happy easter!

collecting some eggs...

penny surveying her loot (which we graciously ate for her later).

haha.

love these pics of penny with my dad.

uncle paul giving max a toss in the air.

it was so nice and warm outside that day. a perfect easter!

so long, utah!

tomorrow we will be leaving THIS behind.

(today: our backyard + outside the front door)

we will be driving to this:

to enjoy this:

(penny at easter last year - 6 months)

to go to this:

(thanks for the discount tickets, dad + for baby-sitting, mom. that's right. we're not going to ruin a perfectly good day at knott's with kids. jk...sort of)

and listen to this:

and eat this:

(one of my FAVorite restaurants)

and to visit friends and enjoy time with family. which i am REALLY looking forward to.

hope you all have a great easter!!

only the highest quality toys for my baby

(only the highest quality cereal for my family as well...)

feeling better is good

back to crafting... (it's an organized mess.)

back to not doing the dishes...not that i did them when i was sick...

back to a happy lady in her high chair.


back to a happy lady in her bath. (yes, i STILL bathe her in the kitchen sink. if she's little enough, why not?)

and paul is back to work. i must say that even though we were all sick, we all really enjoyed the 4 day weekend together - just relaxing, sleeping, and watching those awesome timelife infomercials where they show footage of old music hits. oh man, those are the best.

monday thru wednesday sucked, but mostly wednesday

MONDAY
2:00pm: penny starts getting a runny nose, fever, and red watery eyes. i start cursing nursery for what i'm sure is responsible for getting her sick.
8:00pm-tuesday morning: penny cries throughout the night = 3 hours of sleep. i'm thinking she's just irritable from the cold...

TUESDAY
7:00am: penny has a full-blown nasty cold, her fever hasn't gone away, she can't sleep and cries all the time. i'm starting to get the itchy throat that means a cold is coming and i curse nursery even more. (you're supposed to get blessings when you go to church, not viruses.)
7:00am-8:00pm: me and penny both feel like crap and just lay there and watch cartoons all day. i have a ton of etsy orders to work on that need to ship wednesday but i procrastinate and do nothing all day except take care of a miserably sick baby. i call the doctor to see if there's anything else i should be doing, and he says just to give her tylenol and wipe her eyes with a warm washcloth. i check my shops and see i have even more orders to work on that are due on wednesday (i ship mon/wed/fri and if they order something on tuesday, they're expecting it to go out on wednesday and if i ship later than when i say i'm going to ship, i could get negative feedback on my shop and the customer gets annoyed...have you noticed that people really like crap to ship on time?).
8:00pm: penny goes to bed (sort of) and i start working on like 20 clips that are supposed to ship the next morning and finish at 3:00am. i still have 5 burpcloths that are also supposed to ship the next morning but decide to sew them in the morning and go to the post office at noon. paul is now also sick and we all feel so crappy that he decides to stay home from work on wednesday. penny wakes up 4 times that night crying = 3 hours of sleep.

