Do You Believe in Magic?

At my bridal shower Rob's Aunt Leslie gave me an awesome gift basket of cleaning supplies. As I was opening it she explained everything in it and when I came to the Magic Sizing she told me "Robby likes sizing, not starch." I smiled pleasantly whilst inwardly I was seriously doubting my ability to properly care for a home, let alone a husband because I had no idea what this "sizing" was (I had heard of starch but had no clue how to use it). Flash forward two and a half years, the sizing bottle is getting rusty from neglect since that shower. So now that I am pretty much a pro at this mothering thing (ha!) my new hobby is caring for my much-neglected-since-Grace's-arrival husband. So as not to send my husband to the office looking slovenly I have started ironing his shirts and my new best friend is Magic Sizing. Oh how I love that stuff. It makes ironing de-lightful.

So, thank you Aunt Leslie for introducing me to this can of ironing happiness. Want to know my silly little indulgence? Ironing my sheets. I'm pretty sure that there is nothing better than getting into a bed of freshly ironed sheets. And those wrinkle-free pillow cases. Ahhhh...heaven.

Babies Are Gross

I'm sure I'll have many occasions to re-use this title, so why not start now. I feel bad for not blogging in so long, but I don't have much to say. Or even many pictures really. Mostly recently I've re-realized that babies are gross. Mine in particular has an affinity for chewing and sucking on the metal handlebars while she's riding in shopping carts which is gross enough. Then the runny nose starts. No one I know has a runny nose. I don't even want to think what she's contracted and then given to me. Gross. I will never go out without the shopping cart cover ever again. Like we need the swine flu on top of the current not-enough-napsleep-crankiness? No thankyou.

In other news, Grace loves to stand and climb. This morning I found her climbing up her high chair balancing delicately on one of the rungs. Yikes. Here's Grace climbing on her toy basket. She got mad when she got high-centered and was having difficulty moving. She's getting into everything now and I'm sure it's only going to get worse.


She loves to chew on the high chair straps, so she'll stand, then squat to have the optimal chewing angle.

Here are some random pictures from the past few weeks:

Happy Easter

The whole egg hunting crew.

Gracie finding (and eating) her first egg...

Can you see the two bottom teeth?

My two favorite people.

Milestones

It seems like in the last week things have clicked with Grace. She now crawls on her hands and knees instead of doing her belly-dragging army crawl. She also loves to pull herself up onto her knees and pull anything off of tables and bookshelves that she can reach. I always find her after her naps up on her knees waiting for me.


She also is now taking baths in the big bathtub and loves having lots of water to splash around in.


No pictures, but after a month of sitting on her little potty, she's finally figured out how to use it and uses it pretty regularly. We're so excited!

She also cut her two bottom teeth last week. Pictures are really hard to get!

Good job baby girl!

Don't Buy Stuff

The Today Show does a little segment on Money 911 every week where they answer viewer questions. I think one week instead of taking the same questions over and over again they should just play this video... it makes me laugh.

Goodbye, Dear Friend

Today I lay to rest a good friend, Pen (2008-2009). She was born in a Papermate factory in 2008 and despite early penhood struggles came to be the best pen that she could be. She has been through many a scribble with me in good times and bad. Pen has helped me organize every week with a To Do list and now I mourn her loss. She was a good pen. She wrote dark and thick and glided across the page as you wrote. With her, I wrote my favorite handwriting. She was always there for me when I needed a reliable writing instrument. She never pooped out and had to be shaken and doodled to continue making marks that one could actually see. And today, while writing out the grocery list she gave her last little spurts of ink. I will miss you, dear Pen.

*I'm weird and that's okay. But I really am mourning the loss of my favorite pen. Just ask Rob, she was the best ever. I would sing her praises whenever I wrote with her and someone was around to listen to me ramble and even sometimes not.

Putting Down Roots and Are You Kidding?

We've decided to put down roots so yesterday we planted our first garden in front of our apartment. It's supposed to be a salsa garden so we plan to grow everything we need to make our own salsa (to make Rob a happy man) plus a few other herbs and veggies. We spent all of yesterday afternoon weeding and preparing the soil and planting the early veggies that we could (onions, strawberries, carrots and chives).

Rob weeding the future onion bed. What a trooper. He wasn't feeling well and had already ripped out a brick wall that morning.

Strawberries

Carrots and chives someday. Hopefully.

Then this morning:

The little peaks you can sort of see on the left are the onions. The two tiers are the strawberries.

Are you kidding me? I really, really, really hope all our cute little plants don't die. Alright already with the snow!

