I don't know what my fascination with old photos is lately....and my poor blog readers are the ones who have to suffer. Sorry, everyone. There are plenty more where this came from and I'm probably going to keep torturing you with them for a while.

Here's one of me at Sea World getting a temporary tattoo when I was 12 years old. I don't know what my mom was thinking, letting her (ummmm...early-blossoming) 12-year-old wear such a slutty outfit. Maybe that's why I had a string of crappy older boyfriends at a very young age. Grrr.

Labels: old skool pics

Scout took 7-8 steps in a row yesterday while I was in the church nursery with her. She was holding onto a chair and just decided that she wanted to come over to where I was sitting. But instead of plopping her booty down on the floor to crawl, like she normally does if she has her eyes fixed on something she wants, she just let go and stepped on over. She almost made to my arms, but got wobbly and fell before she reached me. It happened so fast, I don't think she even realized she did it. Yikes!

Labels: firsts

We love our coffee 'round here. After we watched an episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats in which he uses a pour-through coffee maker to make the perfect cup of coffee, we were intrigued. It was a coffee contraption that we didn't have and suddenly just had to own! We bought a Bodum Bistro Double Wall Pour-Over Drip Coffee Maker shortly after. (Pay no mind to the crappy reviews on Amazon. They're all just pissed because their carafes came broken. Ours did too, but Amazon happily replaces things that are damaged in shipment. No biggie. They really should consider packing them a lot better if there are that many people receiving broken ones. Duh.)

Here's our fail-safe recipe for some yummy coffee made with the pour-through coffee maker:

Put 5 cups filtered water on the stove to boil. Grind 3 level scoops (we use a standard 1/8 C coffee scoop) of good beans that have been stored in an opaque air-tight container. We use a paper filter in addition to the gold filter. It just reduces sediment and allows the water to drip through for just the right amount of time. When the water has come to a boil, turn off the fire and count to 20. Pour the water over the grounds. Halfway through, stir the grounds and pour in the rest of the water. Wait for all of the water to drip through to the bottom. Enjoy!

Labels: coffee, food

Tara over at Two Lines on a Stick is now an Avon representative. You should check out her site! C'mon, you know you want some of that famous Avon bubble bath. Man, that stuff was a staple in my home when I was growing up. It was very rare for our bathroom to be without a bottle of pink Avon bubble bath. And my sis and I always got some yummy lip gloss and a little trinket or cute piece of jewelry from Avon on holidays like Valentine's Day and Easter. Ahhh. Memories.

Labels: plugs 'n' such

Woohoo! We found a cheap and easy solution to Scout's sleeping situation. You can read more about what our dilemma was HERE. But to summarize, she doesn't sleep in a crib because she is used to being nursed to sleep in the side-lying position and we don't co-sleep because she sleeps better in her own room and is too stimulated by my presence at night and constantly wants to play if I sleep beside her.

We had a queen size mattress in the floor of her bedroom, but honestly I don't think that was the safest option. It has only happened a handful of times, but she has rolled off and fallen head-first in her sleep. I know it's on carpet and it's just a 12" fall...but still, it can't feel too good. There have been a few times that she has managed to wriggle part of herself between the mattress and the wall. Even though her face was not covered, it still scared the crap out of me. We bought a bed rail, but that thing looked like a freakin' death trap to me, so we decided not to use it.

I wish I would have thought of this sooner, but last night we decided to switch her 12" thick pillow-top mattress with a 4" thick sleeper-sofa mattress we had hanging out in our utility room.

It's perfect! She can crawl on and off of it with ease (and in fact, LOVES to do that and makes a sort of game out of it) and we don't have to worry about there being any danger in her inchworming off of it at night or slipping between it and the wall.

Labels: baby sleep, my house, pics of scout

Oops! I've been a very lazy blogger lately. I just don't have enough time to sit and do everything I want to do on the internet throughout the course of my day. If I am active on the mommy forums that I like to visit, my blogging suffers, and vice versa. I'll try to be better.

Just for fun, I scanned in some old photos that I thought you might get a kick out of:

These are my parents in 1978.
{{cue music: The Carpenters, "We've Only Just Begun"}}



Then I came along. They look a little less smitten with one another, but no less groovy.



This is me, my dad, and my cousin in 1981. I'm not sure why my dad thought skin-tight white daisy dukes were okay to wear out in public. I don't get it.

