Why is it so hard?

It's a simple concept, people.  The elevator has to be departed before it can be boarded. 

I was at the mall yesterday, only to go to Barnes and Noble at first, but when I discovered a diamond missing from my wedding ring, a trip to the lower level was required to talk to the folks at Zales.  So, with stroller in tow, I headed to the nearest elevator.  I was the first one there waiting on it to come up.  I pushed the button and, logically, stepped off to the side so that those coming up could exit easily.  But before it arrived, several other groups of people gathered, but not in an orderly fashion to either side of the doors.  Oh no.  Right in front of them!  Then when the doors opened and revealed the car full of people wanting off, these people looked shocked and mystified as they attempted to take steps forward into the elevator.  Really people?

Those inside slowly maneuvered their way around the rude folks who were so incredibly anxious to get on.  I was the last one on and made my way to the back.  Needless to say, the same thing happened to us when we got to the lower level.  Those who had been so pushy to get on before were now enraged at their peers who were acting in the same way and making it difficult for them to now get off.

The trip back up after visiting Zales was not unlike what I just described.  I was the last one to try and exit the elevator on the upper level and when the wall of unsupervised kids - little kids, not inconsiderate teenagers - refused to move to let me and my stroller out before pushing their way in, I looked at every unattentive parent, curtly said 'excuse me', disregarded their expressions of dismay (I'm sure they were thinking something like "What's that lady's problem?  Didn't she want to ride the elevator over and over for grins and giggles?"), and made my way out.

I mean, really, is it that difficult to understand? 

And......end rant

Happy half-birthday, sweet girl o' mine

I actually wrote this blog on December 2 - Savannah's 6 month birthday - but didn't have my pictures loaded, so I saved it intending to get back to it later that day. It's now December 14 and I'm finally sitting down to publish it.  That's how crazy things have been lately.  So without further ado...read on about my precious baby's half-birthday.


Well, as much as I hoped it wouldn't, the day has come and Savannah is halfway through her first year.  Oh.My.Goodness.  I've been thinking back over the past 6 months and realizing all the changes we've experienced.  Sav has gone from a tiny little bundle that spent most of her time sleeping to a not so tiny bundle that rolls around all over the place and only takes 2 little naps a day.  Cory and I have gone from a couple who loved to go run around town doing whatever floated our boat to a couple who enjoys a lot more time at home as a family. 

Savannah is loving everything she eats...except peas.  She is just about sitting up completely by herself, but still topples backwards unexpectedly from time to time.  She's mastered rolling over and is starting to figure out that she really can get places that way.  But it's also pretty clear that she's anxious to become mobile by means of the more practical method of crawling....just can't quite get those legs working the right way.  Soon, though, I'm sure.

I'm betting she'll have a tooth or two by Christmas as well.  I haven't spent a great deal of time around many teething babies, but I think it's safe to say she's taking it harder than most.  I'm holding on to hope that once the first few come in, the rest won't be so traumatic.

Our 6-month well baby appointment is Monday, so I'll have updated growth stats soon.  But she's reaching the end of fitting into her 3-6m clothes, especially jammies, which means Momma's gonna have to plan another date with the dresser and closet to swap out sizes.  So, so sad.

I did indeed do some cleaning out in her room.  It was crazy to lay her little newborn-size clothes next to the 3-6 and 6-9 month clothes she's wearing now.  Such a dramatic difference.  Her well baby check went great (minus those awful shots).  She weighs 15 lbs 13 oz and is 26 1/2 inches long (I think...the nurse forgot to give me a sticker with her info, so I'm not positive about the height).  She's graduated to 2nd foods now and really seems to like the apple/blueberry combo. 

AND, she's even more of a sitter-upper than she was 2 weeks go...catching herself far more often than toppling backwards. You can see how she's even sitting up in this month's picture instead of resting against the back of the chair.  Such a big girl (and taller than her bear)! 

