Out of Commission

Well.....my fancy schmancy computer is royally screwed up. It keeps shutting off on me out of the blue so I'm gonna have end this sucker in to be repaired or throw it through the store window. But luckily it's under warranty!  Something about a "logic board." So I'll probably be MIA for a while.  Grrrrr. 

Repeat Performance

I can promise you that I'll never get tired of this:

We found her like this around 10:30 last night. Notice her leg shoved under the night stand and the  "pregnancy journal" she had out. Guess she wanted to know how embryos develop. 

John Deere Green

Fact #1: Farm equipment is not Little Bit's idea of fun.

Fact #2: Farm equipment was my idea of fun when I was little. 

Fact #3: This particular tractor has a giant unicorn looking stick on the end of it that could stab and lift an elephant! Yikes! 

Fact #4: The concept of a shirt completely loses it's meaning between the months of May and October for my nutty dad.

Fact #5: My nutty dad is crazy about Sophie B. 

10

1. Well I cleaned out my closet this weekend and pack away and or threw away all of the things that no longer fit. Needless to say, my closet is almost totally empty. C'est la vie. 

2. We aren't going to the WVU/Marsall game this weekend. I can't possibly be inside Mountaineer Field if the unthinkable happens. And after the game last Thursday, the unthinkable just might happen.

3. It has literally taken me 2 entire days to recover from the wedding we went to on Saturday night. I think it's the staying up late that did me in and not the martinis! 

4. My crazy kid is under the impression that Daddy's first name is "Babe." Yesterday she looked right at him and said "Babe, can you get me chocolate milk."  

5. She also looked right him when he asked her to close to door and said "In a minute daddy, I watchn' Dora right now." Excuse, the heck out of us! 

6. I finished up the Twilight books last week and I'm kicking myself for reading them so fast. I never thought I'd say this but I like them more than ole Harry Potter.

7. All of the fall shows will be starting soon, EXCEPT for Lost. It doesn't start until '09. Talk about keeping you waiting!

8. Only a few more weeks until Sophie B and I head down to Charleston SC. My cousin and I are gonna check out a ghost tour. Apparently Charleston is one of the most haunted cities in the US.

9. Little Bit now prays before going to sleep. It's cute, until you realize that all she's doing is stalling the inevitable bedtime by "god blessing" her entire family, extended family, friends, day care teachers and classmates, stuffed animals, and Mary Lou Retton. 

10. Did you guys know that it's only 93 days until Xmas! That's only 5 more paychecks. Steven and I aren't doing Xmas this year since we are going on a trip for our anniversary the week before. 

Flower Girl

       Last night Steven and I stayed out way too late and had too much fun at a wedding for one of his co-workers. It was nice to dress up and kick up our heels with a bunch of adults. And Steven was in heaven loading up on gummy bears from the candy display. Instead of wedding favors the bride and groom had set up the coolest candy table with empty Chinese take-out boxes to load up.  It looked like the inside of a candy store!

    So normally I'm not one to grab the center pieces after the party but I've never had a 2 year old at home either. So I lugged home a 3 foot tall skinny vase topped with a bouquet. And just as i suspected, flowers are a big hit with the 3 and under crowd. 

30 Months

Dear Sophia,

Well little one, we've reached the half way mark, you are officially two and a half years old. It's sometimes hard for me to wrap my head around that fact. A month ago, I held little 6 pound Jackson in the hospital. I tried putting myself in Jenny's place, in that hospital room.  The memories are obviously etched permanently in my mind but they just seem so long ago. How you went from a 5 pound 15 ounce itty bitty baby needing us for everything, to a 30 pound big kid who would sometimes rather die than have us do anything for her is still a mystery to me. 

You actually haven't gotten into too much trouble this month. Although this past Saturday at Jordan's 1st birthday party you made me want to crawl under the table and die. There was Katie's dad going through the food line. He puts his plate down for one nano second and you wedge your little body right next to his a lifted a pineapple chunk right off his plate. Nice. At least you did look up at him and say "thank-you." I think we need to learn some manners. We'll definitely be practicing before we go trick-or-treating. Otherwise, you'll probably walk up to the candy bowls and help yourself!