Labels: old skool pics

I know it's a little early to be planning Scout's 1st birthday, (or maybe not - it's just 2 months away!) but I've already picked a theme for the party:



My mom has offered to buy all of the decorations, which is so awesome!! I know Scout will have no recollection of the party, but I want to make the event extra special because I have family coming in from out of town. Besides, I think it's great for friends and family to gather around and celebrate this little person who just completed her very first year of life on this planet! Most importantly, I just like Hello Kitty and want an excuse to plan and decorate :)

DH is not big into parties and holidays. I'm not sure if his family made a big deal out of birthdays or not, but mine did and it's a tradition that I want to hold onto. Some of my fondest memories are from the big birthday parties my parents had for my sister and I. It was always a big deal. We would have pinatas and sometimes clowns and tons of food. All of our friends from school were invited, as well as our grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It always made me feel so special. I think that it's great for kids to have their own special day like that.

Labels: birthdays, firsts, parties, special occasions

Last night, my throat started feeling sore and the glands in my neck were a little swollen. This morning, it feels even worse and is accompanied by a stuffy nose. Oh gosh, I don't want to be sick!! That's gotta be one of the roughest parts about being a mommy....when mommy's sick, she still has to BE mommy! She still has to make food, clean, change diapers, and carry around a 20 lbs sack o' taters on her hip all day.

I just gargled some warm salt water because that's what my mom always says to do when you have a sore throat. I'd love to make a nice hot cup of somethin' to sip before I go back to sleep, but we are out of honey and lemon. Guess it'll have to be plain ol' herbal tea.

Today is the monthly LLL meeting. I missed December's and January's and I was REALLY wanting to go today! My friend, who is going to be having her 2nd cesarean in April, was planning on going with me because she had a hard time with breastfeeding the first time around and could use the support. I was also supposed to go out to lunch with some mommies and babies I haven't seen in 3 months after the meeting. But if I have something, I don't wanna spread my germs.

Crap.

***ETA***
So, after I gargled about 10 mouthfuls of warm salt water and went back to bed, I slept great. When Scout woke me up at 8:30, I felt sooooo much better than I did last night. My throat was still a little sore, but NOTHING like it was last night. So, I went to the LLL meeting after all, and just didn't touch anyone else's babies and sort of kept my distance from everyone in general. I got to hang out with my momma friends afterwards and we all had a good time. Yay! Now, I am so freakin' tired, but my throat feels almost 100% better and I don't have a headache anymore. I don't know why I felt like I was getting strep last night, but today I feel pretty good. Weird. My mommy's magical salt water cure that she has always sworn by really works, I guess.

Labels: general complaining

Fl1ckr is doing something wacky right now. I hope it comes back soon. My blog is even MORE boring without pics!

My sweet grandma sent Scout some money for Valentine's Day and I spent it on a spring dress and a pair of shoes from T@rget for her.





I just love shopping for a little girl!! I don't get to do it very often because our budget is so tight and we have been blessed with hand-me-downs and family that buys lots of nice stuff for Scout. But every now and then, it's nice to be able to pick something out for her myself.

I REALLY REALLY want to start making dresses for Scout out of fun and unusual prints, but I just haven't had the money to buy fabric and sewing supplies. I guess I could've spent Scout's Valentine money on fabric and notions to sew something myself. It's a sad fact, but fabric is so dang expensive - It was probably cheaper for me to buy a dress off the rack along with the shoes than it would've been to buy a pattern, cute fabric, and zippers/buttons/elastic or whatever. Maybe I'll dig around in my fabric pile and see if there's anything cute enough to make a simple little dress for Scout.

Labels: clothes, sewing

2 weird things happened when Scout and I went shopping with my friend and her baby (who is 3 months older than Scout) on Thursday.

The first thing was that the 2 babies HATED sitting next to eachother in the car. My friend's baby's seat is forward-facing and Scout still sits rear-facing, so they had a good view of eachother. During the first 5 minutes, they were smiling and laughing and seemed to be interacting well. I didn't expect any different, since they see eachother in the nursery all the time at church. But, as soon as my friend's little guy started crying, Scout FLIPPED OUT and started her "I'm-freakin'-terrified" scream. I felt so bad for her. Her screams just fed his screams. He got louder. She got louder. They were both terribly upset.

