New Audrey Milestones

Yesterday, she cut her third tooth. I had thought her extreme clingyness(I don't think that's a word) was just due to her cold but now it makes more sense. She got another lower tooth. This one's on the right. If I remember correctly, I think Mickey got 3-4 on the bottom before his uppers started coming in.

Today, she pushed herself up to standing and just when I started to marvel at how long she'd been standing there by herself, she took a step! She started to take another one and wobbled and slowly sank back down to the ground.

Go baby girl! :D

Weigh in Wednesday...

...has been called on account of sickness. Seriously. Mickey, Audrey and I all have monster colds. It started a few hours after our final Christmas event, we had six of them! I started getting a sore throat that evening after the kids were in bed and woke up many times in the night. Audrey woke up with a green "mustache" and then the next day, Mickey joined in.

Since whatever I take ends up in Audrey, I've been limited to a little bit of Tylenol and some throat drops. Not cough drops, not lozenges, throat drops. They are basically candy with pectin. Heh. So, to aleviate the throat, I'm eating a lot more. And, on top of all our Christmas events, it's just not going to be pretty so I'm not setting foot on that scale.

Stress is bad for a cold, right? ;)

Christmas Card Holder

Remember when Mickey's crib got recalled? We had to send back the screws and such to get our voucher but, we still had the frame. Andrew threw a bit of a stink about keeping it but I knew that some of it could be used as a headboard and footboard still, as long as they weren't used for a baby. (I'm thinking a future guest room bed.) I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the sides and the mattress support I still wanted to keep them.

Well, I found a use for the mattress support! Introducing my brand new, handy-dandy, Christmas Card Holder!!!

I bought some mini clothespins and some ribbon and enlisted Andrew to hang it for me. I'm thinking about keeping it up year round for pictures and birthday/Mother's Day/Father's Day cards. I'm also planning on decorating the clothespins too.

So, what do you think? Cute or silly? :)

Merry Christmas!

Have a wonderful Christmas!

Love,

Erica, Andrew, Mickey and Audrey

Christmas Eve Santa Visit

I'm very last minute this year but I'm getting it done and that's all that matters! LOL!


We went to see Santa today at the Woodburn Outlet Mall. Mickey didn't want to sit on Santa's lap so we pulled up a little red to chair for him to sit on. He wasn't going for that either. So, Andrew sat on the chair and Mickey on his lap. I had Andrew lean back and it almost looks like Mickey's sitting on Santa's lap with his sister. ;)


Aud had no problem with Santa. She gave him a bit of a look but once Mickey was near, she was golden.


Here they are. Andrew is trying to talk Mickey into giving Santa a "fist bump".



And, the money shot. Well, as good as it gets with a three year old and eight month old. They are both looking at the camera. Heh!


Mickey did overcome his shyness enough to tell Santa that he wanted a bulldozer. Fortunately, Santa kind of already knew this so he'll be good to go tomorrow morning. ;)


Tonight we're off to Andrew's dad's side of the family to have dinner. We're bringing desserts!


Hope you have a wonderful Christmas Eve!

Weigh in Wednesday

Ooops! I forgot last week's. Oh, well. :)

Today's weigh in....165! Another one bites the dust! Three down, fifteen to go!

I'm nervous about this next week. Sweets are my downfall. And cheese and cracker platters. And, did mention potato dumplings and homemade strawberry jam? It's gonna be a rough week. :)

Baby Girl Randoms

~She is really attached to me. This was one of the few pictures I took where she isn't crawling straight towards me.

~She loves her some solid foods. This also includes dog food. Sigh.

~She cruises along the couch and coffe table.

~She stands for 6-8 seconds at a time...unsupported!

~She likes to give me kisses. Big, drooly, open mouth kisses.

~She thinks her daddy is pretty darn cool. She'll stop what she's doing and just grin at him.

~She adores her big brother.

~She is so mellow and easy going. She will only cry if she's hungry or if she's tired. She will stop crying if you pick her up. Sometimes she'll even stop crying if you look at her and smile. Baby Girl is all about the eye contact.

~She has a few different crawling speeds.

Slow-she takes her time, crawls a few steps and then stops and sits up, crawls a few steps and then stops and sits up again.

Fast-she crawls nonstop down the hall, baby girl is on a mission.

Super fast baby warp speed-this happens when she is in fast crawling mode and sees me at the other end of the hall. You can hear her little hands slapping on the carpet, her little panting breath and the tracks she leaves in the carpet and then bam! she's there.

~She has the world's most kissable cheeks. I can't help but kiss them and smoosh them. Super cute!

~She giggles when I kiss her upper lip. She also giggles when I say "booger, booger".

~She makes this weird "ack-ack-ack" sound. Kind of like a machine gun. We have no idea where she came up with it but it's hysterical. I like to tell her that if she keeps that up she'll sound like a two pack a day smoker by the time she's three!

~The way her little face lights up when she sees me, melts my heart. Every time. I love my baby girl.

Little Man Randoms

~Mickey "reads" stories and each page of every story he reads begins, "One day...". It's ridiculously adorable!

~He is pretty well potty trained now. No accidents lately and he just needs a little help sometimes. Most of the time he can handle it all by himself. He hasn't gone without telling us though. I'm looking forward to the first time I hear the toilet flush, the water run and then see him come out all by himself!

