Spring is here

Our week was pretty much the usual. We went to a different park on Sunday with Cody. We drove around and explored a few neighborhoods. Baylee and I took a few walks and of course went to the park. We even raced the rain and walked to the post office one day. I still find it strange to be able to walk to the post office (1.5 miles round trip) and amusing that all of our postmen are still walking postmen. The weather has been great this week for the most part.

Pretty uneventful. Baylee is still struggling with ear infections but hopefully her new medicine will work and she will be better soon. It has caused us to have a few long nights, mostly for me, Baylee is able to sleep as long as it was on me. I'm too light of a sleeper to sleep while she tossed and turned. But we hope soon, she will be back to normal. She is getting stronger all of the time and making more and more sounds. No new words this week. She has discovered, however, how to make a mess. She learned how to take the lid off of her sippy cups...thank goodness I only give her water in those. She even made graham cracker mush one day for me on her tray with her water she dumped out and the piece of cracker. She splashed and painted and slung and any other word that goes with mess, this graham cracker mush. All I could do was laugh. She dumped her water twice. She also likes to torment the kitty while she eats. Baylee decided this was not enough so while she was eating, she took her food and water and dumped it and proceeded to splash and mix that. EW! If you have ever seen how fast pet food and water turn to ew, you understand. Of course I had just mopped maybe 2 hours prior to that. I was in the kitchen and didn't hear her grab it. She did it the first day we were here and since then it's been on a bench. The bench is now a great height to stand next to for her.

I love that she is still loving to read. Many times while I'm cooking dinner I hear her in her room and when I go check on her, she's laying in the floor looking at her books. She likes to "help" me in the kitchen. She also learned how to open cabinets and pull drawers this week. Lucky me. Here we go!

Today, Cody didn't have to work which is rare. We went to Decatur to go get Chinese food and also to do a little shopping. It was nice to get out. I was so excited that we passed a few of the Mennonite families in their carriages. I was too slow to get a picture. We are in Amish country and see a lot of them whereever we go in Mattoon. The Mennonites we don't get to see so much. That was very neat. I got to go to a Target. Sad to admit it, but very exciting for me.

New Tricks

Baylee has developed a few new tricks. She can twist her tongue and does it while she plays. And she does the Lizard. (video attached) It makes us laugh, hope you enjoy!

De ja vu

We started off the week with me not feeling well, so we didn't get to take advantage of Cody's day off, the weather was bad too. Baylee was a little cranky during the beginning of the week and we were up a lot at night, Wednesday we went to the doctor. Poor little lady had another ear infection. Luckily, we caught this one a lot sooner since we know how she will act now and so she never got to the point of breathing like a freight train and coughing like a seal. So once again, she's on antibiotics and mending up nicely.

We did get to go for a few walks this week and went to the park a few times for her to swing and pick grass, she even tasted it this time. The face and the actions taken afterward told me she didn't like it so much. We went over and hung out with one of the neighbors for a while one night. We took the girls a piece offering(cookies) that we owed after Baylee screaming so much in the night. It took Baylee a few minutes to get used to being over there, but had a blast after she warmed up.

She still pushed her box around a lot this week. I did revoke the box after she kept climbing on top of it and trying to head dive over. She's still fearless. Because the box is gone, she has gravitated toward her walker toy and actually stood up a few times with it but not much on the pushing it yet. She's been perfecting the art of carrying things while she scoots and has done that a lot this week. She holds whatever it is up in the air and won't let it touch the ground. At one point, her sleeves were too long and she kept putting her hand inside and so she scooted carrying her sleeve around. She's able to walk along the couches and practices with one hand for balance, which went hand in hand with her first bleeding injury. She lost her balance and busted her lip on the frame of the couch.

In the way of talking, she says ma ma all of the time(which is her newest addition), still says da da, yay and ba ba. And of course lots of gibberish. The cat is on the receiving end a majority of the time. Poor kitty, Baylee yells at her quite often and tries to constantly bite her tail. I guess since I broke her of biting us, she's moved on to the kitty. I should break her of that one as well, but honestly the kitty deserves it at least for a while longer.

We did get to experience the earthquake yesterday morning at about 4:35 am. Very cool to me. It woke us up and at first had it narrowed down to 3 possibilities; someone crashed into our building, bomb a ways away or an earthquake. Had no idea we could expect to feel an earthquake here in Illinois. The epicenter was about 50 miles from our house. The only thing that happened to anything was it knocked our webcam off the computer monitor. We actually had an aftershock that I felt around 10 am, Cody was at work and didn't feel it but some of the other employees did. I thought I was crazy and imagined it until he came home and confirmed. It was not nearly as long or as strong, but I happened to be sitting on the bed and felt it. I was excited to experience something new. Though the excitement is allowed as not much damage was caused.