Sweet Sunday

"I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted

me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord.

For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord." 

1 Samuel 1:27 & 28

Just as Hannah dedicated Samuel to the Lord when he was just a baby, Cory and I dedicated Savannah yesterday morning during a special ceremony at church.  Pastor Brandon prayed for her and us, as her parents, and reminded us that she always has been and always will be God's child.  He has merely entrusted her to us while on this earth.  We commit to train her in the way she should go so when she is old, she will not turn from it (Prov. 22:6).

Since it was a special day, I thought there was no better outfit for her to wear than the fancy dress her Grrdad bought before she was born.  He painstakingly picked it out all by himself to carry on a tradition started by my grandpa when I was born.  I have been anxious for her to be able to wear it, and little did I know that this occasion would work out perfectly. 

This little beauty is the most amazing blessing I have ever received. 

Witnessing history

We couldn't help ourselves.  When the Rangers won the pennant, we just had to see them play in the World Series.  We secured tickets to Game 5 and kept our fingers crossed that there would in fact be a Game 5.  And that there was.  The Rangers came into it down 3 games to 1 against the San Francisco Giants.  Of course we wanted a win, but mostly we were just excited about the experience.

We got to the ballpark before the gates even opened (which was unintentional).  There was already a huge crowd in line and I'm guessing they were all aware of when the gates opened and chose to stand there and wait.

As if she wasn't already cute enough, I had to get her some antlers to wear.  It's a shame they didn't have a more positive impact on our base running.  Wait...what am I saying.  We couldn't even get on base in the first place!  Man, that was a bummer.  In any event, my kid looks ADORABLE in antlers!

We chilled in the outfield for a bit while Daddy tried to catch a ball during batting practice and picked up a couple of souvenirs.  In a miraculous twist of fate, a dear high school friend and her family found us sitting at a picnic table and came to say hi.  If not for Meagan, I don't think Savannah would have smiled for a single picture!  Thank you Meagan!  I knew they were going to be there, but with over 50,000 in attendance, I figured there was no chance we'd run into them.  So glad we did though!

Getting ready for the game to start.  Can you see the excitement in her face?  No...?  Hmm...weird.

Ah, more excitement!  I tell ya, this kid is outta control!

She won't remember it, but we sure will.  And I plan to tell her all about it some day.  She was perfect the entire time.  We left our house at 1:30 and got home after 11:00 and she didn't fuss once.  She'd eat.  She'd snooze.  She'd flirt with the people around us.  She'd pose for a picture.  She'd repeat the whole process.

Tough loss Rangers.  Let's shake it off and have another stellar season next year!

Halloween fun

I love hand-me-downs.  Talk about money saver!  Especially when it comes to one-time-wear items like a baby's Halloween costume.  Savannah's Halloween outfit was a hand-me-down from a friend's friend.  Isn't she the sweetest little ladybug you've ever seen?!

That was just about the only smile we got out of her that evening.  Mostly, she didn't want to look at the camera and preferred to frown...as you can see...

Cory and I enjoy dressing up for Halloween, and being our first as a family of three, we wanted to coordinate somehow.  The easiest idea we came up with was for me to be a bug along with Savannah and Cory would be a bug catcher.  [I almost just put exterminator instead of bug catcher, but it really made the whole idea sound much more grim.]  So I made myself an inexpensive ... oh nevermind, I'll just say it ... CHEAP bumblebee outfit - complete with spray painted t-shirt, pipe cleanenr antennae, styrofoam cone stinger, and wire hanger/cellophane wings.

Mr. Pest Control donned khaki pants, military boots, polo with magic-markered logo, desert hat with netting hot glued to it, and a bamboo shoot/wire hanger/netting bug-catching apparatus.

I don't think we spent more than 10 dollars on all three costumes combined (which, as stated on Facebook, is painfully obvious from looking at mine).  When it comes to things like this, we are the ultimate do-it-yourself-ers...and the cheaper the better.

