Grandma loves us

This past weekend we had the whole family together for a few hours.  Mom and Dad and Joey, Andy and Kayden all came to our house for taxi service (smile) to the airport.  They are in Key West this week...lucky ducks!!  Anyways, when they were there I snapped a few quick pictures with Grandma.  These babies just love her to death!

Actually, speaking of loving her to death, Abby held her arms out for someone for the first time last weekend.  Guess who it was to?  Not me!!  Not Ryan!  Nope, to Grandma.  Silly, sweet girl.   Made my mom's day.

Messes are fun!

I've just been messing with my camera and learning how to use all the little buttons and features.  Here's some shots of our life these days.....

Enjoy!

Abby LOVES to eat her food.  She's not a huge fan of anything green, but I don't know that many babies are.  I've been watching videos of a friends little man trying avocados for the first time and it had me laughing pretty hard.  Abbers loves her carrots and sweet potatoes.  And, she loves all kinds of fruits and her baby yogurt.  Feeding her is one of my favorite times of day.  Especially once I decided that getting messy was just part of the deal and let her have at it. 

This shot will totally made it into her wedding slide show!

More progress

Slowly but surely our master bath is coming together.  I forget where we left off with the last post.  Oh yeah, Ryan and his boogers, but here's the slow progression that we are calling progress around our house these days. 

Doesn't everyone wish they had huge saws laying on their bed?  You're jealous....I know.

Then, for a few days we had an "ET" like experience happening.  Ry put up these great plastic walls to help contain the dust while they drywalled, primed and painted the new walls. 

Then, like magic, with two shakes of a lamb's tail we got to this point.  Actually, that's a huge lie.  After we got the walls done Ryan laid the floor tile and we grouted it.  Yes, I said WE.  What really happened was Ryan did all the work and then I was on wipe down duty.  So, since technically my hands touched the floor while it was still being worked on, I considered that as helping :O) 

Ryan totally spoiled my blog reveal of our tile choices with his post of Facebook last weekend but the guy did do all of the work so I can't complain.  We know it's a bold choice, especially with the dark tile at the top, but we love it and we figured we are the only ones that are really going to see it so who cares. 

Just to give you a little run down of the lay out, the two larger holes to the right of Ryan are where the knobs for the shower will be.  Then, the 4 smaller holes are body sprayers.  A splurge we probably wouldn't have done, but the bathroom was already setup with those so why not keep em!  Then, the head of the shower will come down from the ceiling.  You can sort of see where if you look above Ry's head and to the left.  Not the big hole, that's the fart fan (Ryan's term).

Let's see, what else?  We've got crown all around the top which we both love.  Six canned lights (we will be able to see hairs and blemishes ANY time of day....yippee) and radiant heat in the floor.  I can't wait for that sucker to be turned on.  It's going to be glorious!

Two of my favorite parts are the little ledges Ryan made and the built in (picture below).  So the story on the ledges is that I wanted a place to put my foot when I'm shaving.  Have you ever stood in one of these showers without a ledge and wondered just how you'd shave.  Then, you precariously dance around trying to not slip and not miss any spots thinking to yourself this shower MUST have been made by a man!  Well...I have!  So ladies...I demanded a shaving ledge for my foot.  Other than shaving (*count how many times I said shaving in this post!) we will use them for shampoo and soap bottles etc. 

Here's a shot looking back into our (messy!) bedroom.  The two pipes coming out of the wall are for the sink.  You might remember that originally the sink was in the bedroom, NOT the bathroom.  So, we moved the wall back to get it inside where it should be.  But, what I was really taking a picture of is where our awesome built in will go.  So, just to the right of the light switch on the small wall we will cut in a medicine cabinet.  It won't have a mirror since that will be above the sink.  But, it will have one shelf that is exposed (below the door to the cabinet, for decorations) and then a few shelves inside for things like toothbrushes and contact lenses.  One of the coolest things though you can't even see yet.  Ryan thought far enough ahead to bury a plug in that wall so when we cut it open and add our built-in there were be a place to plug in his toothbrush on the INSIDE!  So...no more crap on the sink.  It will all be neatly tucked away inside that custom cabinet.

