Spelling Tuesday

I just signed up for this "Mommy and Me" exercise class. The description was something like "enjoy interactive exercises with your baby, and the company of other mothers", but what it should have said is "run a million suicides while your baby watches and laughs from the stroller, and attempt to do wall sits while holding twenty pounds weights while your baby laughs, and then keep doing push ups, even though your baby is now screaming and wants down." Uhg. We are doing stuff in this class that I haven't attempted since high school! When is the last time you did lunges with one foot up on a wall??? Pretty much everything that I HATE to do in a workout, we have managed to get into the three classes I have now gone to: suicides, plank, push ups, and tricept push-ups. Today, there was literally sweat dripping off my face!!! When is the last time I worked out that hard? Oh, we also had to jog with a foam ball between our knees while pushing our strollers. W...

I just listened to Caleb do a puppet show for loralie with her dolly and three bears. It started out pretty normal. "Hey bear, let's go for a walk. La la la la. Okay, here we are back at home. Uh Oh, the door's open... YOU COVER THE BACK!!! KITCHEN"S CLEAR! oh, no, someone ate your porriage! WHO DOES THAT??? (Loralie is looking confused at this point). WE HAVE A SUSPECT IN THE BEDROOM. FREEZE! HANDS ON YOUR HEAD! GET DOWN GET DOWN!!!!! Unfortunatley, Goldilocks tries to run for it, and she gets two caps to the back of the head. At this point I am scolding Caleb for the amount of violence in his fairytales, and Loralie is rolling on the floor laughing. The End.

So, Loralie has sort of a love/hate relationship with our dog, Scooter. Tonight, while she was taking a bath, he kept putting his little paws up on the edge of the tub. She was sqealing with delight, and trying to hand him her duckies, which was driving him crazy. He likes to chew them (grrr), so you could tell he was thinking about jumping right into the tub to get them. She would start to hand him one, and then put it into her mouth instead. He was literally crying. Ahh, sibling rivalry. I managed to get a picture of the chaos (don't you just love camera phones?)

I have been doing a terrible job blogging since Loralie was born, but at least I am pretty good at posting pics every now and then. I have a lot of stuff to report. For one thing, baby is officially crawling now. She started in August (10 months old). It is just amazing to watch her now. She gets into all sorts of things that she shouldn't (particularly electrical cords). It is sort of fun to see her express her independence, by going where she wants to go and playing with what she wants to play with! We just took her on her first vacation to Florida. She did great on the plane, sleeping almost the whole time. She wasn't really a fan of the pack and play that she was supposed to sleep in at the hotel, though. She actually eneded up "sleeping" with us one of the nights. Nobody did much sleeping. It is like having a live gopher in your bed. She was sideways between Caleb and I most of the night, so we looked like a letter H. That way, she could jab me in the nose with h...

I have a question for all you mama's out there... Loralie has always hated "tummy time". She generaly screamed the whole time she was on her tummy, but we still made her do it every day because all the experts say it is so important. Well, recently she has gotten REALLY good at rolling over, so much so that she starts "rolling" before her tummy ever hits the floor! No more tummy time for me, Mom. Nice try. Anyways, now I am a little worried that she will skip the whole crawling phase, which some other moms have told me is fine. Not fine for me though, as an ex-K teacher who had it drilled into our heads that it is BAD when babies don't crawl before they walk. Something with develping the cerebral cortex? Anyways, I was wondering if any of your babies had an aversion to tummy time but still managed to crawl??? Loralile is eight months old now, and all the baby books are saying "your baby is probably crawling all over the place now..." Uh, no. I know...

Loralie is at an age now where Caleb and I can just watch her and watch her, as she is so very entertaining. Today, I ate a powerbar and she entertained herself (and us) with the wrapper for about twenty minutes. First, she ripped it in half and was delighted that she now had TWO shiny toys. They she alternated putting each one in her mouth and making the crunchy sound. She tried to see what would happen if she put one in mommy's mouth (no luck). She crunched them in her little hands and clapped them together. So, sorry Playskool, Powerbar has invented the funnest baby toy ever.

My blessings, that is. Today I turn 29, and as I look back on this last year, I can't belive all the changes that have happened in our lives! At this time last year, I was hugely pregnant and working at a job that didn't make me happy. Fast forward one year (and it really does seem as though it was fast forwarded!) and we have a beautiful daughter and I own my own business and get to do a job that I really enjoy! Thank you Jesus! So, I am not freaked out to be turning 29 today. That just means I have gotten to experience God's blessings for 29 fantastic years! "When your worried, and you can't sleep, Just count your blessings, instead of sheep! And you'll fall asleep, counting your blessings! When your bank roll is getting small, just think of when you had none at all. And you'll fall asleep, counting your blessings!" ~Mr. Bing Crosby