Cowboy Boots

My mom is a busy woman these days, sewing Audrey lots and lots of clothes, and now, these cowboy boots! I found the pattern and tutorial on one of the sewing blogs I follow, Nap Time Crafters. Mom said she struggled with it, but I think they turned out adorable! I can't wait to pair these boots with a cute denim skirt and summery top!

Help, please.

I'm hoping to creating a video for Audrey's first birthday. Maybe we'll have it playing quietly on the TV during her birthday party or something, but mostly I want it for her and for us. I want it to have music, I want to use photos from her first year, and - here's the hard part - I want to include snippets from videos we have from her first year. Does anyone know how the heck I can do this? I know it would probably be easy as pie if I had a Mac (ugh!) but I don't. I have a PC. And I downloaded Picasa.

I know many of you are very resourceful and smart and some are even computer literate so please help me out if you can! I literally have NO IDEA how to even start. None of my videos have ever been edited because I am baffled by the idea of it.

Check out this video (scroll down) to see what I mean.

Thanks ya'll!

xoxo

Hard Work!

I was avoiding laundry last week and left the basket full of clean clothes on the floor in the living room. It didn't take long for Audrey to find interest and start pushing the basket around the house! She does this whenever she sees a laundry basket now. I think she looks so cute when she puts her head down like its heavy and she's working really hard. I guess she's "helping" me do the laundry!

Blow Bubbles!

Audrey is at such a fun stage right now. I'm not sure, but I think I've definitely written that sentence at least two or three times before. Each stage is just better than the last! I love her more and more with every passing day.

Ok, enough sappy-love-story-to-my-daughter stuff. Audrey has learned to "blow bubbles" on demand. Its so cute. I will probably regret having taught her this if she ever starts doing it to/at people. But for now, it is incredibly cute.

I have no idea how to edit videos, or I'd cut out all the extra stuff. Sorry!

Blah

Today sucks. It just does.

I googled "Puppies" and the images made me happy for a little while. But then I remembered that today sucks, and I was feeling crappy again.

Good thing I uploaded a bunch of videos to my Youtube channel last night, so I can spend today watching videos of my baby girl. They aren't anything special, except that they're of Audrey being ridiculously cute.

Like this:

I love how she crawls under the bridge at the end. So adorable.

Ok, wow.

I spend way to much time on the internet. Since I am in front of a computer all day at work, and we are in July which is the second slowest month of the year here (ohh how I'm dreading August), I have a lot of time to browse. Pinterest is a great website that I have found lots of fun food ideas, activities, and other things. Today I came across a website that has a ton of Do-It-Yourself plans to build stuff. What kind of stuff? Like, everything. Anything. And all of the tutorials and plans are free! I'm amazed. Here are a few of my favorites:

Helping Tower:
I have this on my Amazon wishlist as something I planned to buy for Audrey for Christmas. It is $200! I'm not sure how much this one will cost, but I think we could do it for less than that, plus it would be homemade by mama and papi!

Source

Or how about this adorable solution for dress-up clothes? Audrey needs it.

Source

Well, obviously she needs a kitchen as well. What child doesn't?

Source

I think its safe to say that I'll be putting Josh to work with all those tools he's accumulated over the years. I'm sure he'll be more than happy to make all of these things and more for his little girl!

First Steps

Our little muffin took her first baby steps on Friday! When I got to daycare, I was so excited to see they were having a concert on the deck with a one-man-band! He was playing all the childhood classic songs, and the kids were having so much fun. They had to put Audrey in a bumbo seat to contain her because she was trying to dance with the big kids but would have gotten trampled. I hung out with her for a few minutes dancing and singing to the music and chatting with her teacher. The teacher informed me that she took a step that day, and while I was there she even did it a few more times! I am so happy for Audrey, but I am bummed that I wasn't there for it. Damn mommy guilt. When I told Josh this news, he said she actually took a step the night before but he didn't want to say anything because I didn't see it. So sweet. If only Ms.Teacher could have done the same! Anyways, Friday night she ended up taking 4 consecutive steps at once, and then a few times took one or two steps. She seems better with her left leg than her right and she keeps taking multiple left foot steps which leaves her "walking" in a circle. Funny. Its hard to get a good video because she can't decide if she wants to walk or not and I now have a bunch of videos of her standing and then plopping to the floor and crawling away. Here is the best I could get for now. Enjoy! I can't believe our little girl is getting so big!

