My little chocolate monster

This picture makes me laugh and cringe at the same time. Ahhh, the joys of parenthood!
She looks positively evil, doesn't she? ;)

New Family Members!

After watching Alyssa totally wig out watching the Wiggles this morning when they showed a gold fish (and then continue to say "Fish, Fish, Fish" while pointing at the TV throughout the day), I decided to take her to the pet store and see what she thought of fish in "real" life. She LOVED it, so we came home as the proud new owners of two goldfish. Currently we're leaning towards naming them Macaroni and Cheese. All afternoon/evening Alyssa has been completely enthralled with them. And heck, when they die, I bet she'll be the first to volunteer to flush them . . . she loves flushing stuff. I just hope that life with a toddler isn't to traumatizing for them. Already she'll pull her step stool over to the bookshelf and climb up to look at them. I'm waiting for the day that she decides to try to pull the tank off the shelf . . . yikes!

Live long and prosper fish! Aka FEESH!FEESH! in Toddler-ease.

Its a proud, proud day . . .

for this mommy to a little girl!

Introducing . . . the ponytail! Its there, barely, but its there!!! :)















Let's flash back to a year ago . . .















Look at my 'lil baldy!!!

Julai ~ you gotta do this one!

You Are A Margarita Martini

You are a full on partier, with a good deal of sass and spunk. You're always friendly and welcoming - and very tolerant of obnoxious drunks. You should never: Drink and dance. The pictures will be everywhere the next morning! Your ideal party: Is loud, with good music and fun drinking games. Your drinking soulmates: Those with a Dirty Martini personality Your drinking rivals: Those with a Classic Martini personality

What Flavor Martini Are You?

I gotta know if we are drinking soulmates, drinking rivals, or somewhere in between!
(Not that it'll stop us for going out and partying it up like rock stars, but its good knowledge to have)

I've always wanted to be known as "the girl with a good deal of sass and spunk" ~ too often I'm known as the girl with a good deal of ass (I must be tired because that is DAMN funny to me tonight). And its true about me not drinking and dancing . . . only leads to injury, I'm afraid.

I feel like such a loser!

I keep getting blown off . . . by MY MOM!

Last week all the H-town "grandmas" were coming into town for the Street of Dreams home tour. They started out their day by visiting all the grandkids and kids' houses. The day before they came my mom e-mailed me to say that they were stopping by our house first, but if I wanted to go over to Renee's house with them afterwards I was welcome. And since I hadn't seen Renee's house or met her twins, I was pretty much planning on going. But then the fateful day arrived. Renee's mom asked Alyssa if she was going to go with them to go see Stephen and Abigail, but then said "oh, maybe I shouldn't have said that, she'll want to go with us". I looked at my mom expecting her to say something along the lines of "she is going with us" or "did you decide if you wanted to go over to Renee's?", but she didn't say a thing. I tried to just let it go, but I was disappointed.

Saturday my mom and I were running some errands and she told me that she and her friend Mary were going to come into town this week and do some shopping and wanted to know what we had going on. I said we were free pretty much all week. This morning I called to find out if they had decided what day there were coming so that I could have Adam leave the carseat here. (He's car is broken, so he has to take Gwen to work). My mom said "Oh, we're coming in this morning after my meeting" as if she was surprised that I had asked. Great. I guess its probably selfish of me to expect that every time she comes to town she'll want to see us/hang out with us, but when she specifically asked what my schedule was, it seems like kind of a blow off.

Stopping to smell the flowers

Friday afternoon when I got Alyssa up from her nap she was rolling all over the changing table and fighting getting her diaper changed something fierce. She finally got semi-free from me and grabbed my tank top that I was wearing. I figured she was going to try to pull herself up with it, but lo and behold all she wanted to do was pull my tank top closer to her so that she could "smell" the flowers on it! It happened again yesterday when I walked into to get her after her nap. I was wearing ANOTHER shirt with flowers on it (honestly, I don't have that many flowered items in my wardrobe, I swear!) and she got SOOOO excited. She grabbed at my shirt before I could even lean over to pick her up and inhaled deeply as she stuck her face into my shirt. Too cute!!! I love her!

Jeff ~ this one is for you!!!

Most of my readers know our big news by now, but there are a handful that don't (and evidently there are a handful of smarty pants out there *cough* Amber, Randy, Asten *cough* that figured it out on their own even thought I was trying to be super sly about it).

Anyway, we are very happy to announce that our Miss Alyssa is going to be in a big sister in February! Happy = Terrified, right? ;) For anyone who wants to read my pregnancy thoughts so far I started a new blog for Baby "Bun". I'm really going to try to keep it up, but I have a feeling that it will probably just get "adopted" by my Mama Musings blog. Already screwing over the 2nd kid; right on schedule. We've had 2 ultrasounds already, so I'll post some baby pictures for you all to "ooohhhh" and "ahhhh" over. :)

Bun @ 6 weeks 3 days



Bun @ 8 weeks 3 days

Friday night parties

It was an exciting Friday night for our family. Adam and I went to a wedding, so G&G Nelsen were on Alyssa duty. They took her home with them and she spent the night partying it up like a rock star at Jacob's 16th birthday poker party with the rest of the Olsen family.

notice she doesn't know to hold her pretzel like a cigar . . . she's just trying to shove as much food in her mouth as quickly as possible. That's my girl!!!

I think it was Alyssa's advice that helped Anna win the big money . . . we seriously need to talk about getting a cut of that!



