What....I'm doing 2 posts in a week?

Yes, I'm proud to say, I am finally(hopefully) back. I have the last of my boxes unpacked though not all put away at least the cardboard is out of sight!

I have already told some of you about Baylee and her "are you" but let me fill in the rest. In this new house, the hallways and rooms make a square. She loves to run from me at diaper change time, or time for shoes or just because. So I've been calling out to her "Baylee where are you" and she will come find me. She picked up on this rather quickly and while I was going from room to room putting up stuff and unpacking or painting or cleaning or what not, she'd yell "Momma, are you?" She does it to Cody too...."Daddy are you?" You tell her which room you are in and she comes to you. This explanation is needed later.

We decided, in part with the beautiful weather, to kick off the 2009 fishing season today. It was such a nice day for a change. There was no chance of us staying inside. We had the normal luck with fishing, bluegill and perch were to be caught. We had fun with Baylee especially. She was much more fun (trouble included) today than last season. She managed to reel in a fish or two or three and wanted to help with many more. At one point in time, fishing was a little slow and it had been a while since any fish had bitten even. Next thing we know Baylee randomly busted out, unprompted, "fishies, are you?" followed by a small pause and "fishies, are you?" It had us cracking up but she was dead serious and waiting for the fishies to respond, or jump on the bank, I'm not sure which.

She snuck off and found the one mud puddle still by us and conquered that like it was nothing. Thank goodness for the jet setting on the garden hose. She can also open the car doors and had climbed in to drive a while. And at some point, we looked over and she had pulled down her pants. Yes, she's one of those kids. All in all, it was nice just to be able to be outside and catching a few fish didn't hurt things either.

We came home and took the wagon out for the second spin of the day and went on quite a long walk. She loves that thing and pitched a tantrum(putting it nicely) because we had to park it. The lady loves her outdoors and fights everytime we have to go inside. It was a long napless day for Baylee and she hit the hay a little early. She was pretty good overall considering no nap for her.

This week she also got a box of prizes from her Uncle Teague. She was so excited about her clothes. They were all really cute and she's very lucky. Thanks Uncle Teague!

She discovered a box that was perfect to push her toys around in. She had a pillow in there at one point and insisted on eating her snack in her box. Her gift bags "purses" have been filled emptied and refilled countless times. She even insisted on taking an extra of my purses in the store and carried it around on her shoulder.

We are also excited for vacation plans that were made. In June, my whole family is coming from various parts of the country and meeting in Houston for a week of family fun, sun and offshore fishing. It will be nice to leave the confines of Mattoon for a little bit and though it's still almost 3 months away, I can hardly wait. It will also be the first time that I have gone back to Houston since we moved away 13 years ago, which is crazy considering we lived there the longest of anywhere. All of kids will get to be around each other and it will be the first time that we get to meet little Savannah. It has been 10 years this year since the family has been on vacation together and had everyone there....it's about time!

On the go....

Obviously things have been quite busy for us lately. We ended up painting the entire house, having to do some patch work and a lot of carpet cleaning. We now have a place we are happy in and Baylee became right at home very very quickly. She has adjusted really well. We are already loving the fact that we have a yard. Though the weather hasn't been it's best lately we have gotten to go out a few days.

The move went rather smoothly. We ended up not having anyone to watch Baylee(whole other story). We just had to do what we could in keeping her up the stairs. Baylee has yet to fail to impress. She listened and stayed upstairs with the door wide open the whole time we were moving our stuff out. She was such an angel that day and did so much more than could be expected of her. I know she's smart beyond her one year. We got all moved over and the other place cleaned. We had most of the painting done(which i just finished an hour or so ago). If I don't pick up a paintbrush for at least 5 years, it will still be too soon. (kidding, but at least a while).

Somehow in between all of our painting cleaning and moving chaos we still managed to find a little fun. Baylee and I met our friends Marley and Libby at a library in a neighboring town. Why? They have the coolest kids area with toys and puzzles galore. Baylee has been very clingy at playgroup and unwilling to play. However we walked into the library and she went to town playing like she owned the place. We will definitely be going back. She had so much fun.

Baylee has been quite the picky eater these days and it's surprising some of the things I compromise and let her eat just so she will eat something. This picture portrays Baylee sitting with Cody while she downs sour cream. Yes just plain sour cream. I don't know about her sometimes. But the food battle continues.

We have had Julia with us a few days lately too. They still have fun together most times. Julia was having a tough day one of the days and Baylee was trying her hardest to get Julia to laugh. She was throwing herself around and fake falling and hugging Julia. It's amazing the things the kids can sense. I appreciated Baylee's diligence in trying to help.

Baylee is still quite the copycat. She will copy your stance in a heartbeat. She's been trying to perfect the hands on her hips. She still needs some work but if that one takes a while, I'm ok with it. She's just so much fun with everything and talking up a storm these days.

