They had him at "choo-choo"

Let me just say that I love a ruffled camera strap cover.  Yesterday I cranked one out for my camera while Newbie took a monster nap.  It was fun, and now I've got two covers down, one to go!  If you're feeling crafty, here's the site where I got the directions, and also where I get a lot of fun free fonts. =)

Mmm...Mmm....RUFFLES.

When the sewing was done and Newbie got up from his nap, G-Mama and Grandad showed up for a grand adventure.  The Hubs was at work, so we blew a kiss in his direction and pressed on without him. The first stop was Sonic, where I mourned his absence as I indulged in an incredibly large cranberry limeade and a ridiculously delicious slew of tater tots.  Newbie wasn't happy when I told him it was another couple years before he could have any tots.  He's a man after my own heart, bless his soul.

Then we pulled into a parking lot littered with "Train Show Today!" signs and embarked on Newbie's first train show experience.  

After about 30 seconds in a school gym full of old men and miniature steam engines racing across teensy tinsy tracks and tunnels made of plaster and covered in moss, I was convinced we have a junior conductor on our hands.  And I cried a little inside because I realized that means we will probably have to log in some Thomas the Train time during Saturday morning cartoons, and Mama is not a fan of Thomas the Train.  He just kinda bugs me.  I can't explain it.  All I can tell you is I wish there was another train show for kids that didn't involve gray faces and British accents and eyes that swoop back and forth all creepy-like.  It's just not the kind of cartoon I like with my Saturday morning cup of coffee.  I'm a Go, Diego Go! or Looney Tunes kinda girl, myself.

Anyway, there was no stopping it.  This baby boy was completely taken the moment we walked in the door, and he didn't take his eyes off the trains until we put him in his car seat an hour later.  The entire gym was filled with what looked like a miniature train expo. There were trains for sale, trains running on tracks, and all manner of train enthusiasts everywhere. Newbie was just fascinated and had this adorable look of concentration and observation the entire time we were there.

Grandad carried him around for an up-close view of the locomotives while I flashed around like the paparazzi and tried to get Newbie to peel his eyes away from the trains for one minute just to capture a quick smile, but it never happened.  He just stared....

And stared....

and stared...

 I'd be lying if I told you I didn't see a man over 70 wearing overalls and a conductor's hat.  Because I did.  And it made me smile.  Because that guy was having one whale of a time at the 'ol train show, and I found myself regretting that I didn't dress Newbie up in his own overalls for the occasion because he was having one whale of a time too.

 There's just something fun about seeing a bunch of gentlemen really excited about their toy trains. They were all standing beside their tracks and anxious to tell you all about the trains. At one point, curiosity got the best of me, and I let my hand hover over one of the steam engines as it flew past because I wanted to see if the steam was hot.  It wasn't super hot, but warm, and it proved to be a mistake for two reasons:

 A) The look on my dad's face told me right away how stupid it was to put my hand over something hot and had traces of "you're a 25 year old college graduate, how did you not know that?" written all over it.

and B) the gentleman who owned the mini steam engine came up to me and shared with fervor and great pride the ins and outs of the steamed locomotive.  BOY HOWDY did that guy ever lay it on me.  I got the once over on the boiler, the engine, the coal, the water, you name it, that train did it, and it was a real-to-life replica of a genuine steam engine.  So YOU SHOULD REALLY KEEP YOUR HANDS OUT OF THAT STEAM. 

Yes, Sir.  Wow, Sir.  Really, Sir? Fascinating, Sir. I'm sorry, Sir.

I will never put my hand over a steam engine again.  Amen.

After I learned my lesson, we continued on through the show and had a blast watching Newbie take it all in.

It was such a fantastic afternoon.  I'm so happy we went and got to see my little boy marvel over all those fun little trains!  I think I know what he'll be getting for his birthday in a few more months.  =)

(I can't tell you how much my dad loved it when I put that hat on his head. )

This afternoon we're headed out to Target to find some drapes to replace the blinds in the dining room because Newbie is crawling and climbing all over any and everything, and we've been moving the Great Wall of China and opening the dining room up for play time, which means the baby-proofing needs to be taken up a notch.  I'm not sure Newbie will love our shopping trip as much as the trains, but I know his mama will because Target= shopping heaven.

Hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend and remember to keep your hands away from the emissions of steam engines.  I'm just saying.

There ain't nothin' like some poppy seed

Aloha.

I haven't updated since Tuesday.  It is Friday.

Lamesauce.

I am sorry.

All I can tell you is I've been really busy cleaning and organizing and being incredibly productive watching a lot of NetFlix and eating a lot of blackberries that were on sale 10 for 10 bucks this week at the grocery store.  Although, I did clean my house down like DONKEY KONG yesterday. 

There is something euphoric about seeing those freshly raked tracks in the carpet where the vacuum recently traveled.  There's also something to walking by the entertainment center you haven't dusted in three weeks and NOT seeing a mountain of dust interrupted by tiny hand prints.  And I also LOVE me a clean toilet.  I'm just sayin'.

Also, blackberries are delicious.  This afternoon I committed the crime of making a summer salad in the middle of January.  Lettuce, mandarin oranges, pineapple, and blackberries, all smothered in a delightfully delicious poppy seed dressing.  Oh, sweet summer in a bowl, COME TO MAMA!

It was heavenly.

Newbie and I took an experimental batch of soup over to Miss L's this afternoon for a play date and had to make up for the soup recipe's mediocrity with a killer awesome salad.You can never go wrong with mandarin oranges and poppy seeds.

Newbie loves hanging out with his friend J, and he had a grand 'ol time slogging on all of J's books and big boy toys.  Bless Miss L's heart, she's too crazy into her pregnancy to care that my son was slobbering all the corners off her son's books.  You know you've got yourself a keeper of a friend when she doesn't care where your son's saliva ends up at her house.  For the record, Miss L is the least crazy pregnant lady I've ever known, and I'll be the first to tell you that I am the most crazy pregnant lady I've ever known.  I like to think we balance each other out. 

Mowing the lawn while riding a giraffe?  He's already showing excellent signs of being able to multitask.

I've been busy hacking through my New Year's "resolutions" that I'm not actually calling "resolutions" because nobody ever does their resolutions.  I'm calling them my "New Year's hopes and dreams".  There are many items on the list, one of them being to learn how to use my fancy schmancy camera.  So there's been a lot of this going on lately:

The mid-squeal I captured on my part in the picture above has me thinking perhaps the reason Newbie waves at everything is because I react with an enthusiastic, "OH GREAT JOB, BABY BOY!" screech any time he does. Noted.  

Another item on the list was to incorporate prayer into our family life and routine in a way that enables Newbie to see who and what we are praying for in a concrete way.  So I whipped up a "Prayer Page" with pictures of family and friends.  Each day I move the front page to the back, and we have a fresh set of people to pray for throughout the day.  I have it hung up in our dining room so we can pray together after we eat breakfast in the morning. It fits perfectly with my hodge-podge motif and my anything-goes interior decorating philosophy. The first page was full of pictures of Newbie's aunt and uncle and his grandparents.  When he saw it, he stood there and waved at the pictures while I prayed out loud.  I'm counting it as progress. =)

Not a 2011 resolution hope and dream, but still exciting, last night Newbie and I packed up and headed out to G-Mama and Grandad's house to bum some dinner while the Hubs worked late.  I had grand ambitions of finishing up a sewing project, but it never happened because Newbie was busy playing with Griffin, and Mama was busy eating cornbread. 

I love a good batch of cornbread.  I went back for seconds in a strategically bad move that left me whimpering to the Hubs when I got home about "oh my aching stomach and why did I eat such a load of cornbread at my mom's???"  When there's cornbread involved, I just can't hold myself back.

Which reminds me of a hope and dream I'd rather forget, involving a commitment to hit the gym and possibly even sign up for a mama/baby class this winter.  What was I thinking?  Didn't I remember how much more fun it is to hang out with blackberries and NetFlix all afternoon?  Apparently I did, in fact forget while hoping and dreaming last week, because this afternoon I find myself trying to finagle the schedule in a way that gets me and Newbie into a mama/baby class before the month is up.  Look out, world!  Here comes the most uncoordinated-exercise-hating mama you've ever seen!  Buckle up; it should be a good time.

