Boot Camp

Well, the time is long overdue. Time for me to get my butt in shape. :) Rebekah's wedding has given me the motivation to get started. Main reason #1: the dress

The dress is gorgeous. I tried it on and love it. However... as you can see -- it is not very forgiving through the middle. :) So my goal is to get into the size dress I would have worn pre-baby. And to help me do it... drumroll, please...

I'm not expecting rockin' abs quite like those... but hopefully it will help me out. I ordered it this morning. The nice thing about it is that the workouts can be broken into 10 minute segments for when I only have a short amount of time on my hands. (Which is most of the time.) Anyway... I'll let you know how it goes after I get it.

Thanksgiving pictures

Here are a few pictures that were taken on Thanksgiving. As you can see, Kaiya was worn out! :)

This picture was taken on Sunday evening. Shortly after Aunt Bekah left. Kaiya was zonked.

This week has gone well, so far. We have had unusually warm weather... 70 degree days make it difficult to get into the holiday spirit! However, it did make it very nice to get the Christmas lights put up (Thanks Dad for all the help with that! Christmas lights fall under the category of "yard work" to Tony! ha ha...) So, the warm temps will only last until Wednesday and then the real winter weather will arrive. This coming weekend Kaiya and I are heading to Chicago to visit a few of my college friends. We are going to ride the bus (I'll let you know how that goes) and are leaving at 7 a.m. Sat and then getting back around 4 p.m. on Sunday. I'm looking forward to the trip and being able to catch up on life and introduce Kaiya. :)

Last night I decided it was time to trim Kaiya's hair. Nervously I took off about a 1/2 inch on the top. The kid has a ton of hair right there on the top front. I could have taken more, but I was kind of scared. I debated saving it -- isn't that what you do with the first haircut? But Tony laughed when I told him I felt like I should save it -- and told me he's looked at his first hair like once in his life. So... it went in the trash can. I think maybe I'll save her first "real" haircut. When there is more to save. It seems like the right thing to do. But the umbilical cord definitely hit the trash can -- there wasn't much hesitating on that one. Her belly button is proof enough that she was once attached to me. :)

Fall Leaves

I've been meaning to bring our pictures from the weekend to work so that I can post them on the blog. I forgot two days in a row. :) There's always tomorrow. We had a fun weekend with Rebekah and Ruthie (when she wasn't working). Bekah was a HUGE help in getting me organized. We tackled the scariest room in the house (the office area). It has basically looked like a tornado ran through the room for as long as I can remember. I am so glad to have it organized and feel so much better when I pass through the room. Cause that's the catch -- I have to pass it all the time as it is an open room that we walk through to get back to the bathrooms or bedroom. You can imagine my anxiety when company says they have to use the bathroom. :) ha ha... Anyway... it's clean now.

What else... we went to Sam's to price food for Bekah's wedding. Still nailing a date down, but it's looking like Friday, May 25. I'm helping her cater it. Basically just appetizers -- definitely something that we can handle. I love stuff like that. She has a lot of great ideas and it is all very do-able. I'm excited about the chance to save her money.

On Saturday we also raked leaves in the backyard. It was a family affair with Bekah, Ziggy, Tony, Kaiya and I all out there working hard. Took some fun pictures in the leaves (which will be posted when I remember my usb cord for the computer). We were SO tired when finished... the back yard is huge!! And Tony took a huge chunk of time out of his schedule to help with it. And for those of you who know how much Tony hates yardwork, you know what a gift that was to me. My two favorite quotes from him for the day -- "maybe if we leave a small layer it will stunt the grass growth next spring." That's Tony... always looking ahead to the future. And the second quote: "When we move we are either living in a forest (because it is natural to have leaves on the forest floor) or not having neighbors." (Because truly, the main reason we were raking the leaves is because our neighbor is a lawn-mowing nazi. He mows his grass constantly -- always making us look like slackers. So of course, he had all their leaves raked 2 weeks ago. I told Tony we had to rake them before they all blew over into the neighbors yard.) I think Tony would have been secretly delighted if they had blown into the neighbors yard. :) After all -- our neighbor has a riding lawn mower w/ a mulcher so it's an easy task for him.

Anyway... pictures are coming.

Other exciting mama news is that I am about to ask Santa for a night of uninterrupted sleep. This parent stuff is exhausting and I am nearing a breaking point with K waking up in the night and wee hours of the morning. So... the new plan is this (thanks to Jen for the suggestion): When Kaiya wakes up in the middle of the night, leave her in the crib while heating a formula bottle, then take it in and feed her in the dark w/out talking, burp her and then put her down right away. We did pretty well with it. I took care of the bottle and burp, then Tony put her down. We have been making the mistake of bringing her into our room when she cries in the middle of the night and then I nurse her and we both fall asleep in our bed. So no wonder she cries in the middle of the night. It's mama at her complete disposal -- meanwhile I am sleep deprived. :) So hopefully this plan will help break the bad habit that we created. Time will tell! And I'm pretty determined.

Old Navy Adventures

Kaiya's Christmas Dress! I spotted this cute little thing at Old Navy last night and had to get it! :) She is getting her 9-month pictures taken in December, so we'll have her wear this.

