Catching Up: Easter Pictures

I’m only a month late, right?! I have a good chunk of backlogged pictures to post, so I figured this is as good a place to start as any.

Sam had to work Easter morning, so Zoe and I slept in. We had a surprise when we woke up though – the Easter bunny had visited!

Click here for an Easter morning video of Zoe discovering her first Easter eggs.

Zoe and I spent the morning playing with her eggs and coloring a card for Daddy – we waited to get into our Easter baskets until Daddy got home. She seemed to enjoy coloring:

Coloring on the front of Daddy’s card

She also got to open an Easter card from Grandma Marie!

She likes the card, not so much the flash.

Once Daddy got home, she got to play with her Easter basket. She *loved* the paper Easter grass we put in it!

Making a mess!

At one point, she was taking the handfuls of “grass” over to the couch, and making a big pile of it. It looked like she was building a nest! Very cute.

She also had fun pulling apart my yarn Easter eggs:

Yarn Easter eggs – idea from Pinterest

They were really easy to make, and lots of fun for kiddo to pull apart later! Maybe in another couple years we can make them together. They’re not hard to make at all, but can be very messy. One part glue to one part water, then unwind some tiny balls of scrap yarn into the glue (do this neatly, so it will come back out without knots). Blow up a little water balloon until you get the shape you want, and then tie it off & wrap the yarn around it. If you squeeze off a lot of the glue as you wrap, it will dry a lot faster and your glue will stretch much farther. Tuck your ends in, and hang somewhere to dry (put something underneath them to catch drips!) – mine were dry overnight. Pop the balloon and pull it out, and voila, yarn eggs! I put some in a bowl on the table, and hung some up in the kitchen doorway.

Click the picture below for the rest of our Easter-related pictures:

Click me for more pictures!

I think I’m starting to come down with whatever illness Sam had, so if I disappear again for a bit… I’ll be back!

Still here…

I can’t believe it’s been three months since I posted last! I’ve been meaning to, I just keep getting distracted with everything else. I have a backlog of pictures to post, but I’ll try to do that in the next day or two. My first goal is actually to move all of my current pictures to a different account, which means I’ll have to go back and edit all of my old posts if I want the links to continue working. Luckily, I’m a huge slacker about actually posting, so I don’t think there are too many spots I’ll have to change.

Since I’d probably be strung up somewhere if I posted without baby pictures, here’s one from a few days ago:

Such a cute little ponytail!

Zoe is very much not a fan of having things in her hair. We figure it’s probably just because she’s not used to it, so I’ve been trying to mess with her hair a little more often. It worked great for the first day or two – I’d put in a little ponytail, and she’d fight until I got it in there, and then ignore it. Now though, she’s figured out that she can just pull it right out. There goes my plan to get her used to it! She looks completely adorable with two little pigtails – too bad she won’t leave them in long enough for me to snap a picture!

How she really feels about this!

Sam’s been sick for the past week or so – started with a sore throat, and is now a nasty head cold. Runny nose, coughing, and most recently, no voice! He’s been squeaking at us for a day or two now. Zoe and I seem to have avoided the plague so far, but if Sam doesn’t feel better soon then I’m not sure how much longer we can avoid it!

On the gaming front, we’ve basically stopped playing SW:TOR at this point. It was a great game, lots of fun, but once you get a couple characters through the end-game content (which isn’t hard to do), it starts to get pretty boring. The same set of three dailies and three operations just wasn’t doing it for us. We’d started logging in once or twice a week to raid, and otherwise not really logging in at all. So we’ve decided to let our subs lapse. Since they gave almost everyone a free month a while back, our accounts will still be open until next month – we just aren’t likely to be on them much. We’ve picked up Wurm Online again instead. Since Sam sold off his characters when we quit Wurm for Star Wars, we decided to start over on all new characters on a different server. We found  a nice open spot right near water & we’ve been starting all over with building our deed. It’s a lot of work, but it’s coming along nicely! Maybe I’ll get some pictures of that posted in the next few days too.

And last but not least, my current crafting project!

Hmm, I wonder what it could be?