You have a new favorite song these days and it brings a tear to my eye every time you belt it out. "Country woads, take me home, to da place, I belong, West Virginia, mountain mama ( or mountain Sophie, depending on whether or not you are in an egocentric mood), take me home, country woads. And hearing you sing "Jesus Loves Me" is priceless. Although yesterday morning when I asked you if you wanted to go to church you boldly pronounced "I don't like church."Well then, you obviously don't need to go. 

I've also mentioned that since the paci went off into the wild blue yonder, your naps went up in the air as well. This totally 100% sucks. And that's all I can say about that. Maybe one day you'll understand the magnitude of a 2 year old deciding that they no longer need to nap. And when that day comes, I'll be sure to laugh my arse off. 

Pretending seems to be on the rise around here too. When we let you build a fort under the kitchen table your eyes light up like it's Christmas morning. Usually you pretend that you are the "daddy" and you say "bye, family, I'm going to work now." I guess after I drop you off at daycare you assume that I'm going to hang out at the country club. I need to get you straightened out on that one! 

 

Well Little Bit we've got a fun month ahead of us. A trip with the "girls," Halloween, and a ton of Halloween parties. And I'll be there watching you take in everything, trying to etch all those things in my mind, like that day 30 months ago when I held you in my arms for the first time. 

Love mama

And all of these pics were taken yesterday at the pumpkin patch. They are growing like crazy! 

Paging Dr. Carr

So I was cruising the aisles at Target on Friday and saw the famous Fisher Price Doctor's Kit. Now I was a HUGE fan of this toy. And not only at  the age of 4 but also between the ages of 20-23  when I thought that dressing up like a "hot" nurse every year for Halloween was a fabulous idea. Go ahead, laugh it up, I won't name any names, Mrs. "hot" cop, Mrs. "hot" maid, and Mrs. "hot" go go dancer. 

Anyway, back to my sweet 2 year old. She loooved playing doctor and Monkey Jesse James was a willing patient. 

Daddy, on the other hand, wasn't as cooperative. Of course I don't know how cooperative I would be if my doctor was cramming a plastic scope in my eye. 

So I Never Forget

A conversation I had with Little Bit last night at bedtime.

Me:  "Nite nite princess."

LB: (you can see the wheels in her brain churning) 

"I a princess?"

Me: "Yes baby you are our Princess Sophie." 

LB: "Hmmm. Mama are you a princess too?

Me: "Nope. I'm what you call the queen."

LB: "Oh. So you da Queen Mommy.

Me: "Oh how I love you. I couldn't have said it better myself." 

What a nut. Here's a pic from tonight's gymnastics class. Sorry about the "deer in the headlights" look she's giving here and the lighting in the gym Sucks with a capital S. But you can get a look at Mary Lou's new leotard. 

Tuesday's 10

It's been a few weeks since I've done a 10 list. So here goes!

1. Sophie is doing GREAT without her paci! But her naps are still few and far between. It seems like the only way we can get her to take a nap over the weekend is to lay her in our bed and turn on Shrek the 3rd. She's seen it so many times that she now sings Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die" at the drop of a hate.

2. In October Sophie and I are heading down to Isle of Palms in Charleston SC with the girls. Meaning my mom, grandma, and my aunt and cousin who live in Kansas. The beach house is absolutely ADORABLE. We are still hoping that my cousin Kelly can come along but she has 4 boys so it's hard for her to get away, especially in the middle of football season.

3. Steven and I have something MAJOR sitting in our foyer. FOR SALE signs for our house. Within the next month or so our casa is gonna be going on the market. Not sure where we are gonna go but we want to unload this sucker before we do anything. We have some work to do first, namely rent a storage unit and unload 50% of our possessions.

4. A few of Sophie's old day care teachers from her first day care are now at her new daycare and I am pumped because these girls are really awesome!

5. Our second gymnastics class is tomorrow and Little Bit has a new leotard and a Dora sports bottle.  Cool.

6. It's also official that my office is moving downtown. We should be there by Nov 1. If you saw where my office is now you'd be excited for me. It's out in no mans land away from civilization. 

