Don’t forget to enter into my contest!! I need some more entries . . . I’m starting to feel sad. :(
I guess I’ll have to come up with a better contest next time. . .

:)

Something happened today that made me feel like a Mom. Not a Mommy, which is what I feel like most days, but a MOM. In my mind, a Mommy is when you have a baby, and you are cuddling and loving on your baby, taking care of and teaching the baby new things, etc – not too much hard core “Mom” stuff yet. A Mom seems somehow older and more mature (because I’m obviously not old enough to be a Mom, right???), having children rather than babies – how we all remember our Moms from when we were growing up.

We were in the check out line at Wal-Mart, and something happened for the first time ever that I am sure will happen a million more times before Ali grows up. There were little bags of potato chips and candy at the checkout line, and Ali saw the chips, pointed, looked at me and said “crocker, teese. . . crocker, teese” (translation – “cracker, please”). She actually was very sweet and non-demanding about it, and when I told her “no, baby, not now”, she didn’t protest – she just waited about 10 seconds, pointed, looked at me and said “crocker, teese. . . crocker, teese”. We did that about 4 times before we got up to pay, but she never did get any more demanding than she started out. It was actually very adorable. It just struck me as a momentous occasion – the first of many times that my child (no longer seeming like a baby for a minute) begged for goodies at the checkout line.

On an unrelated note, Pastor Walls’ sermon yesterday was EXCEPTIONALLY amazing. It was very convicting yet encouraging. It amazes me how me can do that. If you missed it, I highly recommend downloading it. I missed the two weeks leading up to this one, so I’ve GOT to download those and get the intro to yesterday’s message.

I know, the title of my blog today just proves that I can grasp for objectivity in everything, right? As most of you know, Ashley, and Lydia and I lead a LifeGroup at church of 5 fifteen year old girls that we meet with on Sunday nights. Tonight, we were only able to have one girl come, so I was trying to decide something that we could do that would be a good thing to do with three against one odds. :) I was thinking along the lines of talking about spiritual highs and lows and the events in our lives that have precipitated each, and God gave me a fun idea – charting our spiritual journeys. I ran into Staples and bought pencils and graph paper (I do love some graph paper! But these days I really use more Excel more than graph paper). I explained my idea, and since they didn’t say “that’s a terrible idea!”, we did it!! We all took a little while and very anal-retentively drew our graphs (using extra pieces of paper to ensure that we had straight lines, of course) and wrote little snippets on each point of the graph as to what precipitated that particular high or low. Then once we finished, we each (all three leaders and our one lifegrouper) went around the table and basically outlined our whole spiritual journey. It was so fun! We learned so much about each other, we were able to pick up on trends among the four of us, we were able to glean some understanding about how a lot of our spiritual highs were precipitated by trials of some sort in our lives and how turning to God resulted in a huge revival in our lives, and we were able to see how having people in our lives that we were helping spiritually definitely created spiritual revivals for ourselves as well.

disclaimer: this blog has to do with hair. If that sounds boring to you, just don’t read it. That way you don’t have to complain to me about my girly post. You know who you are. =)

So I’ve really been wanting to do something different with my hair lately. I’m just bored with it, but don’t have enough time or inclination to start styling it differently or very complicated. I can’t get it cut short, because a) Chris loves it long and wouldn’t like me to cut it (much), and b) me with short hair looks awkward-seventh-grade-ish. I think it probably doesn’t, but the last time I had my hair really short was when I was an awkward seventh grader, so I think I just have very unpleasant flashbacks. I don’t want to get it colored, because I’ve never colored it, and I’m WAY too practical/cheap – with my time and my money – to go get it touched up every 6 weeks. So I finally decided that I might like to get another perm or body wave.

I have had a few before, and I like how I look with wavy hair, and I like having the versitility of leaving it as is and having wavy hair or straightening it. So I stopped by my salon today to find out what the girls who cut my hair thought about that (before I scheduled the appointment and they refused to take the 10 hours it would take to perm my hair. Ok, maybe not 10 hours, but every time I’ve gotten it done, by the time the hairdresser finished, they never wanted to see me again.).

