The new bathroom!!!!!!

Here we are in our new bathroom! Amelia gets her first bath. I will admit that the only reason for posting this picture is that I think it's a good picture of me.

I love how she is looking at me in this picture...

The first video is our old bathroom (don't judge us for its horridness...but now you will see why we got / needed a new one)
And the second video is the NEW ONE!!!!

Sunday night post

I can't think of anything intelligent to title this post - so I am going the obvious route. We haven't posted pictures recently because we left the camera cord at Grammie's house. Hopefully we'll do it soon - in the meantime I will post some older pictures that I think are cute of Amelia drinking from her cup. Little Miss Stubborn likes to HOLD IT and DO IT HERSELF, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. She's getting better at using the sippy cup lids so I am hopeful that soon she'll be drinking from that and and not the regular cup... we're getting there!

"No, thank you, I will hold the milk myself..."

"What? I wanted milk on my cereal anyway..."

My Kid is a Chain Smoker

Well, not of cigarettes but of Graham Crackers. This afternoon I was alone with her and she was crying her eyes out and I gave her a quarter of a cracker. She ate that in two bites and started crying again. I gave her another quarter. She ate that in two bites and started crying again.

Can you see where I'm going with this.

I can't tell you how many quarters I gave her but it wasn't the whole box. If I did tell you Heidi would probably tell me that, "You can't give her that many crackers because it will ruin her dinner." But isn't that part of what I do? Sort of do anything to make my daughter happy so that she will love me someday--after the years of hating me when she is a teenager. I think I'm just following the job description.

Wow.

So the last two days with Amelia have shown me that HOLY #$%! we have a small person in our house, not a baby. Sigh. My baby is not a baby.

Situation #1: Amelia and I went out to lunch yesterday because we didn't have any food at home (yes, you read that correctly, we finally made it home despite much foot dragging on our part...) Anywho, she is sitting there in her high chair being adorable -- she kept waving at another woman who was having lunch there and she would give this big toothy grin at her every few minutes. She's slowly eating (she's a slow eater like her momma) and after awhile starts throwing food on the floor. I do the usual, "Are you done?" and I signed the sign language sign for "done." I have been doing this sign language thing since she was six months old and will admit I have grown weary of it. I know she understands what we say to her and I do the sign OVER AND OVER and she DOES NOT SIGN BACK. It has gotten annoying. Well, yesterday she looks me dead on and does the sign! I couldn't believe it! So I pull her out of her high chair and we get ready to go home. I wondered if it was a fluke?

Situation #2: This morning Amelia is getting fussy and it's time for her morning nap. I did the sign for "nap/bed" and she also did it back to me. When I see her do it I realize she has been doing this one for awhile, but I didn't realize it. I again wonder if this is a fluke...

Situation #3: This afternoon around naptime she was acting fussy and so I do the sign again. She doesn't sign back. I decided to give it some time and about 15 minutes later, I tried again. Nothing. I decide to give it some more time - after all, she is not THAT fussy. About 15 minutes after that, she looks at me across the room and SHE DOES THE SIGN all by herself! I could NOT believe it. So I scooped her up and we went into her room and she took a nap! Recently we have realized how much she understands what she says to us - but now she's showing us that she can communicate back. I'm going to find two new signs to introduce this weekend and see how long it takes her to pick them up (hopefully not another 6 months :))

We'll put some new pictures up soon...

A fun weekend!

Amelia in her pretty, pretty dress - tightly clutching her bottle of motrin... did she have a toothache?

Trying to get her to stand still for a picture...

Enjoying some prunes. I"m sure you can all guess why she was eating prunes...

And Yoda decided to eat a celery stalk

Amelia ATTACKS her birthday balloons...

I don't want to leave my mother in law's house

No, this is not an Onion article.

I don't want to leave my mother-in-law's house. It is so fun and easy here. Food appears as if out of nowhere. An addle minded cleaning lady comes every two weeks. The showers work. The floors don't have nails that stick up and hurt your feet.

