Too much driving! But definitely worth it.

Karly and I have spent over 16 hours in the car in the last week.

She hated her car seat before. Now it's just a torture tool. Poor girl.

Nate was really busy with school last week, so Karly and I spent Monday-Thursday morning with my cousins in Altamont, UT (ever heard of it?). It was great to spend time with them - it's been way too long. I forgot how funny Alta is and how sarcastic Nelson is. :) Nancy was so good with Karly (makes sense, since she had 6 of her own!).

I didn't take many pictures - surprise surprise - but here are some that I got:

Totally random picture I took while driving (I was really careful). Pretty huh?

We went to work with Nancy one of the days, so we're just hanging out in her office...

keeping ourselves entertained.

This is mostly for my parents and siblings. This is the house we lived in until I was 10. The house used to be a darker green with a bright red door. It was awesome. It looks so much smaller...

And here's the back yard. They tore out the raspberry patch. :( They don't know what they're missing. (and the yard looks bigger than I remember - maybe it's because there used to be a garden taking up about half that yard).

Ane and Alta are in a play (with a bunch of high schoolers - they LOVE it. Heh heh.). Oklahoma! to be exact. Karly and I went to their practice a couple of nights and had fun watching them dance and just being with them
As you can see. :) (Thanks Shan for the cute jammies!)

(This is a random in between picture...)
Heil Hitler! (can I say that on here? It's just a joke) She has started raising her hand like this all the time. Sometimes like she's waiving, sometimes when she wants to be picked up, sometimes when she's trying to give you something and sometimes when she wants something. So pretty much all the time.

ANYWAY, on to our other trip. Nate decided really last minute that we should drive to Denver to help his parents unpack their new house. So Friday, we drove the 7 hours to surprise his parents. We set Karly on the porch, rang the doorbell and hid. It was pretty cute.

We spent a good part of Saturday unpacking and organizing, but that doesn't mean we didn't have time for fun! With Karly at the center of it all.

She loved this rocking horse. At first she rocked a little, but then decided it was much for fun to do tricks (she also stood on it and lifted one leg, like a rodeo girl!).
I think this was at 10 or 10:30, after she threw up all over me (and Kippy's couch and pillow - sorry about that!). She was pretty tired. But so cute!

She had a love/hate relationship with Jake the dog (hah - that could be The Bachelor too, huh?) She would crawl toward him, but keep her distance and just kind of yell and put her hands up to us like she wanted us to pick her up. In the above video is how she reacted when she got too close (this is also how she reacts to the vacuum, by the way)

Just look at her toes...

Anyway, it was a fun, albeit SHORT trip. It was fun to see their house (we'll be living there for a little while when we move to Denver) and can't wait to be there for good!

Karly Stats and Pics

At 9 months, Karly is:

16 lbs, 6 oz (10%)

27 3/4 in (56%)

17.4 in. head (56%)

So, she's skinny. And she's anemic. Is anyone in my family surprised by that? (we're pretty much all anemic - thanks mom! :) ). Otherwise, she's a healthy and happy baby.

Oh, I have to brag for a sec (I'm a mom so I get to do that, right?). At her dr. appt., when the doctor was checking her, she didn't get upset. She just kind of looked at him and only kind of whined when he put the stethoscope on her chest. He was pretty surprised at how calm she was and said most babies just cry the whole time because of stranger anxiety. She really doesn't have that (is that good or bad?).

And since you probably don't care about all that, here are the pictures:

She's a little climber. Wonderful.

She also sometimes pushes her laundry basket around and walks with it (like a walker). She figured out she could push it up to the TV stand and climb on it, as well as the table and be able to see over the top.

She's not allowed to play with her laundry basket anymore.

(I'm not going to apologize for my baby talk voice. It's sound stupid, but who doesn't talk like that to babies?)

She picked up on this game pretty fast and does it all the time now.

She claps every time Nate walks in the door after work. It's hilarious.

Do you ever...

have one of those nights, right before you go grocery shopping that your house is practically devoid of food?

I did.

I had ingredients for several different things, but there was always a crucial element missing: tomato sauce, bread, etc.

So, I got on the wonderful allrecipes.com and went to the ingredient search. All I put in was "ground beef."

This is what came out of that:

Yeah, I know what it looks like. You don't have to tell me. And yes, that is hashed browns underneath. No pasta.

It actually didn't taste as bad as it looks. A little salty, actually. Nate ate almost all of it, though I can tell how much (or little) he likes something based on how much he drinks while eating.

We did have an interesting conversation though:

Nate: (picking up the place) This is heavy.