While we waited for the sun to start setting and trick-or-treaters to appear, Savannah and her Daddy had a little heart-to-heart about this, that, and the other.

And there's not a picture of it, but we put the little 13" TV from my craft room outside so we could watch the Rangers play while we handed out candy.  Just about every parent asked us the score as they walked by.

All-in-all, we had a pretty spooktacular first Halloween as a family.  A pumpkin was carved for each of us...a big one for Daddy, a medium sized one for Mommy, and a little baby one for Savvy.

It's just too bad that she had to go and spit up all over her ladybug outfit before the end of the night, but luckily one of her three other Halloween related onesies was close at hand.  :o)


We hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween this year!

Five months

Everyone is sleeping.  My house is quiet except for the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard.  I'm going to catch up on my blog.  Lucky for you, my friends!

So today, Savannah is one short month away from being a whole half of a year old. *bittersweet sigh*  She weighed in at 15.2 lbs and measured 25 1/2 inches long today.  Isn't she getting so big?!?!  Mercy!

Here's what's new with her since last month:

I've determined that the source of her otherwise unexplainable crabbiness of late is teething.  She's not sleeping as well at night and really struggles going down for naps during the day.  She's chewing on everything and loves for me to massage her gums with infant tooth/gum cleanser.  There's no swelling that I can see, but Orajel stops her screaming instantly, so I can only guess that she's hurting.  We've been so fortunate in all the other typically difficult areas, but I suppose it was time for her to be a challenge with something and it looks like teething is the winner.  Hooray.

She's been eating solids for several weeks now and is getting really good at the whole "open mouth, swallow food" concept.  Hardly any gets pushed out by her tongue anymore.  In addition to baby rice and oatmeal, she's tried squash, sweet potatoes, and apples.  The veggies were a big hit.  Yesterday was her first taste of apples.  She ate 'em, but I wouldn't say she loved 'em.  She made the bitter-beer face a few times, so I guess it was a little tart.  I hadn't planned to introduce any fruits this early...I wanted to get her through the main veggies first so she wouldn't be put off by them after tasting the sweet stuff, but her little tummy seemed to be having trouble adjusting, so I thought a little fiber boost would be good.  Plus, she hasn't refused anything yet, so with any luck she won't be the picky eater that her Momma is. 

On the subject of baby food, I've tried my hand at making some of her food...so far just sweet potatoes and applesauce...and it's super easy, so I'm hereby publicly devoting myself to making all of her baby food from scratch for a while.  It's not so much a "I wanna be a super-mom" thing as it is a "I wanna save money" thing. 

As of October 19th, she's officially a one-way roller-over-er.  She can flip from tummy to back like nobody's business.  Going the other way, though...eh, she's not really interested.  She just goes from side to side.  We'll keep practicing though and she'll do it when she's ready.  She spins herself around when she's on her tummy...if she could get her knees under her I swear she'd be scooting all over the place.  Lord help me when that day comes.  I like that I can lay her on the floor and walk out of the room briefly and come back to find her in the same place. 

Goodness.  She got active over the past month.  Seemed like there for a while I had nothing much new to report, and now suddenly I'm able to write a short novel about my sweet baby.  So there you have it.  On with the sixth month of life we go!

Savannah is a...

great big yawnin'...

bathtime lovin'... 

tiny toes grabbin'...

airplane cruisin'...

exersaucer playin'...

striped sock chewin'...

bib and babydoll snugglin'...

rally cap wearin'...

crazy hair sportin'...

tummy time nappin'...

solids eatin'...

seriously concentratin'...

tongue stickin' outin'...

beautiful bundle of pure JOY!

A new venture (cont)

So my best friend Tisha was the first to follow through and send me pictures to have a collage (or three) made.  Here are the results.  Smashing, don't you think?!?!

