We Give Thanks...

...for surviving today. Thank you to our fellow passengers for being relatively tolerant of our exhausted, refusing-to-nap, squirmy, climbing, fussy, ripping up the in-flight magazine, adorable 14-month-old daughter. And thanks for tolerating the sounds of our voices singing silly songs and reading "Peekaboo!" books over and over and over. Short flights never felt so long.

But the rest of our trip to Texas for Thanksgiving was great! It was our last trip to see Grandma and Grandpa there, since my dad is being transferred to a job in D.C. very soon. (Yay!)

Here is our trip in pictures:

Waiting at the gate:

Wearing pajamas with hair in her face because Mama is still sleeping (yay!):

Reading one of our oh-so-fun-and-repetitive Peekaboo! books:

Checking her e-mail:

Our latest (and most fun) thing is playing ball (again in pjs while Mama is sleeping in):

Feeding ducks! Evie loves everything to do with ducks, but she's thinking "aren't they supposed to be yellow?!" They did quack for her, but sadly, did not sing a song:

"Mama, Dada, look! It's a turkey duck! That's silly."

Evie is starting to understand that this is supposed to be fun, not scary:
What Evie wants from Santa (C*ostco) for Christmas:

Our poor (still teething molars) Pookie has been on a self-imposed milk, fruit and snack diet. Sharing a pear with Mama:

Sweet kisses from Grandpa:

"Oops, I think I lost a black bean in my bib."

I love this picture! It expresses perfectly her combined dismay about being trapped in a high chair AND having the camera flashing in her face:

Another favorite at home and away is rocking chairs. She figured out how to climb in, rock away and climb out of this one at Grandma and Grandpa's house...all by herself:

Seemingly eager for the journey home:

Do you see the exhausted, mischievous glint in her eye? She is getting away with something! We don't normally allow her to have pacifiers except in her crib, but a full flight of holiday travelers calls for an exception:

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hope you all ate a lot more turkey and fixings than Evie did. My mom prepared a delicious spread but Evie only ate a couple of bites of stuffing and some pumpkin pie. That was about it. Toddlers!

Crash! 14 Months Old

Not the car, the computer. The old computer, I should say. The trusty computer that brought you this blog from the beginning. Dead.

Good news! I backed up all of Evie's photos from her first year, and all of the videos from her first year, on DVD data discs.

Bad news! All of the photos from months 13 and 14 are now only on S*napfish and in hard copy form, which doesn't help me upload them here. And now I have V*ista (don't get me wrong, I'm grateful to the nice lady at C*ostco who gave us a great price on a floor model of my new touch screen Dell, but V*ista stinks) and it's going to take awhile to get my free copy of Windows 7 that was promised with the purchase of the computer. And S*ony didn't release a driver for my camcorder that works with V*ista. So, the videos are stuck on my camcorder unless someone locally wants to come over and let me use theirs to upload? :)

Which means, in the end, that this post is going to be way more words and a lot fewer pictures. And the pictures I do have from the past couple of days aren't anything great, but they do illustrate what Evie is up to at this age:

Playing with Aunt C and Uncle M's dog (Nana and Papa were visiting). She loved kicking the dog out of the bed and sitting in it herself:
Eating frozen yogurt (teething molars = OUCH! fever, diaper rash, runny nose and much crankiness):


Avoiding the camera:

Dancing on her toys:

And some pictures from today (in a D*ora outfit that was a birthday gift from G's grandmother)...

"Hey, Mama! There's velcro on my shoes!"
My little genius who figured out that her tea set is also a shape puzzle:

Just after taking off a shoe and throwing it to the floor:

Examining her music:

Balancing out the challenges of parenting a willful, teething toddler, Evie is all sugar and spice right now. She learns something new every day (throwing balls! new words and signs! climbing skills!) and is very cuddly. She has recently begun giving J and I real hugs and kisses, and will sometimes come up to us when we are standing and give our legs a tight bear hug. There is just nothing like it--feeling your baby's little arms wrapped around your legs or neck, squeezing tightly...knowing that she learned how to hug by being cuddled and hugged every day since she was born. Knowing that she loves you back and wants to express her love for you with a tight squeeze and a little puckery kiss. Parenthood just keeps getting more wonderful, and more challenging!

I've been spending a lot of my spare time trying to get caught up with projects before the new baby comes, so I haven't been online as much recently. It's paid off, though, with some major accomplishments. I am officially, totally and completely caught up with scrapbooking Evie pictures! That is a major accomplishment because if I can keep it up then I'll be able to start scrapbooking Drizzle's pictures immediately and not fall into the second child trap of falling behind on documentation. You know, the first child has a baby book and scrapbooks and the second has a box of pictures? I don't want that for Drizzle!

I'm also working on a Christmas quilt that I started over 2 years ago. I'm hoping it will be displayed before January, or at least for Drizzle's first Christmas next year. :)

Finally, I bought a plain t-shirt for Evie and some iron-on letters to make her a "Big Sister" shirt to wear to Florida in the spring. Now that the holidays are here the time is going to fly!

Drizzle is (Probably) a...

...Boy!

A had a sonogram today and the doctor is pretty sure it's a boy and will confirm 100% with another sonogram in early December. Darn it, I'm going to have to wait a few more weeks to start shopping blue. And, I'm going to hold off on writing about how I feel about the prospect of having a son (SO EXCITED, YAY! in short) until we know for sure. We'll also keep Drizzle until we're sure, because I know how much my mom and Deanna love the name. (Facetious.)

Speaking of things we don't know for sure, we also found out today that C, Drizzle's dad, is more uncertain about the adoption than we knew at first. A is hopeful that he will come around, but we are grateful to know how he is feeling because if this adoption plan fails, it will be much easier to deal with if we see it coming. It is very comforting to know A and have ongoing communication with her.

On to cheerier topics! Evie is having a communication growth spurt and is a little mynah bird these days, imitating words and signs and is also starting to use them with purpose. She now signs (independently, not mimicking) "milk," and "eat" and is starting to sign "all done" again (after refusing to do it for weeks). She is also mimicking some of the hand motions we use with songs we sing to her and one of my next missions is to get that on tape. Unfortunately, you'll have to hear me singing in the background. :)

Evie also says "baby," "ball," "no!" and "Dada" (again) independently and mimics the sounds of "bye bye," "bread," "yeah" and "girl." "Baby" and "bye bye" sound identical, so you have to go by context! She has also started saying "gaga" intently, in a tone of voice that indicates she believes it is a word. I haven't yet figured out what it means.

I'll end with a couple of cute anecdotes:

Yesterday Evie woke me up with the following coming over the baby monitor: "dadadadadadadadadada.....Mama?"

Today when I walked into her room to get her up from her nap, she waved "Hi" to me!

How is it that she just keeps getting cuter? This is her "smile for the camera" face these days. I need to teach her how to say cheese with her eyes open:

Mud

(Look at her pant leg.)

First time getting muddy outside, but definitely not the last time.