11 Months

We haven't taken our monthly pictures since 9 months. Total fail on my part. Life just seems to be in fast forward these days. It's strange because we aren't particulary busy but yet days just slip away. Now, a few weeks before her big birthday I thought I'd slip in a 11 month update....

ruby is starting to babble finally. At her 9 month apt the pediatrician was a little worried she didn't babble at all, but she does a little now. It is still mostly grunts and squeals, but just in the last few days there is a definite "dada" in there which is just so amazing to hear.

We are definitely on a pretty consistent schedule. Wakes up around 6:30am, nap at 9am and 2pm, then bed at 7pm. We listen to her bedtime song and then put her in her crib and after tossing around for usually 10-15 minutes she goes to sleep. It still blows my mind that she goes to sleep on her own and sleeps nearly 12 hours a night. I thank God every single day for this huge blessing.

She is awesome at independent play. It's no big deal for her to sit and play by herself for 45 minutes. Favorite things to do include pulling things out of boxes, playing with my old empty wallet, playing with an old keyboard, flipping through books, and messing with Molly's crate.

There is no doubt she is an extrovert. She loves being around people. She is a lot like me in that she likes being around people and just watching but can still be a little shy. If a new person comes up to her she is a little more hesitant to be held by them and avoids eye contact.

 She is getting more cuddly these days which I looooooooove. For the past few months she's been so active with her crawling you couldn't get her to sit still long enough. The past week she hasn't been feeling well, so that may be part of it, but she reaches up a lot to be held a lot. And after naps and when she wakes up she likes to just be held and rocked for while or she gets really cranky and cries.

She has 8 teeth!

Starting to walk, mostly it is 1-2 steps here and there. The other day she took five steps in a row though. It takes quite a bit of coaxing though, her preferred mode of transportation is definitely still crawling.

Eating well, she is starting to protest certain foods though. If she doesn't like something she picks it up and drops it on the floor. It's making me kind of nuts but I'm trying not to give her much of a reaction because that just makes her laugh and do it more.

Little stinkers loves to grab her hair when her hands are good and gross. Clean ups are fun.

My big girl

Down in fraggle rock.....

After a painting project

MISC.

 Nearly a month of no blogging and I think this is like my 5th post today! Figured I was on a roll and I better take advantage of it (and Ruby is asleep now). So here's bits and pieces from our life the last couple of months or so.....

Rachel and I made this quilt for our friend Elana her baby girl Rylee

we started line drying. it works especially good on our cloth diapers as the sun actually bleaches the stains out- who knew?

jimmy johns is amazing. that is all.

andy's gotten a little bit of time to work on the nova, he built this entire front end/transmision/i don't know what it's called

i am obsessed with dump cake/easy peasy cobbler- this one was peaches and blueberries.

Very proud of our newly signed 10 year mortgage!!!

slowly working on xeriscaping our yard- believe it or not this is a huge improvement from what it was before!

Andy built this machine that bends metal tubing. Seriously, he's just too awesome times I can barely even handle it.

Playin' Around

Ruby is a handful. Like I look away and she is playing in Molly's dog bowl/eating a cotton ball/stuck under the desk/hiding behind a chair (all of these things happened just this morning). I also feel really strongly that my job is no longer to just keep her alive (our only goal the first few months, I'm glad we succeeded) but to start getting those brain cells a poppin' and help her to explore this world as much as I can. So, we've been trying to do some fun activities lately....

We "fished" for bananas. She was good. But she also really likes bananas. I kept making it harder by cutting the pieces smaller and smaller and she got every last one.

Then we attempted some finger painting. Literally everything she touches goes in her mouth, so I just added a little bit of food coloring to some yogurt for her to "paint" with....

I would say she ate at least half of her "paint" and this activity lasted all of about 10 minutes with a whole lotta clean up but worth it nonetheless!

We had bought this tube for Molly to run through and jump over years ago and brought it out for Ruby to play with and she wasn't too interested, even with dad showing her how to do it!

It's been so much fun the past few months being able to play with her and see her happy and watch her learn. I know this is just the beginning too! I cannot wait to do arts and crafts with her, we are just going to have so much fun!

They rock

This is from a few months back, I just forgot to blog about it......


So my parents brought us rocks when they came to visit. And these rocks deserve a blog post of their own. I love them. And yes, I may be a little more (a lot) more excited than most people get about rocks but these are special rocks.

They are Weleetka rocks. Weleetka Okalahoma is where my pawpaw and grandma lived. My pawpaw passed away a few years ago and I still miss him and sometimes think about him looking down on us from heaven. Man, didn't see a rock post getting me all weepy eyed.

Moving on....what I'm getting at is I love my memories with them. We rode four wheelers, herded cattle, rode pigs, had huge bonfires, swan in the river, built forts, just simply had so much fun. More fun than any video game or trip to mall could offer us "big city" kids.  So, my grandma still lives there and so I asked my parents if they would mind getting me a few rocks next time they visit.

And boy did they!

like christmas morning!

weird hunched over excited me, also i'm sorry for the temporary blindness from the whiteness of my legs, your vision should come back momentarily

my rocks.

this one still had manure on it! the things that get me excited...

We have some plans to use the rest of them in the backyard but we need to dig a bunch of dead stuff up, lay down weed blockers, put a bunch of egg rocks in the beds, and then of course place our beautiful Weleetka rocks.

Thank you Grandma for sharing. These rocks will have to do for now until we can finally come and visit you. Thank you mom for helping to pick out some good rocks, and big thanks to dad for loading, unloading, then loading back up just to unload them just so I can have some rocks. Love all you guys.

