"Do you want a meatball?" and "Where did my socks go?"

We are still struggling with getting proteins into little one. We have tried just about every meat and bean imaginable. We have served them baked, fried, plain with sauce. To give us more choices and so we don't throw away as much food, when we are in grocery stores on the weekends, we always try to have little one sample everything.

Yesterday, after the playing at the Little Gym and before any snack, we stopped by Sam's club. We asked little one if she wanted to try all the various things that were offered. Imagine our suprise when she said "yes." And, double suprise when she had not one but two! We were quite excited and we bought a whole bag. A whole bag at Sam's club is like a 5 lb sack or enough meatballs to have a meatball everyday for 3 months.

So we made up a couple for lunch today. No go! Oh well. Looks like mommy and daddy will be enjoying meatballs for some time to come.

Little one usually plays in her crib for a bit when she wakes up from her nap. We will hear her talking or singing or laughing. If we go in, she will not really be ready to get up. When she is ready, she will call out for us. When she called for me today, she was in a great mood, hair flying everywhere, hands waving in the air. As you can see, she has taken her socks off her feet and put them on her hands. Too funny!!

I have been off work since a week ago last Thursday. I have enjoyed the time off. I have kept up on work emails so will not have a massive amount to go through in the morning. Will just have lots of issues waiting for me....as usual. Time to jump back in to the deep end with both feet.

What a relief!!

Today, hubby went in for the final test before the propsed open heart surgery. They put him under anesthesia and put a scope down his throat. (Apparently, you can see the heart this way...go figure.) Anyway, the doctor came out about 10-15 minutes after they wheeled hubby away and said that the leaking was less than they had thought and the ventricle was not as dilated. Thus, they were going to wait to do anything else for 6 months. Hubby has one final check up with the doctor next week but we are breathing sighs of relief at this news.

He will eventually have to have the valve replacement surgery. The good news is that there is a new procedure on the horizon where this surgery can be done through a cathetor through a vein in the arm (radial artery). This would make the procedure MUCHO less invasive and recovery time much less. So, hopefully, we can wait long enough for this surgery for this new procedure to come on line.

Started working on a page from our recent trip to Wichita. This is little one playing bubbles with Grandpa.

Credits to Sir Scrapalot Sweet Sugar Love kit. Love all the girly elements. YOu will be seeing this kit many more times.

Family Vacation?

This past weekend was spent in Wichita, Kansas for hubby's niece's wedding. Since we did not venture up for Christmas, we knew that hubby's relatives would spoil little one (lavish her with gifts), and because she has so much paraphenalia of her own, we decided to drive. The drive SHOULD be about 8 1/2 hours...but with little one....we knew we would have to stop and let her stretch her legs so we counted on a long day's drive. In preparation for the drive, hubby purchased a small DVD player and checked out 5 kid DVD's from the library.

We left on Thursday at about 11am and made it to Grandma's and Grandpa's house at 9:30 pm. Long day...but have to say, the DVD player was AWESOME! (On a weekly basis, little one watches approximately 1-2 hours of video. It is the same video each time. A video called Baby Songs - Animals. We watch/sing some of the songs before she goes to bed as a way to wind down, after our bath and before our last book.) Thus, she was just mesmerized by all the new characters that she was introduced to - Pooh and all his friends, Big Bird and all the Sesame Street people, and The Wiggles.

Friday, we hung out with Grandma and Grandpa. Saturday was a completely full day. We started the day with a visit to hubby's sister's house. They have a 9 year old girl that just loves little one. They played and giggled and played. There was one boo boo time out (little one fell off the bed and landed on her head). From there, we went to the afternoon wedding. The wedding was beautiful. Little one did not really care. She had brought one of her cousin's dolls with her and was occupied with taking her clothes off. (Do you know that they make dolls anatomically correct these days?) From the wedding, we went back to hubby's sister's house for more play for the girls and a 6 handed Pitch game for the rest of us. After more playtime, we headed off to the reception for more fun. The girls had a great time. They danced. They played under the tables. I tried to get little one to eat something healthy, while hubby's big brother kept dropping M&M's onto little one's plate. We called it a day at 9pm. A hugely long day for little one.

Sunday, we hung out at hubby's other brother's house. More playing with cousins. Hubby and I had our turn with Wii. We decided we are not good and video games AND we don't have the time to get good at them. Monday, we went to visit an old classmate of hubby, who happens to be an eye doctor. He gave little one her first eye exam. He was awesome with her. She sat in the chair and looked at the things he told her to look at. What a big girl she is getting to be!

Yesterday was the DVD filled drive back. (Note to self, bring more than 5 DVD's for two 10 hour drives.)

There were so many firsts on this trip. Little one got to play in snow (we saw snow last year but this year, she got to throw a snow ball). Little one slept in a big girl bed (we decided not to bring the Pack-and-Play as she can now crawl out of it with ease. She was so exhausted by the end of each day that she just fell in bed and did not move until morning.). She attended her first wedding reception and dance. With all the comings and goings, missed naps and bedtimes, she still had a smile and laugh for everyone.

Grandpa and little one playing bubbles.
Little one and cousin...they played and played and played.

