Eye Spy

I'm not quite sure what color Ainsley's eyes are leaning toward. One day they look green to me, the next they look brown, and the next they look gray. I am pretty darn sure they won't be blue like Avery's, but at this point there's really no good indication of what they're going to do. Jed's eyes are hazel, but they lean more toward the brown side of hazel. My eyes are very much green. I guess we'll just wait and watch and see what happens.

Rollin', rollin', rollin'

Ainsley rolled over for the first time on Christmas Eve Eve -- her 4-month birthday if you're into to having monthly birthday celebrations. I actually sort of forgot about it and never even told Jed. Then, yesterday she did it three times in a row and it reminded me that she'd done it a few days before. Today I broke out the camera and caught it on tape. Not that it's all that amazing, but I think she'll wonder why I have every minute detail of Avery's life documented and nothing for her. Sigh, to be the second born. It's a time issue, I promise. I don't love her any less. I actually think I'm a little more in love with her, if that's possible. She is so happy and smiley and totally adorable.

Here is a video clip.

Feliz Naviblah

After eating a Christmas dinner-sized meal every day for the last three days, I can truly say that I have a post-holiday food hangover. Instead of popping pain killers, I'm popping Tums in a big way. Thankfully I only had a couple of tasty beverages to accompany my generous portions of heart-attack-on-a-plate goulash, otherwise I'd surely be popping pain killers too.

We got a jump start on starting our own family holiday traditions by having Avery and Ainsley wrestle for who got to open the first present. I think it's safe to say Avery won, although next year might be a little more fair. Ainsley didn't have a chance.

Check out the half Nelson.


We headed to Grammy and Pops's house to eat and open more gifts. Here are just a few pictures. I linked the whole album at then end of this post.












On Christmas Day we went to GramZ and PapaZ's house for more food and more presents. Avery couldn't have been more pleased about the presents once she realized that if she could get them open there would probably be something pretty great inside. I didn't get many pictures, unfortunately, but it was mostly because I was relying on everyone else to get some good shots. Here are a couple:




And here is the whole album.

Also, Avery and Ainsley don't really realize it yet, but these two miniature horses (Mia and Lucy) are for them as well. They're not trained to give pony rides just yet, but Grammy Gigi is working on that. I didn't get any Christmas shots of them, but here is Avery's first meeting with them a couple of weeks ago. Aren't they cute?

Polka Dots Take Two

Just to remind all my beloved blog readers, these two girls ARE indeed related. Sisters, in fact. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, no?

Elf Yourself

This is pretty funny! Thanks Jill for the hours of endless entertainment.



Come on, you know you wanna do it too...

HOW?

How can a tiny 3-millimeter-long paper cut HURT SO FREAKING BADLY?

Can. not. type.

I'm not giving up my day job

Although, I guess I technically don't have one.

So a few weeks ago, I had this epiphany while perusing JoAnn's craft store looking for ribbon to make some headbands for a friend's daughter. I thought I could make headbands that aren't all lame and frilly like the ones you typically see for sale, and I could sell them on the internet and make a fortune.

I bought some ribbon and decided my friend's daughter would get the first few of my many marvelous headband creations.

Then I sat down and actually tried to figure out how to make these headbands so that they were elastic on the back and could get bigger as the baby's head grew. I gave up and started over twice. The third headband came out a little better, but still nothing I'd try to sell to anyone.

Here are a couple of pictures. My friend Leslie suggested the bow on top, and a few others suggested two layers of ribbon, which I agreed about (like a solid color under the patterned ribbon) but I never got that far.


After spending about 7 hours trying to make a headband that actually worked, I finished this one and decided I either needed to find a more efficient way of doing this or give up my idea altogether. I'm not sure what I've decided. I don't think I'm ready to give up yet. Moms everywhere need ME to help save them from frilly frou-frou baby headband hell.

Trimming the tree

Our tree had been sitting in our living room for two weeks, so we decided it was probably time to actually take out the ornaments and decorate it. We had a couple of new ornaments to add to the collection -- personalized ones for each girl that I ordered from ornamentshop.com.


Since we took our gas fire log thingy out of the fireplace last year to put this Christmas candelabra in instead, I decided it was too much work to reinstall the gas log and I lit the candelabra. It turns out Avery was more fond of the candles anyway.


Finally we got to the important part and put the lights and decorations up. Avery was pretty pleased with it all. This morning she woke up around 6am and yelled "I want to decorate the Christmas tree!" I took that as my cue (though VERY reluctantly) to get up and get her and remind her that we already did that. She was happy enough to just plug the lights in and sit and stare at it.

Drooly Yours

Partly learned, partly created

Avery demands that I sing to her. Con. stant. ly. So my repertoire of songs is always challenged, and I have to dig deep for new material. Please refer back to this post if you need to see just how deeply I've had to dig for songs...