WEDNESDAY (the crappiest day)
7:00am: penny wakes up screaming and crying and her fever's even higher. the tylenol just doesn't seem to be working like it should. she's gotta have more than a cold. call the doctor, explain how she can't sleep and her fever won't go away and make an appt to see her for 5:30pm. dang, i wish it was sooner.
7:00am-10:00am: me and paul lay on couches taking turns holding penny, and all of us are sick sick sick, too tired to do anything but lay there. penny gets loose and i wasn't watching for 5 seconds, and she smashes two little fingers in the dvd drawer. she wails like a banshee while i try to console her. as if she wasn't feeling bad enough...
10:00am-noon: still lying on a couch and thinking i still have those dang burpcloths to sew that need to be at the post office by 4:30pm.
noon: paul watches robin hood with penny while i plan to sew. (there is NOTHING less i want to do at that moment than sew). i start to get out the fabrics i need when i realize i am out of not one but TWO fabrics that the guy ordered. crappity crap crap. so i email the guy hoping he's the understanding type and tell him that i'm so sorry but i just realized i'm out of two of the fabrics for the burpcloths he wants (SO embarrassing). and i offer to reimburse him for the two, and let him pick out two replacements for free, and let him know that i'm normally much more professional that this...luckily, the guy writes back soon and he's super nice about it and picks out the two replacements.
3:00pm: barely finish the burpcloths (it doesn't normally take me 3 hours to sew 5 burpcloths, but in the meantime i'm feeding penny and holding her when she doesn't want dad to anymore...etc). hop in the shower (because nothing makes you feel nastier when you're sick than not being clean) and plan to haul tail to the post office which closes in a half hour.
4:00pm: open the door to the honda, try to start the car...battery's dead. i look up and see the cabin light that i left on the whole night. UGH. run over to paul's truck, thanking my lucky stars that he stayed home from work today.
4:30pm: get home, yank penny out of her nap so we can feed her, bathe her (her curly hair was in all sorts of knots) and run over to the doctor's office.
5:15pm: waiting in the doctor's office while penny burrows into my shoulder (i know she's sick but she never does that any more and i feel all warm and fuzzy and mom-ish). the movie "up" is on the wating room tv and me and paul watch the montage in the beginning where they grow old together. it breaks my heart every time.
5:30pm: nurse takes penny's temp and it's 100.7 degrees. yikes. doctor lady is super nice but informs us penny has an ear infection in her left ear. CRAP. (but also YAY because now we know why she was so miserable and now we can make her better).
6:00pm: drive over to the grocery store to get her antibiotics + cold meds for me and paul + ibuprofen for penny's fever.
6:45pm: drug penny up real good with her bubblegum flavored antibiotics and citrus flavored ibuprofen.
7:30pm: stuff her with oatmeal and milk and put her down for bed.
7:50pm: watch lacey get kicked off american idol. thank goodness, she was an awful singer.
midnight-this morning: i guess the drugs are working because penny sleeps all night and so do we.

i know there are worse days to be had...but let's not repeat wednesday, okay?

18 months!

i can't believe my baby is a year and a half! it went by super quick.

the jellies return! can you believe she still fits into them from last summer?? wow, she has tiny feet.

haha this picture makes me laugh.

she weighs 22 pounds (20th percentile, which is the highest she's ever been so good job eating penny!) and 32 1/2 inches tall (75th percentile, she's always been pretty high in this area).

she likes to...
- grab paul's hair (soo funny)
- pat your cheeks with her hands when you put your face up close to hers
- sort of give kisses, i'll say "gimme kiss!" and she'll sort of nuzzle her nose and lips on yours (i LOVE this)
- wave and say "hi" and "buh-bye"
- roll her fists over each other and say "roh-ohllllll"
- clap her hands and say "pat pat"
- throw her hands in the air when you say "toss it up!"
(i can't really take credit for the last three...grandma debbie likes to sing patty cake with her and do the motions...)

she still sleeps like a champ, 12 hours a night + a 3 hour nap every afternoon (it is HEAVEN). still a super happy baby, really content most of the time.

we're still working on the walking thing. since she just learned to crawl 2 months ago, i'm assuming it's gonna be a few more months before she walks. oh, well. she'll catch up in her own time i guess..and whenever i'm not worrying about her walking, i'll just enjoy not having her get into things or falling down and chipping a tooth (ahem, cousin max).

thank you for being a wonderful baby, penny-butt!

and if you were wondering about her little owl dress...i finally conquered my fear of sewing clothing and made a few simple pillowcase dresses for penny. and it wasn't as hard as i thought it was going to be! now if i could just conquer the mysterious world of sewing sleeves...

today

dear winter,

you need to go away PRONTO. it's freaking march and i'm tired of you being all cold and icy and drying out my baby's skin no matter how many times i slather lotion on her cute little pudgy body. also, i would like to start wearing flip-flops please.

here is our "apple" tree in our backyard this morning. grrr....snow....and i say "apple" because they look like tiny apples and feel like tiny apples but i'm sure as heckfire not gonna eat one of those creepy tiny apples.

making these put me in a better mood.

(go here for the recipe. AMAZING.)

i made them because our church does this pioneer trek re-enactment every year (sounds hard to me) and they're having a baked good silent auction tonight to help raise money so the teenagers in our area can go. plus, we get a free dinner for bringing a baked good so why the heck not.

lastly, this man is the best. yesterday was kind of a hard day and what does the husband do? he brings me home my most favorite, irresistable, and the symbol of all that is good in this world - the original cadbury egg. (none of this caramel or butterfinger egg crap, thank you.)

*4 years ago, when i bleached my hair so much it started falling out.