The wedding we went to was really nice. The reception was at the art museum downtown, which was absolutely stunning. I had always kind of thought it was a weird place for a reception given the layout, but it was very classic and sophisticated. We had a fun time hanging out with Asten, but if we could have eaten a little earlier, like within an HOUR of getting to the reception, and avoided the pesky "who should we eat first" incident things would have been a lot better. ;) Or at least be less stingy on the appetizers. Maybe "pushy wine guy" should have been in charge of those. I think I'll write a letter.

PS ~ Know what time Alyssa went to bed? 11 PM. Know what time her parents went to bed? About 11:15 and I felt like a total party animal. How sad is that?!?!?!

Cousins!

As much as my youngest niece can tend to drive me NUTS, completely and utterly NUTS, its things like this that totally warm my heart and makes me glad that she's around.

Splish Splash they were having a BLAST!

Okay, maybe blast is a bit much, but it rhymed!

Alyssa and I went with our neighbor Amy and her daughter Sophie (3 months younger than Alyssa) to a sprinkler park close to our house this afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised that it was first of all, free, and second of all very uncrowded for a pretty warm summer afternoon. Its kind of out in the middle of no where (like our neighborhood, I guess). There were 3 other kids there when we got there about 3:45 and then maybe around 10 when we left at 5. Its kind of geared more towards the toddler age group, so I didn't have to worry about Alyssa getting bowled over by some big kid. We'll definitely be going back ~ we'll have to take Evan and Charlie with us sometime. (PS ~ we miss you guys!!!)

Weather

My sister called last night to see if Alyssa and I wanted to come over and go swimming some time this week. I told her that either tomorrow (Tuesday) or Wednesday would work and she replied that we should try for Tuesday because its going to be waaaay too hot on Wednesday. Too hot to swim?! What the heck? Wouldn't you want to swim on the hotter day? I know I would, but whateva!

In other weather related news . . . its supposed to be 102 on Wednesday and 71 on Friday. That just blows my mind!

She makes my heart burn

I used to long for the days when Alyssa would be out of my stomach because I suffered really bad heart burn during pregnancy. Little did I know that she would make my heart "burn" just as bad, if not worse, when she was outside my body.

Yesterday morning I was vacuuming and I put Alyssa's rocking chair and mini easy chair up on the coffee table. My monkey, seeing a fine opportunity to prove her climbing skills, immediately made a beanline for the top of the coffee table and ultimately the top of her chair. As I turned around I saw the chair (with her in it) sliding off the coffee table. I did grab it before she fell, so she wasn't hurt at all, but it did scare the poo out of her. She cried for a good 10 minutes afterwards ~ she's such a sensitive soul.

Last night she was climbing on me then climbing on the coffee table and I kept telling her that she was going to get hurt. Then I said something along the lines of "Alyssa, do you remember this morning when you almost fell off the table and got really scared?". She gave me these big sad eyes and walked out of the room towards the front of the house. Turns out that she PUT HERSELF ON THE NAUGHTY STEP! Adam went to check on her and she was sitting on the steps looking all sad. I didn't yell at her when I reminded her that she almost got hurt, it was just a normal/reminding tone. And its not like I put her on the naughty step for almost falling off the table earlier in the day. And besides that I've only put her on the naughty step twice in the last couple months that we've been using it, TWICE, so its not like she spends a whole lot of time there. Just broke my heart that she thought I was mad at her or she had disappointed me somehow and she thought she needed to be punished.

Of course then today she threw herself off the coffee table onto me on the couch multiple times whether I was ready for her or not (thankfully her mommy is a pretty "fluffy" landing pad, so she didn't get hurt), so she must not have been too traumatized.

Glimpse into the future

Thursday last week Alyssa and I "kidnapped" Christy, Evan, and Charlie to go out for lunch in my (and Jeff's) hometown at Mickels/Wickies as a pick me up/early birthday lunch for Christy. We stopped by my parents house for a few minutes before heading back home to change diapers and get a cheerio refill. As we were leaving town when I heard Evan say "Mom, Alyssa's throwing cheerios at Charlie". Instantly I was saying "Alyssa, don't throw cheerios at Charlie". Its funny how second nature it was and how it felt so natural. I guess that's a sign that I can handle more than one kid, right? Right? RIGHT?!?!?!?!?!

Watermelon + Small Town Parade = Good 4th 'o July fun!

Okay, I've been trying to figure out something to blog about for a couple days now and nothing spectacular is coming to mind (its been a fairly mundane week), so I thought I would share some of my favorite pictures from the 4th of July. My mom and I took Alyssa to the parade in a town about 15 minutes from my hometown. My dad and "Johnny" (his restored 1935 John Deere tractor) were going to be in the parade, so that's pretty much the only reason we went. Its always really fun to see my dad having such a great time perched on top of his tractor. He really looks like a kid in a candy shop and you would have no clue that Parkingson's is slowly taking over his life. One of the great times I'll look back on ~ but that's not what this is all about. You gotta love small town parades . . . the local funeral home was giving out huge slices of watermelon, so since Alyssa was dressed festively in a watermelon dress (1 of 3 4th of July outfits that she rotated through) I decided to give her a piece and let her go at it. Of course, cuteness followed . . .
















































The other thing that stuck me as "cute" during this parade was the announcer. First of all, they had a guy standing in front of the court house narrating who was going by and what they were riding/driving. And the gave a short biography. "Here comes Norm N on his 1935 John Deere Tractor. Norm lives on West Park Street and enjoys himself a nice hamburger on summer evenings". Not quite that detailed, but pretty darn close. Makes me miss my youth! Stay tuned for more small town fun . . . the county fair hits my hometown next week and I think Alyssa may ride in the parade with my nieces in my dad's wagon being pulled by the famous "Johnny".