…you get the idea. basically, my baby’s motor skills make your baby’s motor skills look gooood. (we’re actually going to take her to a baby physical therapist because our pediatrician recommended it…but i might cancel because i like a baby i don’t have to chase after.)
* BUT, she is the sweetest-tempered little baby. she hardly ever cries, doesn’t have stranger-danger complex yet and in fact LOVES meeting new people, always smiling and babbling and is easily entertained by ANYthing. seriously, a piece of paper is her favorite thing in the world.
* sleeps from 8:00 pm to 9:00am. yep, that’s 13 hours a night folks. ya jealous?
* babbles non-stop: baba, gaga, dada…no mama yet. it’s okay, i’m not offended. much. i love hearing her little voice, it makes my heart melt.
* loves to screech like a banshee when she’s excited about something.

balmforth family reunion

my family gets together alot in utah because the 3 older siblings live here and my parents and two little brothers are in california - but there always seems to be some kind of event going on in utah so my parents and little brothers come up alot. BUT, this was our declared, official balmforth family reunion this weekend. nothing fancy, we went to a cousin's wedding reception, the zoo, a little water park and had a bbq.

most of my pics are from the zoo. it was super hot and muggy that day, and genius that i am, i wore a sweater-ish cardigan (it was cloudy when we left but then it got hot...) but other than that, it was pretty fun!

i love this picture of penny and my dad. they both look so happy!

watching the elephants.

even derek was having a good time...

as was jordan.

where's paul?

oh, he's with the bears.
(it's kind of a tradition actually. everywhere we go, if there's a statue of a bear, or a painting, or a stuffed animal, etc. we always get a picture of paul with a bear. it's kind of cheesey, but it's because i always thought he looked like a bear, so i started to call him that sometimes, even before we were married. doesn't he look like a bear? i think so. this is a long caption.)

you get a dollar if you spot the penguins!

a hedgehog! we used to have a hedgehog once (my family in ca, i mean). his name was cuddles.

awww, look who's all tuckered out from the zoo. it sure is hard being pushed around in a stroller.

my mom and dad in grandparent bliss.

it was so funny, there was like 3 of us taking these last 2 pictures and everyone was shouting, whooping, hollering, you name it to get the grandbabies to smile. it seriously sounded like a madhouse.

thanks for a fun weekend mom and dad!

jellabee

so...i haven't posted for a couple weeks and i'm sure you're sick of looking at my california post by now. i've been super busy lately, every spare minute i've been craftin' away making stuff for my farmer's market booth...and my new etsy shop! a couple weeks ago i decided to squeeze in my hairclips into my card booth and i sold 20 clips the first saturday. encouraged by that, i made even more clips and now recently i've been making vintage-inspired headbands. yesterday was my first saturday selling all 3 things: cards, hair clips, and headbands and i made $170!! so surprising and awesome. the farmer's market only lasts 5 months and i wanted to keep on craftin' so opening an etsy shop seemed like a no-brainer. (if you're not familiar with etsy it's an online store for handmade and vintage items.)

it's been really fun but kept me busy (if you ever want to open up an etsy shop, it takes longer than you think!) - trying to get penny to stay still while i put the clips on her to take pictures, editing the pictures, posting each item and writing the descriptions and shipping specifics...etc. but now i've got about 30 items posted featuring "cute clips for the babies and hip headbands for the ladies". (are you so impressed by the poetry of that??) i still have more items to post so i'll be adding new stuff every day for the next week or so.

the hardest thing ever was trying to come up with a name for the shop. have you ever tried thinking up a random name for something like this? it's hard! i knew i wanted something that rolled off the tongue and that wasn't really a word, just some nice sounding syllables so...i came up with jellabee. no particular meaning behind it, just something non-descript but pleasant sounding. go ahead, say it outloud, it rolls right off the tongue. :)

i put up a link to my shop on the right (click on "jellabee" under the pics), so if you have a minute stop by and take a peek! and if you have even more minutes (and at the risk of being too self-promoting...), you can put up a link to my shop on your own blog (but seriously, only if you like my stuff and want to): www.jellabee.etsy.com

penny's my little model for all the hair clips in the shop. here's a fierce picture of her workin' it:

there's pictures of me, too - please don't snigger too hard at my "model" shots of my headbands...