Now That the Living Room is Clean...

...I can share some pictures from our day!




Someone sure looks more and more like her daddy as the months fly by:


(the picture of her is from today and the one of him is from December. It was the best comparison I could find!)

It was another low-key, spending-free, lazy day at home. Jason is at work now and I am looking forward to some reading and maybe a phone call or two. We'll see how chatty I feel...

My Living Room Right Now

Thank you, Amelia. You sure know how to have a good time!

Piggy Meets Piggy

Today I gave Amelia $3 to feed her piggy. Her real piggy, not her toy piggy. I save any tips I get/find at work to feed her real piggy.


Amelia doesn't like to feed her piggy as much as she likes to take "food" from her piggy. Much like when we play with her toy piggy, she prefers to remove any money I put in the slot instead of pushing it in.


I got to wondering today, why are they called "piggy" banks? From a quick google search, I learned that around the 15th century a clay known as "pygg" was used to make household items, including jars in which any spare coins might have been dropped. Over the next few hundred years people forgot that "pygg" referred to the clay and and when there was an order for a "pygg" bank a bank in the shape of a pig was made. Thus, the "piggy" bank was born.

Snow Day

Snow has returned to SE Wisconsin! It all started just past midnight and will continue into tomorrow night. Finally, it is looking like February around here again. Small group was cancelled this morning only...I had no clue and went anyways! I got there and no one was there and I was informed it had been cancelled and didn't I get the note? Well, no, I missed that one because I hadn't checked my e-mail!

Oh well, the roads really weren't that terrible. I mean, they weren't ideal but we made it there and back safely. It is just white here in Milwaukee. You can't even see the lake:


(for those of you who have been here, this was taken from the bluff where the old water tower is on the East Side - near the hospital Amelia was born at)

Amelia refused her lunch-time nap today so instead we shoveled! I got Amelia all bundled up and she explored while I shoveled the walkway.

She was very interested in the snow and crawled all over the place:


She also got her exercise in and did laps around her sled:


See the circle she made around the sled?

Mostly she just looked around:


A hot, late lunch is in order for us now. I also haven't given up on her taking an afternoon nap...so I better try and tire her out!

SuperBaby!

She may look like an ordinary baby...


...but when she throws her bib back...


...she is SuperBaby!!!

Super Bowl Sunday

Tonight, while we watch the Super Bowl I am going to play catch up on here!

What have we been up to? Lots of things somedays and lots of nothing other days.

I have to keep a better eye on Amelia when we are at the store now:


I went to grab something and I heard a crash. Apparently she wanted some green beans too!

Friday while I was at work, Jason put a shelf up in Amelia's room:



It is so nice to have her wipes and such off of the table itself. She is getting so big that it was just a hassle to change her most of the time.

They boys (our cats) got a special present in Amelia's Valentine's Day package from her Nana and Grandpa. We tried hiding the gifts until Valentine's Day but...


...Poopy was going crazy trying to find the presents! Lucky and Ludo were concerned as well, but they handled it a little better than the big guy. We gave them their "catnip pillows" early, for obvious reasons.

Saturday Amelia and I stayed in while Jason was at work. We played most of the day. Amelia shocked me when we were in the kitchen though. She ate mixed berry yogurt melts all by herself! I was so excited when I saw her putting them into her mouth. She sure likes them:


(see her purple chin?)

Next, she drank an entire sippy cup of apple juice!




She doesn't totally get it yet, but she eventually finished it all. She is such a big girl :)

Saturday night I had a rough night of work. I was so bored. We have an outer box office, you know-like in the old days (remember, the theatre was built in the 1920s) and that is where I spent the night. Usually it isn't too bad but for some reason I was bored out of my mind last night. I shot video of my phone looking around the outer box... This is the view I had all night:


Like I said, I usually don't mind it but it just got to me last night and I was so stir crazy!

Amelia and I went to church this morning and had the usual lunch with friends. Today we went to Whole Foods (because they have parking available). Amelia was a riot! Here is just one example of the adorable things she did:



I have stopped bringing lots of toys with us when we go out because of this:


See how enthralled she is with an empty Pepsi bottle? Yeah, I would rather she lose an empty bottle than her toys!