Follow Up on Cloth Diapers (Poo Post)

Total Investment: $288.02

My Stash Includes:

10 Kawaii Pocket Diapers
2 Just Simply Baby Diapers
1 Blueberry Diaper
1 BumGenius 3.0 All in One Diaper
1 BumGenius Elemental Diaper
1 Large wetbag for dirties
1 Small Wetbag for dirties on the go
1 diaper sprayer
1 Bag of diaper friendly detergent
4 Hemp inserts for overnight

I have a total of 15 diapers which is more than I need for part time cloth diapering. If I were doing it full time, I'd be washing the diapers every day and a half to two days. I had to purchase hemp inserts for her overnight diapers because Audrey is such a heavy wetter and the hemp is the most absorbent fabric around. I have three expensive diapers - the Blueberry brand and the BumGenius brand. I got the Blueberry one on Babysteals.com for half off original price, the BG 3.0 was a "flawed" diaper that I got for $10 (can't find the flaw), and the BG Elemental I got second hand at a great discount. It doesn't even look like it has been used before, and this is by far my favorite diaper! If I come across more on sale, I might snatch them up and sell of some of the Kawaii diapers that I don't like as much. The small wet bag came as part of a package deal. The diaper sprayer was expensive and I'm not sure I even like it, but I just received it last week so maybe it just takes some getting used to. The wash and dry cycle takes about 3 hours total, and of course Audrey loves it because the washer is running for 2 hours so she can peek in and watch them wash.

I am debating purchasing a set of cloth wipes or just making my own. They run about $12 per dozen, and I'd need probably 2 dozen. For comparison, the Pampers wipes I currently use are $17.50 and they last me a little less than 3 months. I could sew some wipes pretty easily for a few bucks, and I know I should, but I'm having a hard time finding a fabric that I think is soft enough.

In the mornings we put a disposable on her since she's headed to day care, and it amazes me how the diaper just can't....keep everything in. I'd say 2 out of 5 days we have to change her outfit before we leave the house because her disposable diaper has leaked onto her clothes. Now I've become smart(er) and have put a cloth diaper on her first thing, and then change her into a disposable right before we leave the house. Much cleaner this way.

So there you have it. All the poo notes in all their glory. I enjoy cloth diapers and look forward to doing it from birth with the next one!

Concentrating

I gave Audrey a container and some corks and showed her how to drop them in and then dump them all out. It took her a while to catch on because she was mostly interested in putting the cork in her mouth. :) She also kept pretending like she was going to put it in, but instead would hold it over the opening and then just put it in her mouth. So cute. After a little while she finally decided to drop it in, but then got frustrated that she couldn't get it out again. She was really concentrating on how to get it out of there, though. I love watching her and wondering what she's thinking.

Another doctor's visit

Audrey had a really bad day on Tuesday. Her ears were bothering her more than usual despite being on day 6 of her current antibiotic treatment. Day care called me at work to tell me that she was running a fever and was fussy and not herself. I left work to pick my sweet girl up and give her cuddles, but wouldn't ya know it, there was a fire on the highway and it took me 3 hours to get to her. Poor thing. When I finally got home with her, she was miserable. She didn't want to eat, was tired but couldn't sleep, and ended up crying inconsolably for over 2 hours that evening. I ended up taking her in the bathroom and sitting on the floor with the shower running so she was distracted by the water pouring down from the shower. I think maybe the steam felt good too. I took a warm shower with her and then finally we climbed into bed. She didn't sleep well, but she did sleep some. Josh stayed home with her yesterday.