I am also including a few of Baylee's new cousin, Little Brayden.

On the go

Well, our week started off as always on Sunday, which is Cody's one off day. It was very nice outside a little chilly, but it was sunny, so small price. We were ready to get out and "explore". Mind you, our exploring consists of getting in the car and just driving where ever we think is the right direction to whatever you want to see. We do not use directions. We have found the best way to find things is to get lost. Well, we still have been unable to get lost, and of course, to find things there have to be things. :) We found Lake Mattoon, which was unimpressive. We had heard of a lake that was a lot larger about 25 miles. So we headed that direction to scope out fishing spots and check things out. On our way, we passed a historical site that could not be passed up. So I turned around on the highway, we just had to check out the..... 2-story outhouse in a town called Gays.

"It was built in the 1880s for two second-story apartments above the S.F. Gammill general store. While the store has since been torn down, historical enthusiast Pat Goodwin restored the outhouse. Though it is kept locked, passersby can see it along Illinois Highway 16 between Shelbyville and Mattoon.
The outhouse is cleverly designed with offset walls to permit emissions from above safe (but perhaps not-so-silent) silent bypassage of the ground floor seating."

We definitely checked this thing out. It's crazy, but it's real. Needless to say the booming town of 300 residents gave us nothing but a laugh and a memory.

We continued our trip to Lake Shelbyville where we found a couple of parks. One has a beach on the lake and is perfectly set up for an all day adventure of fun in the sun with picnic tables, pavillions, bbq pits, the works. We may have to spend a little time out there in the summer. We had fun playing on one of the playgrounds and just being outside as well as soaking up some sun. While we were out there, we got word that Hagan and Heather had their baby, little Brayden, and now, Baylee has a cousin and I'm officially an Aunt. Congrats to them. We are so excited. I showed Baylee her cousin this morning in some pictures and she got all excited and started jumping and making lots of noise. It was cute. We had a fun day and enjoyed Cody being home with us.

The rest of the week, once again, found us indoors mostly. I did attend a Moms group on Monday night to attempt to network and find friends for Baylee and me, but it wasn't really what I was looking for and am undecided if I will go back. We put together Baylee's walk n ride toy this week. She's not quite the age it suggests, but thought we'd give it a try. She likes to sit on it and likes to play with all of the neat things, but as for the walking part, I'm not sure that she could care less. She did however discover that she can stand up with a box and push it, so I have a box in my floor now, but whatever makes her happy.

I also learned that Baylee can crawl, she just doesn't. It's almost like she is hiding it. Yesterday morning, she went from one side of the room to the other to get a toy and crawled the most of the way. As soon as I said in amazement something along the lines "Baylee, you can crawl, you big faker" she flattened and scooted the last foot to the toy. Funny kid!

We have played A LOT of peekaboo lately. Baylee is so stinking cute. She's playing it all the time and just stares at you until you catch on that she's hiding and you can't see her.

In this picture, you can't see her, tell me what you may, but we all know you can't see her. That jacket is touching the top of her head, that means, she's hiding!

Now you can see her!

Yesterday was very windy, so Cody got to come home early. It was sunny out (yay) so we went for a walk and to the park down the street. We once again enjoyed just soaking in the sun. Baylee got to swing and play with Dad. Needless to say, she took a very long afternoon nap when we got home.

There are some crazy old houses around here, we admired the "run downedness" of them.

At least we have a lot of pictures from this week and a few adventures to tell of! Hope everyone is well!

On the mend

Baylee is doing much better these days and is busy getting back to the exploration of everything she can find. She's to the point of finding every little piece of lint on the floor and playing with it. Soon I expect her to hand them to me and even a few imaginary ones. Baylee is still improving on her standing and is getting faster all of the time. She loves to still just sit and stand, sit and stand, sit and stand. It's been another bad weather week, other than the one day we had to walk and pick up Cody's car, we weren't outside. We play peekaboo quite often and for long amounts of time, as the video will show. (I am aware that I'm annoying on it, but in my defense, the Baylee loves it)

We had another pretty slow week in the way of activities, but we are SO glad that the Baylee is feeling better. It's warming up a little so maybe soon we can get out and start doing stuff, granted the rain slows down. I am still hopeful!