It's moments like these that I LOVE being married to a guy in construction.  It's like having a genie in a bottle.  I just say "I want a shelf so I can shave!" or "Let's do a built in for our bathroom crap" and then I close my eyes (for about 4 months), wiggle my noes and like magic, my wish is granted. 

I CAN NOT wait to show you guys the finished product.  Expect a few more "progress" posts between now and then but we are making big strides now that we are on to the tile.  I'm hoping to get the toilet and sink back in by this weekend.  We are getting close my friends....very close!

Why are rolls cute on babies but not adults?

Don't we all just wish we could be this cute and still have rolls?  Babies just don't know how good they have it!!!  They can sleep whenever they darn well please, eat whenever they demand it and sport rolls that make them look like wrinkley puppies.  Man...now that's living the life!

Momma

Awhile back I realized that I already have so few pictures actually WITH my munchkin.  You see, first off, I'm often the one behind the camera, not in front of it.  No matter how much I love Ryan, he doesn't think to himself, "This is a memory I want to remember forever", and grab the camera.  It's not that he doesn't want to remember it, or that he doesn't love us, it's just that grabbing the camera is usually the last thing on his mind.  Then, to make it worse, I am the one to do all the editing and filing of the pictures and the writer of the blog.  So, when photos like this one do show up, I'm quick to dismiss them because maybe my hair doesn't look perfect, or maybe I didn't have makeup (both true in this picture!).  No matter how good I get in photoshop, there are some things I'm not qualifed to fix :O)

Long story short, I made a vow to start making sure to be present in pictures with Abby.  Someday, when I can't remember her being this little, when I can't feel the weight of her in my arms, or her little hand wrapped around my finger, I will have pictures like this to look back on.  And, in those moments, I won't care what my hair looked like.

And, not just present in pictures.  Present all the time.  Since going back to work I feel this constant tug at my heart when we are apart.  Sure, we have bad days.  Days when I just want someone else to take over.  But those moments are few.  And, when someone else does take over, I find myself wanting her back near me. 

This little lady has taught me a lot since she came into my life.  Making elaborate dinners just don't matter much anymore.  I often leave my phone in the bedroom when I'm home (on silent) and don't look at it for hours (sorry Mom!!).  I don't check emails often from home.  Blogging and knitting?  Those things happen after my peanut goes to bed.  When I'm with her, I'm WITH her and she is what is most important to me.

I will remember to ask Ryan to grab the camera every now and then.  And, I will remember that my hair, makeup, and clothes won't matter to anyone, least of all Abby.  All she cares about is that we love her with every ounce of our being.  And that, I can promise, I do!

Let her sleep for when she wakes, she will move moutains.

I think the title pretty much explains it all.

Just keep swimming....

Guess who started swimming this weekend!  Abber-dabber did.  Ryan decided a few weeks back that he wanted to enroll Abby is swim classes, and I was all for it.  Friday nights free of baby duty?  Sign me up!! 

In all seriousness though, Ryan is a great swimmer and he started young.  My mom taught me how to swim before I was 6 months old.  I was born in April and swimming alone by the end of August so she basically had me in the pool as soon as it was warm enough.  Now that we live in the new house, we've got a pool in the backyard and we both knew that we wanted Abby to know how to swim early in life.  Partly for safety and partly because the earlier you learn the better!

So, last Friday night Abby had her first swim class. 

Isn't that just the cutest picture ever??  Many of you have already seen in on Facebook, but I couldn't resist putting it here too.  She just looks so happy!

