Hello? Is Anybody There?

Um.................. I have a question: When exactly did my blog die?

One day I loved writing it... and I thought that I could put some interesting, dare I even say funny, stories out into the world that people might enjoy reading. And then the next minute the thought of sitting down and trying to construct my thoughts into some kind of interesting anecdote, let alone a coherent sentence, was more than I could stand.

Yes, I have been mostly absent for a long time. There has been the occasional update on Ally. I must write those. I cherish those. (When she is a "NO" screaming two year old running around my house butt naked and covered head to toe in my makeup that I thought I had hidden away high enough I know I will need those cute, innocent little stories to save my sanity). And, it is just so fun to remember...

And then there was the ill-fated attempt at the daily picture. I thought it was a good idea at the time. That is all we will say about that.

But, I have missed documenting birthdays and family vacations and moving and potty training and preschool and...LIFE!

I have spent some time the last few days pondering on where all my motivation and creativity and time has gone.

• The easiest answer is to simply say that I have discovered Downton Abbey. 
• Also, the decline in my writing has a direct correlation with the increase in my couch sitting time. We bought a very comfortable couch at the exact same time I started to feel that writing this blog was a chore 
• Oh yes, and about the time that we purchased this new couch and my desire to "just sit and do nothing!" jumped fourfold, we added number 4 to our happy, little clan. Lack of sleep and increased exposure to diaper duty has a way of killing the creative in you.

So, as I was trying to learn how to balance the world of mothering 2, I let a few things fall to the wayside, blogging being one of them.

This makes me sad!  I love this blog! And, we have so many friends and family that live faraway and look to this blog to stay updated on our family. And, I love looking back at past posts and remembering what was happening and how I was feeling. I love being reminded of stories I have forgotten about. I really like being creative and trying to be witty and trying to tell a story that somebody thinks is interesting enough to read.

But, the longer I didn't write the more overwhelming it became to tackle it all again. And now I am to the point that I am wondering if anybody would even notice or care if I just didn't post anymore. After all, we all have Facebook, right?

But, here's the truth: I don't write this blog for anybody but me. Sure, I hope I have some kind of a following. And, I hope those that do follow are entertained and informed. But really, I started this blog as a journal of sorts for myself. There are things that I want and need to write down so I can remember when I begin to forget.

Ally is sleeping through the night for the most part now. The move is nearly complete. And, I am feeling a need to get back to who I am. And to me that means writing. So, this is my personal goal publicly proclaimed. I am going to try to write more.

Now, should we all start taking bets on how long my motivation is going to last?

The Adventures of Miss Aly

Alyssa 9 Months

Miss Aly will be 10 months on Friday. I can't quite imagine where the time has gone, but it has flown by.
Her 9 month stats were:
Height: 27 1/8" 37%
Weight: 16 lbs 9.5oz 14%
Head: 17 1/4" 46%

Alyssa has been making leaps and strides lately...and I don't mean that figuratively. She is crawling, cruising, climbing and trying to walk! I am a really terrible mom and didn't document exactly the first time I saw her crawl. I am really kicking myself for that one, but it was sometime right around her 8 month birthday. She was happy crawling for about a minute and then decided she would be more happy walking, so she has been working on that (cruising around anything she can get a hold of) ever since.

Cute, naked, baby chub - cruising around the bathroom

This one is a climber! She climbs into the shower. She climbs up the tv cabinet. She climbs into boxes and up onto boxes (we have alot of those things hanging around recently). She loves to knock over the fan in her room and climb on top of it. She has no fear! And, I have been impressed at how careful she is with herself. She goes to a lot of effort to make sure she won't get hurt before she starts climbing up or down, in or out. She conquered going up the stairs on July 11th. Her inaugural voyage took her all the way to the top of our staircase on her very first try. She is also getting better at standing all on her own and I can see her little mind building confidence and calculating whether or not she can take a step without holding on to anything. Man, I wish this girl would slow down!

She climbs in baskets...

She climbs in suitcases...

She climbs in the tv cabinet...

She climbs on the dishwasher...
Seriously, this girl climb everywhere!

