Down the Drain

This morning Evy discovered that it's fun to throw things in the toilet. I had her in the bathroom with me while I was getting ready and noticed she was looking into the toilet bowl. She dropped my sock in the water. Next on the baby-proofing list...toilet locks. Or, eyes in the back of my head.

Make It Work

Loving the new season of "Project Runway." I was worried the format of the show would change with the move to Lifetime. I do miss Michael Kors' snarky comments. He always made me laugh. And, wondering why Tim Gunn doesn't say his signature line "Make It Work" anymore. Anyone know why? I'm wondering if it has something to do with the network move. I loved that line!

Happy 11 Month Birthday!

Evy's 11th month was a big one! She mastered walking and is working on her first tooth. She has become such a good eater, shoveling the food in with both hands. The way she shovels is pretty funny. She scoops the food up with her entire hand and then shoves it into her mouth and half of the food falls down her bib. We have to empty the little thing on her bib that catches the food halfway through the meal and put the food back on her tray for a 2nd attempt at making it in the mouth. She knows when we're making her bottle and whines and grunts until we give it to her. She also wants to eat or drink anything she sees us eating. We have to hide if we don't want to share.

Evy still loves her stuffed animals and has started playing with her dolls. She likes to squat down and pick things up and then stays in the squatting position for awhile. I guess she'll have really toned thighs!

Daycare is going much better. Since moving to the big girl room Evy is down to 1 nap per day (11:30 to 1:00) so she is ready to crash at 7:30 each night. Everyone at the center loves Evy; she is such a ham. When I pick her up she smiles her big gummy smile and waves at everyone on the way out of the building. She is the youngest in her room but they say she holds her own.

She LOVES stroller rides and will ride contently for an hour. Sometimes she falls asleep other times she just goes into a zoned out state. It must be really relaxing for her. I am dreading the winter because stroller rides are our "go-to" form of entertainment when crankiness sets in.

Evy has never been much of a cuddler but she has will occasionally treat me to 10 minutes worth of cuddling. She lays on her tummy in my lap and lets me rub her head and back. I cherish those rare moments of stillness because otherwise she is very busy!

Sorry for the rambling, but I love to use the blog to document all the day to day stuff that will quickly fade from memory (sob!).

Happily Ever After

This weekend we married off JP, the last woman standing. Grandma and Grandma C. watched Evy so everyone else (including Grandma and Grandpa S.) could attend the wedding. Congratulations JP and Aaron!

So Proud!

My sleepy hometown rarely gets news covereage. But this gem of a story is getting all kinds of play! Makes me proud! We're not all idiots, I promise...

http://www.kcci.com/video/21092113/index.html

Little Helper?

Maybe I could put Evy and brown bear in charge of grocery shopping?

Brush Brush Brush

I am amazed everyday at how much Evy understands. Here's some video of her brushing her baby's hair.

p.s. We don't dress Evy in hawkeye attire every day. She was on a roll with entertainment last Friday evening so all of our video posted lately was from that same day.

Here Comes Trouble

Everyone warned us that all craziness breaks loose when your child figures out walking. Evy didn't want to disappoint. She started walking on Thursday. By Friday she crawled into the dish washer and by Saturday she discovered that she could pull 2 shelves of DVD's down.

I Give Up

My TV watching time is becoming scarce. I choose to spend my few free hours on other tasks such as mopping the floor with my new Swiffer. Dancing With the Stars premiers tonight. I was excited, for a moment, until I saw it was a "3-night Season Premier." What the hell? A 3-night premier? I do not want to invest as much time into a season of DWTS as I did getting a graduate degree. In fact, I might have spent less hours on that graduate degree.

The other factor here is that Scott and I have nothing in common when it comes to TV preferences. Last week he spent 4 nights watching a 10 hour CNBC special about the economic meltdown. SNOOZE....put on some Real Housewives or Project Runway please! We normally watch TV together which means I rarely watch what I want to. I see a seperation of TV viewing coming to our household. No way I can squeeze my DWTS fix in otherwise.

Getting Better

A little more walking, a little less falling...

Caught on Tape

Something must have clicked today. Evy's teachers said she walked around all day, hardly crawling anymore. The video shows that she is still perfecting her new skill. It's ok to laugh.

Breaking News: Alleged Walker

We have received reports that there is an alleged walker in our midst. The suspect weighs approximately 20 pounds and sometimes responds to the name Evy. Witnesses say she walked the entire length of her classroom on Thursday, September 17. To date, the crime has not been entirely duplicated nor has it been caught on film. The suspect was most recently seen taking 3 steps in her home. As we receive more information about this case we will report it here.

Silly Piggy

Evy is inconsistent. It's amazing how different each week can be. Last week she would cry and clamp her lips during dinner time. This week she shovels the food in with both hands. I took the photo above last week to demonstrate that she wasn't eating anything...I had several jars of half eaten food in my fridge. Today my fridge has no half eaten anything in it because she's become such a piggy. Her new found excitment for eating certainly makes dinner time more fun for everyone. Last night she had a hot dog, carrots and crescent roll.