This is an old picture (from the very start of it), but it’s the only one I have currently. I’ll try to get an up-to-date picture before I post again – it’s much bigger now!

Playing with Rice!

After seeing a link on Pinterest about dying rice as an alternative to a sandbox for kiddos, I knew I wanted to try it. Zoe has this thing where she hates to get her hands dirty, and we’re trying to get her to get over it – she doesn’t even like to feed herself half the time because she doesn’t want to get anything on her hands. So I figured playing with some different textures could be fun for her (not sure what else is on the list yet, but I know homemade playdough is another idea).

I took some time yesterday to dye some white rice a bunch of different colors, to make it more fun and exciting for her. Here’s what I started with:

Materials

And the finished product:

Colorful bowls of rice!

I tossed them all in a little Rubbermaid bin and grabbed some kitchen utensils that looked fun – she seemed to think they were pretty cool! Lots more pictures, and a five-minute video of her playing, are under the link below:

Click for more pictures!

If you’re looking for a fun activity for your kiddo, this was really easy to do. The rice takes very little drying time (it was dry after maybe a half hour), and I’m willing to bet that slightly older kids would have a lot of fun helping dye the rice, too. Zoe probably would have had a blast helping me shake the jars, but she was having fun playing in her room at the time (don’t mess with it when it’s happy, man!). Cleanup was really easy too; I chose carpeted floor because the rice wouldn’t bounce as far, and it was really easy to just vacuum up afterwards.

New Apartment

Settling into the new place is coming along nicely. We’ve unpacked most of our stuff; now it’s just those last few boxes of …stuff. You know, that stuff that you keep around for various reasons, but you don’t really know where to put it or what to do with it? Yeah, that stuff. I’m slowly working on weeding through the “stuff” now, and donating a large chunk of it.

Zoe seems to really like her new room. It’s right off the living room, and as baby-proofed as anything can be. She gets to wander in and out all day, and pulls out whatever toys she wants to play with into the living room. The kitchen is a little small, but we really can’t complain too much. The appliances are all pretty new (if not brand new). I love that there’s a big window in the living room, and we get lots of light during the day. Click the picture below for more pictures of the apartment (minus our room, which is still a work in progress).

Living room – big window!

We’re pretty happy here so far; my only real complaint is that there’s no washer & dryer in the apartment – I have to go down to the first floor to do laundry. A bit of a hassle with kiddo, but it works well enough if I wait until Sam is home on the weekends.

I’ve really been slacking on taking pictures lately! There’s a handful in this album with the apartment pictures, but Zoe moves so much now that it’s hard to get decent pictures of her, and my camera is pretty terrible on top of that. If I turn the flash off then the pictures come out blurry and gross, but if I leave it on Zoe scrunches up her whole face because she’s squinting so hard against the light. It’s pretty much a lose-lose situation. Here’s one of the few that I’ve caught of her without issue:

She loves this new toy.

 

She has the right idea…

 

Knocked out on the couch.

My “baby” is growing up so fast ! When she gets tired lately, she’s been dragging her blanket out of her crib and curling up on the couch to put herself to sleep. I love it! I think she is so adorable.

I’ve been bad about taking pictures lately. We’re still trying to clean up and get the house organized from the move, so I guess I haven’t really been thinking about it. Hopefully I’ll have pictures of the new place (and the baby!) to come in the near future.

I think I’m also going to change the background here again… Pink just isn’t doing it for me now. I guess it’s just too girly… I’ll have to see what else I can come up with.

Happy New Year!

There’s a certain point where I haven’t posted in so long that it becomes hard to just pick it back up. “Oh hi guys, long time no see!” and all that. I’m not necessarily a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions, but regardless, the start of a new year seems like a good time to make an effort to post more again.

I have quite a few goals for this year. They’re basically all things that I’ve been wanting to do (or change) for a while now, but haven’t for whatever reason. Here goes:

1. Lose weight and get into shape. This is definitely my biggest goal, and has been for a while – I’m just really bad at sticking to it. Between having a baby, not having access to a kitchen and eating lots of tv dinners, and just not exercising, I’ve gained a lot of weight. I’m ashamed of my weight (and how I look right now), so I’m stepping WAY out of my comfort zone even talking about it – but I am determined to make a change, and hopefully this will help keep me accountable. I need to lose about 70 lbs to make it back down a healthy weight for my height/frame. I’m not very good at sticking to it, but I’m going to try to start dieting / exercising and cross my fingers that I can stick to it this time!

