The Mind of a 15 month-old

How long can I moan in the car before I get yelled at?
Watch what happens when I push on this tortilla chip with one finger... it JUMPS!
Why don't glass balls bounce?
Straws are the perfect size for my finger!
Straws also fill up nicely with chicken and cheese and....
The peanut shell tastes much better than what's inside.
See how I can go perfectly limp to wiggle out of being held?
My finger can make the guts squish out of a pea when I push really hard on it.
When my nose runs, if I smear it all over my face it dries a lot faster.
Cat litter sifts through my hands and disappears into the carpet pretty awesomely.
Does every door close? I think I will check to make sure that they do.
The cat follows things I drag on the ground!
There's a certain button on the remote that makes the tv go REEEEALLY LOUD.
Music MUST be danced to.
If you're going to wave good-bye, do it vigorously. From the shoulder on down.
I'm going to get into that toilet as soon as she's not looking.

Packing

Getting ready for vacation is stressful. Adrie is already thinking of sandy beaches. This is her cute new suitcase... $14.99 compliments of Building 19 in Boston. Greatest store ever. I told you our favorite vacation spots include great shopping. I can't wait to see what we come back from Mexico with. (slash-and/or-the-AZ-swap-meet :)

December Life

Life flies. Seriously. Here are some random pictures and December updates:

Here's my cat and my mom's dog being friends at last. Adrie loves it.

Adrie has fallen in love with tv. Not that we watch a whole lot, but I have been known to bribe her a time or two with Baby Einstein to get her clothes changed, drink her bottle, etc.



Here is my Christmas tree! And my cat's favorite place to sit. See him underneath? It has become tradition to have only meaningful ornaments on my tree. This year I've gotten three darling gingerbread men handcrafted by Natalie, and my first Fairy Tale sequined set from mom. Blood, sweat, and needle pricks go into those ornaments! I am tremendously grateful. See the little pink bears that are actually a rattle for Adrie in honor of last year's new baby? You can also see the little white snowmen with the names of all my immediate family embroidered. I am one lucky gal.

We love eating Clementines (those teeny oranges that are super easy to peel and very sweet to eat.) Adrie likes to carry them around, throw them like a ball, and even bite right through the peel when she feels the urge. Tonight we found another use for them:

As you can see, her hair is a royal mess. We seem to be in that awful stage where there's not much to do with it other than ponytails/pigtails, but I hate to do them constantly. Once in awhile she'll leave a barette in the side to hold back that toupe, but I think the max is about 40 minutes. Headbands look cute, too, but their max time is about 10 minutes. Sigh. At least she has hair, right!?

Here is my little sister Kendall and her Josh. They have become great friends of mine and I dearly love being around them and hearing their humor together. I love when you are in awe of your own family and friends - just makes you lucky to be alive, huh!

Red Shoes

I finally got the guts to wear my new red heels to church today. ($5.00 on the Boston trip, remember?)

The first comment I got was from the resident crazy lady. Every ward has one, right? Platinum blonde, 60-something but dresses like she's 29. Sings with ultra-loud off-key vibrato. Awkward to talk to. Gotta love 'em.

Needless to say, when my first raving compliment was from above-mentioned lady I thought "Uh oh."

Luckily, a wide variety of comments and compliments trooped in over the next 2.5 hours.

If I had known red heels would be such a conversation starter I would have worn them in college!

The Baby with a Cell Phone

Adrie has a cell phone.

Well... sort of. I keep calling it "Adrie's phone."

I have chosen to edit this post for child and internet safety. Thank you for the concerns friends and family.

But it's a gorgeous phone, anyway eh? I just might trade her when she's not looking....

Life!

Tonight Adrie sat cross-legged on the floor and removed all of the alphabet magnets from the fridge one by one.

She also picked up the steamed peas and added them to her soup for dinner, one by one. It's fascinating to watch her mind work.

I started putting a towel across the bottom of her door at night. It took me awhile to figure out that she'd cry after going to bed when she saw the light on in the hall.

I take great pleasure in finding Kendall a song that pleases her as much as her music has delighted me. Score: Alaina - 1, Kendall - 2098675987.

A hypnotist was the main entertainment at my work Christmas party today. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard, even crying because of it. My stomach still hurts. My favorite part was when a friend of mine was flirting with an imaginary cabana boy. Or maybe when my usually reserved, sweet coworker pulled a chair out from under someone because he was 'mad' (hypnotized state, remember...)