Apple of My Eye

We spent a beautiful afternoon at Wilson's apple orchard, but failed miserably at the "pick your own" game. All of the trees marked for picking were stripped bare. After walking around aimlessly, declaring that we never would have survived pioneer times, and thanking the lord for grocery stores we decided to cheat. The honeycrisps weren't technically marked for picking but the sign said they are ripe the 3rd week of September. Close enough, right? We picked 6 and then went back to the orchard store where we bought another dozen and a fresh from-the-oven turnover. YUM!

No Fun!

Do you know how much a new garbage disposal costs? I'm not talking about the mark up and labor for installation if you had someone else do the work. I'm talking about walking into a hardware store and buying one for yourself. $140! That is NOT a fun way to blow $140. The stupid thing goes under your kitchen sink and chops up your food. If I'm spending $140 I want it to be on something fun. Or, at least on something that can be worn on your feet...wink wink...like a new pair of shoes.

Thanks to my dad who saved us at least $150 by doing the installation for us. Maybe I should go spend that $150 on something fun...

Wild Child

Evy decided to wear her PJ top on her head the other night.

Whew!

7:40 - 5:00 Drive to work, work, pull my hair out, work, drive home
5:00 Pick Evy up at Daycare
5:00 - 7:10 Feed Evy, feed me (kind of), stroll the block, entertain Evy
7:10 Make bottle while holding crying baby in other arm. Wrestle with exhausted sweet baby who does not want a diaper change, sweat rolls down my back. Put sweet baby to bed
7:30 Attempt to clean up kitchen
7:40 Discover that the garbage disposal is dead. Call Dad. Tinker to determine cause. Learn more about garbage disposals than I ever wanted to. Cause unknown. Decide not to deal with this problem any further.
8:00 Dad calls back. Remembers the re-set button on the garbage disposal. Further tinkering. Holy Crap it works! Dad says, "See you can do everything." I respond, "I don't want to do everything."
8:10 Resume kitchen cleaning and other misc tasks
8:20 Take out the garbage and recycling
8:30 Complain about my day on my blog
8:40 Now I should work out. Like that's 'gonna happen. I'm pooped.
8:41: What's on TV?

Remind me again why we all work so hard?

I love Ravioli!

Happy Birthdays!

Today we celebrated all of the September birthdays (3) on Scott's side. Evy loved having her cousins at her house and we loved having extra backs to bend over and walk Evy around. Evy's cousin Hayden was particularly fond of her so we're counting down the years until he can babysit!

Game Day

Evy stayed home and tailgated with Grandma and Grandpa while Scott and I had a blast tailgating on Melrose. The tailgate spread looked good, the fans looked good, the field looked good...everything looked good but the Hawks. But I guess that's just details.

How 'Bout Them Hawks?

In our house we love...LOVE...Hawkeye football. We are spoiled because we live 15 minutes from the stadium and on a Friday morning like this Iowa City is buzzing with anticipation for kickoff. Evy wore her Hawkeye T-shirt to school and Scott and I also happened to choose black and gold today. Before leaving for work we hoisted the Iowa flag into place on our front porch. The Bloody Mary mix, pickle spears and other tailgate essentials are sitting in the kitchen ready for action tomorrow morning. Tomorrow will be my 14th season in Kinnick and I know I will still get goose bumps when the swarm comes out of the tunnel. Game on!

This is from an email forward:

-Hawkeye football is best described as a crisp fall day with 70,000 people chanting I .. O.. W..A.

-Hawkeye football is seeing a 9 month old at the game dressed in black and gold and thinking "If I had only been so lucky...".

-Hawkeye football is the 60 year old from Sioux City who drives 6 hours every week to park his RV in someone's yard and then tailgates all day until the game.

-Hawkeye football is wearing a black and gold shirt in Denver and having somebody stick their head out of a car at a stoplight and scream "GO HAWKS!"

-Hawkeye football is knowing at the tender age of 5 that the Cyclones are vicious evil-doers to be hated, but having no idea why.

-Hawkeye football is a guy like Dallas Clark, who walks onto the team, 3 years later is a star, leaves a year early to play in the NFL, but was SO DAMN NICE that nobody can begrudge him for it.

-Hawkeye football is having one of your starting offensive lineman graduate to go to med school!

-Hawkeye football is the little black and gold flags waving off of every car antennae caravaning up and down I-80 every Saturday on their way to Iowa City.

-Hawkeye football is the bricks of Kinnick and the grass on the field with the smell in the air of some kind of meat barbecuing that will soon be put on a stick and sold to a tanked undergrad who can no longer speak as they are hoarse from screaming from the front row of the student section.

-Hawkeye football is 12 weeks of getting up at 6 a.m. on Saturday mornings, drinking bloody marys and eating a bowl of chili on Melrose before the sun comes up.

-Hawkeye football is being anywhere in Iowa City on a Saturday afternoon and hearing a dull roar come through the air and thinking... "Hmmm, we must've scored".

-Hawkeye football is sitting in Kinnick with your out of state friend and have him turn to you and scream through the roar ofthe crowd, "I've never seen anything like this before ... it's amazing."

No, it's Iowa Hawkeye Football.

GO HAWKS!!!!!

Baubles

If I would have known that Evy would like these beads so much I would have given them to her weeks ago!

Happy Birthday Daddy

Scott is out of town so Evy sent him a birthday greeting via cell phone...