I'm pretty sure what scared her what not necessarily that he was crying, but that he looks a bit scary when he cries. He's got a rather large mouth full of teeth and he was staring at her with his eyes and mouth open wide while screaming at the top of his lungs. I can see how that could be a little scary for Scout to look at and not be able to escape, trapped in her car seat. There were brief moments of peace, but if one of them let out so much as a whimper, the other would start bawling and the whole thing would start over again.

I think if I would've known that was going to go on during the entire car ride to "town" and between all of our errands, I would've asked my friend to take us back home when the babes first started their screaming 5 minutes into the drive. Luckily, we had plenty of stops, so they got to take some breaks from being in the car throughout the trip.

The second weird thing was that when we were at Wa1-Mart, I grabbed a little stuffed Valentine's puppy off a shelf and handed it to Scout when she was being fussy. She fell in LOVE with it immediately. She wouldn't let go of it and insisted on holding it when we went to lunch and while I nursed her. She's never shown much interest in stuffed animals, so her love for the little stuffed dog surprised me. After we got home and she kept treating it like a security blanket, it dawned on me that if this toy does in fact become her "lovey", we would never be able to replace it if it got lost or damaged somehow.

Since it's just a cheap piece-of-crap made-in-China seasonal toy that doesn't even have a brand name printed on the tag, I highly doubt we'd ever be able to find another one. So, I went back to Wa1-Mart and bought 6 more. DH thought I was being silly, but I figured that I might as well play it safe. The day after Valentine's Day, they were half off, so they ended up costing just $1.44 each.

Yesterday and today, she doesn't seem quite as attached to the dog. Although, her face still lights up and her arms flap in delight when she sees it. I'm a little worried. If it doesn't become her favorite toy, I just spent a whopping $8.46 on crappy stuffed dogs for no reason.

Labels: outings, toys

I'm trying to get Scout back on a two-nap-a-day "schedule". I put "schedule" in quotations because I pretty much let Scout decide when she wants to sleep, eat, etc. After all, I wouldn't want someone to make me go to bed if I am not tired or eat when I'm not hungry. On the other hand, I do know that children (for the most part) thrive on routine and consistency, so I need to find a balance. I know for a fact that Scout is tired enough in the afternoons (around 3 or 4) to take a second nap, but she fights it and most of the time will NOT go to sleep. Today, I pressed the issue and won. After trying to nurse her down unsuccessfully, I decided to slap on the sling and wear her while I vacuumed the house. I only got 1.5 rooms done before she was out like a light. I gently took the sling off and laid her in bed. I nursed her for a little while and she went right back to sleep. Ha! I outsmarted the baby! I then made myself a nice big spinach salad with cilantro, garbanzo beans, white corn, red bell pepper, croutons, olive tapenade, and oilive oil and vinegar dressing. I then propped my feet up and ate it while watching Oprah. How house-wifey of me.

Labels: baby sleep

Oh my gosh. WHEN will Grey's Anatomy ever come back on? I am going into withdrawals. Also, it would be nice to see a new episode of The Office.
Is that too much to ask??

Labels: entertainment, general complaining

I know I haven't posted any videos of Scout in a while. I've been too lazy to figure out our video editing software. Now that I have a decent grasp on it, no more excuses. You should be seeing a lot more videos around here from now on.

The first part of the video is Scout's valiant (yet unsuccessful) attempt at pushing her noisy walker toy thingy. (Leap Frog Learning Band Walker) The second half of the video is Scout using the walker to triumphantly cruise through the house.



**ETA** Just to be clear, Scout hasn't taken any independent steps yet. She can only "walk" using her little push-toy. I can barely keep up with her crawling all through the house....I don't know what I'll do when she's walking! Yikes!

Labels: firsts, video of scout

Labels: pics of scout

I really REALLY need to get around to listing Scout's cloth diapers on Diaperswappers.com. I have taken all the pics and have started typing out all the descriptions, but I just haven't made the time to sit down and get it finished....mostly because I know how time-consuming listing diapers can be and how daunting it is to keep up with all the messages sent by people inquiring about the diapers. But then, I think a small part of me doesn't want to get rid of them. It'll be like admitting total defeat. Plus, they're adorable. It must be done, though. I will definitely get them listed within the next week.

