Life Lately

Some good friends of ours got married on September 21st.  I was really excited about their wedding.  I bought a new dress.  I got a pedicure (a rare occurrence these days).  Dustin was out of town for work, but my mom and Mark were in town for the wedding, so I had the luxury of taking my time on my hair and make-up that day while they entertained Eden.  I put on my heels and walked out the door feeling like a million bucks - it was a far cry from my usual yoga pants and ponytail.  We arrived at the reception and were there for mayyybbbeeee five minutes when Eden suddenly projectile vomited all over herself, me and my mom.  I stood there for a second, just stunned.  I had vomit all over me - literally dripping off of me and running down my legs.  Others sprang into action.  A friend took Eden from me and another girl took me into the bathroom and helped me clean myself off.  Friends mopped up the floor for us, we stripped Eden's clothes off, and I walked back out the door smelling like puke and holding a naked baby.  Eden was now running fever, so Eden, my mom, Mark and I all went back to my house where I put on yoga pants, put my hair in a ponytail, scrubbed stains out of my brand new dress and took care of my sick baby girl.  She was sick for an entire week.  It was the first time she had ever thrown up, and she had no idea what was happening.  It terrified her.  It was the saddest little thing, her crying every time it happened.  We laid on the couch all night one night, watching Tangled over and over again, and I held the trashcan for her every hour when she needed it.  For a week, she looked like this:

 

I laid right with her all week long, and we watched Cinderella, The Little Mermaid and Tangled approximately a thousand times each in addition to approximately one million episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  I hated, hated, hated seeing her feel so bad, but I did enjoy having her lay and sleep on top of me all week.  It took me back to when she was first born, and I spent every afternoon laying on the couch with her asleep on my chest.  After a week, she finally got rid of her fever, but it took her another week to start acting like herself again.  She was so lethargic and took three naps a day.  I was actually more worried about her that week than I was the week she was sick!  She was just so unlike herself.  I took her to Granny and Pops' one afternoon, and she just kinda laid around their house and then came up to me and told me "night-night".  So I took her home, and she went straight to sleep. 

 

She got a little bit stronger each day, and finally after two long weeks, she was back to her feisty, happy little self!

 

Texas finally has some cooler weather, and we've started going riding around in the pastures in the afternoons and evenings when Dustin gets home from work.  I realize that might sound really boring, but it's not - it's wonderful.  We roll down the windows, enjoy the beautiful weather, and Eden has her very own zoo.  We see horses and cows and birds and rabbits, and she points and tells us first what they are and then the sounds they make.  COW!!!  MOOOOOOOOO!!!

She is still obsessed with stickers.  Not a day goes by that she doesn't ask for some. 

One evening I had her sitting on the kitchen counter while I made a cake, and she took all the stickers off of the lemons and put them on her tummy.

A friend of mine's little girl had her 1st birthday party on Sunday.  I LOVE this picture that we took:

I grew up with those girls; they were some of my closest friends when I was younger, and I can't believe that we not only all had babies within a year of each other, but that they're all girls.  The girl to my right became my best friend on the very first day of kindergarten when we bonded over our same The Little Mermaid lunchboxes.  We remained close all throughout school.  She was there for it all, including the night we met Dustin.  If Eden and Brooklyn become best friends one day, then they'll be the third generation to do so because her dad and my dad were best friends too.  The girl to my left went to elementary school with us too, but she and I didn't become really close until we got to jr. high, and we had lockers next to each other and the same homeroom every single year until graduation because we had the same last name.  I met the girl on the far right in 6th grade, and she was one of my best friends throughout jr. high and high school, and we still get together frequently for play dates as our daughters are only two weeks apart.  I enjoyed so much watching our girls play together at the birthday party.

The other night I went into Eden's room to check on her (as I do numerous times every night since I am still afraid that she's going to just stop breathing), and I found her sleeping with her arms up by her head. 