I rushed to the pool after work to fully document her first class.  I had my iPhone, my big camera and my video camera all in tow when I arrived only to have Ry tell me that we weren't allowed to take pictures!!  How horrible is that?  So, I decided that I'd just snap until they asked me to stop.  Looking back, I suppose I can think of a few reason why they'd not want you taking pictures but at the time all I could think was "It's her first swim class!  How could I miss that??"  I'm so glad I was a rule breaker and "did what I waun..."  I'd have been heart broken to miss this picture.

Just about to "jump" in for the first time

I was so proud of her!!  She didn't shed a single tear.  The cut off for the class was 6 months so she barely made it in.  She was the littlest one there, and the cutest (I know I'm biased).  They have class now every Friday for two months.  At the end she should be able to make her way to the edge of the pool and be able to turn herself over to float, so, she will be safe in our backyard with the pool.  All that said, don't worry, we've got a fence around the pool deck.

Sorry for all the long distance shots...these were "under-cover", illegal pictures.

Without further ado....here are the rest of the pictures and videos from the day.

That was her first dunk!!  I got yelled at a second time right after that, but, at least I got the moment on tape!

Resembalance x 2

Gosh, who would have known you guys would love baby pictures of me so much!  Shoot...I should start re-posting all the pictures of me as a kid right here.  HA!  As if I had time.

Anyways, last nights post went over so well, I asked Ellyn for some pictures of Ryan as a baby to give everyone a fair chance to vote on just who Abby looks like.

The sitter says she's the perfect combo of both of us.  She swore up and down she looked exactly like me until one day Ryan picked her up.  The next day they told me "he certainly didn't have to introduce himself....Abby looks just like him too".

So, whats your verdict?  Is she a Daddy's girl or all me??

Resembalance??

A few weeks ago I took this picture:

Gotta love that drool!

Mom wrote me back and said "remember that one picture...Abby looks just like you in that one".  So, I dug through our boxes (Yes!  There are still boxes at the house) and I found my scrap books.  The one bad thing about scrap booking is that you end up cutting pictures sometimes and gluing them to the pages so I had to settle with just taking a picture of a picture.  But, I'll let you be the judge.  Does Abby look like me? 

I see it in the eyes mostly.  I think she's got a lot of Ryan in her too.  Like her ears and her nose.  I'll have to get a few baby pictures of Ryan from Ellyn so you can have a fair comparison. 

And, just because I've got to include this pictures somewhere, here is one more that I just wanted to share.

Knitting and a baby

Before Abby was born I decided to knit her (or him!...we didn't know) a sweater.  I actually made the same one for Kayden.  The sweater was supposed to be for a baby 0-6 weeks old.  But, like always, my knitting came out a little big.  Abby is FINALLY big enough to fit the cute sweater I made for her so many months ago.  I took a few pictures of her (and Rupert the Rhino I also knit for her) today and wanted to share them with you.

I was honored to see that Abby loves Rupert.  She laughs every time she sees him.  I also knit Kayden a Monkey and I've got a Hippo and a Moose in the works for two other very special babies.  I will share pictures of them when they are finished. 

Abby's sweater turned out just how I imagined it (except for being a bit big).  The good thing about babies is that they grow!  It doesn't take long for them to move in and out of clothes.  The buttons were cute little antique buttons I found at a thrift store.  They were made in Italy and are perfect for my "old soul" little one. 

And, because this post just doesn't have enough pictures of my favorite little lady, here are a few more for you.

At her last doctors appointment (6 months) she was 15 lbs 8 ozs and in the 30th percential for both height and weight.  She's growing and changing so much.  And LEARNING!!  She's eating stage 2 foods now and baby yogurt...she loves that!  She's drinking water from her sippy cup (when I hold it for her) and her hair is getting so long.  Her favorite thing to do is stand.  I sort of wonder if she will ever crawl or just go straight to walking.  She'd much rather be standing in her activity center (thanks, Grandma!!) than anywhere else.  She copies me when I wave bye-bye (although she doesn't understand what it means yet) and she plays peek-a-boo really well now.  She loves to sing and talk to us, but if we are talking she's all ears, learning and watching what we are doing.

Never knew I could love someone so much!