I have two girls that cut my hair – Shannon and Meaghan – and they both happened to be there at side by side stations, so I got to talk to both of them. Meaghan was finishing up someone’s hair, so Shannon talked to me first. Shannon has long, dark, shiny hair, and she was immediately opposed to the idea. She said it would make my hair lose its shine, it would look bad when it was growing out, and that I would have to put a ton of product in it to make it look decent. So she’d about convinced me that it was a terrible idea, and then she took over drying Meaghan’s client’s hair so Meaghan could have her say. Meaghan has short, bleached, blonde hair. Meaghan immediately said that she thought it would be a fun idea, that it would look great as long as I obeyed her care instructions, that it wouldn’t look bad growing out, that it wouldn’t lose it’s shine, and she was totally behind it. AHH!

So I left more confused than ever. I suppose I should give more credence to the hairdresser with hair more like mine, but at the same time, I really am bored with my hair and want to do something new. Plus, I’ve gotten body waves before and have really loved them (until about a year into them, then I want them to go away). I haven’t set an appointment yet, I’m going to think about it.

Any opinions anyone? I need help!!!!

By popular demand, I managed to aquire a baby picture of Chris to add to the comparison (he is 18 months old in the picture, but close enough). The majority of people say “she looks just like Chris!!”, but I believe that these photos will prove otherwise. Ali has one feature of his – that is very prominent – and I think most people see that and think of him. And I think she has several features of mine.

SOO. . . I’m having a pin the feature on the baby contest!!!

In my opinion, Ali has one facial feature of Chris’, and five facial features of mine. Name those features!! The person who gets the closest to my list of features wins a gift up to $15 of your choice from etsy.com (have I blogged about how awesome Etsy is? It’s a new e-bay like site (minus the auction part) for sellers who make homemade everything to sell their creations – they have great hairbows, purses, baby stuff, etc). And if there are actually any guys who want to play, there are plenty of great things at Etsy for Mother’s Day for your wife!! (hint, hint) ;)

You have until Friday, April 18th to comment your answers in! If there is more than one person who gets all of the answers right, I will randomly draw one to be the winner.

AND – if you come up with better answers (and justification) than me, I will consider you for an honorable mention!

Chris – 18 Months

Ali – 15 Months
Rachel – 15 Months

p.s. – doesn’t Chris have a wierd blue aura around him? =)

Ironies of the day:

1. As it was pouring tonight, we went to great lengths to keep Ali from getting wet when we went out to eat tonight (at Baha Burgers. . .yummm), and then we get set down inside and I give her her sippy cup, and the lid wasn’t screwed on so it spilt everywhere. She was soaked.

2. Chris ordered me Microsoft Access for my Engle and Associates work, and I have been trying for 15 minutes to try to get the ultra-modern plastic case opened. It seems to be very inaccessible.

Ironic days are better than bad ones. :)

I had that R.E.M. song stuck in my head all day yesterday. . .and boy was it fitting!
This post is for my Dad – he took great pleasure in making me write down everything that went wrong when I was a teenager and I would say “I had the worst day in the world!!” and then he would save it and let me read it later and expect me to say “oh, that wasn’t so bad”. But I always still thought they were bad. ;)

So here’s what happened yesterday, for Dad:
1. I got up at 6:45 to get some work done (still very very busy with getting Chris’ business set up at home), and discovered that I had never thought to set up autosave on Excel on my new computer, and the power had flickered during the night and I had lost some stuff, so I had to recreate it. That’s not too bad.
2. This one’s kinda silly, but it was sad. Chris’ Mom was coming over to babysit Ali so I could go to the dentist (never a good day when you have to go to the dentist), and I had asked her to bring a picture of Chris when he was around 15 mos old so I could compare it to Ali, and she brought an 18 mo old picture, and HE STILL HAD VERY BLUE EYES!! It made me sad because I realized that Ali definitely still could lose hers, and I really wanted her to keep her blue eyes because everyone is always saying how striking they are.
3. OK. Now to the worse stuff: On my way to the dentist (BAD), and I got a speeding ticket. Now, I must say, I’m not feeling repentant about this ticket. It was just rotten luck. It was on Old Leeds Road where the speed limit is 30 mph, and NO ONE goes 30 on O.L.R.! AND it was a motorcycle cop, so I never saw him. He could have been hiding behind an Azalea bush for all I know!! But this is super bad because I just got a ticket last September (these are the first two tickets that I’ve gotten (that I haven’t gone to driving school to get out of)), so I got really scared about the “points system”, but I checked it, and I’m good as long as I never go above 85mph for the next year and a half. Phew. Anyway, the ticket I got last Sept, I actually was remorseful about and beat myself up because it was on the open interstate and I’m usually really good at spotting state troopers. Plus, I use cruise control EVERY time I’m on the interstate because I know that i have a tendancy to creep up in speed and not realize it. But I had to drop Ali off at my Mom’s, and so I was running late for church, and running late is my biggest pet peeve of all time, but I decided to have a good attitude about it and listen to praise and worship music on the way and get my worship time in in the car. Kinda ruins worship when you get a ticket for going too fast because you were worshipping and not paying attention. Anyway, I digress. This ticket was just bad luck, no worship involved.
4. dentist. They couldn’t get my temporary crown off, so they had to shatter it in my mouth, which is really nasty feeling, and I kept finding tooth fragments in my mouth all day. ick. And the feeling of a new tooth in my mouth grossed me out all day.
5. naps. As I said in my last post, it’s been a totally bad nap week. Both naps were disastrous and difficult, which is always stressful.