As for the potty training thing. she loves to wander the house without a diaper still. This was the case on Saturday night. She came running to me and said potty potty potty to which I continued what i was doing not thinking she even knew what she was doing or saying since it's been over 2 months since we've even put her on the potty before bathtime due to Lilli and Faiths visit and moving and so on. She ran back to the bathroom door and not even 2 minutes later she came back in "momma, pee pee pee". Yep she had peed in the floor right outside the bathroom door that was closed due to Cody showering. Stinking smart kid....poor ignorant mom. Haha. I guess we will be working on the going potty some more. I had no idea.

We are still getting settled in the house and I've been horrible with the blog and tried to do a quick catch up, here are all of our pictures just thrown in, though not as many as you would expect. I promise one of these days we will get back to our old routine.

It's like a carousel...

Many ups and downs and round and round but it's all fun, well mostly. We have been quite busy lately. We did find a place to live so we won't be homeless in 2 weeks. Though it's not quite up to our normal standards, it will be sufficient for the next 6 months. We will have a huge fenced backyard and quite honestly that makes up for the short comings of the house. We get the keys this weekend and have a good bit of cleaning to do but we have a little over a week to do it and move in and out of our other place.

Baylee and I had a movie day one afternoon. I laid out pillows and blankets and we had popcorn and bananas for lunch. Despite the pictures she thought it was fun. Her bunny joined us and she made sure he was comfy the whole time. We watched the Fox and the Hound. Baylee even got to pick out her outfit that day. It happened to be one that's quite a little large for her. Though it's 18 months, we had to roll up the pants at the waist 2 times and the shirt just seemed to get in the way but it was what she wanted. Miss Independent for sure.

We have been helping out and watching Julia during the day. Baylee and Julia get along well for the most part. Obviously there are going to be a few scuffles between two 18 month olds. I mean they are girls. One mishap over a cup while I was refilling one cup turned into a busted lip for Julia and a bruised face for Baylee. They have had fun following each other around and playing. It was a little warmer last week and we got to go on walks after naptime. They both love to point out leaves, rocks, trees, cars and yes of course the choo choo train. We did the usual playgroup and storytime. We also had a McDonalds picnic in the floor one day. I even managed to get my cleaning and errands done somehow.

Baylee and I went on a walk one day after Julia went home. She insisted on taking her baby with us. I thought I was going to end up having to carry it and discouraged her coming along. To my surprise, she carried her the whole time. Well carried is a choice word, dragged would probably be more suitable. Her Cabbage Patch also made the trip to playgroup as I declared it not worth the fight to get her to leave the baby at home or in the car.

She is constantly talking more and more. I was so excited on Sunday when she said "thank you" unprompted. We still have a ways to go but I've stopped keeping up with new words, which makes me feel like we are finally getting there.

We have all had colds this weekend but decided to take a shopping excursion to Decatur. Baylee showed off her skills first in Best Buy. She has discovered that if she can't see you, she can call really loudly and you will come. Cody and I went in different directions at one point(imagine that in an electronics store). She looks around, gets a serious face and then proceeds to yell "DA DA". It was the loudest I've heard her be other than crying of course. All I could do was join in all of the other customers and laugh. She did it all day while we were shopping. It was cracking me up so we continued to set her up just so she'd do it.

She defintely keeps us laughing these days and on our toes and I leave you with a sample of Baylee orginal artwork on my canisters. I had no idea the crayons were to out still. Guess I will be more careful with those. At least it wasn't on the wall!

Congrats again to Mom and Dad who finally found a house in South Dakota. Can't wait to visit! :)

My little Exhibitionist

There is absolutely nothing Baylee loves more than being naked right now. She's perfecting the stripping speed and no telling what she will be wearing from one minute to the next. The proof

is in the web album... I would post it, however, Blogger is hating me with the pictures today.

So sorry for the lack of photos in the actual post.

She is such a silly little thing and full of energy. I think we've finally beaten the colds and ear infections for now...hopefully for longer than not. But I don't want to count my eggs...blah blah blah. She loves to run laps at night around the house. And though we have been improving on the jumping and occasionally gets both feet off the ground at the same time, it's still a rare occurrence. It is hilarious to watch though.

Baylee has been a copycatter for a while now. However, she is finally doing it with words too. Sometimes monkey may come out as bubo but at least she's attempting everything these days. She has a whole new heap of words she can actually say and loves to declare "all done" when something is empty or gone. She also has this infatuation with watching the toilet flush and saying "down". So she's a little quirky.

She is probably the best smelling 18 month old(officially tomorrow). She puts on loads of deodorant and brushes her teeth 13 times a day still. Her toothbrush count is up to 3 of her own now. She loves to help out with everything. She gets upset(to put it lightly) if she doesn't get to help sweep up the trash with the little broom and dustpan. She enjoys carrying things to where ever they need to go as well. Though her carrying her own plate turns a little disastrous at times, she's gotta learn somehow right?

