New Goal

I have decided that my new goal in life is to be a professional blogger. Except that I have no idea how to go about doing that. Any suggestions? I suppose I need followers and maybe someone to comment every once and awhile. Hmmmm...anyone want to jump on that? How do you even get paid for blogging? I know some people have ads on their blogs and get paid for a certain number of clicks on the ad but I don't know about all that buisness. I was introduced to The Bloggess last night and her blog is fantastic. Hilarious. Maybe you need to be funny to be a professional blogger. It probably doesn't hurt that she's a writer too. It would probably also be helpful for me to actually post something on a semi-regular basis. I'll work on my part, you work on yours.

In other news, someone has been taking some steps recently (I'll give you a hint, one of her nicknames is 'two feet of dynomite' - more on that some other time). Last weekend we were at a friends house watching the FSU game and Hot Stuff pulled up on me, let go and walked two steps to Nick. (Did I tell you this already? I feel like I have.) Anyway, she hadn't really taken any steps since then...until last night! We were playing in her room and she decided to let go of her bookshelf, stand for a little bit and then walk to me! Two steps again! I'm going to add this to the list of reasons why she's a little OCD like me. One step for each foot. You have to be even. I understand, little baby, I understand. Oh, in semi-related Alexa news, I started thinking this past week about how I can't call her things like 'little baby' or 'the baby' or 'pretty baby' (you get the idea) anymore because her birthday is coming up and after October 1st she technically won't be a baby anymore. That's sad. And I know, I can call her 'baby' all I want even after she's past infancy but I like to be correct in my terminology. I feel like it's appropriate. Here's a picture of the little toddler (it just doesn't sound the same as little baby. Oh my God, am I going to call her 'little school aged girl' when she's 7 or 8?! Maybe I should just stick to 'Hot Stuff') with Nick. Please excuse the nasty FSU-wear. See what a good wife/mom I am, putting my kid in FSU stuff because Nick likes them?! Her dress is actually super cute and I've been trying to find a Gator one like it. If you know where I can find one, please let me know! OK, so small update: the stupid computer I'm on at work won't let me upload a picture onto my blog. Really, people. What good is it going to work if I can't adequately write on my blog?

One Crafty Mama

Why yes, that would be me. Hehe. I've been looking for a chandelier type of thing to hang in Alexa's room above the chair for awhile. I just felt like that wall against the window was a little bare. So I saw this on pottery barn.

I really like the concept and it doesn't include a light (which is good because we don't have wiring there), but I'm just not a butterfly person. You know how some people are butterfly people and some people aren't. I'm just not. I appreciate butterfly people. I have many friends who are butterfly people. I enjoy the periodic butterfly. But I feel like sometimes we forget that they are just pretty bugs. So being that Alexa has a love for birds (that by the way, I find equally disturbing) I tried to search out a similar design with birds instead of butterflies. No such luck. Then came the moment of enlightenment. (A little background here: I always say that I can make things and then I never actually make them. I have told Nick that I can build furniture, sew things, all kinds of stuff. So one of our running jokes is that I say we can't buy ____ item because I can just make it and Nick gives me a look and then brings up the bar I was supposed to build him a few years ago.) So naturally, when I couldn't find a bird chandelier, I said that I would just make one. Obviously. Nick did the usual thing that he does when I talk about making things and I made him stop my Michaels so I could get my supplies. And look at what I made!!!!!I know, you're jealous. Let's just take a moment for you to pull yourself together. OK now? Good. It was super easy. The circle part is a ring that you use to stretch the fabric when cross stitching with skinny dowels hot glued across it. Then I got some high quality fishing line (I know, right, who would have thought there was high quality fishing line?!) and used tiny dots of hot glue to attach them to the dowels and circle thing. Cut out birds and flowers on my Cricut and glued them on. Then we hung it from the ceiling with more fishing line. Easy peasy! I know it's not as full as the Pottery Barn one, but I kind of did that on purpose. And now thanks to my amazing ability to make things you too can create your own bird/flower/butterfly/whatever you want chandelier. Or for, let's say $30, I'll make one for you. :) Here's a picture of it in Alexa's room.