The main mission on my shopping trip to Old Navy was to find jeans. And I'm happy to report that I finally found jeans that fit right! I've been putting that trip off since having Kaiya... just too depressing. I have been getting by with my great garage sale jeans -- but much to my delight, they are getting too big! The plumber look has not been the best look for me lately. And we all know that with a crawling baby I am bending over constantly. So I decided that even though I am not back to where I used to be, it was time to buy jeans. I took my trusty shopping guide, Ruthie and we tackled Old Navy. Thankfully it was a quick trip. We found the perfect pair of jeans immediately as Ruthie asks me, "What about trying the new 'curvy' style." I can tell she is treading lightly for fear I lash out at her for insinuating I am "curvy." But it is what it is. And I am glad to report that I now have jeans that fit me right. All my previous jeans have been gaping at the waist but snug on my hips. These jeans fit me perfectly.

I also got this shirt in green and one in black. I'm not sure, but I think I am cooler now. :)

Answer to prayer!

I wanted to post and update about my job situation. Last week I mentioned I only had 15 Mondays left. That has changed just a bit... :) I decided to talk to my employer about my transition out of here. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I have a 300 hour practicum to complete before April 27. Originally I was thinking that I would need to stop working at the end of February so I could be full-time out at my practicum site. And then once my practicum hours were finished I would get to stay at home with Kaiya until we move (wherever we move). Tony enlightened me that preceptorships (internships) are not paid. So... we would be without income from March - August. In light of that, I decided to give David the option of my last day being Feb. 28 or allowing me to work part-time starting next year. He decided that I could go part-time starting in December! So I will have every Friday and every other Thursday off to begin my hours at the practicum site. I will continue to receive the same benefits I did at the full-time level. This is such an answer to prayer! I am able to finish my Master's degree, continue to provide for our family, and possibly get in a little more at-home time with Kaiya once my practicum is finished. Depending on when/where we move, I will probably continue working here until or through May.

The Official Halloween Pictures!

I took Kaiya to JC Penney for pictures in her costume. I also took along a little costume that I found at a garage sale for 50 cents (the lion outfit). Thought it would be fun to get her looking so cute. Don't you just want to kiss those little cheeks? :)

Our weekend

Well, another Monday is here. But for my count, I only have about 15 more Mondays left here at the current job. Of course I had to take out the holidays for my count. :) But there is a light at the end of this tunnel. After this job, I'll go full-time at an at-risk youth treatment center through the end of April to get my practicum hours in. Very exciting!

Wanted to post a link to our weekend activities. Friday night we went to Fortel's pizza parlor for small group leader training and then afterwards everyone went to SkyZone for trampoline dodgeball. :) I'm giggling just writing it. Yes... trampoline dodgeball. It was much more fun than I thought it would be. And... in the words of one of the other participants: "For a mommy, you still have it going on!" (That was spoken by the guy I hit in the face with one of the balls.) oops! Here's the link to what we did: http://www.skymaniafuncenters.com/ We both had fun and got quite a workout -- both of us were sore the rest of the weekend.

On Saturday I went to Kimmswick with my friend Nicole to check out the shops there. Some shops were cute, others not so cute. The worst one was a really slow shop where the lady working pointed out that we didn't go through all the rooms. (We knew we didn't want to after walking through the first room.) I mumbled something about just being interested in candles. Something that she had in the first room, but she made sure to point out that she had a hot chocolate candle burning in the very back room. So... we obliged and walked through to the back room... took a deep breath of the hot cocoa aroma and walked right back out again. After browsing the shops we planned to eat lunch at the famous Blue Owl. We arrived at 11:55 and found out they were taking names to eat between 1 and 1:15 p.m. So we opted for soup, salad & breadsticks at the Olive Garden! :)

After a long day of shopping, I decided that I wanted to soak in the tub. Kaiya needed a bath too, so I filled up the tub and she played for a bit. The water had cooled off a bit and so I drained some out and added some warmer water. I notice bubbles, followed by torpedo poo in the tub. Nice way to end the bath. It's a first for Miss Kaiya -- must have been the warm water. :) We all got quite a laugh out of it. Ruthie's friend Mark was over doing laundry and he announced that he would never be taking a shower at our house again. :)

Saturday night Kaiya got a case of the clingy cries. Clingy cries are were she only wants held by mama and continues whining periodically while being held. If she is put down or given to anyone else the whining escalates immediately to screams. It was great -- couldn't get much done at all.

Sunday was a normal day. Church and then stuff around the house. Only Kaiya still had the clingy cries. When Tony got home from his soccer game he relieved me so I could make a dessert for small group. After arriving at small group I was getting the dessert out of my back seat and discovered that it spilled all over the back seat. I made Lemon Gooey Butter Cake. And gooey is the right word for it. Gooey in my fabric seats. Not to mention we no longer had a dessert for small group. We left Kaiya with the group and ran to the store for a back-up cheesecake. Tried to play games at small group, but had to leave early because of Miss K. I fed Kaiya, gave her a bath and then handed her off to Tony the rest of the night. She was crying when I fell asleep at 9:30 and Tony said she finally went down at 11:30. *Sigh* We have to figure out what's up with her. But hooray for Tony for letting me go to bed early!

That was our weekend. Moments of fun squeezed between moments of insanity.

Costume Party!

Halloween was fun -- even though we only had 4 trick-or-treaters! It just means left over candy for us! We had some friends bring their babies over and we took pictures with them. The cute little duck is AJ (Kaiya plays with him all day while I'm at work) and then little cowgirl is Hannah (Nate & Maurine's little girl -- Nate is in school with Tony.) We also took some cute video. Kaiya is so close to being on the move. We've been trying to capture the first crawl. She can move 2 hands and one leg and then usually bites the dust. :)

I love this one. They both are checking out the pumpkin.
What is this thing that has invaded our home?