Poor Poor Adrie

Here is Adrie's list of current injuries:


*1/2-inch long scrape on her knee from crawling over the spigot of the lotion bottle
*1/2-inch scab came off today when crawling on the cement
*Bruise from underarm pinched by the shopping cart seat belt
*Old green bruise on her left cheek from face planting on a toy last week (can be seen in poor-quality picture, right)
*Bright red bruise on underarm - cause unknown
*Two small scabs on one thigh - cause unknown
*Cut lip from face planting on the baby Tylenol bottle on the floor (anyone have a guess as to how a rubber-topped bottle can cut open a lip!?)

Anyone ready to call CPS on me? It breaks my heart! This learning to crawl, walk, climb stairs, etc. stuff is hard work. I try my best to protect her but she just won't have it.

In other news I did fun pictures with Jody tonight. Two thumbs up for her fiance Connor. Check 'em out here.

Training Her Early

Answers to Stuff Questions

I love watermelon. Closely followed by canteloupe and honeydewmelon. The problem with these fruits is that they take a lot of effort (and mess) to cut up and prepare for eating - and most fruit I look for a quick grab-and-run type eating. If I'm going to spend TIME preparing it, I could've had something so much better! (meat, cheese, bread... all that healthy stuff.) And problem #2 is that they are only good in a small window of ripeness opportunity - like the proverbial Goldilocks I will only eat it if it's jussst right.

As for apples, they have an ok texture except for their skin, which I cannot chew on the right side with my granny-like teeth.

I LOVE used kids clothes. I used to frequent Kid-to-Kid until I realized their prices weren't that great. I will have to search out this Children's Orchard.

Yes, we sold our couches Mally. The big huge overly stuffed ones covered in cat scratches. Amazing we got five hundred bucks for scratched up couches, huh! In my craigslist advertisement I talked about how they had that "distressed" look and would be perfect if your kids were going to ruin them anyway. The guy that bought them had 3 kids under age 7.

Adrie found a lemon Skittle this morning and once she had it in her mouth I decided to let her go for it. Mmmm she was happy. Otherwise, I am saving all kinds of good treats for next Friday when I have to keep her happy on an airplane for five hours.

I found the greatest fleece footed sleepers at Costco for $7.49. They are so cute and I'm dying for next week to get here so my Oregon family can squeeze Adrie in them. (Squeeze her... not her into the jammies.) :)

Confession: Sometimes when Adrie is sticky and dirty we'll go swimming instead of take a bath. That's better than nothing, right? She still cries in the bathtub and it's just not worth the effort. After swimming we lotion her up just like after a bath and then she's good as new.

Happy Saturday! I've already filled all the nail-holes in our condo and checked up on the carpet cleaners who came yesterday, now time to clean my own house before Jody's bridal shower and then friends for a BBQ tonight. I love busy Saturdays.

Stuff

*I need to remember that short blogs are better than no blogs. I feel under this pressure to have good ones.

*Adrie discovered the toilet and toilet paper. Mmm mmmm good.

*She now pulls herself to standing with one hand or less and is testing out the whole letting-go thing to see how long til she falls (approximately 0.7 seconds currently.)

*Try as I might, I just cannot make myself eat fruits and vegetables. My favorite right now is frozen peas (cooked of course) and it's about all I can eat. Bananas, which used to be a guaranteed fall-back, have the most disgusting texture ever and I can only make it through 3/4 of one before I will vomit if I eat another bite.

*Kevin is the best brother in law ever and set up my home computer so that it connects directly to my web page - which I am madly building. Soon, the great unveiling will occur.

*I made those "Cafe Rio" recipes for the first time. They taste nothing like Cafe Rio but they were still pretty good. Shredded beef, creamy tomatillo dressing, and even homemade tortillas. Kevin had seconds, so it must've been pretty good.

*Adrie won't eat some foods that I share with her, and somehow after seeing her spit out a mouthful of what I once thought was delicious I find myself second guessing how good they really are - and usually they don't taste as good after. (That happened this morning with Oatmeal, which I have since decided tastes sort of like glue, and yesterday with Bean with Bacon soup - which now tastes like pure salt.)

*I've said it before, and I will say it again - Craigslist is like manna from heaven. Sold our leather couches for 500 bucks this week. And a desk the week before that for 100. How cool is that! They might've ended up at DI otherwise.

*Restless sleep sucks. Both Kurt and I toss and turn alll night and we keep our house at 76 at night so it's not like we're hot. Any ideas for us? Please?

*I don't know what kind of jammies to buy Adrie because currently she is so hard on them (crawling) that anything I buy is going to be ruined. But her little feet are now poking through the bottoms of the ones she's wearing now. Sigh. Kids are expensive.

I'm a walking All-State Commercial

I managed to trade a pair of yoga pants for tight jeans while my car sat on cruise control at 32 mph on a straight road. Put on my shoes, too. I'm pretty impressed with myself.

Why, you ask, was I changing clothes in the car? On my way to work, of course, from my first laser hair removal appointment.

Oh baby, oh baby, I used more deep breathing and distraction techniques (including digging my fingernails into my own skin) for hair removal than I used to birth a baby. That laser sucker HURT. Just while it was in place on my skin, and as soon as it moved it didn't hurt anymore, but picture hundreds of mini lightening-bolts in a 0.5-inch by 0.5-inch area, then moved on to the next square of skin, then the next, then the next... I'm fine now, but still a little shaky from all the adrenalin pumping through my body while I tried to keep my legs from spasmodically jerking in shock. Every time my legs would jerk the gal holding the laser would jump - not a good combination!