On to my shock of the week. Baylee has been known to roll her eyes at me. However her attitude was taken to new heights this week. I had the cat on my lap the other night and Baylee came up and started hitting her. I told her "Stop hitting her and if you aren't going to be soft and pet her nice, then don't touch her." Baylee in all her glory looked up at me smirked, poked out that chubby little finger and proceeded to say "touch" and touch the cat. I had no idea she could say touch though this does support my theory she's holding out on talking more. All I could do was laugh. This was no doubt the worst thing I could've done but it was hysterical. I could hardly believe she had just done that. How ridiculous! But it gave me a good laugh, the little tester.

It's been so cold and snowy here and it seems like we haven't been out in weeks. We did go out and attempt to play in the snow. Baylee has a strong hatred of the snow after about 2 minutes, so our outdoor fun didn't last very long. I can't wait for warmer weather!

On the flip side, looks like it's official, we will be hanging out in Mattoon for another year. And we are currently looking for a new place to live. Me in my craziness...I've already started randomly packing things away that we won't need for the next 3 weeks into the boxes that never made it out of the house from around Christmas time. Cody laughs at me but says moving with me is so easy because everything is done and packed and I'm not throwing things in last minute.

Lilli and Faith's visit (delayed posting)

So I'm finally getting around to writing about Lilli and Faith's visit to see us. We had so much fun wtih both of them.

It was great to have Faith around and be able to carry on a normal conversation during the day. We had lots of laughs! We watched strange movies and just had a good time. We got to do a decent amount of shopping...it was a nice change to have a partner in crime.

We did the normal playgroup and storytime outings. The weather was never really in favor of anything. We got to go to the big park one day and play around for a while. We did attempt one other park visit that failed miserably and ended up very short and having a screaming Baylee. But Faith did get to experience our crappy cold -25 windchill weather. I think she froze pretty much the whole time he was here!

We have very little around us here and one of our options is the Children'sMuseum of Illinois. Though it's 50 miles away...it was worth it. I got my Chinese food at a place Cody doesn't hate. And we went shopping after ward.

As for the actual museum, it was fun. I think that Cody had the most fun out of all of us. Baylee was quite clingy as she still felt bad with her ear infections and she didn't get to fully enjoy the outing. It was fun to play with the big bubbles especially and I think we all went crazy with the pin art. It was stunning how well it worked and you can actually tell who is who.

It was a good time and nice to get out of Mattoon for a bit occasionally. As for the rest of the time, we got to laugh and play and pitch tantrums and just enjoy each other's company.

Lilli tried to "help" Baylee and was always looking for hugs and kisses from her. However, Baylee hardly felt the same about half the time. Little Miss Independent was not fond of constantly having someone try to help.

We had our battles of sharing and fits and hitting but also had fun times all playing. We had all kinds of things going on from Lilli naming Baylee's baby doll Baby Jesus, singing to Baby Jesus and leaving telling everyone "I have dragon breath" (oops) all the way to dealing with LICE.

Yep that's right, you read correctly. The Lice thing has been an ongoing battle. Apparently Lilli came to us with lice and I didn't figure it out until the day they left. Without knowing this, we all layed together to read, jumped on each other and used same brushes, you get the point. It left all of us less Cody(it's his gray hair they dislike haha, at least that's what I told myself) with bugs. It has been a battle, quite trying and I think we are all finally getting over them. I have never had such paranoia with anything and so many cases of the heebie jeebies, creepy crawlies and aything else you can think of to describe them. It's worn me out. I wish them on no one. The only way I could deal was to continuously do the AA greeting..."Hi I'm Adrien, I'm 26 and I have lice". Though we are still taking precautions I am past the creepy crawlies(mostly).

Baylee was taught how to yell in temper tantrums....she now yells unknown words when she's angry. It's very hard not to laugh. She has also peaked her temper tantrums....the all out make your body go limp and throw yourself on the floor screaming to hitting things when you dont' get your way. We are working on that and day by day the tantrums are diminishing. Poor kid had ear infections most of the time they were here and was quite cranky. She wasn't even mostly herself until the last few days.

The trip was fun and are so glad that both Faith and Lilli could come visit. THANKS AGAIN FAITH for coming and bringing Lilli along! I could go on for a while with stories, however, I will not do that. It was hard to deal with toys everywhere all of the time but I'm over it again and things are slowly going back to normal...somewhat. I will hopefully be back on normal posting schedule soon!

Finally....Christmas

I have been pretty busy since Christmas and haven't taken the time to do our blog and post our pictures. It's about time right? I went picture happy so why not share?