Labels: cloth diapering

Okay, seriously. I guess I need to remove my little Blog 365 button from my sidebar. I am so not worthy. Maybe I'll be the founder of the club: "Blog Every Other Day...or at least twice a week"

My sis sent me a pic that she scanned with her (obviously) crappy scanner. I think it's one of the only pictures of me in existence that doesn't make me feel bad about myself. (I'm the one on the right, by the way) I had just turned 15. I guess it's kind of sad that I was 15 the last time I remember being close to my ideal weight. I know I can't place the blame on anyone but myself, but shortly after that pic was taken, I met the guy I dated through the rest of high school. We got fat together. We would sit around and smoke out and then get the munchies and gorge ourselves on junk food. all. the. time. I think we both gained 25 lbs in the matter of 2 years. He eventually took it off. I didn't.

This picture inspires me.



Gosh. It makes me want to vomit when I compare it to this pic.

Labels: doh, health, weight loss

This morning, Scout's usual 4 AM waking (well, this morning, it was more like 5:30) when she wants to play for 2 hours rather than be nursed back to sleep, was diffused by a loooooong session of nursing accompanied by nerve-grating pinching, scratching, poking, and kicking. Poor thing just couldn't get settled down. I swear, when I go into her room to nurse her, she just gets so wound up.

She ended up getting frustrated and unlatched herself to wiggle all over the mattress for a while, as I rubbed her back and tried to calm her down. It eventually worked, but when I stepped out of the room and she finally got settled in and back to sleep, she was so close to the edge of the mattress (which is on the floor, BTW) that I just couldn't leave her there. I tried to scoot her back to the middle of the bed without disturbing her. Didn't work. 10 more minutes of back-rubbing and patting, and she was back to sleep. I stepped out of the room again and she managed to wriggle to the edge of the mattress within 2 seconds. This time, so that she would surely fall head first if she inched any closer to the edge. (Normally, she's pretty stationary all night and there is a baracade of Boppy pillows preventing her from going over the edge. But when she is having trouble getting settled in, she scoots like an inchworm and I am in such a hurry to escape the room without her noticing, that there is no time for a pillow baracade.)

I felt ridiculous (and tired and pissed) as I quickly trolled the house, gathering couch cushions and pillows to shove next to her mattress. I thought to myself, "Now, why exactly don't we use a crib? This is just stupid!"

Co-sleeping did not work for us because (as you can tell from the above encounter) Scout gets too stimulated by my presence. She was seriously up all. night. long. when she slept in our bed or when I slept with her on her queen size mattress. Not just nursing all night. I could tolerate that. Every time she would wake up and nurse, she would think it was party time after her snack. But for some reason, she gets good long stretches of sleep when she's on her own. I really can't complain about her sleep habits most of the time. Last night, she slept from 9:00 PM to 5:30 AM without so much as a peep.

But the mattress thing is getting annoying and I really think she would just settle herself back down and go back to sleep after that early morning waking if I just didn't go in her room. I'm not talking about letting her "cry it out". It's just that when I do hear her wake up at 4:00 or 5:00, it's normally just moaning and squirming and mild fussing. I always try to wait and see if she'll settle back down before I go in there, but she rarely does. She either gets all chipper and excited and ready to play if I leave her in there for a while without going in to nurse her or she gets worked up into a real cry. I'm afraid if I let her get all the way awake and leave her in there by herself, she'll crawl off the edge of the mattress. It doesn't really injure her as much as scare her the few times that has happened. But I still obviously don't want her to have to go through that. Plus, even though she is getting better about at least attempting to slide down off the mattress feet first sometimes, it's still not a good thing to have an unattended almost 10-month-old having the run of her room while mommy and daddy lay sleeping.

I can't help but think if she slept in a crib, all of this could be avoided because I could leave her in there longer to see if she'd eventually settle down and go back to sleep. I suspect that most of the time, she might just sit up and play for a while and then go right back to sleep if I left her alone. I really do think it's my presence that is screwing everything up.

UUuughh. Trouble is, she is so used to me laying down beside her to nurse her to sleep and she has NEVER stayed asleep when I have tried to transport her from my lap or the bed to her crib, so I just stopped trying.

I guess for now, it'll just have to be couch cushions until I figure out what we should do. Hhhmmm....maybe wall-to-wall matresses in her room? Who needs a dresser and toys, anyway?

