The Bike

Y has been asking for a bike since sometime after Christmas.  Unfortunately, we live in Michigan and wintertime isn't exactly bike friendly so we told her that she could get a bike for her birthday.  She was more than content with that but every time we passed the bike section in Wal-Mart she wanted to see "her" bike and helmet.

She has ridden it several times since she got it and it's clear we need to build those leg muscles up!  Today we took her and her bike to a park and she peddled for quite a while but she wanted B's assistance up until she saw a little girl who was probably a couple years older than she is peddling a bike all by herself.  And then she could be heard saying things like, "I can do it by myself" and "Daddy, I don't need any help" and of course, "Stop helping me!"  I did giggle to myself quite a bit as I pushed Q in the stroller.

Boy do they grow up fast!

The Gift

One of the first things my doctor said to me when he entered the delivery room was that he was disappointed. Disappointed because he had ordered something for me but it wasn't scheduled to arrive until Friday (today, the day I would have had my C-Section). I immediately wondered what it was but he wouldn't tell me what it was. I was pretty sure I knew though. I knew it would likely be something for the baby and it would probably have some University of Virginia emblem on it (he always jokes with me that he's delivering future Wahoos/Cavaliers when he sees me).

So today we receive a call from Dr. L and he asks if someone in my family could drive to his office (not me because i can't drive for another week and a half) and pick something up. I told him I'd send Brandon to get it. When Brandon came back I was totally surprised when I opened the box. In one aspect it had indeed been what I was expecting, it was definitely a gift for the baby. But I opened the box to find this:

I never would have thought that he would order Virginia Tech gear, he being such an avid hater of all things Virginia Tech.

I was not only impressed that he got us Virginia Tech gear but also that he got us anything at all - I don't imagine it's something he does for all his patients. Maybe he thinks as much of us as we think of him! One thing's for certain, I couldn't imagine having a better doctor!

Mother's Day 2011

I am so very grateful for mothers!  I have been blessed to be surrounded by so many wonderful women that are such awesome examples of what motherhood should be.  I am not the perfect mother, any mother will tell you that there's really no such thing.  We all make mistakes and do just plain stupid things some time, but for the most part, we love our children and ultimately want the best for them. 

Motherhood is vastly different from what I thought it would be, I'm a very different mother than I ever thought I'd be.  Motherhood has made me a different person, a better person I hope.  I used to wonder what was happening to me when I realized my hopes and dreams were starting to change; all the things I had ever wanted in my life were all of a sudden so much less important.  Somewhere along the line I became less obsessed with having a large beautiful house, or the car of my dreams, or even having the job that would enable me to purchase those things.  And then I realized that it wasn't my dreams that had really changed, it was the value I placed in those dreams that changed.  Sure, someday I'd still love to have a big beautiful house and the car of my dreams but it's far less important to me than knowing that our child(ren) are mentally, physically and spiritually healthy.  Knowing that they know that they are one of the top priorities in my life, having an active role in their daily life, cheering them on whether they succeed or fail at anything, hugging and kissing them multiple times a day so that they know without a doubt just how much they are loved, and being able to be there when they need me and hopefully not having to brush them aside for whatever else happens to be going on at the moment.  Those are the things that really matter to me as a mom and those are the things that I have been able to witness the mothers in my life do.  I am nowhere near being the mother that I want to be but with so many positive examples of motherhood surrounding me, I know that sooner or later I will get there.

On a slightly different note, this Mother's Day (and Father's Day) we decided to give gifts to our parents but not to each other.  We have something planned at the end of the month that we are going to be spending the money on instead (more details on that later, for now it's top secret, and if you know the secret...don't let it slip!).  But I received lots of hugs and kisses and heard "Happy Mother's Day, Mommy" enough to leave me more than content with that.  We went to church, returned home and made phone calls or did video chats, had dinner, got lots of rest and enjoyed being together as a family.  I truly feel like the luckiest woman on the earth, well aside from the swollen feet, ankles and legs which I'm experiencing today, but even that couldn't ruin my day!

