Black and White

Evie has been rechristened Queen Grabbypants. Princess Grabbypants is so yesterday.

Oh, hello blue eye.

Evelyn also has no aversions to meat - she really seems to be favoring red meat lately as poor Mr. Cow has been her snack of choice.

"Mom, did you see me bite his head off?"

"I'm sick of cow meat, how about some camera lens?"

"Fine, I'll settle for cow."

When we were first married and taking 3 trips a week to IKEA, Nick quietly slipped this soccer ball into one of those trips. I was a little ticked even though it only cost $1. I told him we'd never use it. Not only did we use it, goofing off playing around the house before we had Evie, she now LOVES it. Its squishy and easy to grab, plus she has figured out how to pass it back to me in her own spastic way, so we can play pass with each other.

Her David Beckham impression:

Queen Grabbypants showing everybody how its done.

Nick's mom gave us this sweatshirt. I love it. But its way too big on her. I had to roll the sleeves up about 3 inches, but I wanted her to wear it so she's rocking the vintage boyfriend sweater look.

Ev has discovered that she can roll over while I change her diaper. This really hasn't been a problem until now. Luckily she can't crawl away so once she can get her hands on whatever item she is reaching for she usually turns back over and lets me put her diaper on.

Oh hey pretty baby.

Striped: Before, During, and During

Bedroom before:

During:

And during:

More to come hopefully. Once we get a lamp, paint/sand a shelving unit, figure out the dresser situation, and add some window treatments it will be finished. (Now you see why I can't wait until "After," because lets be honest - will there ever be an "After?")

It was a pretty cheap re-do. I made the yellow and reddish pillows and we purchased the paint. Those are the only "new" things. The wall is a lot bluer than I expected - I think I need a lesson in picking out paint colors. They never turn out how they look on the strip. Oh well.

FYI: Painting stripes on a wall is nauseating. Don't do it. But if you are going to ignore my advice, splurge on frog tape. That saved us a lot of time even though we didn't quite use it right. I think if we would have followed the directions exactly then it would have saved us even more time.

There it is. So many hours (Nick working, me directing) went into this baby. I told Nick we are going to knock the wall down and transport it when we move into a house. He laughed. Then I laughed because I'm dead serious.

Old Hubs

Nick is 26 today. Yowza!

More on his birthdayness (and others) to come, but for now, here's a shout out to an honestly hunky dude - my hubby!

A Series of Adorable Events

It is rare when Evie does not wake up happy. I had to document:

She makes me one happy Mama.

Princess Grabby Pants Now Owns a Toothbrush

She is so grabby. Hair, earrings, necklace, watch, camera, phone, spoon, bowl, cup, brush, lotion, knobs, mail, pens, hangers, toys, books, blankies, iPad, keys, everything!

This face means: Please give me the camera, pleeeease!"

Do it. Try and squeeze her bum - right through the computer screen. Its so luscious that you can almost feel it when you squeeze your monitor.

Don't believe me?

Try again.

You're welcome.

This is Evie before church on the Sunday before Valentine's Day.

I made her headband and skirt as part of her "gifts" from Nick and I.

She loved them, obviously.

Please ignore the mess. We spent the majority of Saturday painting and making a disaster of our bedroom.

Evie usually comes home from church looking like this:

After her post-church nap, Evster usually teases us with her almost crawling lunges. She creeps but doesn't crawl and she will reach farther than humanly possible to get something.

But she will not crawl to it.

Evie's Valentine's Day present from her parents was her first toothbrush.

She seems thrilled, yeah?

"Dang, this toothbrush is delicious. Thanks M & D."

I thought she might even crawl to get to her new and spectacular toothbrush.

But nay, I was brutally rebuffed.

"No more photos, please."

10 months!

Ev turned 10 months old this past week.

Here she is in all her 10-month glory:

She is still not crawling, but she can scoot and is getting better at standing up. I think she might skip crawling all together, but we shall see.

Proof that I'm a bad mom:

Evie is obsessed with my cell phone. I swore I'd never let her play with it, but she somehow always gets her hands on it. She has also entered the phase where when she can't have something she screams bloody murder until it is handed to her. I know, she's such a diva! I keep telling Nick he's a bad influence on her...

While she is still the reigning Queen of Chub, Ev is starting to thin out a little. I can already tell that she isn't gaining weight as rapidly as she used to. I keep waiting for her to grow out of her 12 month clothes, but to be honest, most of them are a little too big still. (I'm not complaining, I love that she has a chance to get good use out of all her cute clothes.)

I know she's still a "baby," but I feel toddler creeping up on us. It makes me sad and excited at the same time. I love watching her grow and discover new things, but putting away old clothes is depressing.

Each day she gets more and more expressive.

This is her "frustrated" face. IE: When I take too many pictures of her or I won't let her have something she wants.