And I realized that I have never posted pics of her completed room so here are the other walls. Please excuse the random bottles on the changing table. They are one step closer to the kitchen. One step closer.

Randomness

Alexa has been sick this week.  :(  No fun.  It started out on Friday with a fever and now the runny nose is here.  We had our second slumber party on the floor on Saturday night which was kind of rough but kind of nice at the same time.  My little cuddle buddy doesn't want to cuddle any more now that she's a big girl who crawls around.  The good thing about her being sick is that now she wants to cuddle again.  She would not go into the crib Saturday night and ended up finally falling asleep straddling me with her head on my chest.  So instead of fighting with her to go into the crib again I just layed down on her floor and we slept there. 

Daycare is going OK I suppose, she seems to like it there.  Getting her to take a nap is hit or miss and she still refuses to take a bottle from any of them.  I guess that's OK because we are trying to wean off the bottle.  She drinks from her sippy cup with only juice or water, refuses formula in it) and eats fine so I'm not worried about it.  The teachers there think she's hilarious because she takes off her pants and her diaper in the pack-n-play when she's supposed to be napping.  Naked baby.  I told her it's not socially acceptable to be naked in public even though she does have a super cute hiney.

You all know about my obcession with feeding Alexa correctly and my ever constant quest to find out what exactly she is supposed to be eating.  So last night I was googling snack ideas and came across this website that had a ton of different things on it, some good and some not so much.  As I was skimming though the posts I came across one where the lady was talking about tofu cubes and soy chips and all kinds of crazy stuff.  Now, I am all for tofu as long as I am not the one who's eating it!  If you like it, great.  More for you and less for me.  Also, my general rule of feeding Alexa is that if it looks like I'm going to have to get something at a different store, it's not worth it.  Also, if it costs more to feed her then it does to feed me, it's not worth it.  I feel like those are pretty good rules.  So anyway, this lady is talking about all these fun nutritious snacks (which probably taste like butt) and at the end she says that she thinks it's important to have the baby eat what the parents eat instead of catering to them with typical "toddler foods" such as cheerios or chicken fingers.  What?  Excuse me?  Cheerios and chicken fingers are a staple item in our house hold!  Alexa eats cheerios for breakfast every day.  Every day.  And I do not think there has been one time in the past 6 1/2 years of our marriage when we did not have a bag of chicken fingers in our freezer.  Nick and I eat chicken fingers and tater tots at least once a week.  You know, that day when he's working late and I worked the night before and that night and no one wants to cook.  Needless to say, I moved on to another website.

Mommy and Me

Alexa and I went to our first Mommy and Me class on Friday. It was a music class held at the hospital that my friend, Dana told me about. Dana and I both grew up in Hollywood. She's a year or two older then me and our brothers are the same age so she was Sean's sister and I was Ricky's sister (which was the just the start me being known as "Ricky's sister". More on that some other time.). Anyway, we both ended up in Tallahassee and both ended up pregnant at the same time. She is one of those random people that I haven't really talked to in years, yet I stalk her on facebook. And apparently she stalks me too which made me feel slightly less awkward and creeperish. So, the point, Alexa and I went to this class. It was at 11:00 which is probably one of the worst times for her schedule so we left here early so that she could nap in the car on the way up to Tallahassee. I actually ended up sitting in the parking lot at Michael's, knitting (yes, I knit. Do you have a problem with that?!) while she finished her nap. Speaking of knitting, I have this hat that I just finished for Nick and it's huge. If you know of anyone who has a monstrous sized head, please let me know because I'll send him a hat. Back to the class. Picture your stereotypical mommy and me teacher complete with guitar and everything. OK, so she was there leading us in song as I took pictures of my kid (and Kaydence) crawling around the room. About half way through the class I realized that I was the only obnoxious one with a camera. Dana was taking some pictures with her phone but that's easier to disguise. Slick. I probably should have been interacting more with Lexi since it was a mommy and me class but you know what, she was way to interested in everything else that's going on. She spent the first 5 minutes with me and then she kept creeping further and further away. Oh, and she was the only one who threw a fit in the class too, of course. They gave out different things for the babies to hold and play with for each song. The first thing was a drum and mallet. When they came around at the end of the song to take it away Alexa was not having that. Sigh. She did better with the other stuff though. All in all I think she had a good time and I had fun. We are going to have Thursdays and Fridays to ourselves so I think it will be a fun thing to do to get us out of the house a little bit. And it's nice that we have a day to recover from daycare/work on Thursday. It's a pay as you go kind of thing so if we don't want to go one week it's not a big deal. Plus it gives me a good excuse to go shopping afterward. I'm already in Tallahassee, I might as well! Here's a picture of Alexa and Kaydence planning their next move.