Newbie is currently sawing logs over the baby monitor this afternoon. Gotta love a good car-to-crib transfer during nap time.  That boy went down at 1:30, woke up when we pulled into the driveway at 1:57, and fell right back asleep after I took off his mittens and laid him down in his crib. Awesome.  Also, he slept through the entire night last night, the first time in at least two weeks, and the Hubs and I have never felt better.  Newbie went sans-humidifier last night, and the Sherlock in me reasoned that perhaps those big air bubbles that float noisily to the top of the tank at night are what have been waking Newbie up at the ripe 'ol hours of 12 and 3 in the morning.  Then I made a mental note to put the humidifier just outside his door and to never get Newbie a goldfish or any other aquatic creature, as the bubbling is sure to wake him in the night.  This works out really well because I hate cleaning fish tanks.  The fish get all flippy and floppy when you put them in the net to clean their tank, and it just makes me frantic and jittery.

I am off to make an already relatively productive day more productive by tossing in a load of laundry.  It's those darn vacuum tracks in the carpet.  That kind of cleanliness just inspires me.

Y'all have a fabulous Friday night, and enjoy any big plans for me, seeing as how mine are currently limited to laundry, leftovers, and laundry.  Amen.

Baby, it's SO cold outside.

The snow today was beautiful!  It was fluffy and the snowflakes were those kind that are puffy and delicately laced together into huge flakes that fall like down feathers from a pillow in some great movie with a massive pillow fight.  The flakes were so soft and light that they sometimes fluttered upwards to the sky making it look like they had changed their mind and decided to go back to the clouds they came from.  It was magical.

...Until we started to get our snow stuff on.

Because when you're 8 months old, snow suits just aren't your best game. 

And ya know what else isn't gonna be your best game?

"Playing" outside in the snow.

Because snow is cold and wet and hard on the eyes when you're only 20 something inches off the ground.



He was a little overwhelmed and a little disgruntled.

But he was a trooper for his mama who was thrilled to be out in the fluff dawning a parka the size of Manhattan with the new Santa sled in tow.

Opie was just as happy about the occasion as I was...I think it was just Newbie and the Hubs that were counting down the hours  minutes until we gave up on the frigid air and went back inside.

(Oh yes, the Lumberjack coat is happening.)

Truth be told, we would have lasted a lot longer if that darn hat had stayed on Newbie's head better.  Bless his heart, it's looking like he got his mother's watermelon head that won't fit into a single hat without absolutely filling the thing 'til it's busting at the seams.  Son, the good news is, there's a lot of brains in there. At least that's what my daddy used to tell me. Well, you know, minus the "son" part.

I finally gave in and threw in the towel when the Hubs declared that he wasn't so sure it was good for my new camera to be out in the fluffy wet snow.  Because AT ALL COSTS, SAVE THE CAMERA! When we got inside he said, "Whoa.  We weren't even out there for ten minutes."

Such is life in the arctic.

After you climb into eighteen layers of down filled coats and wool socks, you go outside and frolic for what feels like an eternity, because only an eternity of frolicking in perfect snow would make all the effort it took to get suited up worth it, but when you get back inside, jaw chattering and desperate for a cup of hot chocolate, you realize its only been a few minutes since you walked out the door.

It is just that stinking cold.

So that very well might have been Newbie's first and only trek into the winter wonderland with his new sled this year.  I'm just saying.  That was a lotta work for a few pictures of my baby in the snow that just scream "Mama. Get. me. out. of. here."

I'm off to contemplate what we can do tomorrow that will get us out of the house but keep us out of the snow.  And I'm thinking a cup of Marshmallow Lover's Hot Chocolate is going to help get the job done.

Y'all have a good night!

Hello, Snow!

We woke up to a world of white this morning.

Newbie was fascinated looking out the window after changing out of his pj's...

And he loved getting out in it while we hit the grocery store with Daddy-O this morning.

He's in for a real treat this afternoon when we pull out the sled and snowsuit Santa brought for him after nap time!