Nick and I have decided that right now in this phase, she is looking more like me than she ever has. She has always looked so much like Nick, but lately I look at her and think, "Wow, I do that face all the time." (She still has her daddy's eyes though)

Evie loves electronics. (another trait she inherited from her Dad) Phones, iPads, iPods, anything that lights up. She has learned how to "unlock" the iPad by scrolling her finger across it. Is it sad that my 10-month old knows how to use it better than I do?

Syd face. This is one she does all the time that reminds me of me.

In contrast, here's a total Nick face.

We finally gave in and bought a high chair. Evie still fits in and likes her bumbo, but its kind of messy since she can flick food everywhere. The chair provides a nice backdrop for pureed fruits and veggies.

She has stopped pulling her headbands off her head for the moment. I'm savoring every second until she discovers that something is on her head again. Her sudden increase of head hair makes this development very helpful for me since I don't know how to do hair. Especially baby wispy hair. Its so cute, but what do you do with it?

Another Evie development:

Finger pointing.

This is how we jog everyday. Usually it is sprinkling or pouring rain or even hailing bullets, but Ev is always protected. Me, however, usually come home soaking wet. She loves the stroller. She does really well unless we run for more than an hour. Then she starts to get a little bit cabin feverish. Luckily we only do that once a week. (Saturdays)

Her eyes are still blue. I will probably say this until she's 35 years old because I still can't believe it! How did I get a blue-eyed baby? Ev can thank Grandma J and Grandpa Puffy because her parents had nothing to do with it.

She still loves reading in her chair. Sometimes she will just sit in it and play with her dolly. I just sit and stare because it is beyond adorable. I hope she loves to read as much as me. We go to the library every couple weeks and pick out books together - I do most of the picking out, but hopefully she will enjoy it someday too.

I know everyone says this, but every phase just gets better and better. I thought six months was my favorite, but I am really loving her 9-10 month phase. She is so much fun. She is my little partner, my buddy day in and day out. I'm just grateful she's not sick of me yet. Our days are pretty routine, but we both like that sort of thing and Ev is actually a huge fan of running errands. Probably because people stop us to tell her how pretty she is or smile and talk to her. She loves it! I won't lie, she probably got it from me. But its not my fault, I inherited it from this guy.

And in case you're wondering, Snick is still alive. Snickerdoodle often takes up 95% of our blog, but we are still here. Nick is busy (understatement) with school and he has been making a teeny bit of spare time for fishing. I love that he makes time for all the things he loves to do and still amazingly enough, can find time to do all that he has to do, plus spend time with his girls.

We've been busy with home projects lately. We painted a striped wall in our bedroom that I can't wait to post pictures of, but its not quite ready. Our sweat (Nick's) and tears (mine) went into this wall so I will be posting a hundred pictures of it. Let's just say, whenever we do home projects I am in awe of how different Nick and I are. We are seriously the perfect team - everything he hates, I love. And everything that he dislikes, I like. (As far as home improvements go) But somehow, we can still accomplish things together and have a good time. Whew!

I have been sewing like crazy lately. I sewed my first maxi skirt, some new pillows, a shirt for myself, and some skirts for Evie. I still have a couple more things I want to sew for Ev for her birthday and a few things for me as well. I still consider myself a terrible seamstress, but I really enjoy it. It makes me feel productive and accomplished while still giving me a fix to exercise the creative side of my brain.

Nick and I have also been running a little bit more and have decided to do another couple races this summer. He's trying to talk me into another half marathon, but we shall see. It was a goal of mine to do a race in between every baby to keep myself in good shape, but I didn't specify how long of a race. 13.1 miles sounds so long to me, especially since I'm only running 16 miles a week. That's almost my entire week's worth in one day! Can I really do again? I hope someday that I can.

Speaking of crazy things, my friend Emma invited me to try Bikram Yoga with her this past week. There was a deal for unlimited yoga for 10 days for $20. I did a lot of yoga before I had Ev, but its expensive for a gym membership and I don't feel comfortable leaving her with a stranger babysitting service, so I haven't really done much of it since getting pregnant with her.

Plus I'd never done Bikram Yoga so I was pretty nervous. I knew swan wouldn't come back to me on the first day, but I was still nervous.

Bikram is very different from flow yoga. Its 104 degrees and you hold the poses much longer and you basically do it a quite a bit slower.

It was so hot! I almost had to leave the room it was so hot. Direct quote from our instructor: "If you are feeling nauseous than you are doing it right!" Ha! Then I did EVERYTHING right. It felt great to get out for a little while sans baby, hang with a friend, and do something really great for my body. Its too expensive to do long term right now ($145 a month!) but Emma and I are going to get our $20 worth the next ten days.

Disclaimer - nobody wears clothes and it smells like dead sweaty dogs. Seriously, the hairiest man I've ever seen was wearing a speedo and a lot of older women (who were way more limber than me, I might add) were wearing bra and panties. I can't blame them though - it is like a sauna in there! I loved it though and hopefully someday I can talk Nick into coming with me! (Hint, hint...)

Well that's definitely a weird way to end a blog post, but that's all I've got.

Wait, how about this?

I think this makes up for a hairy man in a speedo covered in sweat, don't you?