There's no place like home

After a week in London, it is great to be home. London lived up to its weather reputation of cold, wet and, generally, miserable. This particular trip, it snowed and was REALLY cold. If there was any doubt it was cold, every freaking weather report repeated over and over that this was the coldest day of the winter so far. (I am such a cold wimp. Hearing that it was the coldest day of the year made me even colder.)

While on this trip, hubby received results from his annual physical. The result showed that the leaky valve in his heart was doing bad things and that he will likely have to have the valve replaced ... open heart surgery!! This was quite a shocker and horrible to take when I was 6000 miles away. The doctors are doing one final definitive test a week from Friday. If that result confirms the previous test, we will have to live with that new reality. The valve replacement surgery is supposedly the "easiest" of open heart surgeries but....hubby would be in the hospital for 5-10 days and then recovery is 3-5 months. This is just shocking to me as he is healthy, active, in shape, etc....oh well, something to deal with and go on.

We are heading to Wichita on Thursday for hubby's goddaughter's wedding. Will be a fun weekend. (Hopefully, it will warm up!) Hubby's relatives have not see little one for awhile. They will be shocked at how big she has gotten. She is going to have so much fun playing with all her cousins. Will take lots of photos!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!!

2008 came and went so fast. Many changes at work - new Pres for the company, new title for me, currency fluctuations making international business quite interesting, etc. Little one continues to grow at an amazing pace. How do you slow things down? I never really set new year's resolutions, so will continue that tradition.

OK, I say that I don't do resolutions but I do TRY to do various things. It continues to shock me that little one continues to grow and change so fast. So this year, as I have for the last two years, I will do my utmost to spend as much time at home with hubby and little one to just enjoy life. (I say this as I am typing in my hotel room in London. Yup. Am in London for the week. Went from the high 70s of Houston to the low 30s. Brrrr.)

As it is so cold, I felt inclined to finish and post little ones outing this summer to the tennis courts.

Have a great week!

2009 is just around the corner

I cannot believe another year is about to come to a close. I don't remember time going this fast before little one came along. It seems just yesterday that we brought her home and now she is a walking, talking little dynamo. I keep reminding myself to stop and enjoy everything, whether it is playing playdo, doing puzzles and trying to get back up after the "all fall down" in Ring Around the Rosie. These are the best things in my life now and they are not going to last long.

We are actually going to ring in the new year without little one. We are going to a New Year's party that starts at 8pm (little one's bed time) so we have a neighbor girl who is going to come over and watch some TV while little one sleeps. (Hopefully, she will be asleep even with all the fireworks that usually happen.) I am sure we will celebrate with the east coast and be in be long before the official new year. (After all, little one will still be up at the crack of dawn.)

I believe little one is a firm right-hander now. She still uses both hands for eating and drawing but she always seems to start with her right hand. I am happy with this as I would have no clue as to how to teach her anything with the left hand.

We are in the process of changing schools. Little one has been at a pre-School out of the Methodist church. We have been very happy there and little one has thrived. However, she is always the oldest one in her class and we believe is this holding her back. The new school is a Montessori school, where they have several ages together. The littler kids learn from the teachers and from the older kids' examples. Today is our first day at the new school. This will just be a half day...then another half day next week. If those "test" days go ok, we will formally make the move. We have not told the old school yet but will do so after little one settles in. I do feel bad about moving her but I believe it will be best for little one in the long run.

Managed to do one more page. This is going to have to be it for Christmas. I have yet to finish last year's book. At last count for last year's book, it was closing in on 120 pages. I thought about leaving some of the layouts out but just could not decide which to leave out. I don't want to miss a single smile or cute thing. At the rate I am going on this year's book, we could top 200 pages,,,,so am cutting off Christmas as of now.

After Christmas Fun

One of these days, I have to figure out how to post a video. Little one is such a talker these days. We are getting quite a library of her singing and saying repetoire - abc's, going through all her animals and making their associated sounds, Bingo, etc. Last night, I actually got her to spell her name. She knows who she is (first and last name). And, as she loves the Bingo song so I just substituted her name for Bingo. "there was a family who had a girl and Rilee was her name-o...." Now, the next step will be to just ask her to spell her name...but I think that will be awhile.

Every day seems to bring something new. Yesterday, was a two-fer. She spelled her name and counted to five on her fingers. (She can actually count to 10 in both english and spanish...but I believe that is just memorizing words.) Yesterday, she actually raised up one finger and said 1 and so on. Was quite cute watching her try to segrate her fingers to do the counting.

Friends of ours with their 14 month old twins came over on Sunday for some chili and kiddo playtime. They had purchased a play stroller for their little ones but they are not quite ready for it. So, they brought it over for Munchkin to play with for a few weeks. Little one LOVED it. She has been pushing one or another of her animals around since the stroller came. When it goes back home, we may have to purchase one of our own.

Speaking of purchases, Santa (in the form our (hubby and my) parents) were VERY generous this year. We are looking at what to purchase with these Christmas funds. We have about decided to purchase a kitchen for little one and possibly a flat screen TV for us (we want to be able to display our computer screen on this TV, and our current TV won't let us do that. My family bought us some Spanish lessons on DVD so we want to do these together and also have kiddo participate. So what better way to do all that but to hook it up so that the TV displays the lessons.)

I head to the UK on Saturday, which stinks as I miss our four day weekend. (Work is out Thursday and Friday for the new year celebration.) Will hopefully have some time to scrap some pages during the trip.