So after the terrible Tuesday that we experienced, I started calling other ENT's around town to see if anyone had an appointment sooner than the one I had scheduled for next week. I was able to get in on Thursday with the specialists at Children's National Medical Center. The doctor took one look and confirmed that it was a pretty bad infection and then we did a hearing test. He said that she does have very slight hearing loss due to the fluid, but that it should be back to normal once the infection and fluid is gone. He also did a hearing test behind the ear drum to make sure that she doesn't have any permanent hearing loss, and she doesn't. I told him that we want to avoid surgery and tubes if possible, but that we of course do not want her to be in pain if she doesn't have to be. He said that generally they suggest tubes if there are more than 4 infections in a 6 month period (I think that was it) and she's on #4 now. We decided to continue on her current antibiotics - she started a different one yesterday, that's the fourth different one, too - and if she isn't cleared up in a month when we go back, then we will discuss putting tubes in her ears. I researched the procedure before the appointment, and it is a very common procedure, but we simply would like to avoid it if we can. We really hope that this round of antibiotics does something to kick that fluid out and our girl can be pain-free.

We are lucky that Audrey is such a happy girl, because even with the infections she has, she still doesn't fuss much except when she's tired. It seems that her ears bother her more when she's sleepy, and that probably has something to do with her laying down and the pressure on her ears. We've been propping her up with a pillow under her head to keep the pressure to a minimum.

Thanks for the good thoughts!
xoxo

4th of July Weekend!

Oh, how we love long weekends! I think every weekend should be a three day weekend. Two days just isn't enough.

We started the weekend out by meeting up with one of our favorite families, the Hales. They were in town for the day on Saturday, so we went to Alexandria where they were staying and spent the day visiting and catching up. Their little girl, Sloan, is one year older than Audrey (also a September baby!) and it was really fun for Josh and I to see what to expect a year from now. Sloan is so sweet and the girls played well together. I will say this, however: Neither of those girls sat still for longer than a minute or two! Luckily the apartment was not huge, and surprisingly it was pretty baby proof and there wasn't too much for them to get into.

Matching runny noses

so sweet!

Door Stopper Fun!

The day was so wonderful, but unfortunately it just made us miss the Hales even more! We are going to make a trip down to Hampton soon to hit the beach with them.

On Sunday, we had a small get together at our home with some friends. Lauren and Mike came over, Mike's sister Katie and her husband, Chris, came with their 2 year old, Kayla, and our friends Jourdan and Beau stopped by with little 6 month old Ryley. When Ryley got there, Audrey perked right up and was so excited. She wanted to play and was grabbing at Ryley, and scared the poor girl! That's my little social butterfly.

So pretty!

Audrey and aunt Laurie

Miss kayla 

Later that afternoon we went over to the home of one of Josh's co-workers to watch fireworks. They buy the good fireworks - the illegal ones - and set them off in their backyard every year. I thought I'd be fine, but within only a few minutes of them starting, I was terrified and was headed with Audrey back to the car where we fell asleep until the fireworks were over. I can't help it! I'm scared, but so much can go wrong and I'm a mama, I have a right to be scared! No pictures since I was a scaredy cat, but here is sweet muffin:

Standing!

Mom, I'm standing, yeah!

We took it easy on Monday because Josh was working and we were just mostly tired. We made a trip to the fabric store (fun!!) and then hung out at dad's for a while and did some swimming. By the end of this three day weekend, we were all tuckered out and ready for another 3 day weekend!

Just standing around

american flag, ohhhh pretty

Audrey and tia Cristina

Have I mentioned she's standing?

Pool time!

So much fun!!!

Clapping AND Dancing

Something new every day, I tell you. She started dancing recently. Its this head bob thing and its super cute. Today when I dropped her off at day care, her teacher told me that whenever she sings to Audrey, she claps her hands and dances. Awww.  Here she is dancing and clapping!