With Sadie, food was a daily battle. I would beg and plead and try to force food into Sadie and she just wouldn't eat alot. Not a problem with Alyssa. In fact, I have to keep everything off the floor or else she will have it in her mouth pronto. It doesn't much matter whether it is food or not. Her current forays into non-food consumption are mud off the floor, dog food, toilet paper, crayons, leaves/grass, and shoes. However, Alyssa will not eat baby food. She is totally over it. She only wants what we are eating. But she is great at chewing, so that's what we give her.

Eating the toilet paper.

Alyssa has also decided she is willing to take a bottle (she refused until about 7 months). This makes leaving her with babysitters so much easier. And, it means I don't have to breastfeed in public, which is glorious to me.

Mom and Alyssa - July 4, 2012

Alyssa now has 3 teeth, with 2 or 3 more looking like they are ready to cut through. She has both her bottom teeth (which she has had for a while) and now has her top left front tooth. She has the cutest little toothy grin that melts Ryan's heart. She tucks her top lip and pushes out her bottom two teeth. We are still trying to capture it on the camera...

Almost caught her toothy grin on camera...I just missed the grin part :)

Alyssa and Sadie have started really playing together. It is probably my favorite mommy moment so far. They really like to play hide 'n seek together. Sadie hides and Alyssa finds her, when she is found Sadie screams and runs to a new hiding place and Alyssa laughs hysterically and then crawls off to find her again. Sadie and Ryan often play "lions" before bedtime - Sadie tackles Ryan, climbs on top of him a roars. Well, lately, Alyssa loves to get in on the fun. She can totally take Sadie down (I see this maybe not being so cute in the future...) and she can roar too. Alyssa also likes to play keep away, usually when I am trying to dress her or change her diaper. She thinks it is just so funny to crawl away from me. She gets a little ways away, then she turns and waits for me to get close. When she sees I am coming after her she tries to get away again, but she is so excited/laughing too hard that usually her legs go faster than her hands and she ends up face planting it into the floor.

Sisters! Sometimes they love each other, and other times, not so much

Alyssa is also really good at entertaining herself. She loves to crawl into the toy room and explore all the bins and treasures. Sometimes I really wish Sadie was just as good at entertaining herself.

Alyssa's new favorite tricks these days are dancing,waving and clapping. She waves at everybody from a hello from her crib first thing in the morning, to all her admirers when we go on airplanes or at church to a goodbye wave to Sadie when they go to their separate rooms at night. All we have to say is "Aly, say Hi" and she is waving at everyone. She also likes to clap. She will clap for you if she likes what you are doing and she claps for herself when she is proud of something she has done. She claps whenever you say "yea!" and she claps if she likes the music that is playing. She also dances to any music she likes. She wiggles her shoulders and head bangs. She was headbanging last week at church to "Called to Serve."

Alyssa is making a play for "the favorite child of the week" award by starting to sleep through the night. (Yea!!! Super Yea!!!) She slept through the night about half the time last week and I am hoping to increase that number this week.

Alyssa has also started making specific sounds for different people. Her first was "GEE!" for the dog (doggie). Then she started saying "DA!" for daddy and "DEE!" for Sadie. What does she call me, you might ask - the one who cares for her every want, need and desire? Nothing. She has not figured out who I am yet, beyond a cry or an outreached hand. That's love for ya, huh? :)

A daddy's girl! Dad and Alyssa - July 4, 2012

We love our little munch and I still can't believe how fast she is growing. Her first birthday is right around the corner.

Project 365 - April 9th

Project 365 is an attempt to capture all of these memories I am forgetting to write down. Taking a picture is an easier way to document for me all of the milestones and cute and silly things these girls are doing day to day, plus I get to see them grow right before my eyes. So, if you are interested in checking out our daily pictures, find the link to the right or just click here. Enjoy!

Sadie Swims

This has been a long winter. A very, very long winter. With far too many days when it was cold enough outside that Sadie didn't want to go outside to play. This led to way, way too much pent up energy. This pent up energy caused all sorts of problems with the mischief and the yelling and the 3 yr old attitude. Everybody's sanity was at stake. So Sadie took up swimming.

Mondays and Wednesdays she took lessons and then spent an hour or 2 playing in the pool. The lucky thing is that we killed 3 birds with one stone. Sadie is now more comfortable in the water, she got to use up a small portion of that never-ending energy and we saved mom's sanity.