Our Top 5 Baby Items

Ugh, I've been a bad blogger. Sorry. There are thousands of excuses but I'll spare you and just say that I'm sorry it's been so long...again. So, as (kind of)previously promised, I give you my top five must have baby conveniences. These are of course minus the obvious things like bottles, pacis, cribs, stuff like that. I started thinking about this because a couple of months ago my mom asked me what was the one thing I would recomend to a new mother-to-be that I didn't realize I would need. That kind of got me thinking. And then I asked Nick what he thought and he had completely different ideas that I didn't even consider. So with both of our lists together and again, minus the obvious stuff that everyone has, here is our top 5 list:

5 - Any toy that plays music. I know, this is kind of a cop out, but we really could not live without our music makers. Alexa has known how to turn on the music on her mobile (which is now just the sound box) for months now. She has a sea horse that she also sleeps with that plays music when you press it's belly. Any time I want to get her attention or distract her from crying all I have to do is show her a toy that makes music. Yes, I realize that singing provides lots of music and singing is free (trust me, she gets her fill of me singing. I joke that she thinks her life is a musical because pretty much everything comes in the form of a song) but music makers at least give your voice a rest.

4 - The removable try on our high chair. I realize that most of the trays come off to get the baby out but ours (which is a Chicco) has an extra, clear, plastic tray that snaps onto the top of the main tray. As we have entered the fun and extremely messy phase of self feeding this past month, I have totally come to appreciate that tray thing. It snaps on and off easily and instead of bringing the whole, big, awkward main tray to the sink to be washed you just wash the top tray. The mess is contained and it is fantastic!!!

3 - Wipes warmer. Who wants to have their butt wiped with a cold wipe in the middle of the day, let alone in the middle of the night?! Not I and not my baby!

2 - Pacifier Clip. I find this one funny because we never actually registered for one. Niki gave us one in a pile of hand me downs from Kinley and she even said to me that she never actually used it. Just goes to show you that what works for one person is pointless for another. Now, we've been really good about keeping the paci only for naps and bedtime. However. When a baby is acting a fool in public, the paci comes out real fast. I discovered the wonders of the paci clip at dance. Alexa would sit at the front of the room in a bouncy seat or bumbo while I was teaching and I let her have a paci to keep her relatively quiet. Five minutes later the paci would be on the floor. Nasty. One week I brought the paci clip with me to try it out and it was awesome! I can't tell you how many pacis it saved from the floor on countless trips shopping and at Disney. When my mom asked me the question about the one thing I would reccomend, a paci clip was my answer.

1 - A Video Monitor. By far. We don't even have one of the fancy portable ones or one that has a color monitor or measures the room temperature. Nope, just an obnociously large (I think it's a 6 inch screen) monitor that sits on my bedside table. This is definately the best baby convenience that we own. And my mom thought it was dumb at first. That was until she came up here to baby sit for a week. There is a camera that goes in the baby's room (we have it on the wall above her crib so we can look down on her) and just the one TV looking monitor. Let me tell you that I will get up and walk across the house to look at the monitor before I will walk into that child's room to see if she's really sleeping. We use it to check on her at night. We use it for any time she takes a nap. It's wonderful.

So there it is, our top 5. What do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Like I said, I find it interesting that what is trash for someone is a must have for someone else.