The garge door opens with some kind of magic button. There are 3 refigerators. The decks look out on beautiful mountains and not piles of trash. The trash is taken away by men in a magic bus that drives by every week.

Anyway--we are leaving this week and are already looking forwar to a return.

Amelia makes a phone call

Amelia spent some time today enjoying climbing in and out of chairs. She had a lot of fun getting on the furniture and then standing up - eek! :)

That is some SERIOUS concentration...

She loves to lounge - she is clearly her mother's daughter!

Amelia spent the rest of her time climbing in and out of her stroller. She really enjoyed just doing what you see in this video...

And lastly, she attempts to make a phone call!

Birthday Fun!

Amelia LOVED her birthday cake - she inhaled it in about 5 minutes...
Yummo!!!!
Cute new crocs from M-E : one of Amelia's godmothers.
Mommy and Amelia one year later - we both look much happier and well rested!



Amelia tells us how much she enjoyed her cake.



Amelia opens up a special surprise from Grammie. Recently she has fallen in love with Elmo - interesting as she doesn't watch any television...but she loves him nonetheless.!

Today she is one...

Look how small she was!

Today is Amelia's first birthday and I can't believe it. We will post more pictures later, but I wanted to record my thoughts while she is napping sweetly and quietly in the other room. I decided on a David Letterman-style Top 10 list of things that surprised me/I've enjoyed this year:

10. How frequently Tom and I talk about poop. In fact, our day often begins with, "Did she poop today? What was it like?"
9. I never thought about my birthday also being about my mom - but this year on my birthday I couldn't stop thinking about my mom and I sent her two dozen pink roses to let her know it. I think I might do that every year (but don't hold against, Mom, if I don't - and be sure to act surprised if I do!)
8. I am actually more excited when Amelia reaches a cognitive milestone than a physical one. Crawling and walking were cool - but slightly anticlimactic because she had been "almost" doing it for weeks. But when I saw her wave for the first time, or walk from the living room into her bedroom and reach into her crib for her security blanket, or go into the cupboard where we keep cereal and get herself a snack, I was so so so excited and thrilled.
7. I could literally sit on the couch and watch her play by herself every day, all day, forever. I just love watching her explore her world.
6. Last year when I was still in the hospital, I remember having a hard time sitting down (OUCH) and thinking that I have so much respect for women who have more than one baby - because the second time around you know what you're getting into...the first time you don't have a clue. I wondered if I would always think about that and be more hesitant to have another one. But, now I'm excited to do it again (but not any time soon; this is by no way an announcement :))
5. I love watching her in shopping carts. She likes to sit on her knees turned around so that she faces out. It's adorable and hysterical all at once.
4. We are so happy that she is so independent. This could mean that she'll move away to Taiwan or something when she's grown up, but independence is always a good thing.
3. I think that her stubborness is very funny - I will probably not like it when she's 13 - but right now it's just cute. For example, she will only drink milk from a sippy cup that does not have a lid. This is very messy and we are learning to compromise with each other - I make her let me hold the cup when she drinks, but then I'll let her stick her hands in the cup to play with the milk afterwards if she wants to.
2. How unbelievably FUN Amelia is. I always knew that I would like having a baby, but I never realized how fun it is - and how excited I am for the fun things that we can do in the future. I'm already excited for family vacations - to Disney World, a cruise, long car rides to see friends and family (although when that actually happens, I may not enjoy it as much as I had hoped... I also am excited to see Tom on a cruise ship...that could be its own blog and/or reality tv show...)
1. I love her more every day - and it has gone by so fast - the cliche is true, it really does go by fast...

Don't Take My Goldfish...

Amelia's Day Outside

Sadly we might have to go home

Well, we are finally almost ready to move home. Our 2 week stay at Grammie's which turned into a 6 week stay is winding down. Today I finished the drywall in the new bathroom and the final step--the electrician--is coming on Friday.

After that we should be back in the house. The strange thing is that I think we will all be sad to go. We have really loved our stay here and being closer to Concord has made us all the more interested in selling our house and moving closer to the town where we work.

