The Sisterhood of the Pre-Pregnancy Pants

This Friday, something very exciting happened. I squeezed my lower half into some jeans that I USED TO WEAR BEFORE I HAD KATE. Granted, they did NOT look the same as they did back then. Let's just say, I filled them out a bit more. BUT, they zipped & buttoned, AND I even wore them out on a date with Josh. So, they passed the sitting down test and the eating test with flying colors. I guess my two days of walking last week (thanks, Jen!) whipped my buns into shape. I wish it were really that easy. And no, the picture above is NOT me in the jeans.


OK, so this is me in the jeans, Apr 2005. Unfortunately, you can't see the jeans at all, but I mean to tell you LOOK AT MY HAIR! I should have written an ODE to Cute & Sexy hair. I am going back to the Long & fill in the blank hair. I'm not sure that it is worth it.

Identity: Stolen

This picture is a from July. (Pre-crawling)

Katie-boo's favorite new toy.

A few weeks ago (post-crawling!)

So, last Friday, Kate and I had a rather unusual day. I took my English class to the DQ inside the mall as a treat for all of their hard work on our newspaper. That class period is right before lunch, so I took advantage of the food court and bought something at Chick-fil-A for lunch. I pulled out my wallet, and Kate looked at me with her baby blues and asked, "Mommy, may I play with your wallet?" I acquiesced because she asked so nicely. We strolled out of the mall with all the children and made it safely back to school, all in one piece, or so I thought.

As I walked out of the door after my last class, Jenny caught up with me and asked if I could take Grandma Moseley to a doctor's appointment in MONROE! She had gotten really sick and needed to see a doctor in order for him to prescribe some antibiotics. Sure, no problem. I canceled my evening plans with some friend's of Josh's and started up towards Winder. Now, in retrospect, taking my sweet baby girl into a car with a very sick woman (bronchitis) and even beyond that taking her into a GP office, practically the den of infirmity!!! was not a bright idea, but family is family, right?

The trip went very smoothly. Kate was the talk of the doctor's office and cheered up several infirm older people. (Although this place was a FAMILY PRACTICE almost everyone in the waiting room was over 70.) To occupy her attention in the lobby, mom's purse came out again. Boy, this purse is lighter than usual, I thought, but immediately became distracted by Kate trying to shove 30 receipts into her mouth. The appointment concluded just fine, and I packed us all back into the car: one car seat, one diaper bag, two purses, miscellaneous toys, two canes, and three ladies from VASTLY different generations.

We stopped by Publix on our way home with the intention of shopping while they filled Grandma's Rx. As soon as I got into the store with Kate, purse, shopping cart, I knew something was wrong. My purse WAS too light! I had misplaced my wallet. My mind zoomed back to the last instance I could think of involving the wallet. I had given to Kate to hold in her stroller and thought, "She won't drop it, and if she does, I'll have to run over it in the stroller and SEE it, right?" Famous last words.

Our trip to Publix cut short, I stopped at the Bailey house in Winder to feed Kate supper and collect my thoughts. Where could I have left it? Did it really fall out in the food court? I checked each nook & cranny I could think of. I cursorily looked at the stroller in the trunk. I decided, it's time to start calling the authorities. I called & canceled my credit card and debit card. While I was on the phone with the credit card company, I discover some other things were amiss. Now I'm in such a dither, I decide I'm going to drive TO THE MALL. In retrospect, I'm not exactly sure what I wished to accomplish there. On my way, I called the Mall security office and chick-fil-A but neither place had seen my red wallet. Did I hope that by showing them my tear stained face & the sweet face of my young, young daughter that they would search harder? Did I hope actually TO FIND THE DAD-BLASTED THING in plain sight? Well, I parked the car, popped the trunk, and got out. I pulled the stroller out of the car and snapped it open. It was like a magician's trick: WA-LAA! There was my wallet. It HAD been recovered from my sweet daughter's hands. I had NOT gone crazy. I had merely placed my wallet under the hood of the stroller and forgotten about it. And, my cursory check just hadn't gone far enough.

So, thankful for this discovery AND thankful that this meant no one had stolen my identity, I drove on home. Well, on consideration, maybe my identity had been stolen. Smart lady turned into shoplifting, mislaying, mind-losing person-- all by a baby & a stroller.

Just You and Me, and All Other People

My 9 Month Old Girl

This picture taken this Sunday. It's our 5th family picture in 9 months. Pretty sad!