Usually she sleeps on her stomach, and it made me so happy to see her like that because it reminded me of how she used to sleep when she was itsy-bitsy.  Unless I had her in a swaddling blanket, she slept with her arms up by her head, and even when we would see her in ultrasounds, her arms were up by her head.

 

There are a thousand reasons to love fall in my opinion, but at the top of my list is how cute Eden is in her footie pajamas.

photobombed by Luna

 

I'm so happy my sassy little girl is back to her old self.  And just in time for the fair.  Which is where you can find us tomorrow.



Eden - Twenty Months

She wanted to stand up this month.

So Eden is twenty months old... And I still have moments where I look at her and think to myself, "Holy crap, I have a kid!"  I love it; I hope the wonder of her never wears off.

 She's smelling her flower in the picture on the left, and in the picture on the right she was so excited to see her daddy through the window.



Her current obsession is stickers.  Stickers on EVERYTHING. 

 

She decorates anything and everything.  Yesterday morning before volleyball practice she put stickers on the volleyballs.  I go around most days with stickers on my face.  Most of her toys have them.  The water trough has them.  Any sticker will do.  Today she proudly rode around the grocery store with a sticker from a cantaloupe on her shirt.

Her current favorite phrase is "gone gone".  She likes to take our stuff, and then when we ask for it, she tells us "gone gone".  She hides stuff just so she can say "gone gone". 

She has such a wonder for the world at this age.  I love it; I hope it never wears off.

Summer Ain't Over Yet!

As soon as September hit, I'm pretty sure everyone I know started acting like it's fall.  Um... it's ninety-five degrees outside.  It is most definitely NOT fall.  Now, don't get me wrong... I love fall as much as the next person, and when the temperature drops, I'll be all excited over sweaters and pumpkins too.  But right now, I'm still enjoying summer.  On Saturday, the three of us made a day trip to Matagorda.  We had the beach almost to ourselves since everyone else was out buying pumpkins or something.

 

 Eden kept trying to fill her bucket up with water.

But it had a hole in the bottom.

She would proudly bring us the bucket to show us her water, see that the bucket was empty and look so confused.  "Gone gone", she'd tell us and go back to try again.  We let her do it a few times just because it was so cute, but then Daddy to the rescue!

Triumph at last!

The weather was gloriously overcast.  I think I prefer the beach that way.  Dustin and I sat back and watched the storm clouds roll in.  After about two hours, it finally started to rain, so we packed up and went and ate seafood.  On the way home we were treated to a beautiful double rainbow.

The picture (taken on my phone) does not do it justice at all.  I had never seen a rainbow as vibrant as the one on the right.  The red, orange and yellow part of it looked like the sky was on fire.  It was breathtaking.

Yesterday, Eden started Sunday school.

I swear I won't take pictures every Sunday, but I had to on her very first day!  The activity for her class was making a lamb out of cotton bolls.  She concentrated so hard, and I was really impressed with her!

After Sunday school, we stopped by my Granny and Pops' house because Pops is HOME!  Granny opened the door and Eden RAN into her arms!  She was so excited to see them back at their house!  She wrapped her arms around Granny's neck and kept kissing her cheek.  Then Granny walked over to Pops, and Eden leaned over and wrapped her arms around his neck too.  "That's the best thing," Pops said.

First Texans game of the regular season tonight!  And I have the cutest Texans fan EVER!

And one more picture...

Random Stuff

Random Stuff #1:

With the start of the school year, our routine changed as I was asked to help coach junior high volleyball at the school where I used to teach.  Volleyball practice is every morning from seven to nine, and I agreed to come in two days a week to help.  The school is nice enough to let me bring Eden, so from seven to eight, my friend and former teaching partner, Stacy, watches Eden in her classroom.  When school starts at eight, Eden goes over to the preschool until I pick her up at nine.  A woman known to all who love her as "Momo" volunteers at the preschool on Tuesdays and Fridays so those are the days that I help out with volleyball, and Momo watches Eden for that hour.  She told me that they have put Eden in with the two year olds a few times just to see how she is with them, but mostly Momo spoils Eden rotten and takes her to the playroom and gives her her undivided attention.  Eden has a giant room full of toys all to herself.  Every single time I've gone to pick her up, she is covered in necklaces and bracelets.  Momo says she loves to sit at the play vanity table and put on all the toy jewelry, play with the play makeup and pretend to blow dry her hair with the toy hair dryer.  That girly side is coming out in full-force!  She is also a big fan of the pretend kitchen, so I'm thinking that between Christmas and her birthday in a few months, Little Miss Eden will be getting a kitchen and vanity table.  I love that Momo is so devoted to her and that Eden has so much fun, but I do wish she would have more time to interact with the other kids because...

Random Stuff #2:

My child is really bad at sharing.  Like REALLY BAD.  On Thursday we went to the Children's Museum.  And yes, she's still wild.  She also thinks that if she wants a toy, she can have that toy... even if another child is already playing with it.  She walked up to so many kids and just took toys away from them.  That I can handle though.  She hasn't had many instances where she has had to share so I know she doesn't know any better.  Every time it happened,  I took the toy away from her, told her "no", gave it back to the original kid and did my best to explain to her that somebody else had it first.  By the end of our time there, she was starting to get it.  HOWEVER, sometimes another kid would come up to Eden and take a toy away from her.  My little independent girl would just take matters into her own hands, take the toy back, HIT THE KID AND TELL THEM "BAD!".  Ahhhhhh!  I had to apologize to so many moms!  "I'm so sorry she just hit your child!  We're still learning how to share."

 

Random Stuff #3:

 

I have park pictures!  In the last two weeks, Eden has become so independent at the park.  Gone are the days when I had to follow her around and hold her hand and help her.  Now when we get to the park, she's gone!  She, fortunately, hasn't tried to run down any slides in a while.

 

She even climbs all the way up to the top of the tall curvy slide and slides down all by herself.  I catch her at the bottom, and then she runs back to the steps to do it again.

 

Random Stuff #4:

 

My Pops is in the hospital.  He scared us all for a few days and had to spend a week in the ICU, but he's out of the ICU now so Eden is able to go with me to visit him.

 

I know she misses her Granny and her Pops while they're gone.  We all still seem to congregate at their house even though they're not there, and over the weekend I stopped by their house looking for Eden's cousin Rylen (so that they could play, and she could work on sharing).  Eden just looked at Pops' empty chair for a while and then walked around the house searching for her Granny.  It broke my heart.  But Pops is doing good now, and I pray that they will be home soon, and we can go back to spending lots of afternoons with them.

 

Random Stuff #5:

 

Every night Eden sleeps with her Lovey (who Dustin refers to as Cat Towel), Sheepie (a stuffed sheep that my mom brought her from Ireland - I'm so original with names) and Rosie (a little mouse that used to be mine).  The other night I put her into her crib like usual and then went downstairs.  After a few minutes, Eden started yelling and crying.  I went back to her room, and she was standing in her crib.  She held Lovey out to me and motioned that she wanted me to kiss her.  After I kissed Lovey, she held out Sheepie for me to kiss followed by Rosie.  After I had kissed all three of them, she was fine and laid down to go to sleep.  Now every night I have to kiss her stuffed animals.  She stalls so that she can put off going to sleep as long as possible, and I have to kiss them all about ten times each.  Just when I think we're done and I start heading for the door, she decides they need more kisses.  It's so adorable, and it makes her so happy.

 

My mom was here two weekends ago and watched Eden all day that Sunday while Dustin and I went to the Texans game.  She later told me how special it was for her to get to do Eden's little nighttime routine with her and put her in her crib.  Her telling me that made me realize how much I take doing that for granted.  Not that I ever mind doing it, but lately I've been reminding myself just how special it really is getting to read to her and sing to her and kiss her goodnight.

 

End of Random Stuff