Tisha and Seth are both Aggies so naturally they're already prepping Gabriella for her future.  If her first word is "Whoop" I won't be surprised.  :o)

Look at those eyes!  She's gonna be a heartbreaker, folks.

Tutu cute!  Cheesy, I know, but I couldn't resist.

A family first

Over the weekend, we took our first big trip as a family of three. Destination: Eldon, Missouri. Our friends, Derrick and Jen Lodge, live there and invited us to visit before Derrick deployed to Afghanistan.

Cory and Derrick go way back. They met in the Air Force and have been stationed/deployed together at different points for a number of years. He was also Cory's best man when we got married!  That's him and Jen (5 months preggo with Riley at the time) walking with me and Cory through MGM Grand.

The trip was great!  Cory and I both needed a break from our everyday routines.  We left Thursday afternoon when he got home from work and just agreed to take the drive easy, stop when we needed to for Savannah, and just make it as far as we could before stopping for the night.  Cory told me hilarious Air Force stories along the way and the drive went surprisingly fast.  We were aiming to make it to Joplin, but when we got there and found out that Springfield was only another hour away, we decided we could make it.  That meant our drive would be less than 2 hours the next day.

We were so excited to finally make it to Eldon.  While we were there, we hung out, talked, went to Derrick's parents' house for dinner, watched a little Eldon High School football, left the kiddos with a sitter and went out...all kinds of stuff.  The big event was a pumpkin festival in a t-tiny town called Hartsburg.  It wasn't quite what anyone expected.  We pictured a big pumpkin patch with maybe 20-30 people milling around at any one time taking pictures and searching for the perfect pumpkin.  Boy were we wrong!  This town of like 100 people had been invaded by thousands and thousands of people who were not only in search of the perfect pumpkin in the one tiny pumpkin patch we saw, but who were also accosted by countless vendors selling the sorts of things that are cool for a minute, but then quickly become that thing you wish you hadn't wasted money on because it'll never get used or doesn't go with the decor of your house.  We made the most of it though! :o)  Mostly we all just walked around aimlessly, ate a little fair-type food, picked a pumpkin or two, and then hit the road back to Eldon.  Savannah was a peach while we were there even though it was pretty warm outside.  She chilled in the stroller at first then perched like a big girl in the Baby Bjorn.

The time came on Sunday when we had to get back in the car and head toward Texas.  It was sad to say goodbye, especially knowing Derrick was leaving for Afghanistan, but we're already planning the next get-together after he gets home in June or July.

The drive home was not as easy as the drive there - mostly because we were more aware of how far it was I think.  Savannah still did really well despite having a stuffy nose and not feeling well.  Our last leg of the trip was kicked off with an ice cream stop in Sherman.  It provided one of the most ... umm, odd moments of the whole vacation.  We sat down, I started feeding Savannah, and Cory went to get ice cream for us.  Savannah was her typical charming self and was smiling and laughing which apparently caught the attention of one bold, and old, lady.  She approached and confidently stated with arms extended, "give me back my baby now!"  Umm, NO!  She was prepared to take what wasn't given to her, that being my kid, but Cory jumped in and sweetly explained that Savannah was sick and we didn't want to spread her germs.  Bullet dodged there!

The woman stood there and continued to chat it up with us about how beautiful our baby was, etc. which is all well and good, but you can understand that we were exhausted and not in the mood to humor Chatty Kathy for very long.  She finally let us be, we finished feeding the kid, ate our ice cream, and headed to the car to finish our drive home, but not before receiving a hearty "be safe, girl!" from our dear ol' friend Kathy.

Give me a 'C'!

A 'C' for cereal, that is!  After Savannah's 4-month well baby check last week, it was confirmed that she has definitely hit all of the milestones for starting solids.  She has doubled her birth weight and weighs at least 13 lbs, drinks 32 oz of formula a day, and can lift and support her head.  YAY!  So after we got home from Missouri (which will be the topic of my next post), we gave it a try and it went a little like this:

Food in...