Visiting Grandma and Paw Paw

After our relaxing weekend with friends we headed up the turnpike to visit my parents. I was really excited as I hadn't been up there since Christmas, was going to get to spend some time with my brother, and Andy was going to fly up and meet us and we were all going to go to a lake house for a night. It was going to be a fun week and I was ready to get it started/be done with driving!!!!

As always, my mom cooked uh-mazing food

one of my most favorite foods- tomatoe pie!

ruby figured out how to climb stairs, she was fast! good things we had a few extra set of eyes to watch her!

Picking tomatoes with PawPaw

Ruby got to see some deers in the front yard

Then the day after Andy got there we headed up to the Lake Skiatook, which was really a nice lake.

LAKE!

The girls!

After the boat, we came back to the cabin and hung out and ate dinner

ruby getting some lovins from her great grandma

Then everyone but us decided it was a little too warm to be enjoyable, plus their pug Emma was really hot and having a hard time breathing, so they decided to go back home. Andy and I opted to stay since Ruby was already in bed and we weren't too hot. I was bummed everyone left but then it was kinda nice to just sit out on the deck and watch the sunset.

Then the next morning we got up and played outside. It was Ruby's first time to play in dirt and she loooved it. And yes, she did try to eat that rock.

Daddy loves his girl, just crawling around together/also trying to avoid Ruby eating rabbit turds that were everywhere.

I think there is a direct correlation between how dirty a kid is and how happy they are b/c she was so happy this morning after playing in dirt, crawling in the grass, and then eating a whole bowl of watermelon.

Then we drove back to my parents house, spend another day there and then headed home. It was really nice to have Andy on the drive home and Ruby did really well. Overall, great trip. As always, it made me wish we lived closer to family but since we don't it makes the time we do get to spend with them that much sweeter.

Whirlwind of a trip

OKLAHOMA. The land of my childhood, the land of some of the people I love most in the world, and my most favorite place to visit. A couple weeks back I was brave/dumb/naive and thought driving our $1800 car that I just learned how to drive (it is a manual) up to Oklahoma without Andy and with a dog and baby that hates the car would be okay. Well, it was. We survived. It wasn't pretty at times. There was hysterical screaming (nearly from more than one of us), there was dog puking incident that made things extra fun, but gosh darn it- we made it!

 Since Ruby is such a stinker in the car we had to break up the trip but it worked out really well. So first leg of the trip we just drove to Waxahachie and spend the night with Andy's mom and then she drove with us to OKC and sat in the back and played with Ruby which was so helpful.

Then I spend the weekend with my BFF Sara, Drew, and their sweet baby I was crazy excited to meet- Mackenzie.

How can she not just melt your heart? Uh, that face!

I love George (Sara's dad) and boy did Ruby love George, they played together for a long time.

My favorite OKC girls

Ruby had a rough night and so the next morning I was a little tired but Sara spoiled me with a souffle and mimosa! What a wonderful way to start the day.

the.best.picture.that.ever.was.

It was a relaxing and fun weekend and Sara and Drew were wonderful host to me and my little rambunctious girl that was all over the place. Hopefully I didn't scare them too much about having a 10 month old. Love you guys!

Alright, then Sunday evening we headed up to Tulsa.......

Permission

I gave myself permission today to give Ruby a crappy birthday party.

Okay, not a crappy one. In fact, I know it will be lovely. Double in fact, I think it will be better than the first birthday party I have imagined in my head since, well, she was born. I'm still rectifying in my head how I feel about the whole thing, let me attempt to explain...

Pinterest.

Those of you on pinterest probably already know where I'm going with this. Those of you not on pinterest, well, let me attempt to put what's been swirling around in my brain for months.

Pinterest is a website that you can saved images and see other people's images. What it sometimes is for me though is a place to see how average and not organized, creative, or fabulous your life is. You will see pantries with so many labels that it makes Martha Stewart weep with joy, you will see tutorials on how to make your mascara with things from your pantry, or make perfume from your toots you capture in a jar (lol@myself there), but most of all you will see parties. Oh these parties, they will challenge your beliefs. They will turn your world upside down. Okay, they don't? Well when you have your child's first birthday coming up then, at least for me, it's messing with me.

So for months now I've been pouring over 1st birthday parties. Should she have a Hawaiian theme part where everyone whears grass skirts and we build a pit and roast an entire pig in the backyard? OR should we have Zoo theme part where we have real animals come to our house so our kid (that will have zero recollection of any of this and has an attention span of approximately 25 seconds) can pet a goat? Heck, let's just have a swim party, now we will need to have a pool built sometime in the next 30 days but how hard could that really be? Pinterest makes these all seem like rational first birthday ideas.

So the last month or so I've been going back and forth between big blow out with everyone we know or the three of us eating cake together and just having a low key family day. They both had their appeal but I felt like I was leaning more towards the big blow out because that's what your are suppose to do for your kid's first birthday (as Pinterest would have me believe). But then I would look at her and realized she was having a great time playing with a plastic cup the past 45 minutes and her birthday plans have zero impact on her. She is going to be happy no matter what and I really wanted to spend the day celebrating, not cleaning/cooking/stressing out.

There is also a very real possibilty that maybe I am making all this up because I'm lazy and just don't want to throw a big party. My menu changes would prove this to be the case.

Menu:
Hamburger sliders (w/ homemade buns)
Corndog bites
Potatoe Salad
Pasta Salad
Fruit Sald
Hummus and veggies
PB doggie chow
Assortment of cookies
Big multi-layered cake
Cupcakes
Pizza


So, that's the plan. No figuring out where out of town guest are going to stay, no worrying about the ice sculpture melting, no anything that requires stress. Just hanging out with friends for an hour or two and then the rest of the weekend for us to just be with our one year old. One year old. Crazytown.