She learned to blow bubbles and put her head under the water, enter, exit and recover, and a bunch of different strokes. She is working on floating front and back, coordinated hand and foot movement, and gliding underwater.

Staying warm in the water while she waits for her turn with the teacher

Practicing some arm movements

Fieldtrip Friday: Redstone Park

Sadie sings a song she learned in preschool about the spring -- well, rather, she sings one line of a song she learned at preschool: "How do you know that spring is coming?" After our Fieldtrip Friday today to Redstone Park, I now know how I would finish that song.

• You get to spend your afternoons in the park
• You apply your sunscreen for the very first time. If you want to ensure your skin still looks like it does mid-December you make sure it is 60+spf 
• You get to order chocolate ice cream with star sprinkles, a big glass of cherry juice with ice & colorful chicken nuggets at the playground drive-thru window from an extra happy attendant named Sadie
• You feed the geese some day old bread
• When you run out of bread you look for something else to throw at the geese...and have a quick lesson on how to tell the difference between pebbles and goose poop
• You remember just how much you love the sunshine
• You are just too tired to eat your dinner cause you spent the whole day playing so hard

A Very Happy Un-Birthday!

6 months until cake smashing day! And 6 months behind us. Where does the time go? This year is flying by way too fast. So, here are the stats as of Alyssa's 6 month check up:
Height: 25"  29% (see I told you she wouldn't stay in the 67th percentile for long)
Weight: 14lbs 6oz 23%
Head: 16.5" 39%

As you saw from the last post Alyssa took up rolling over again right around her 5 month mark. She is now rolling all over the place - across rooms, under beds and tables, everywhere. She sees somewhere she wants to go and then she goes! She often throws her head backwards to try and roll away when she is being held and gets frustrated when we don't let her go.

I am ok with the rolling. It is the crawling I am dreading...and that doesn't seem to be more than a few months away. She can get her knees up underneath herself, she just hasn't figured out how to push up on her arms yet. Let's all hope it takes her awhile to figure that out.

Aly also started sitting up on her own right around 5 months. She is pretty steady now. She has also learned how to tip herself over softly when she wants to lay down and start rolling again.

Alyssa celebrated her 6 month birthday by cutting a new tooth! That's right. She has her first little tooth peeking out. It is her lower front tooth. She has not been her usual happy self for about 2 weeks and I wondered if it was a tooth, but the dr. said she didn't see any signs of teething. I guess she was wrong. I am glad that little tooth poked through and now I can have my happy baby back again.

She also celebrated by starting on fruits and veggies! Yea! She was excited about that. OK, not so excited for the veggies, but she sure does love her fruit. Her first food was carrots. Dislike. Then Sweet Potatoes.She liked those slightly better than carrots. Next Peas. HATE!!! (ha ha) She isn't crazy about bananas, but she will eat them. She likes Applesauce. And she Loves, Loves, Loves strawberries. She hasn't been too thrilled about her cereal lately. She usually loves it, so I am wondering if her appetite is just down from teething or if her taste horizons have expanded beyond that nasty looking cereal :).

Smiles even after carrots

Can you spy Sadie in this photo? She hides when I want to take her picture, but sneaks into all of Alyssa's

Alyssa still plays with her feet pretty often, but her fingers and hands have replaced her feet as her favorite toy. She likes to pull on her fingers, suck on her fingers, and flap her arms really fast like a little bird.

Bath time is still a daily favorite, followed closely by laughing at the antics of her big sister.

Strangers are a new fear of hers. She gets really upset if someone she doesn't know tries to pick her up or gets too close to her face. This is not so great in the process of trying to be able to leave her with babysitters, but we are working on it. She does ok when I leave her at the daycare at gym as long as they leave her in her car seat. If they get her out and try to hold her she goes ballistic.

So yeah. That is what our little bug is up to these days. We love her bunches and bunches. And we might be partial, but we think she is pretty cute.

Here are some more pics.

5 months - sitting

5 months - tummy

6 months - gotta love those cheeks!

6 months

Hello. My Name is Mayhem.

Today is the day we will mark on our calendars as the day Alyssa went into DESTRUCTION MODE.

She is rolling everywhere leaving nothing but mayhem in her wake. Pulling, grabbing, pushing, squeezing, ripping...

The days of immobility are O.V.E.R.