Amelia's first first birthday party.

Enjoying her first taste of cake holding tightly onto the sippy cup she stole from her friend Michael. He was having a nice drink and she walked right over and took it from him... Good thing she's going to school next year where she'll learn some manners, which she clearly hasn't learned from us! :)Mommy & Amelia on the big day! (Actually 9 days before the big day...but close enough...)

Amelia had 4 of her friends over for her birthday party today. Michael, Jake, Gianna and Emma. From all impressions they had a great time. I was a little embarassed by how much Amelia cried but Heidi said she was just being protective of her space.
Everyone is very interested in Gianna's hairbow so Heidi attempts to keep the girls from ripping it out...

Michael and Amelia in her big present the water pool.

Jake and Amelia. Jake was the big lover of the water pool and required a whole change of clothes after.

The moms enjoyed some homemade macaroni with the kids.

Family of four.

Reading Are You My Mother--a gift from Grandma and Grandpa Crumrine. Apparently this was my favorite book as a wee one.

Grandpa Crumrine reads to Amelia.

And some fun video:

Becky plays some intense Wii Boxing:

Amelia shows off her pretty party dress:

And Amelia plays with the bubbles that her Aunt Jen bought her!

Something special for Katelyn

Amelia enjoys a cracker snack with some company...
When she's full she just feeds it to them...
Amelia enjoys reading with Grandpa



And a special video for our niece/cousin/granddaughter, Katelyn, who was so sad when Grandma and Grandpa had to leave her last week. When everyone told her that they were going to visit Amelia she perked up when she realized she could watch them on the blog...

March 3 - Some cute stuff!

Duh... isn't it obvious why Amelia is so cute???? :)

Our little farmer - even chewing on some long grass...or broom grass... whatever.

Amelia eating something Mommy would never offer... but Mommy was at yoga. What is that huge block, you ask? An ENORMOUS rice krispy treat. I don't think she actually ate a lot... she just sucked on some sugar or something.


And here we have a long, but cute, video of Amelia doing some "purposeful" walking - in pajamas that are way too big for her... but that's better than too small!
I enjoyed Tom's Discovery Channel-style dialogue and our plethora of animals making their appearances throughout the clip...

One more day of vacation

We woke up this morning to 6 inches of snow and a 5:30am phone call saying that we had one more day off before returning from winter vacation.

The snow is just about the lightest and fluffiest that can come down so we are getting about 2 inches an hour. I was just out covering up the grill and my best guess would be that we have at least 10 inches already.

And it is still coming down really fast and hard.

The best benefit for Heidi is that I was able to take Amelia this morning so she could get a little more sleep.

On an unrelated note--I went ice fishing this weekend. We drilled about 35 holes and didn't catch a single fish. But the real excitement was when we came back to the Red House and I took off my hat. My friend Nesbitt laughed so hard that he did that thing where you spit out your drink in a porpoise like spray. His laughter was directed square at my stupid sun tan line in the middle of my forehead. Since I am pretty much bald there was a gigantic white top to my head--like an eraser. Then from about 2 inches above my eyes and down my face looked like I had just come in from a summer life guarding job. It is such an unfortunate tan that I refuse to take a picture of it--I'll leave it to your imagination.

This is Heidi finishing up the post -- Tom couldn't finish because Amelia was screaming. I told him I have NO IDEA what it's like to want to get something done and have Amelia creating distractions... Anywho, about the tan line. It's pretty impressive. Tom made me go to Rite Aid with him yesterday so we could buy some sunless tanner in hopes of helping it even out... I can't tell if it's better yet, but the experience of standing in the sunless tanner aisle helping my husband choose the best product was pretty funny.

just some cute stuff from last week.

Amelia's favorite activity is sitting in the dishwasher investigating...


Amelia gets some help from the dogs we have re-named Trouble 1 & Trouble 2
Amelia and Michael enjoy a cracker snack in their pint size rocking chairs. They look like they could be sitting in a nursing home garden talking about the "old times."


...and two videos showing Amelia enjoying her food...and Champ trying to help out...