We had some play time after lunch today and any time I called his name, he turned around and waved at me, then turned back to watch his Praise Baby DVD.  Scroll down and he'll wave to you! =)

See y'all later with our Snow Day pictures! =)

Ringin' in 2011

Oh man.

I never wanna see another Lil' Smokie as long as I live.  The end.

We had a blast this weekend hanging out with the BugMan and playing round after round after round of Five Crowns, a new family favorite card game.  I used the down time between Five Crowns and appetizer feasting to practice with my new camera. I racked my brain trying to remember all the tips Miss Trudy has given me, and after seeing some of my less-than-mediocre work, the Broski finally stepped in with a "Photography 101" cram lesson and helped me learn what about two of the thirty different buttons do. Good grief, Charlie Brown.  There is so much to learn, and I am having flashbacks to Geology of The Great Lakes 201....the only class I nearly failed in college.  It's all a foreign language to me, and it's beating me to a pulp.  BUT I am a woman of true grit (have you seen the movie yet?!?), so we are putting our head down and powering through. 

Here's a few snap shots from our weekend de fun:

I didn't get out of my pj's yesterday, and the rest of the crew didn't either until at least noon. It. was. awesome.  I can't remember the last time we just spent an entire weekend veging out and playing cards and sitting around doing nothing.  It might have been our weekend at the cottage this past summer.  At the very least, it made me ache for the cottage and those long, careless summer days. In the sun. By the beach.  We've had some crazy snowless weather around here that is messing with my psyche and making me wish desperately for a winterless year that skips right on into the fresh grass, moist dirt, and cool breezes of Spring.  I think I'm going to start counting down the days til our next stay at the cottage on the beach this summer.  =)

In other news, Newbie has recently pulled off the trick of all tricks...standing up in his crib!  Last night I lay him down in bed and as I walked out of the room, I heard him squawking. I came back into the room to see his little eyes peeping up over the edge of the crib. WHAT?!?  I hollered at the Hubs to come look before he hit the deck, but the thing is, Newbie hasn't mastered the art of getting back down after pulling up onto something, so I shouldn't have worried that the Hubs would miss it.  He probably would have fallen asleep standing up if I didn't lie him back down. I didn't get a chance to snap a picture, but I'll be on the lookout and try to get one soon.  It is so cRaZy to see him standing up in there now!  He's getting bigger and bigger by the minute!

He's also waving to anything and everything....we wave to Opie before naps and bedtime and when we get up in the morning.  He waves to Daddy-O and to his favorite stuffed animals. It is the cutest thing ever!  He was waving at everyone this weekend when they left the room or when he came into the room.  It is so much fun to see him interacting with his surroundings.  I just love love love watching him grow!

I'm off to experience the joy that is Netflix during nap time this morning.  My goodness, is there anything better in the world of TV than having any movie or TV show streamed live to your television with a double click?  I think its going to make hibernating this winter a lot more bearable. =)



Wishing you all a Happy Monday!

"I heard you were a man of true grit."

We're busying going for a new record in 2011 by cramming as many BBQ-covered Lil' Smokies as we can down our throats in one sitting this evening, because we are folks of true grit.  (Sorry, theatrical reference from our movie date last night.)  I have to to be quick, but I just had to pop in and SHARE THE NEWS!

..........................................

[drum roll please........]

...no, I'm not pregnant.

Why does everyone always think that when you say you've got big news?

...no, we haven't disowned Opie.  Although, we'd like to.

Why does he have to be such a burr under my saddle?

...no, I've never had a better jalapeno popper in all my life.

Why didn't I inherit my mom's cooking genes?

....and no, I most certainly did not see a better movie in 2010 than True Grit.

Why can we not all talk like we are in an old western movie all the time?

I do not know why we can not all talk like that. 

(Sorry.  Another theatrical reference.)

But.....

YES! 

YES!

YES!

YES! Aunt Corndog's Etsy site is officially up and running! 

Hop on over there now and check it out!  She recently adjusted her prices and  brought in some new inventory. She's got some fabulous aprons in stock and some super fun posies coming soon!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/ohsewwhimsy?ref=pr_shop_more

I'm thinking 2011 is going to be the year of the FABULOUSLY ADORABLE apron.

Just sayin'.

Happy New Year!