Last week after we sang every single Christmas song I could think of, including a few that I didn't really know the words to, Avery charged on with her simple request of "Mama, I want a different song." So I resorted to the French songs I know. For some reason, "Frère Jacques" appealed to her so she wanted to sing it and the English version "Are You Sleeping" over and over and over. After singing it many times, Avery started to sing it on her own, but she added a funny little twist.

The original lyrics are:
Frère Jacques,
Frère Jacques,
Dormez vous?
Dormez vous?
Sonnez les matines,
Sonnez les matines,
Din, din, don!
Din, din, don!

Avery's lyrics:
Frère Jacques,
Frère Jacques,
Dormez vous?
Dormez vous?
Mommy had a baby,
Mommy had a baby,
Din, din, don!
Din, din, don!

She's nothing if not observant, you know? I'm just glad she didn't choose "Champs-Elysees" or "Au Clair Du La Luna." She'd butcher the crap out of those two for sure.

The "Mommy had a baby" stuff is sweet, yes. But I think the most endearing part of this all for me is that she's clearly like me in at least one way. She constantly sings. I've always had this problem my whole life. I wake up with songs in my head and sing them throughout the day. These days, however, the songs I wake up singing are most often things like "Skinnamarinkydinkydink" and "Dr. Foster Went to Gloucester."

Back to reality

We're home from a crazy trip to Virginia (and DC and Maryland and Pennsylvania...)

Because we're poor planners and apparently don't know how to read a calendar, we also planned a trip to Disneyland for yesterday, so we haven't had a whole lot of down time for 10 days or so.

Right now Avery is watching "Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas" for the second time this morning and Ainsley is taking her morning nap, so I have a little time to blog.

Our trip began Monday December 4th when we left to stay the night at my mom's house because we had a morning flight out of Long Beach, CA. I took a couple of pictures of Ainsley that just make me laugh!

Look at these goofy ears...



We checked our luggage (4 rolling suitcases and 2 carseats, uggh) without a hitch and boarded the plane.


Avery slept somewhat peacefully for a couple of hours and my mom and I could just relax.


Day one in Virginia was pretty low-key. We slept and kept warm inside. We had no car, so the furthest we could go was to the nearby mall, the Tyson's Galleria. Talk about hoity-toity.


On Friday we drove to Maryland to meet up with some of our friends -- Alex and Emma, Sue and Eric, and Jen, Hunter, and Gabe. We had a great time hooking up with them and ended our day with a couple of mudslides, yum. I'm stealing a few pics from you Alex. I hope you don't mind...





Over the weekend we did some sight-seeing. We went to the city (DC), had lunch, visited one of the Smithsonians, rode the trolley, etc. It was a long day, but a fun one.



Natural History Museum pictures...


The Hope Diamond:


Some pendant or something... I just loved this one...


Outside the museum we watched the Zamboni clean the ice skating rink and took a few pictures.




Pictures from the trolley (aka a whirlwind look at the monuments...)







Avery was THRILLED with seeing our Nation's Capital.


On Monday we met up with my friend Tamara and her son Calvin in Pennsylvania. She has a son named Luke who is Avery's age too, but he stayed at home with grandma that day.


The plane ride home departed at 7am EST, and since none of us really ever acclimated to the time change, it really did feel like getting up at 1:30 in the morning (4:30 EST to make it to the airport by 5:30 EST). We're still not quite back onto our normal schedule.

Yesterday we headed to Disneyland and didn't get to bed until midnight. Avery's 5:30am wake up call to me came VERY VERY early. So you'll excuse me if I take a nap now...



Here are some more pictures from Disneyland.

adieu, adieu, to you and you and you

Is that how you spell "adieu?" Those four years of French certainly paid off, non?

I am leaving for a week and won't be blogging. I'll be freezing my arse off in Virginia instead. Wish me luck that Jet Blue's DirecTV doesn't somehow go haywire because if we have no Noggin, I'm going to go out of my noggin.

I'm going to have a lot of shopping to do when I get home. My Christmas cards are out, however, so that's done. I didn't share the picture here yet, so here it is.

Until next week, then. Oh ravwah.

Princess shoes and teaching Avery to read

Here's a little video from Thanksgiving day that was on my mom's camera. Avery tries on her princess shoes for the first time and then we read a book and try to show her the connection between the objects and the words. Really, it's packed with entertainment. Really.

I wanna be the meat

in the middle of this Matthew sandwich. Yes.


I'm pretty sure I'm going to be expected to see this movie -- "We Are Marhsall." Or at least made to feel bad if I don't. My brother-in-law and his 7 siblings all went to Marshall University. I've heard the story is a compelling one, but nothing compels me to see this movie more than Matthew and Matthew.

Yum Yum Gimme Some.