Sad...

Happy...

Sad...

 More please...

Repeat.

Even though she didn't much enjoy the experience, she was fat and happy at its conclusion.  We'll keep practicing, and I'm sure she'll be happily eating from a spoon in no time.

Four months

Yes, it's true.  My daugther is 1/3 of the way to turning one year old.  Happy four months, honeybun! 

This stage has been so much fun.  She's practically all smiles and laughed her first real laugh the other day (Sept. 29).  It was priceless!!  And luckily, I had my voice memo app open to record it. 

Savannah's fourth month was a social one.  At the beginning of it, we took our first trip to White Deer to see Gamma and Grrdad.  She also got to meet her great grandparents (Loyd and Nell Short), aunt Brandi, cousin J, and lots of friends at the Friday night football game.  In the middle, she met our new little neighbor Brock for the first time apart from our visit to the hospital when he was born.  And at the end, she had a play date with Abigail and went to the zoo with Jack.  This little girl likes to be out 'n' about!

In other news, her hair has been falling out like crazy.  But, on the up side, there's a lot of new hair growing in that's filling up the bald places so she doesn't look quite so funky. 

She's also taken to napping on her tummy.  While she's not rolling over completely by herself yet, if she's even the slightest bit sleepy during "tummy time," she'll bypass holding up her head after I've helped her roll over and just lay her head down to rest instead.  Can't blame the girl, I sleep better on my stomach, too.

And, she LOVES bathtime!  She kicks and splashes all the time and gets really excited when I pour water on her.  I had fun last night playing with what little hair she has left.  I'm sure she'll hate me for this some day, but I just think it's so darn cute!

First trip to the zoo

Today, Savannah and I joined Courtney and Jack for a trip to the Fort Worth Zoo. 

Although it was Savannah's first official trip, at three months old, she's clearly not going to remember it.  Not to mention that she and Jack slept for the majority of the time we were there (much to mine and Courtney's delight!).  Grown up conversations are a necessity every now and then.

I'm ashamed to say I didn't snap too many pictures, but when she's older and can appreciate the awesomeness that is the zoo, I'll do better.

We got home, and she was so pooped out that this ...

... didn't take long.

I'm also sad to say it didn't LAST long, for she is now hollering at me.  Hasta luego, friends.

A new venture

It's something I've been thinking about for a long time ... starting a small business.  I have always, always loved photography, but I just really don't have aspirations to do it professionally.  Mostly because I don't want to give up my weekends which I'm sure I'd have to do. 

But a couple of years ago, as I started getting better with Photoshop, I began to dabble with making photo collages.  I've honestly only done a few. 

My earliest was a gift to Cory after he'd mentioned not having any pictures of me at work.  I can't find the file anywhere - though I'm sure it's saved on a disk somewhere in this house - or else I'd post it. 

My next was for a former coworker who wanted something special done with her son's senior pictures.  I made several variations, but this is the version that she chose.

Then there's this one I just made with the awesome pictures my friends, Chris and Tiffany, took a few weeks ago.  Thank you Pirtle Photo!

I will say this about it...without good photos, only so much can be done to make a good collage.  I love this one I made of Savannah, but I know it's mostly because the pics themselves are so great.  Over the years though, I've gotten significantly more skilled with Photoshop and have confindence that I can make just about anything with it.

In addition to the collages, I've made a couple of birth announcements - ours for Savannah and one for a friend.

Obviously, to make a real go of it, I have to do some major brainstorming and planning.  And.......I need to have a strong portfolio of examples.  With that being said, I'm gonna throw an offer out there to all of my faithful readers.  If you have digital images of your family, children, pets, or whatever, that you'd like put together into an 8x10 or larger photo collage, let me know!  I'll put a collage together for you and send you the file or upload it the the photo processing center of your choice for you to print and enjoy.  Sound good?  Ok then, send me comments or Facebook messages if you're interested!