Labels: baby sleep

I've been meeting up with some ladies from church at 9:00 every morning to work out to a Sweatin' to the Oldies video. Don't laugh :)

Okay, I just started, so I've only done it 2 days in a row so far - but I plan on doing it 5 days a week. Surprisingly, it's a pretty good little workout. I take Scout and her borrowed walker, and she has a great time scooting around the smooth cement floors of our church's youth building. We have that gorgeous fluffy green variegated carpet from the 70's all through our house (I know you've seen it in all of my pics and admired it), so being able to glide along in the walker is a fun novelty for Scout. I know, I know, walkers put pressure on the spine, yada, yada. But it's really the only place I can put her while I work out and I doubt that any harm will come of her playing in it for the length of an exercise video. My guess is that there is more of a chance of her being permanently damaged by watching Richard Simmons shake his thang on a giant projector screen every single morning than there is of her spine getting irreparably subluxated.

Sometimes she gets a little fussy and I have to pick her up while I'm Sweatin'. That's okay, though. It just adds to the challenge. Those other ladies are wimps. While they toss their little arms up in the air willy-nilly, I am working my guns with an 18 lb sack of 'taters.

My favorite part of working out to Sweatin' to the Oldies is seeing all of the great 80's clothes. It does make me thankful that I am a fat girl now and not a fat girl in the 80's, though. There are some pretty decent styles that flatter big gals nowadays. Not in the 80's. No. Whew! Poor large ladies had to put up with stretch leggings and jeans that were high-waisted and tapered at the leg. Big neon polka dot prints and shirts with elastic waist bands didn't help matters either. Yikes.

Labels: exercise, weight loss

For some odd reason, Scout turned her nose up at this crazy neon purple oatmeal I tried to feed her earlier. Since she liked whole blueberries so well, I thought she'd like them mixed in her cereal. I didn't know it would end up looking like Barney had diarrhea in a bowl.



Hey, you there!! Help me! Mommy is trying to feed me some radioactive-looking goo!

Labels: food, pics of scout

Scout was enjoying some whole peas and unsweetened frozen blueberries (what a combination!) earlier and I thought I'd capture the messiness. Mmmmm.

Don't ya just love the disheavled non-matching hair bow? Today, it's purely functional and not for decoration. Her hair gets in her eyes something terrible. Gee, I could've done a better job clipping it back though, huh?

Labels: food, pics of scout

Oops. I was too busy to post an entry yesterday. I guess I just can't keep up with blogging 365 days a year. Oh wait, does it count that I post to my food journal every day without fail? I think that counts.

Here is a shot of Scout's top 2 front teeth. They just poked through the gums a couple weeks ago and they have become some nice nubby little chompers already. The 2 beside these front middle ones have poked through as well, but you can't really see them in the pic. An then, of course she has the bottom 2 front teeth that came in when she was 6 months old.

Labels: firsts, pics of scout

Wendy over at Well Mannered Frivolity has presented me with an award! It's my first ever blogging award. I feel so honored. Thank you to all of my loyal readers. For without you, my life in the blogosphere would be so lonely. I would like to thank my husband and my daughter for being the inspiration for many many blog posts. I would also like to thank.....ummm....oh, wait a minute...they've cued the music and are escorting me off the stage.

I would like to bestowe this prestigous award to a couple of the blogs I visit on a daily basis: Two Lines on a Stick, because I love how our gals are so close in age and I always enjoy reading about your daily life, and Through the Looking Glass, because your witty writing slays me.

Labels: blog awards, blog talk

Scout has been eating more and more finger foods, but she still loves her purees. Baby food is freaking expensive now that my little darling is eating sometimes 2 whole jars per meal. (in addition to her many handfuls of puffed brown rice and the bits of food I give her off of my plate) Oink, oink!

So, I decided to make some baby food this evening. I made sweet potatoes, acorn squash, carrots, and rotini w/ marinara and chicken. I'm going to make some green vegetables tomorrow. I also plan on making chicken and brown rice w/ chunks of carrot. I froze the food in ice trays, then popped the cubes into freezer baggies.

I think she'll really like the rotini. I put some organic spaghetti sauce and chunks of all-natural chicken into the food processor and pulsed it a few times to make the chicken chunks a little smaller. Then, I added some cooked whole wheat rotini and pulsed it a couple more times. The noodles are big enough for her to pick up w/ her fingers, but not so big that they'd be a choking hazard.

She's got 6 teeth now (wow!) and is very good at chewing, so I'm getting a lot less paranoid about choking. (but I'm still very careful about what I give her)

Labels: food