2. Blog more. Blogging/journaling/whatever is a great stress-reliever for me. Once I write things down, I can usually look at them more objectively – meaning that not only do I stress out about things less, but I can often find a better solution than I otherwise might have. I’m not going to set a goal of “post daily” because that’s just silly, and I know I’ll never stick to it – but I do want to try to post more often. Plus, I know that family members like the updates on the baby! I’m hoping to change my blog around some, maybe change up the title and theme again. We’ll see. Expect changes!

3. Spend less, save more. Seems easy enough, right? We’re huge impulse shoppers, mostly regarding food. Fast food and soda probably make a pretty big dent in his paycheck – which isn’t helping my weight any, either. If we can cut out the extra spending, we’ll be doing better on several fronts.

4. Spend more “adult time” – both by myself and with Sam. I’m not talking anything dirty here – just taking some time to stop being “Mama” and “Dada” for a bit. I think I’ve forgotten that I can be anything other than Mama – we haven’t been out by ourselves since she was born (15+ months now!). We’re planning on going out to dinner for our anniversary next week (thanks to Me-maw, who agreed to watch the baby!), and I can’t wait. I’m worried about how Zoe will do without us, but I also know that she’ll be fine for an hour or two, and I’m sure that Sam and I will both feel better after a little time to recharge some! Even if we don’t get to go out to dinner or something all the time, even staying up to watch some tv together after she goes to bed or something would be nice.

I think those are my main priorities right now. Let’s hope I can stick with them!

Catching Up

So I’m only almost a month late posting these, but here’s some Halloween pictures:

I didn’t really get many good pictures. I think she was tired beforehand, so she didn’t want to be put down. She didn’t mind the car ride though, and then it was cold when we got there, so she wanted to be held again. We went trunk-or-treating with her cousins, and I think everyone had a good time!

Click the picture for more!

Sam started working again almost two weeks ago. He’s actually on the same shift he was before, but now he was hired up here as a supervisor – which they’d been promising him down in Fairfax (but they never actually promoted him). He seems to like it well enough so far; it’s pretty much the same thing he was doing before, but at a new location and he’s in charge now.  I’m still looking for a part-time job to fit in, probably about 20 hours a week in the mornings before he goes to work. No luck yet, but I’m sure we’ll find something eventually.

Zoe continues to grow like a weed. She must have just had another growth spurt, because her 3T dresses that were a bit big a few weeks ago now fit her almost perfectly. She runs around babbling up a storm and trying to escape up the stairs these days. She loves going shopping too; either walking with Daddy or riding in the cart are both really exciting!

She was so excited to ride in the cart that she couldn’t stop singing!

It’s hard to tell in that picture, but she’s finally getting enough hair that we can get hairclips to stay in place now. I’m sure she’ll have cute little pigtails before much longer!

Ever since being in the SW:TOR beta, other games seem to have lost their excitement for me (and Sam!). We’re both waiting anxiously for release day, and don’t know what to do with ourselves in the meantime. He just sold off his Wurm Online characters (which is completely legal and supported in this game), and actually made enough money off of his two characters to buy us both Collector’s Editions of SW:TOR. So now we’re just playing the waiting game and trying to figure out what to do with our free time! We played a little bit of Super Mario Bros. Wii, but it’s tough to play games like that with a baby climbing all over you and trying to steal your controller! It was fun while it lasted though.

I’ve been knitting / crocheting up a storm here lately. I just finished 6 small projects that are mostly for Christmas presents. One was a remake of the hat that I made for my mother a few months ago that was way too small. I think this one turned out much better! I can’t wait until payday so I can send it off.

That’s about it for us. We’re looking forward to Thanksgiving, and spending the day with family! How are your Thanksgiving plans coming along?