OK – that about covers it. Dad, feel free to print this out and save it for a year and subject me to the memory of my bad day in hopes that I will find it humorous. ;)

ugh. So Ali definitely has an every other week pattern thing going. This week is bad nap week. Last week was AWESOME nap week. Two weeks ago was bad nap week. Hopefully next week will be good nap week.

Yup, that’s my girl. She thinks that it’s much more important to talk than to walk, and the Dr. Amy Albert IS ok with it! She said that she is talking more than most 18 month olds, and obviously has no motor skills issues, so she is not worried about her not walking yet in the least.

Ali said “Cracker” not long after the doctor got in there, and she said, “wow! she says two syllable words?” and I said, “um, yeah, she says three word sentances.” She was shocked. I think that helped her say – she’s fine! :)

For all the other mommies out there, here are her stats (I know this is boring info for most people):

Weight: 25.2 lbs, 75th percentile
Height: 31.5in, 75th percentile
Head Diameter: 48.5 cm, just barely off the charts now (at 12 mos, her head size was WAAY off the chart)

Ali did well with her shots – she only cried a minute. She definitely remembered the doctor’s office, but she did very well over all!

We went and visited with AJ after the doctor’s office, and they were SOO excited to see each other! It had been over a week since they had, and they had both been talking about each other all the time. Everytime they play together, AJ laughs at Ali crawling and gets down and crawls as if she is making fun of her. Too bad peer pressure doesn’t seem to have any effect on Ali!! :)

Ali is 15 Months old!!!

Ali (above) and I (below) at 15 Months

. . . . and STILL refusing to walk.

She was so early at everything else, especially crawling. She started cruising very early. I remember my dad saying “look at her go! She’ll be walking by Thanksgiving!” Ha.

She totally could. Totally. She just won’t.

Sunday, she gave her very first inclination that she just MIGHT be interested – she was standing up holding onto something and let go and just stood there (perfectly stable, because she could TOTALLY walk!!) for about 10 seconds, then reached out and grabbed something again. Yesterday, I got her to do it one more time, but then she refused for the rest of the day.

So tomorrow is her 15 month visit, and being the objective person I am, I have worked out all of my logical arguments to the doctor as to why it’s just fine that she’s not walking yet (at 12 mos, the doctor told me she needed to be walking at 15 mos). Obviously, she is more of a vocab child than a walker. I counted (again, being objective here), and she has 92 words (that I’ve remembered to record), 12 two word sentances and one three word sentance, most of which she uses quite often. She talks constantly, she understands intricate vocab things that I would NEVER think she was old enough to do – such as properly changing pronouns (ex: me: “are you giggly?” ali: “i giggly!”, or me: “you did it!” ali: “I did it!!”), and she understands almost everything I tell her to do and follows instructions very well.

My other justification, of course, is that she could TOTALLY walk if she would try. She walks perfectly holding onto one finger – she just refuses to even try to see if she could do it on her own. So I am anxious to see what the doctor says.

Another important thing about 15 months is that it marks the day that if I were to get pregnant (accidentally, at this point) at or after this point, our kids would be at least 2 years apart. I don’t know why that feels more sane, but for some reason it does. So we have made the 2 year marker!!! Whoo hoo!

I’ll update with the Doctor report tomorrow!