Alisa: (no response. I just laughed.)

A few bites in

Alisa: How is it?

Nate: It's not the worst thing you've ever made, but I wouldn't request it again.

I love it. He's so tactful.

Well, I'm off to get a Tums.

9 Months - way too close to a year!

As always, here are the monkey pictures:

I love the one below because this is how she looks at me when she's on the floor looking up (especially when she's tired). Love the slouchy look.

My little Buddha baby.
And look at the hair! It's getting long and thick and, when I put lotion in it, CURLY!
And some other random pictures and tidbits about the girl:

This girl LOVES anything electronic (don't all babies?); cords, cell phones, computers, etc. If I don't keep her away, she loves to play under here (I finally put a box in the way, so she can't - see my ER post for more details of why...)

Socks. I think that will be her first word, because I am always saying it. Because she is ALWAYS pulling her socks off and eating them. I don't get it. She's ruined several with those little teeth of hers (she has 3 now!).
She loves playing by the door. One day, when she was quite tired, she was yelling at the door hinge. Yeah. Strange kid. :)
This is her Valentine's Day outfit from Grandma Frakes, so we wanted to show it off.

And her cute face. I love this face, with those little cheeks sticking out. SO CUTE!
Man, I love that girl!

Other updates:

-She is getting better at sleeping through the night. She has started to go to bed sometimes as early as 8:30 (Wa-hoo!) and sleeps until usually 7:30, waking up at 6 to eat and sometimes once earlier in the night. But definitely longer lengths of sleep. Wonderful.

-This girl has attitude. When she's eating, she likes to throw things off her high chair. She'll hold it over the edge and look at me like "I'm gonna drop it - what are ya gonna do about it?" And she does drop it.

-She loves the bathroom, I think because she knows it's off limits. We have to ALWAYS keep the door closed and if we forget, she makes a bee-line for the room. (Again, see ER post - BAH).

-For awhile she stopped giving kisses, but she's baa-aaack. She will just give kisses over and over and over!

-She is chatty! Almost always babbling, which is so cute!

-She has perfected the arch-the-back-and-lift-the-arms-so-they-can't-pick-me-up technique. We hate it.

Wow, there are so many more things I could post about! She's so fun to have around and always coming up with new things to make us laugh.

Not the way I wanted to spend my Tuesday

I'm not a bad mom.

I try really hard to take care of my daughter.

But sometimes when I only get 4 hours of sleep at night, I am really tired in the morning, even if she's wide awake.

So sometimes, I fall asleep on the couch while she plays. Our house is mostly baby proofed, so there's really not much she can get into that can cause major problems.

Except the bathroom. So I try to keep the door closed. However, sometimes it gets left open and Karly loves to play in there. This particular morning, the door was open and I was exhausted. I usually only fall asleep for a few minutes, then wake myself back up or Karly wakes me. When I did finally wake up, I saw that she had gotten into some drawers we have on the floor.

She had pulled out my nail buffer as well as some Tylenol we had in a baggie. She has something in her mouth too. Any guess what?

So I got the dang Tylenol out of her mouth and picked all the other ones up. I called her doctor's office to ask if I needed to do anything (I didn't know what to do if your child sucks on Tylenol). They said to call Poison Control (POISON CONTROL?! It's that bad?!). So I called PC and they made me feel like an idiot.

"Did she only eat the one? Are you sure? How long did you leave her alone?"

Yes, I'm an idiot. Yes, I actually put them on the floor for her to suck on. Hello!? Anyway... he said if she ate more than 5, I'd need to take her to the ER, they would draw some blood and check to see if they needed to either pump her stomach or give her the "antidote" for Tylenol. He said it was up to me: if I didn't think she ate more than 5, then not to worry. BUT if she ate more than that, it's toxic, it would kill her liver and eventually her. Oh great.

So we decided I should take her to the ER. I don't think she ate more than that one (and she only sucked on it), but I'd rather be safe than sorry, you know? So off to the ER we went.

It was loads of fun sitting in the ER for over 2 hours with a 9 month old who won't hold still for anything. And even more fun to watch them stick a needle in her arm and miss her vein and wiggle it around and still not get much blood, so they just squeezed it out of the hole they made. Awesome.

Anyway, results came back and she was only at a 3 (toxic levels are 12, so she wasn't even close).

The doctor was really nice about the whole thing. He said it happens to lots of people - his son climbed on the changing table and ate Desitin, so that made me feel better. He said to go home and get down on my hands and knees and just make sure it's all baby proofed. No cords accessible, no chemicals or medicines, etc. I did. There is now almost nothing in our bathroom. :)

Overall, not the best day, but it definitely taught me to be more careful and keep doors closed and stay awake while she is up.