I'm an American and I'm NOT participating in this recession

Dear America,

I love living here. I love that you offer me many freedoms that I would not have in another country. I love that you offer the "if you can dream it, you can do it" mentality. There are some things I don't love about you, but we won't get into that now and it's not even your fault - it's people who don't really think but act anyway who give you a bad name. I digress, so anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I am an American, but I am not participating in this recession. I'm getting so sick of watching the news about gloom and doom and despair! There are so many things to love about living here and so many choices to make that can make our lives better. Dave Ramsey, who is one of my favorite people that I've never met, is hosting a huge town hall meeting across the country called Town Hall For Hope. I love that someone out there is trying to give a message of real hope - not empty frou frou promises, but actual change that you and I can do to make a difference in our lives.

I feel empowered when I think that I have a choice to not participate in your recession, America. I can make good choices for myself and my family and choose to think about hope and not despair and fear, because I believe that this country was founded "in God we trust" and really, if that is true then there can't be despair and fear when God is near, only hope. So, this is your warning that we will not be participating in this recession if there's anything we can do about it!

love your favorite citizen,
Amanda

These are a few of my favorite STRINGS

There is a cat we "know" (not in real life, but in literary life, but if you talk to us about these characters we'll talk as if we know them for real since we have spent many, many hours with them, thank you Lilian Jackson Braun) named Yum Yum who is famous for her love of strings and shiny things. There is a baby we know who is very much like Yum Yum who also very much loves strings and shiny things. The other day I came into the living room to find this:
Did you notice the little red tie on the floor? Obviously the lady who made this quilt for us did not anticipate a baby deconstructing her lovingly placed and oh-so-stringy-delightful ties (and apparently they're fun to eat since we've found them in her diaper).

Another of her favorite strings are on the body - if you've ever gotten your face too close to her little hands you probably know that she'll go for your eyelashes first and if she can't get them because you blink, she'll try to immobilize the whole eyelid with her razor fingernails then commence plucking out for eyelashes (I, for one, am grateful her fine motor control has a long way to go to mature or you could call me Eyelashless Amanda). After she's given up on the eyelashes she'll go for the hair. There must be something that feels so good about wrapping one's little fingers around strands of hair and yanking?

Electrical cords are another favorite of Grace's for general teething. Obviously we haven't done a great job of babyproofing yet since these two poor little cords are battle scarred with many toothless gum gnaw marks.

I think Weezer knew my baby when they (or whoever?) wrote the song with the lyrics "if you want to destroy my sweater, pull this string as I walk away." [Note to self: after mending the clothing that has had strings pulled out of it, be sure to trim every single thread so as not to mend again next week.] Just when you think you've found all threads available for picking...

One thing Yum Yum is famous for is un-tying shoelaces while the unknowing victim is being distracted. Let's just say that if Grace is sweetly playing at your feet and you're wearing tie shoes besure to look down so you don't trip on your way out.

Un-tying Grandpa Ivan's shoelaces

I'll bet that you can guess (you thought I was going to say can't guess...I have more faith in you than that!) why this is a favorite string, I mean thing:

What a funny babyrooski! Watch your strings next time you see her!

Henry's Blessing and Katie's Birthday

We had a really fun day on Saturday. It all started with baby Henry's blessing. Henry looked adorable and was really good throughout the whole thing. Sorry, no pictures of him - there were lots of people enjoying being with him so we had to wait.

How cute are these munchkins? Grace and her cousin Will chillin on the table. It was both of their nap times so if they look a little spacey, we'll blame it on that.

Gracie and her Uncle Tommy. Somehow by the end of the luncheon, Grace had collected all the cell phones she could see and was having trouble deciding on which to suck on first. Oh the decisions facing little babies these days!

Rob and his mama, Annette

Then we went to the park to celebrate the sun being out and the coming of Spring. Oh, and it was also Katie's birthday :)


Birthday Girl! Looking oh so fine in her new jacket.

Water bottles apparently are really fun chew toys

Katie is turning "almost 20" but if you look closely at the candles, she's rounding up a bit

Hey, it's my blog, so I can gratuitously put many, many cute pictures of my baby on it if I want! :)

Attack of the killer Grace-facer!

The whole Carter kids clan. Aren't we good looking?

There's Henry. Could he get any cuter?!? I think not.

Apparently Grace and Tom are pretty photogenic since here's another one of them. Grace loves her Uncle Tommy and had to sport her true blue because Tom is decked out in the color of You-Know-What (The School That Must Not Be Named).

You can't see very well, but the first (and hopefully worst) sunburn of the season is developing on my arm right there. Oops, sunscreen what? At least I'm a careful mom and lathered my baby up even if I don't pay as much attention to myself.

We had such a fun day spending time with family and we are so glad that Mel and Jeff and Henry got to come visit and that it's almost Spring. Hooray for fun things!