I'm sitting here working on a Christmas present, and there are so many fun pictures I could just die to look at them all. I want to make photograph wallpaper or something to display all of these precious memories. Isn't digital storage AMAZING? Here's the only one I'll post for now, but I think I'm going to have to institute a flashback friday of my own. (2 cents to Nat for coining the phrase).

Wishlist

Dear Santa Claus,

Once upon a time in 2005 you gave me a pretty sweeeet photo printer.

My favorite things to use it for are photograph collage dvd covers, cards, and ward party publicity flyers.

In case you still have printer cartridges for my HP Photosmart 8150 lying around, I'm sure there is room in my stocking for them.

All My Love,

Alaina

P.S. In case any other photographers have been really naughty this year I will happily accept their Nikon SB800 flash. I have been really good.

P.P.S. - and World Peace.

Music This Week

Somewhere In Between by Lifehouse (I love finding old classics I forgot about!)
Liar, Liar by A Fine Frenzy

and all of the other ones I've posed previously. Add in "All We Know" by Paramore too.

Have I mentioned how much I love music? Ha, ha, ha. I think I have.

One other new FAVORITE song - thought not a theme - "All that I want" by the Weepies. It's a Christmas song from a Macy's commercial and it's GREAT!

The still small voice

How blessed I am! I want to share three ways I was prompted this week. I'm trying so much harder to listen to little feelings/senses I have to do things - and it's amazing how many more of those promptings come when you listen.

#1: At the store Monday on my way out I had the thought to buy apple juice. I did not follow this thought. Sadly, Adrie began throwing up that night and all that next morning I sure wished I had sweet, mild apple juice with which to entice her hydration.

#2: I have had the ongoing thought to get in touch with someone from graduate school that I haven't talked to in three years. I would appreciate her thoughts and perspective on something in my life right now. This thought is an odd one because although we were amiable and friendly, we were not very close. Several times over the last month I've thought of initiating contact with her, and finally gave in. She answered my email by saying "I thought about writing you just recently to see how you were doing, but sadly did not act on it." See? My prompting was not just on my side alone!

#3: Just tonight I was heading to the store for the quickest errand ever. I strapped Adrie in her car seat and thought, "I'd better grab the diaper bag." Being cold and freezing in the garage I then though "Nah, I'll be right back, no big deal." But I decided that it was safer to grab the bag just in case and made myself take the extra 45 seconds to go in the house and find it. AND.... voila. Right as I approached the store's porch Adrie threw up more than I have ever seen a baby throw up. And it kept coming. All down her front, my arm, my hand. Dah dah dah! (enter triumphant music here). With my free hand I opened up that diaper bag and pulled out my never-ending supply of diaper wipes and deftly cleaned off her front and my arm, and we continued on with our errand. Had I been diaper bag-less that would have been a disgusting, disheartening mess and we would have driven home in filth and stench, errand unaccomplished.

I really believe that the Holy Ghost can accompany us in every thought, word, and deed. Whether it's a simple thought, a gut feeling, or something that JUST CLICKS so well that it can't be denied, I know we can have daily guidance in our lives. It's amazing. So follow those little thoughts. Don't even worry "is it just me or is it a 'prompting'?" If it's good, just do it. Doesn't matter. They come.

Boston Thanksgiving!

Blogging is the new scrapbooking! Seriously, ever since Erica pointed out that you can have your blog printed as a book someday I'm taking the calling seriously. So even though Thanksgiving was a week ago today, I'm determined to give it its full spotlight.

We lived in Boston when I was 13 years old. It's always fun to go back and drive around, actually recognizing a few things. If you know my family, our vacations and memories center around two things: 1) shopping and 2) food.

So, for shopping: We hit the Christmas Tree Shops at least five times in the four days I was there. Rumor has it the family went at least three other times without me. We all managed to purchase unneccesary knick knacks, like the red serving platter I got for $1.69 and the creamy eyeshadow sticks the girls were fighting over. I also managed to leave with a pair of dress-up fairy wings for $1.99. I bought Natalie a coat rack for Christmas for $9.99. Don't even ask what my mom got. It filled six shopping bags, whatever it was. Also, Natalie found us the greatest shoe store ever. Here's our loot: I bought the Ugg knockoffs, the red heels, and mocassins for $29. Total. Kendall got sexy gray pumps and yellow peek-toes, Mally ended up with the darling herringbone flats and wicked-witch copper shoes. And don't forget Building 19 - it's like the Food-4-Less quality version of a Big Lots. Christmas Tree Shops is the Kohl's version of Big Lots.