Kate turned 9 months today. These last few weeks she has really started to look older. I guess cutting two teeth can make a girl grow up. She is crawling around at twice the speed as when she started. The other morning, I left her in the living room while I finished getting ready. She was "supposed" to be watching a DVD. Ha! I walked out into the living room, and she wasn't there. The first funny thing I did was call her name. What is she going to do? Answer me? I looked in the kitchen, nope. The bathroom, nope. I walked into her room, still no. I then backtracked and saw her in the office. She was sitting there with a sort of guilty look on her face. Her hand held a crumpled piece of paper.

She isn't content hanging out on the floor all of the time. She loves to pull up on anything that looks sturdy enough: her diaper bag, her collapsible laundry bag, the sofa, coffee table, kitchen trash can (ew!!!), mom's bed, anything! She went through a rough time lying down in her crib immediately after she learned to pull up on the slats. I think we've made the transition back to easier bed times now. Tonight I put her in the crib and she just lay there, happy as a clam to be going to sleep. What a relief! I was beginning to despair that my easy to put to bed baby had just had a major personality shift! It had turned some of our sweetest times of snuggling into nightmares. But why should I dwell on something that is hopefully now in the past.

Kate has also made great progress in her diet. She really loves to self-feed, so I try to give her a lot of practice. She loves little peas and small bits of banana, and most recently, bits of bread. She's so proud when she picks up a piece and gets it straight into her mouth. She's also pretty good at tracking a piece if it falls off the high chair. She'll sit there looking over the side like, "Mom, are you going to get it?"

She is taking after some of our Johnson family members and LOVES to play games. The second you say "Peekaboo" she knows what game you are about to play with her. Her cutest peekaboo game is when she gets a ring (from a stacking ring toy) and puts it in front of her face, usually with one eye poking through. She's really got the whole "peeking" thing down. She also loves Pattycake -- she's an accomplished clapper all by herself, but she also loves holding mom's hands and making them clap. Her latest fun trick is playing with one of my touristy Mexican toys. It's a wooden cup with a ball attached to it. An adult tries to hold the cup and get the ball on a string to jump into the cup. (I know that is a really BAD explanation, but it should suffice for those of you who have actually SEEN one.) Kate has started grabbing the ball and dropping it into the cup--quite an accomplishment for someone so young.

Well, that's about it. I should have some more adorable pictures to post tomorrow. (I dropped my film off at Wolf today).

Botanicals

This morning, inspired by both the beautiful weather and our friends the Harpers, we decided to go on an outing. It appears that Ben & Jen had been thinking similar thoughts, so we decided to join forces. Ben suggested going to the Athens Botanical Gardens. Josh and I had gone on a date there many years ago, and then returned to have our engagement pictures taken, but it had been awhile. It was nice to stroll down the lanes and see shrubs & trees that are in our backyard, and some that we'd never seen. Kate did awesome -- we'll have to do it again some time.


There were some beautiful archways, brick paths, and gazebos dotting the landscape. We snagged a photo opportunity. Kate is riding in Ben & Jen's new double stroller (Stand & Ride). Kate really enjoyed it, although Lydia did very little "riding." We kept trying to convince her that everyone who was everyone loved riding in the stroller. We can never tell if we should persuade her with the phrase: "Big girls do this" or "Babies do this." It all depends on who she's trying to be at that particular moment.



This was Lydia's idea of riding in the stroller. Kate sure loved having the company, though.

Pardon Me

Hello everyone. I'm sorry that I have dropped off of the planet. (Of course, I think Steph had me beat really.) I have been so busy with school, it's been impossible to sit down and blog. I'm doing a fun project with my 7th & 8th graders -- we're writing a newspaper together. Consequently, every bit of 'free' computer time I get is dedicated to getting the newspaper together. Even though I have enjoyed it immensely, this will have to be a limited project. We published our 2nd one on Friday, and of course, it was much better than the last. Next week we'll publish our last one. I think the kids have learned a lot.

Another reason you haven't seen any pictures is that now famous dunking of the digital camera. The pictures on the SD card did survive, but I haven't figured out how to transfer the pics onto the computer without my camera. (I know, I need a card reader, which I do not have.) So, you will just have to enjoy some much older pictures from earlier in the summer. The following post is also from this summer.

Fourth of July at the Bailey's. When my mom saw the picture, she said: This would be a great Christmas card. It may be a little bit strange to have a Christmas picture in shorts & red, white, and blue -- don't you think? Maybe we'll just restage the picture in appropriate Christmas-wear.


Early in July, we went to visit Auntie Becky & Uncle Elias in their cute 1bdroom apartment in Toccoa. It's really a clever little place, and they have it fixed up quite nicely.