Books, Blogging, and Baby

I’ve been having trouble posting lately because I’m finding it hard to stay positive right now; no one really wants to read about a bunch of whining, so I’ve been pretty quiet. Job hunting is seriously getting to me. It’s sad the number of “scam” job postings out there… and I seem to be hitting all of them. It’s really frustrating to spend hours applying to various jobs online, only to find that they’re all fake. I could keep complaining – but now that I’ve let it out, I’m letting go of it & moving on! Something will work out eventually.

In other news, I got invited to beta test Star Wars: The Old Republic a week ago (just for a weekend testing phase – not a long-term invite). I can’t say much because of the NDA, but I think I can officially say that we’ll all be playing that come December. It looks awesome, and I can’t wait for it to come out! Now if we can just figure out how to pay for the collector’s edition, we’ll be set.

Zoe’s continuing to grow like a weed. Teething has been hitting her hard in the last week or two; she’s working on two lower molars, and they’re obviously a lot worse than her front teeth were. Luckily, pain meds and teething rings seem to be enough to help her manage the pain; she’s just miserable if the medicine wears off at the wrong time. She’ll go from playing happily to screaming in frustration and biting on anything in reach. She tried to chew through the vacuum cord the other day – because it wasn’t enough that the chinchilla got hold of it somehow right before we moved! Luckily Sam is pretty handy around the house, and was able to cut/strip/tape/whatever the cord back together for me (from the chinchilla that is, not the baby).

Speaking of the baby, I should really find something else to call her. She’s such a big girl! Tell me she doesn’t look all grown up:

Dressed up & ready to go out grocery shopping!

Sorry it’s blurry; my phone doesn’t seem to take pictures any better than my camera does.

She looks like such a big girl, sprawled out on the couch!

Aside from job hunting, there’s not really too much going on around here. Sam’s working his last week down in Fairfax; only two more days of being gone for 12 hours a day! I can’t believe how much we’ve spent on gas/tolls so he could finish out his last two weeks. We’re both trying not to think about not having any income after this. It’s stressing me out pretty badly though. Luckily we don’t have many bills right now, but it’s scary to think that we may not be able to pay them for much longer. We’ll make it though. We always do, somehow or another.

As a completely unrelated side note, I’d forgotten how awesome The Name of Wind is. I still haven’t gotten around to reading the second book in the trilogy (the third isn’t out yet) because I’d wanted to re-read this one first – and I’m really glad I finally got around to it! Usually I only read right before bed, but I’ve been dragging this one around the house with me and reading any time I have a few minutes. If you like fantasy and haven’t checked out Patrick Rothfuss yet, you really should! It’s even distracted me from my recent addiction to Glee (working my way through Season 2, when I can put my book down…).

On that note – back to my book!

Zoe’s First Birthday Party

Warning: Lots of pictures! If cute babies and/or Tangled parties aren’t your thing, you should probably quit while you’re ahead.

So we moved last Thursday, and Zoe’s party was on Saturday. Despite the crazy schedule, we got everything cleaned up in time for the party – even if I didn’t have time to put up all the decorations I’d worked so hard on. Zoe loves to watch Tangled (Disney’s Rapunzel movie), so we used that for our theme. I did some searching online for ideas, and came up with a few decorations that wouldn’t  be too hard to make with what I had on hand. So in the midst of packing like crazy, I worked on these:

Sun Medallions

I stuck some fishing line in the middle of these for hanging, and we hung some from the ceiling and some from the ends of the banisters on the stairs. They looked pretty good hanging under her pink streamers – though sadly I forgot to take any pictures of the decorations after I put them up. These are paper lanterns, based off the lanterns they release in the movie:

Glowing Lantern

We tried putting a battery-operated tea light inside, but they were nowhere near bright enough to actually light up the lantern at all. Instead, Sam helped rig up some easy lights with a couple parts from Radio Shack. Here’s what we came up with:

The lights we rigged for the lanterns.