My Crib Story

So I completely forgot to write about how we had to drop Alexa's crib down to the lowest level. Before I even begin, let me say that we dropped it down to the middle one months and months ago. Probably when she was about 5 months old. Amanda taught her how to pull herself up in the crib (thanks Mandy.) so we dropped it down then just in case. Since then Alexa is obviously pulling herself up all the time. In fact, when I walk into her room after every nap, she's standing in the corner of her crib facing the door with both elbows on the top and her chin resting on her hands. It's pretty cute. And let's go ahead and use that as a reference to how high the top of the crib came on her. It was about armpit level. So about a month ago (I told you I was late in telling this story) I was laying in bed one morning listening to her talk to herself in her crib. I knew that Nick had gotten up already and he was probably sitting on the couch drinking his coffee and waiting for her to wake up a little more before picking her up. I was facing away from the monitor (more on the video monitor in my next post) and I noticed that her talking changed. It wasn't distressed or anything but something about her little noises changed so I rolled over to peek at her on the monitor. Let me tell you that that child had both arms up on the top of the crib with her right foot also on the top of the crib and was hopping off her left foot to try to jump over. Now let's all take a moment to appreciate that it was relatively early in the morning (not my best time thanks to night shift) and I was still pretty much asleep. I jumped out of bed and I imagine that I looked something like a cross between mom walking to her bed after falling asleep on the couch and those cartoons where the animal's feet are racing but they are not getting anywhere. You know what I'm talking about. I finally got my footing, started running out into the family room yelling "she's trying to get out of the crib!!!!" At that point Nick got of the couch and started running to her room. He reached the door first, yanked it open and Hot Stuff was standing in her crib looking at us and laughing. Needless to say, I picked up the baby while Nick went to get his screwdriver to lower the crib all the way down. I think she may be part monkey.

'How to put up an above ground pool' by Nick and Kristin (mostly Nick)

I love pools. LOVE THEM. To the point that when we were living in Davie, pretty much every day I had off, I was at the pool. Needless to say, living in Crawfordville, I've been in a little bit of a pool shock. I complain about it all the time. So my mom and Nick were at Target the other day and saw a 12 foot pool on an end cap for $32! That's right, you heard me, only thirty two dollars!!! So anyway, on Tuesday we finally had time to assemble the pool. For step by step instructions, please see below.

Before you begin, make sure you kill the grass that will be under your pool. You can do this by any means necessary including but not limited to killer bug spray, bleach in a spray bottle or actual grass killer. (I'll go ahead and save you some time and advise you to just get it over with and buy the damn grass killer...trust me.) Once your grass has turned sufficiently brown, select a date and time to set up your pool. Apparently the best time to do this is in the heat of the day, when it's about 110 degrees outside.

OK, step 1: Make a crop circle. Or in our case, a crop egg. This can most easily be done with a riding lawn mower. You know when it's the right size when you walk outside to find your husband riding in circles laughing his crazy evil laugh! At this point, just go ahead and tell him to stop.

Step 2: Take the huge roll of plastic that you had origionally intended to be the worlds largest slip-n-slide and cut it to fit in your crop circle. (Sorry about the slip-n-slide, Katie. :( I'm sure we can get another super long roll of plastic)



Step 3: Get an increadably small amount of sand and spread it around on top of the plastic to try to level out the ground.

Step 4: Have a long, heated debate with your spouse regarding previously mentioned sand and how, while the concept is good, we are actually doing nothing to level the ground. One can even argue that it made it worse.

Step 5: Lay the pool on top of the plastic/sand combination and according to the instructions, let it sit in the sun. No worries, because you are doing this in the heat of the day, it will only take about 30 seconds for the pool to get almost too hot to touch.

Step 6: Put together the top PVC-like things for the frame of the pool. The last one will be hard to get together but as the instruction manual states: "You can do it!"



Step 7: Attach the leg pieces.

Step 8: Fill with water. Note: at this point feel free to let your baby splash around in the actively filling pool with her clothes on. Why not, right?