It was kinda warmish today (28 degrees) so Jason grilled some brats for us:


Amelia wanted to get out there too:


Well, it is now halftime and our team is ahead! Jason decided that we would root for the Colts (which likely makes my sister happy!) because the Saints beat the Vikings. My mom is rooting for the Saints because she likes their "outfits" the best. I wonder who will win?

Friday Fails - Bottle Fail

We have had a busy week. Busier than normal for whatever reason. I have been staring at a pile of dishes the past few days. Whenever I went to make a bottle for Amelia I made a mental note that we only had 3 larger bottles left, then 2 and then 1. Today it happened! We had none. So, her dinner looked like this:


Two bottles, one meal. Ridiculous. I always knew we were almost out of bottles but I never remembered to clean them. Tonight I walked into the kitchen, saw the pile of dishes and thought, "shoot".

Even worse? I had Amelia feed herself the first bottle:


I wanted to get her laundry put away before she went to bed!

More "fails" can be found at myblessedlife.net!

What a Wednesday!

Man, we were busy today. We got up at 9 and never stopped. Until now that is.


This morning we went to the art museum (above). Over the weekend a new exhibit, Street Seen, opened so we checked that out. Amelia dicovered that her little voice echoes in the museum today, so we had to let her out of her stroller. She followed us around, crawling, through the exhibit. It was pretty funny. We walked around the first floor for a little bit too. That's one nice thing about being members, we can go for a short period of time and it's not a waste. We don't have to "make a day of it".

After the museum and lunch, we headed home to get Ludo. He had another vet appointment to see check on his bladder issues. Of course, it wasn't perfect so more tests are being run etc. While Jason ran up to get the little guy I stuck my arm in the backseat to snap a picture of Amelia:


What a happy little girl! (I changed it to black and white because the original picture was really dark and it looked so much better this way!)

After the vet we stopped at Downtown Books on our way home. Well, we still had Ludo with us but figured he would be ok for a half hour or so. We plugged our meter for 35 minutes and headed in. Well, an hour later we realized we needed to get going! We got in the car and started to head home when we decided that we wanted dinner out. We had cashed a Christmas check (mainly to have some cash to pay for parking at the museum) so we thought we could treat ourselves, somewhat guilt free. Well, as we were searching for where to go we realized we still had a fourth passenger:


Oops! Don't worry though, we didn't get too far of course before we remembered him! I still can't believe we forgot to bring him home! He is so quiet in the car these days. He is fine. He isn't even mad at us :) All those 5-7 hour trips to MN have him trained well!

We finally found a place for dinner, Villa Roma. We decided somewhere new would be best since it was special Christmas money and all. We just had a pizza and some cheese bread. Pretty simple! Amelia LOVED marinara sauce:


Yes, that is a knife that she is eating off of...

We are home and very tired! Amelia is in bed and I think that we will be headed there very soon.

play, play, play

Amelia is a playing machine! She can play by herself:


(note the cat toy in her hand!)

She can play with daddy...


...in her crib?


It wasn't my idea.

She likes to play with her friends at church:


One thing she doesn't like during playtime are roadblocks:


My (full) hamper is our newest barrier. It keeps her out of our room, which keeps her out of her room.

All the playing leads to this:


A tired girl who takes a late afternoon nap!

Sleepin' In

We sleep in. A lot. Amelia is kind enough to let her mommy and daddy sleep in until around 10 o'clock most days. Yes, 10 o'clock. Sometimes only 9 o'clock but I'm not complaing about that either! Sometimes she wakes early, like 6 o'clock, but a paci can put her right back to sleep in a second.

What does she do in there all morning? I am not entirely sure but we do hear a lot of babbling, grunting and sometimes even laughter. We hear her well before 9 o'clock but we don't go in there until she is calling for us. There is a difference between babbling while you play and babbling because you want your parents.

Every morning when we go in to get her, we are greeted by this:


Well, she has already found her first "toy" of the day, a Pepsi bottle:


Let the fun begin!