Simple, but effective! They glowed nicely hanging from the ceiling or sitting on a table (though again, I completely forgot to take any pictures!). I also made a little banner that we hung down the banister on the stairs – you can see it in the background here:

My little birthday princess <3

How’s that for a cute baby?! I think she looked adorable in her Rapunzel dress and “birthday princess” hat, though I guess I can’t really call her a ‘baby’ anymore – she’s up and walking everywhere now!  I love this picture of Zoe with her cousin, watching Tangled together:

The girls watching Tangled together.

Zoe’s doing really well with solid foods, so I expected her to devour her cake – which didn’t really happen. It was a boxed mix, and I don’t think it was all that great. We got one box of funfetti cake in our normal brand, and one box of chocolate mix in another brand (ours was sold out). Her cake was chocolate, and then we made cupcakes with everything else – the funfetti ones were awesome, but I really didn’t like the chocolate ones very much.

Baby’s cake (complete with candle bigger than the cake itself), and cupcakes.

I think Zoe felt the same way; she ate the cake if we put it in her mouth, but she didn’t have much interest in picking at it herself. She did seem to like sticking her face in it though:

I think she may have actually been smelling the cake, not just sticking her face in it.

We had a full house, too: Me-maw & Poppy, her aunt & uncle and their two kids, her Grandma and Grandpa on my side, and my two brothers. It was quite a crowd! Everyone seemed to have a good time, and Zoe did surprisingly well with so many people there. She’s been acting very shy on and off lately, and we weren’t sure how she would handle all the people, especially after the stress of the move. She seemed to have fun though, and didn’t mind being the center of attention. She gots lots of fun new toys to play with – all of which make noise, of course! She’s had lots of fun with all of them. This is already a pretty picture-heavy post, so click this one last image for lots of pictures under the cut (mostly of baby-covered-in-cake and present-opening time):

Click me for more pictures!

One month later…

Well, I guess it’s been a while! Last month was rather eventful, thus the lack of posting. There just wasn’t really time to sit down and write a coherent post.

My last post mentioned being pretty fed up with life in general – that was mostly in regards to our crappy living situation, and not being able to do anything about it. We had just applied to the Fairfax County Rental Program (which is basically a form of Section 8 housing, but they don’t call it that anymore), and got turned down because we don’t make enough money to qualify for low income housing. Yes, you read that right. We don’t make enough money for low income housing. I mean, really? What’s the point of the whole program then?

Anyway, we got that letter turning us down, and two days later (before I even had time to tell anyone about it), Sam’s mom told us they were moving into a three-bedroom townhouse and had enough room for us to stay there if we wanted to (until we get back on our feet). We thought it over for a few days and decided that it was probably our best bet. We’d been feeling stuck in a rut for quite some time: stuck in a housing situation that we hated, stuck with our work/monetary situations. Obviously where we were and what we were doing wasn’t working… so we figured it was time to shake things up a little.

We made the big move to MD last weekend. Sam’s going to make the commute down to work in Fairfax for at least a couple weeks so we’ll have a little more income until we find something else. The commute is going to suck though; he’ll likely be gone 12 hours a day for as long as he’s working down there. In the meantime, we’re both job-hunting like crazy, trying to find a good job up here to get us up and running again.

We’re adjusting to the move fairly well. I wasn’t sure how Zoe would do in a new environment, but she didn’t have too many issues past the first day (she was a little clingy for a day or so). I’m not sure how well Dwayne and Linda (my in-laws) are adjusting – we still keep pretty weird hours, and I’m pretty sure we’re keeping them up half the night (though by “we” I really mean the baby). I don’t think Zoe likes that we haven’t put her black-out blinds back up though:

This is how we found her… Just like her Daddy!

I have some older pictures that I never got around to posting, too. These are from when my parents came to visit back in August, and we went out to a park for a bit (click the picture below to view the album):

Zoe *loves* to swing!

I also have a bunch of pictures from her birthday that I should hopefully get uploaded and sorted out by tomorrow (I hope!). Unfortunately, our camera seems like it’s just not quite up to par anymore… the pictures it’s been taking recently are really blurry/distorted, which upsets me quite a bit. I have a feeling we’ll be trying to save up for a new camera soon – I don’t want to miss out on cute baby pictures! Regardless, I’ll post what we did manage to get of her birthday soon. I figure this post is about long enough as is.