Why, you ask, when I am such a frugal person would I spend my money on such a frivolity? 1) I'm currently making an extra 50 bucks a week leading a group that I don't really enjoy, so this is my consolation prize, and 2) I can't shave anymore without wicked wicked razor burn that's so ugly I can't wear shorts anyway. I don't want to live this way.

And I'm actually looking forward to round two. :)

Dang You Harry

Not much action in the blogging world since all of my frequent attenders are reading Harry in every second of their free time...

Thank you, Kendall, for posting at least SOMETHING.

I am writing this scathing post because at heart I am jealous and sad but won't let myself read Harry the 7th until I am going to know what the heck is going on. Which means I need to read 5 and 6, the monster mammoth books, again. Sigh. Someday!

More Pictures of the Baby!

I hear this mantra from several different sides. So here you go, an Adrie Shrine:

The Great Wall of Chocolate

Happy Birthday Holly! Here's the ONE piece of cake that seven of us couldn't finish. Probably because our PF Changs dinner was soooo yummy. Thanks Dean!



After coming home and being SO full we were ill, we sat around and watched Adrie play with a balloon for about thirty minutes while Kevin and Kurt tried to be photographers (I just deleted 237 blurry pictures. I'm not kidding). Amazing how such a simple thing can be so entertaining!

Kurt spent time trying to teach Adrie how to go down the stairs. She's mastered going UP, but doesn't worry so much about how to get down.



Then Kevin spent a good two hours with me on my webpage (stay tuned!) It's amazing how much he knows and how much I have to learn. It was tons of fun though and of course I didn't sleep again last night because I laid there laying out pages and links and photo galleries in my head...

I wish we'd finished that cake. Mmmmmm.

Babies

We finally got those babies to just SIT without attacking each other. Aren't they cute?

Google

Oh Google, out of boredom I checked my name on your page today to see if I was any more popular than the two references to 1)a newspaper article at BYU written by Erica and 2) being Kurt's spouse on the Anchorage Alaska Mission alumni page.

Lo and behold! Here is a screen capture of the beauty (since I just learned how to do screen captures and can't believe I've never known this before):




Happy Sunday. Thanks for making me so popular.

Technical Difficulties...

Blogger is doing something very weird and won't let me upload photos. It says "image cannot be found." And dang it, I have some cute ones of Adrie! So stay tuned.

I've been on Photoshop in every spare moment for the last week. Adrie goes to bed by eight and I am on the computer until eleven. Luckily Kurt is studying in every spare moment so I have good excuse to ignore him. I am finding the coolest stuff and I still get so butterfly-in-the-stomach excited about it. Check out my new profile pic on Digital Darkroom. Fun, huh!?

I also started my web page www.adigitaldarkroom.net but it's still under construction so don't bother looking for now. Don't worry, I'll keep you posted.

Adios for now! More photoshopping before bed!

Tonight I figured out how to batch-process photos and save myself LOTS OF TIME by doing the same step (like compressing pictures for blogging) to multiple photos at once. See, you will benefit from all of this. More photos!!!

Well, I said I was going to blog about it...

Yes, that was one of the questions in this quiz - "Do you plan to blog about your addiction to blogging?"

72%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle² - Online Dating

And here I am in the middle of a family therapy session (via phone) blogging. I think 72% is sort of low, actually. :)

The GREAT thing about having a Baby...

Adrie let me plop her in the middle of a field of thistles for a photo shoot this morning. And she got SO HAPPY when she figured out she could stand up to reach Indigo. Can you see her mouth wide open? She was laughing hysterically the whole time.

I like this stage. No tantrums, no hearing "No!" yet. I hope it lasts awhile.

Heaven!

I had SO much fun taking pictures with R&C's family today, and now I'm having even MORE fun in my digital darkroom with them. This is my absolute favorite sofar. I need to stop or I won't sleep tonight.

Go check out the rest (and more to come soon) and tell me which is your favorite!

Happy Fourth!

My little firecracker got her first pigtails for the 4th of July. I just couldn't get over how different she looked! So here, for your viewing pleasure:

Climbing Stairs

I walked around the corner today and came back to find Adrie sitting on the third step. How did she make it up there!? And so fast? I wish I could have watched that one. I've never seen her climb even one step before. Wow this parenting thing is crazy. You know those "life comes at you fast" commercials?....

The Grown-up Version of Christmas

I awoke at six thismorning just knowing it was coming. I called DHL the moment they opened to see if I could just pick up my package at their center. Sadly, it was already on the delivery truck and they absolutely required my in-person signature for delivery. Since I had to work today I convinced them to accept a note on my door with my full name, address, and signature verifying that my neighbor (with her full name and address required) could sign for it. I eagerly watched the tracking online all day, and when at 3:30 it showed that my package had been delivered, I gave up working and headed for home.


Adrie loved helping me open the big box, playing with all of the crumply paper and big plastic air sacks. Here's a crummy picture of us - it's hard to take a self-portrait with a wiggly baby!:



I haven't done much with the camera because I decided to be a good mom tonight instead, going swimming and feeding and bathing my child and such. But I've been reading the manual and I filled out all of the warranty information and it's ready to be mailed off first thing in the morning. I guess when I've made such an expensive purchase I'm determined to take care of it. After I finish this blog I'm going to carefully figure out how I want my camera and lenses stored in the aluminum hard-case that came with it, and then cut out the appropriate foam pieces to keep it all safe from climbing baby and clumsy husband.








Here's the one picture I did snap, though - Adrie just loves a camera. Images in natural light will look sooo much better, stay tuned for good ones soon.