...That's probably a given.

Best Birthday Gift Ever

Fitting into my skinny jeans (the ones I almost threw away in despair because I thought they would never fit again)!

They fit.

Oh, they fit.

This is in no way offence to those wonderful birthday gifts I got from my parents, my in-laws and my husband (all of which I have already opened...it's not even my birthday yet.... But seriously. I. love. these. jeans.

Is anyone else's kid this funny?

I just have some random funny pictures of Karly I thought I'd share (I feel like I did this recently?).

When Karly doesn't have pants on (not that often, so you know), if she crawls on the linoleum, she keeps one knee off the ground while she's crawling. She looks like a gimp - it's super funny.

She is obsessed with Nate's computer. She won't even look at him if he's got his computer open. She just does this:
He's started to put the couch pillows on either side of him, so she can't reach the computer and push keys she shouldn't.
This is kind of blurry, so maybe you can't tell, but she has potatoes ALL OVER her face...and ears...and hands...I don't think she liked them because she kept pulling them out of her mouth and rubbing them all over.
Today she fell asleep while I was holding her and when I laid her down, she wiggled into this position.
Oh, she is my daughter.

And finally a video of bath time (I think this was the night she pooped in the bathtub - lovely). She is trying to catch and hold the water if you can't tell from the video.

Her hair is getting long enough...

to do this:

Can you tell how tired she is? She only took one 30 minute nap today. It was a wonderfully cranky day. For both of us. :)

Thank you Martin Luther King, Jr! And Tanners!

We had a long weekend for the MLKJ holiday, so we spent the weekend with our friends that Tanners. They moved to Salt Lake, so we haven't gotten to see them as much as we used to (they were our first married couple friends and we've stayed good friends ever since).

Both Lindsey and I are horrible about taking pictures, but we did each manage to get a few.

Blake and Karly got to be good friends over the weekend. And, of course, we have future marriage plans for these two. :D heh heh

Blake couldn't get enough of "baby." When asked "What's the baby's name?" he answered "Blake." So cute!

Silly girl waiting for dinner.

Hungry boy!

We went to a pizza place in Park City called The Red Wagon. The pizza and cheese bread were super yummy! It took forEVER to get our food, though and I think the waitress got sick of us because we took forever to order and were probably kind of a pain. We asked her to take a picture and this is what we got. On two different cameras. You can still tell it's us, right?

These two boys could talk for HOURS (and did)! Lindsey and I just roll our eyes and laugh at the things they come up with to talk about.

Troy and Linds have been our game buddies for basically our whole marriage. Anytime we get together we play games. We played Bang!, Settlers of Cataan, Acquire and Ping Pong. Guess who lost EVERY single game? If you guessed me, you're right. Nate and Lindsey (with her pregnancy luck) took turns winning. :)

It was the perfect, relaxing way to spend the long weekend. Thanks again Troy and Lindsey! :)

8 Months!

I don't have a lot of time to post today, but I wanted to put some cute 8 month pictures of Karly. Enjoy!

We love kisses!

All for a triangle block...

I have the funniest kid ever

So I have a bunch of random pictures and videos on my camera of Karly that just crack me up, so I wanted to share them with you!

This is just a random, eat the orange picture (don't all babies do this?)

Okay, this girl: when she smiles, she squints. It's so funny. I think my in-laws and Nate's aunt have better pictures, but this is what I've got. Still stinkin' cute.

So one day I was in the kitchen making dinner and Karly was in the living room, where I had been working on organizing all her clothes into their drawers. I figured she'd probably pull all the clothes out, which was fine - I had just started. I heard her crying/whining a little, but I figured she was just being grumpy. Then I went in to look and this is what I saw:

I laughed so hard that she started laughing too. Priceless.
So while Karly was sick, she really wasn't eating very well. She'd nurse, but she wouldn't take a bottle and definitely wouldn't eat cereal or anything solid. I still tried to get her to eat some and this was the result:

In case you can't tell, the food is just sitting on the edge of her lip while she cries. I had to scoop the food out of her mouth to get her to stop crying.

Oh, and that video is for all of you who ask me, "does she ever cry?" Yes. Yes she does.

Okay, in this one, I promise I'm not abusing my daughter. She thinks it's funny when I push her over! And I think it's funny when she does this:

Annnndddd....in case you can't tell, she's falling over when I put my hand up. SO funny.