7. I'm now on book 3 of the Twilight series and I have GiGi totally hooked. I'd now like to find myself an 18 year old vampire.  Oh did I just put that in writing? 

8. This past weekend was my friend Carrie's WVU tailgate/baby shower. The game SUCKED but the tailgate food rocked. Wings and processed nacho cheese. You just can't top it.

9. Two of my friends are having Halloween parties for kids. Why o why can't someone have an adults party :(.

10. And speaking of Halloween, Sophie's costume came in and I immediately tried it on her. Do you want to see it? No really, I probably should wait until the month of October rolls around. Like I could keep a secret!! This one suits her to a tee! Drum roll please....................

Tada! Told you! And Miss Gracie is gonna be a cow girl! 

To Market We Go

So Steven despises the farmers market. He says we drive all the way down there (a whole 25 minutes) and buy nothing but a cucumber. What ever. GiGi on the other hand could go there every day. So this afternoon we left daddy to watch the Steelers and headed to the market to buy mums with the G (and of course I brought them home to hear, "great an even bigger plant for you to kill"). Little Bit was especially impressed with the vast quantities of watermelons. It doesn't take much to impress her! 

Friday we headed down to the high school to watch the Winfield Generals in action. My cousin is a cheerleader (quite possibly THE coolest thing in the world to a 2 year old) so Sophie B got to scream at the top of her lungs along with them. Although she was a little confused and cheered "LETS GO MOUNTAINEERS." Uh yeah, wrong team. But from the looks of things yesterday, they need all the cheers they can get! 

Her Calling

Well if I had to call it now, I'd say she'll take gold on the uneven bars in 2024. 

Bwhahaha!! No seriously, I'm the first one to pick on my Sophie B. I can laugh at all the crazy and wacky things that she does. I joke openly her about not knowing her colors and other area she's lacking. And I'm not living in some delusional world where I think that my child is perfect. BUT I can say that I think that old girl has found her calling when it comes acting like a monkey in a gym. Of course it could be that since she could crawl her ability to understand and calculate risk has been nonexistent. 

She marched right up to that wedge mat and did her somersault like it was the most natural thing in the world. She jumped up on a balance beam and yelled "DON'T TOUCH ME, I DO IT!" And then she grabbed the bar and swung her legs up over her head. And the real crazy thing, she LISTENED to the instructors. Say what??! Yup. We'll be back next week fo sure. 

I didn't have time to really take any photos today. I'll try to get there a little early next week and snap a few. 

Move over rover...

...and let Sophie take over.

The girl likes to rock out on her axe. Usually we hear her sing "Play your guitar with Murray" while she's rockin out. Wonder if I could get her to like Hair Bands like me. Sorry but the Monster Ballads cd is one of my favorites!

And a big day tomorrow. We start gymnastics for the fall. We've only watched Mary Lou Retton on YouTube 532 times. 

Free At Last

It boggles my mind that someone can become addicted to a piece of plastic. It's not not like any drugs seep out of it during the night and flow though her system. But like a crackhead who can't make it a day without a fix, my daughter has never made it a night with out her paci. Until Friday. 

I mentioned in my last post that on Friday we'd be heading over to Gracie's house for a "Bye Bye Paci" party. And that's exactly what we did. We cooked out, we ate cake, and then we tied those bad boys to helium balloons and sent them off into the sky. Little Bit thought it was great watching her paci float up up up into the sky. And she giggled and gladly said bye to it. But once we got home and ready for bed we thought we'd have to send her to a methadone clinic like a heroin addict! I swear she convulsed a few times and Steven is almost positive that her head spun 360 degrees. But after about a half an hour she went sound to sleep and woke up to a Barbie guitar, a Dora bath castle and a WVU t-shirt from the Paci Fairy. We've been paci free for the past 3 days. Of course it now seems as though naps, glorious, sweet, heavenly naps, are a thing of the past. So here are a few pics from the big send off. It sort of makes me sad that all of the baby stuff in gone. Our Little Bit keeps getting a little bit bigger every day. 

One last"hit" before sending it off!

Somebody having a few second thoughts.

Getting closer....

LIFT OFF!