The beautiful bouquet of flowers and card Yanna made for me at church today!

 

She loves her mommy!



Happy Mother's Day to all women everywhere!  I hope your day was as amazing as mine!

Birthday Celebration

Since Y's Uncle T was going to be moving into his new dorm room (it's his first year at college) the weekend of Y's birthday, we moved it up a few days and celebrated with a few family members and friends.  It was a really good day and Y had a lot of fun, except she was extremely tired and somewhat cranky.  Here are a few pictures from that day.



She is REALLY into Nemo right now. In fact she watches Nemo at least once each day, sometimes twice. It never fails, even though she has seen the movie many times whenever it gets to a point where something might happen to Nemo, Marlin (Nemo's Dad), or Dori she gets very upset and distraught until I reassure her that that particular fish is going to be okay!



To me it looks like she is doing a Michael Jackson impersonation here and I am just waiting for her to throw that hat off at any moment.



She opened each present very carefully and wouldn't move on to the next until every single piece of paper was off the gift.



She LOVES this Elmo!  It is called Elmo's Greatest Hits (or something like that) but it has a microphone which allows her to sing along to whichever song she happens to choose.  Most of the time she just talks (or breathes loudly) into it.  I saw this at Walmart while in NC browsing through the toy section and immediately knew she would love it so when her Nana & Grandpa asked what to get her for her birthday...it was super easy!



My niece in NC had this drum set and Y just loved playing with it so we decided to get her one for her birthday.  You can see from the first picture that she already had some drumming experience.  And with the vast number of musical toys she has, hopefully she will have some sort of musical abilities...if not then I want my money back!

This arrived after the little party but before her birthday.  She has recently really gotten into Dora the Explorer (when we're not watching Nemo, we're probably watching Dora).  We thought that maybe if we got her a sheet set for her toddler bed then it would be easier to get her to sleep in her bed without such a huge hassle...not sure if it was the sheet set or not but she has gotten much better at sleeping in her bed.  She typically only wakes up once per night and I just return her to her room.  We really wanted to find an Elmo sheet set but I was really disappointed with the options.  First there apparently is no sheet set with strictly Elmo and the only Sesame Street one I was able to find was some sort of construction/sports theme which was very boyish, so we settled for Dora instead!

On her Birthday we had a very relaxed day.  We took her out to eat at Red Robin where they sang a birthday song to her and gave her a free ice cream dessert.  She LOVED being sang to.  When they came over clapping their hands and started singing to her she got the biggest smile on her face and started clapping along with them, she probably would have sang too but didn't know the words to the song they were singing.  After dinner we took her to the park to play for a bit but it was pretty cold that day (I think it was like 65°F and very windy) so even she tired of the cold pretty quickly.  We asked her if she wanted to go home and she was adamant that she didn't want to go there yet...she would rather freeze in the park.  So I suggested that we go somewhere inside, like a mall.  That worked perfectly because she loves to ride on elevators and escalators as of late.  In fact anytime we say we're going bye-bye she requests elevators and escalators, though she doesn't differentiate between the two.  We really wanted to take her swimming, her first love, but as I mentioned it was too cold for that.  We ended up buying her some new shoes to wear to church when it gets a little colder out since we'll be putting away her sandals!



 

Q's Birthday Gift

I mentioned a while back that I was going to knit two boleros for my mother-in-law; one for Mother's Day and another for her birthday (which is Thursday).  Well about a week ago I finished the second of the two but have been slow about posting pictures just because I've been a little lazy about posting and slightly preoccupied with packing boxes.  This one was definitely much more challenging than the first and I faced a few minor setbacks with it but I think all of the mistakes I made are well hidden and barely (if at all) noticeable.  Here's the finished product!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Q (AKA NANA B)!