~He got grounded from the TV for a week for drawing on our comforter with a marker. I'm pretty sure it was and accident that he got it on the comforter but we'd already talked about him not touching the markers and he said he wouldn't. So, one week without TV. Well, the week's over and I'm not ready for him to start in on the tube again. Andrew and I have discussed it and he's going to be allowed one show a day and he can come in the living room with us if we are watching something. (When he was grounded he had to leave the room if we wanted to watch something.)

~This last week his behavior has improved. He was getting quite mouthy and I was beginning to think that the terrible two's we avoided were coming back to bite us as terrible three's. I'm blaming Spongebob and it's on the list of cartoon's he can't watch.

~We saw a Santa walking home from his shift tonight and Mickey was super excited. "It's MY Santa" he kept saying. :) He wanted us to turn around because "I should go say Hi!". LOL! I told him Santa was working. That all the houses with chimneys (like ours) were fine and that's how he would come in on Christmas Eve. But, he needs to visit the houses with out chimneys ahead of time to do Santa magic and give them a magic chimney that will show up on Christmas Eve. :)

~He's wearing size 4/4T clothes and size 10 shoes.

~He gives kisses "on the mouth" and holds your face in his hands to line you up just right. It's very sweet.

~He is one darn good kid and we are so very lucky to have him.

I Made the Top Eight!!!

Well, my wreath did at least! :D

Eddie Ross is having a contest for all the people who made his ornament wreath. They (Eddie and Jaithan) narrowed it down to the top eight and my wreath was one of the eight! Whoo-hoo! I am so excited and so giddy about it, it's not even funny.

You can vote here.

My wreath is number 4 and I'd really appreciate the vote!

Thanks, everyone! :D

Our Crayon Stars

Little Man with the finished product. :D

I'd made my own crayons when I was a kid but I did the layered kind in a self made, tin foil mold. Not the best shape. LOL! I saw some really cool ones here and figured they'd be a great craft to do with little man.

Since he's only three, a lot of the crafts we do involve a lot of effort on my part and this one was no exception. I took the paper off the crayons and he broke them into pieces.

I then broke them into smaller pieces and he put some crayons into one of the stars in the muffin tin. (I forgot to get a pic of the crayons in the tin. Whoops!)


Here they are starting to melt in the oven.
And, they are almost ready. Here's the liquified crayon fresh out of the oven.

The instructions I found said to take them out of the oven to cool or put them in the freezer. As it never got above freezing outside, I just put them on the front walk. :)

It only took a few minutes and they were ready to go.

Random close up of the cooled crayon.
Our finished product! We're going to send them to my nieces and nephews in Colorado for Christmas. I hope they like them! :D

Weigh In Wednesday

Down another pound!!! :D 166, baby! 16 more to go.

I've been doing well with my eating habits, especially since I've been crafting more. If I keep my hands busy, I have a harder time eating mindlessly. ;)

I still need to get off my tuckus and work out though.

It's been really cold here lately. I mean really cold. Like it was 7 degrees this morning. Seven! When the day's high isn't above freezing, a walk outside is not a good idea. LOL! Mickey's gone outside with my dad but they only stay out a while before it's back inside for some hot cocoa.

My mom's over today to do some crafting and Mickey's getting into the act, too. He's (we're) making star shaped crayons! I'll post pics later. :D

Gotta scoot, the oven's beeping! :D

My Eddie Ross Wreath

So, I've been seeing this freakin' adorable wreath on some of the decorating blogs I read and I just had to make one.

I got all the "ingredients" at my local Dollar Tree and went to town one night while watching Harry Potter (for the millionth time!).

I found the original instructions on Eddie Ross's blog here. Isn't his version gorgeous???? I'll be hitting the post-Christmas clearance sales to try to make one as fab as his!

Weigh In Wednesday

I lost a pound! Whoo-hoo! :D

I was actually just hoping to not gain this week as I had TWO Thanksgiving dinners. I'm so excited that I lost this week, it's not even funny!

I've been trying to do more sit ups/etc this last week and I ate salads for lunch everyday so even though I only walked twice I still did okay. Phew!

I really like salads I just don't tend to eat them because they take a bit more effort. I have salad with green leaf lettuce or romaine, carrots, tomatoes, cottage cheese, raisins and Catalina dressing. It was a lot easier when I could just buy the bagged salad, however, convenience foods are no longer in the budget. But, I've started making my own bagged salad and that's made all the difference. I wash and shred all my lettuce, chop up my carrots and toss them in a gallon sized zip lock. (It also takes up less room in my fridge!) I keep a container of pre-chopped tomatoes handy and making my salad is a snap!

Sidebar~I LOVE cottage cheese. I know it's supposed to be that most hated of diet foods but I love it! I've loved it ever since I was a baby. It's so good on salads, with fruit, with crackers, heck, I even eat it straight out of the container!

I watched the Biggest Loser last night and they ran a marathon! Can you believe it? Freakin' amazing. So, I'm going to try to run a mile this week. I've got craptacular knees so we'll see how that goes. Heh.

How was your week? Anyone have any weight loss tips that have worked for them?