We had a great Christmas. We all got lots of fun presents. It took Baylee a little while to warm up to the strange items by the tree enough to go explore them. She was worn out by the end and had to have help opening the last of her gifts. It was so much fun though. She ran around like a crazy lady for a while. It was definitely more fun than last year. Our tree and the kitty got a beating by Baylee and her new dress. She loved her new nightgown that became her "princess dress". As soon as she put it on, she just wanted to spin. It was very cute.

Sorry for the delay and lack of posts. I'm convinced I will catch up soon, well once the house is a little less chaotic. Haha.

Cold, Cold, Cold

It's so cold. Griping? Why yes, yes I am. It was 3 the other night when I went to the grocery store with a wind chill of -21. By far the coldest I've been, I'd say pretty much ever. Ridiculous if you ask me. So on top of this, while the rest of the cold United States seems to be getting snow, we do not get much snow. We get ICE. Ice in any form seems to be the trend. I do very much miss having a garage to park in. But at least it's a workout constantly scraping ice off of the car.

Baylee and I went out the other day to go walk in the snow only to find that it was not snow despite the appearance. It was ice. Everything was just a big sheet of ice. So walking in the grass was quite noisy as the ice broke into pieces. Baylee did find that part entertaining(ok so I did too) but it proved difficult for her to walk on as quickly as she desired and we didn't stay out but maybe 10 minutes.

Play group was cancelled since school was as well last week due to the nasty ice everywhere with the prediction of freezing rain in the future. We definitely missed going and won't be going for another 2 weeks because of Christmas break. :( I really enjoy the singing time as does Baylee. Well it comes in second place to the indoor slide.

We have been indoors because of the cold. Even I won't take Baylee out in this mess to play. I keep hoping that one day soon it will be at least 30 degrees and sunny so that we can go to the park and play. So far our only 2 sunny days for weeks happened to both be excrutiatingly cold and had negative wind chills all day long. That was just torturous. Baylee has taken to admiring the outside from new heights, not really a good thing the little monkey. Needless to say I took the picture and made her get down, mean Mom I am.

Baylee still loves to brush her teeth and can be found at least 6 times a day with someones(usually not her own) toothbrush she managed to get out of the drawer. She loves to brush those pearly white which is a good thing, just not that much fun when my toothbrush ends up in her potty or on the floor by the cat's box or under the Christmas tree. We clean toothbrushes a lot around here.

This week also marks the first time she has peed in the floor since using her potty at night before bath time. She was starting to grow out of her "piddler Paige" nickname and doesn't pee everytime she doesn't have a diaper on anymore. However she has not earned my trust and hates that she can't run around totally naked all of the time. But I did laugh this week when she took off her diaper and ran and hid under the Christmas Tree with the kitty and I came around the corner to see her naked tiny heiny in all of it's bright whiteness poking out at me and a little giggle coming from somewhere in the direction.

We let Baylee have bubbles in her tub one night for something fun since it's been a lot of boringness inside. Bubble is one of her best words and I'm sure she said it at least 126 times while she played in the tub that night. She was in awe at the amount of bubbles.

She's very intrigued with hats right now too. She has the general idea of hats down pat. She likes to invent her own though. She has put everything from blocks, to paper, to a bowl, to a stuffed animal on her head and smiles all big and says "hat". But yet her real hats are on her head for 3 seconds and she's angry. Funny lady she is.

Baylee and Lilli also got a blow up sleeping bag bed from Grandma Lowe this week. We blew it up to test it out and Baylee fell in love. She loves to play on it. Yesterday she had every toy in the living room piled on it leaving no room for her. But she was content to put everything "up" on the bed.

She is also very good at pointing out hot since our last incident with hot. She says hot to anything that is warm now. Maybe she did learn her lesson after all?

On the more grateful side of things...Saturday night, Cody, Baylee and I went shopping to pick up a few things. Apparently we were feeling brave and we even went to Walmart and our local "mall". After eating a nutritious dinner from Taco Bell (haha) we were all done and were on the way home. We got to a stop sign at a normally busy intersection and it was surprisingly empty. However, I had one of those gut feelings you can't ignore to not go yet. I didn't really see any immediate harm and there were a few cars but none to the stop signs yet. I looked up to see a car approaching from our right that ran the stop sign at a speed that was a little faster than our normal 25 mph around here and he didn't even hesitate at the stop sign. Had I gone instead of sit there for just those extra seconds that I did, that car would have creamed right into Cody and Baylee's side of the car. Cody never even saw the car. My heart skipped a few beats and we drove away unscathed. I was definitely grateful that I went with my instinct on that one!

The official countdown is on. I wasn't going to start it until Christmas day, but I've given in. We have one week until Lilli and Faith arrive. It will be so much fun to have them here. Crossing my fingers that the weather will cooperate next Tuesday for travelling.

We want to wish every one a very Merry Christmas and we send our love!