Baby Blanket

About 2 weeks ago I finally finished the baby blanket that I was working on for a friend, I think it turned out beautifully and I am so very excited for them to use it with their little one. I thought I'd post a picture here for anyone who hasn't already seen it on Facebook. Now that I have completed the blanket I have started knitting some more dishcloths. My Grandma saw the ones I knit for my mom and wanted a few. Once I am done with those I plan on knitting another baby blanket for one of my college roommates who is due sometime in July. I debated knitting her one identical to this one but I think I'll pick out a different one for her...just to keep things a little different.

How Could I Forget?!?!

In my haste to update our blog yesterday I totally forgot to mention a couple of Christmas gifts. Mostly because I didn't already have the pictures on our camera because I figured I could get better pictures from the item's website. But I forgot to go to their websites...so anyway, I'm posting them now.

The first was given to B and is something that he has wanted for a very long time; he thinks it's probably one of the greatest inventions ever, falling just short of TVs, computers and cars. It's also the perfect gift for him because even though we keep the temperature at about 80° in out apartment (a perk of having heat included in rent) he still finds a way to be cold. So you're probably wondering what the gift is...well, "It's the Blanket That Has Sleeves!" haha.

One gift that I received for Christmas was money, and this money was to specifically go towards my buying a purse. Probably not a big task for most people, but for me it's HUGE. Why? Because I am NOT a purse type of girl! I probably own a total of 5 (including the new one) - 2 of those were a gift, the other 2 I purchased many years ago, and then there's this one.

I must say that I am REALLY excited about this bag. I have been searching for months for the perfect bag for me. I am great at finding the perfect bag for other people but never find the one with the exact specifications I want. Maybe you're wondering why, if I'm not a purse person, am I searching for a purse. Well mainly because I get very tired of going out for quick 20 minute trips and having to carry Y's diaper bag. So I wanted to find a purse that zipped (all the ones i own are snap closures) AND was big enough to carry some diapers and a small wipe holder PLUS my wallet, keys, lotion, my gloves, Y's gloves & hat, chapstick, Lifesavers mints and whatever else I happened to throw in there. Not to mention that I wanted something that wasn't way too expensive, I'm not really a designer girl either.

So I finally found it a couple days ago while perusing the web for purses. It came from GAP and cost $50 which is normally WAY more than I would spend but I had a 20% off coupon and the Christmas money to pay for it, so I went out and bought it! It is everything that I wanted plus it's cute and did I mention that it's a nylon material so it just wipes clean!!! Yeah, I'm excited about it! Anyway, here's a picture of it in case you're wondering.

This Week in Pictures

So there's not a whole lot to update this week, but we did take some pictures (which I realize is probably the only reason some of you come anyway). *wink*

Our Valentine's weekend was pretty nice, it was our first with a baby so it was slightly different. On Friday night our ward had an adult game night at church but since Y is still nursing we took her with us. On Saturday, Bran had to work but once he got home I drove to Olive Garden to pick up our meal (which I called in earlier in the day). We decided that we didn't think we wanted Y to be out and about crowded around so many people. When I went to pick up the food I was certain we made the right choice! Maybe next year when she's eating people food we'll go out again. Dinner was great, typically on V-Day we go to Carrabba's but we switched it up this year since we hadn't been to Olive Garden for a number of years. It's great living in such a large metropolitan area because there are so many options of places to eat that you can literally go a super long time without having to eat at the same one twice. As for gifts, I typically can't wait to get or give my gifts so very rarely do we end up waiting until V-day to exchange. I ended up getting a little money to put towards the Wii (and a game) and B got the first season of King of Queens.