Food: Caswells it was. Best chowder and fish ever. Conveniently it was about 1 mile from our "little yellow house" in Weymouth so who knows if it's the best seafood ever, but it definitely rivals any we've ever tasted. I embarassed myself by asking if Haddock was Halibut (no... it's Haddock). The parking lot picture is me sitting inside of Caswells, looking at the Burger King where Kurt and I ate dinner in 2005 after I chickened out and wouldn't drive any further in the dark to explore my old hometown. We were chowdered out by that point so we looked at Caswells while we ate burgers and fries.

Oh and let's not forget the Texas Roadhouse. We manage to find one almost anywhere. We had a little picture-taking contest across the table, sadly those pictures aren't in my posession. I think my team won.

Dunkin Donuts are EVERYWHERE in New England. Here are my city-girl sisters living it up in the Double D. This is before Kendall embarassed herself by accidentally getting into somebody else's car in the parking lot.

Our photo shoot - I won't bore you with pictures here, I'm sure they are/will be all over the place elsewhere - took place Thanksgiving morning. This picture is here to showcase two things 1) How squished we were in the backseat, so we didn't have to bother with two cars and 2) The Diet Coke Addiction. It's awesome. Sadly I don't partake - orange Fanta is more my thing - but we never drove without at least one being passed around the car. And went through at least 2 12-packs during my 4 days there.

Here is our Thanksgiving table. A surprisingly little of our vacation centered around what/how we would actually cook. We made some really creative uses out of pots, pans, and large cups in the bachelor pad where we were staying, and minus the seafoam jello (which we never eat at Thanksgiving anyway!?) it all turned out delectably! No tablecloth, no placemats, and paper cups. A little bit of heaven.

We were so lucky to stay in the nice apartment of "The Dentals", three of Nat's guy friends in Dental school. It was surprisingly well-decorated for a bachelor pad! Nat and girls made especially good use of their HDTV, watching at least a full season of "How I Met Your Mother." As a family we also watched Ocean's 13 and Hairspray. The blue wall is the kitchen and front room, the window is our view from the 14th floor.

One of my favorite memories was driving around looking at the amazing homes and landscapes around us. One day while I felt like a teen being forced to drive to Plymouth Rock (it wasn't so bad!) we all picked what our house would look like.
Mallory's Pick: (of course) A Yellow house.

My pick: Dark Taupe with Black shutters and Red door.

Kendall's pick: Dark blue or Dark Gray house - sorry, no picture.

Mallory fell asleep in the front room on Thanksgiving night. I couldn't resist snapping her picture because it really reminded me of 1998.

Okay... I wasn't going to say much about the family photo shoot but as I think more on it, it can't be left untouched.

Dad was amazing and rented us the flash I dearly want (need?) and even better, he was willing to drive those crazy New England roads to find the camera shop to get it. The day was beautiful - but of course the sun came out at precisely the wrong moment, exacerbating the Williams Squint. Regardless, we managed to get some nice pictures even though Kendall couldn't jump in time with the rest of us.

Nobody wanted to lay down on the cold, wet leaves with me - I think to get me back they threw them up in the air, knowing they'd land cold and wet on my neck. (Thus, my facial expression below). Or maybe Mal was getting back at us because originally she suggested throwing leaves and nobody wanted to. But then we ended up taking like 30 shots doing so - thanks Mal!

All in all a fun, amazing, little-bit-of-heaven trip. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Freak!

Can someone tell me if this spider is supposed to have two grossly large second legs by nature or by accident?

And should I be worried about contaminants in my water pipes that create random growths?

I do feel sort of sorry for the gimp - you should see him try to walk. Sort of like a cross between Quasimodo and Kendall with a limp.

*Note - this spider is smaller than a cheerio, so don't get too creeped out. See those little bumps he's sitting on? They are the texture on the bottom of the tub - that's how cool my camera is.

Lights!

We braved the cold to check out the lights at Temple Square. Brrr! Adrie didn't last very long in her stroller and wanted to be one of the BIG kids. I had fun with my camera trying to hold as still as stone to catch clear shots without a flash - I'm definitely bringing a tripod next time. People kept staring when I laid on the ground to brace the camera on something unmoving!

See my family on the other side of the reflecting pond?

After Adrie shook one sister missionary's hand, she'd kept holding out her hand for more!

All in all, a great night. Check that one off the holiday list.