Y received her gift from my mom and dad this week. It is actually her Christmas gift but they just went online to walmart.com to have it shipped to us, so she just received it this week. I'm honestly glad that it took so long because we've been gradually letting her play with her gifts so that she thinks she's getting something new all the time (maybe that's a bad thing). She loves her exersaucer and has recently learned how to turn herself around in it to play with one of the millions of toys on it (a slight exaggeration). However, with her new toy...our living room is maxed out! She has the new Rainforest Jumperoo, the Rainforest Gym, the Rainforest bouncer, and the Triple Fun Exersaucer all in the living room...and that's only the big toys! She has about 10 other smaller toys laying around and as I think about it I'm thinking that we should buy stock in a battery factory because all of her toys, big and small, all use batteries. I can't wait until we reach the baby doll stage! Anyway, here are some pictures and a video of her in her new toy. We finally figured out how to convert the video files from our camcorder to a format accepted by blogger, then after we converted it we greatly had to shrink the filesize in order to upload it to blogger so the quality may be shotty at best. BE SURE TO TURN THE MUSIC OFF IF YOU WANT TO HEAR THE VIDEO!

I think these are probably the most ADORABLE pictures ever.

These were taken in the morning after she woke up...all I can say is "Fear the 'Fro!"

The Jumperoo!

She looks like she's saying, "are you kidding me, mom?"

Looks like she's practicing some sort of cheer in bottom picture!

Last, but not least...Y meets the jumperoo!

This Little Piggy Cried Wii, Wii, Wii...All the Way Home!

I have wanted a Nintendo Wii for the longest time now and I finally got one. I've wanted one for the past two years at least but could only justify spending that much on something if it were a joint Christmas present. However, we've known that we wanted Y for that amount of time so we'd end up buying something that we felt we needed when she was born. So one Christmas we purchased a digital camera so that we can take really good pictures of her (my old one really sucked...it was only 3 mega pixels). And this past Christmas we purchased a new camcorder so we could take really good videos of Y (if you haven't noticed yet, our world revolves around Y)! So I've been wanting this Wii for a long time and didn't really want to wait until Christmas so in January I informed Brandon that he was not to buy me a Valentine's Day gift, instead he was to put the money he would have spent on my gift aside because I was saving for a Wii. In fact I told him that any gift he would give me throughout the year (Mother's Day, Graduation, Birthday, etc.) he had to give me cash. I went a step further and told all our family members that if they were to get me a gift...give me cash. Well now, they no longer have to give me cash...my sister (and mother) bought me my Wii. They said it is an early graduation gift...I think I'll drop out now! haha...just kidding. 143

Y's First Christmas

Christmas was an awesome day, but then again it usually is. At Y's 2 month doctor visit the doctor recommended that we not get her a whole lot this Christmas because she really wouldn't know enough to care much about all the gifts anyway. Well we really hadn't planned on getting her a whole lot anyway because she already had her bouncy chair, swing and gym that occupied much of her playing time. Santa brought her a couple of things that she could just lay or sit on the floor and play with and we got her some clothes. We are glad that we didn't get her toys because everyone else did. She got an ExerSaucer that is more like a personal amusement park, (it is a play mat and an exersaucer and after she outgrows the exersaucer stage it is converted into a play table) she absolutely loves it. A Rainforest Xylophone Piano, a ball that plays music and lights when you move it, a space saver high chair, a lights and sound star stacker, a singing nursery rhyme book, Leap Frog Maracas, a vibrating teething ring, links for her car seat, a snugly blanket, a Laugh & Learn "Cookie Jar", a book that her NanaB. made that is a counting book but she uses the members of the family as the counting objects, a Rainforest Jumperoo is on it's way, a few clothes, and a hooded sweatshirt from this store called Fox Outfitters that says FOX so it looks like it's made just for her (and we'll tell her just that)! Anyway, the whole family had dinner together except Lance who is on his mission in Argentina and Claudia who is in Norway. The saddest part of Christmas was that my brother had to spend the day in the hospital. A few months ago he had to have surgery on his knee and sometime between then and now he formed a big blood clot. Well it is in his thigh but some pieces have broken off and are headed towards his lung if not there already. So we're praying for him. They have given him blood thinners in hopes that they will help, time will tell, but we are remaining optimistic! Anyway, I hope your Christmas was as merry as ours was! Enjoy the pictures!