11 Months

   So much has changed in the last month, I feel like I have a whole new baby!  She is a speedy little crawler, and she could get into anything if I'd let her.  Our house is officially Baby-Land, with gates, corrals, outlet covers, toys and cheerios everywhere.  She is constantly moving.  She can walk one-handed and stand up on her own.  She cruises around everything and she has even taken one step on her own (although I think she might have just lost her balance).  Her newest thrill is dancing.  Whether standing or sitting, as soon as she hears music she bobs up and down or back and forth.
   She has also started "putting away" and sharing her toys.  I have found her filling buckets, bread pans, orange cones and shoes with toys.  She loves to move things back and forth and fills my lap with toys.
  She has a growing fascination with her feet.  If she is standing, she likes to pat things with her feet or she will put her feet up when she is sitting at the table.  She loves when I play with her piggies.
   She is becoming so goofy, and I think she has her parents' strange sense of humor.  Sometimes she will laugh just because of the way I look at her.
   I can't believe that this is my last monthly post before her first birthday.  Every day I wish that I could just press Pause on her and keep her from growing just a little while longer.  Just long enough to catch up.  I don't think I'm ready for her to keep growing and I'm so afraid that I'll miss something or that I'll forget the most beautiful little moments.
   It makes me sad to know that she won't remember this time.  She won't remember all the cuddles and story times, or how she fits so neatly between my arms, pressed against my chest. 
   People might make fun of moms for being cheesy and emotional, but there is never any time that I have been more happy and fulfilled and full of love than when I'm holding my child.  I never understood that before I had her, and I never would have.  That's also why moms have ladies retreats and go to Mama Mia together.  We need to be around other people who are the same kind of crazy.

  Emotional mommy stuff: CHECK
  Up next: BRAGGING

Cool stuff she can do:
   crawl
   walk while holding one hand
   stand alone (while clapping, too)
   dance
   make monkey and elephant noises, and woof
   fill things with toys and share
   drink from a cup
   wave hello
   play peekaboo and hide and seek

Favorite things of assorted varieties:
   wheeled push toy
   blocks
   pictures of people, especially babies and people she recognizes
   tomatoes, asparagus and cheerios or any food on the floor
   emptying the dishwasher and the pantry
   kids
   being carried on our shoulders
   being tickled by feet
   streaking

Tooth count:
   Two on the bottom, two more on the way on the top
  
 

Empty Plomises

Eight-month pictures are coming soon,  I plomise!!!!  Do you ever have one of those days where you finally get the motivation to write a blog and take cute pictures of your kid and then you turn on your camera and it decides to take a nap instead of a picture and so you have no way of accomplishing anything?  I know you do, admit it.  Well apparently, setting my camera down on the counter is too much abuse for it to handle, so I'm out a camera for a while.  I may be taking monthly pictures with my phone.  I'm kind of heartbroken about it.
On the flip-side, I'm so excited to tell you all about what Little has been doing lately!  She is turning into a real person that wiggles and throws fits when you take thing from her.  You're gonna love it, trust me.
Spring is in the air here in Alexandria.  Tulips are starting to pop up and birds are singing.  I even got to wear HEELS yesterday.  (Have a little sympathy.  I'm not the type to endanger my life by wearing heels on icy snow banks, so this is a big deal.)  I finally made it to the library on Saturday and picked up a book on vegetable gardening.  I want to start a veggie garden on my balcony, but I'm having mixed feelings of excitement and apprehension for a few reasons:

1. My last garden failed miserably.  Only a third of what I planted sprouted.  The things that did grow got eaten by bugs, bunnies, squirrels, disease and homeless people.  Except for the lettuce.  I did have monster lettuce.
2. I have to buy dirt and pots and seeds and plants and manure and trellises and a bucket for compost and a baby guard and shiny reflective thingies.
3. My balcony only gets about an hour of sun per day.  From what I hear, most plants require some amount of sunshine in order to grow and, you know, live.

Have you ever tried to grow vegetables?  What kind of issues did you run into, and what did you do about it?

If my garden doesn't work out, I'll probably have to get a cat.  If I'm going to be a stay-at-home mom, I have to be some sort of crazy.  If I can't be a crazy plant-lady, I'll have to be a crazy cat-lady.

Spewing fire and generally complaining!

I bought my first car in August 2009, a manual Saturn SL 2001.  I was so proud of myself for finding a good car and negotiating a good price for it by myself.  I drove it everywhere, 20 minutes to work every day, 30 minutes to church three times a week and an hour to see David when we were dating.  In September 2009, I found out that one of the gaskets were cracked and that oil was leaking into my coolant.  Everyone told me this was harmless, so I bit my tongue kept on driving. 
When I got my job as a manager, I was driving in between three coffee shops, putting on about 200 miles a week.  My car never complained or protested.
In April 2010, David and I moved into downtown Minneapolis.  I had a part- time job at Dunn Bros Coffee shop about a mile away, so my car was enjoying a brief period of retirement.  But eventually, the car was victimized by the evils of big city living.  I found my car in the alley one morning with one of my windows broken and my doors open.  Since I was broke and pregnant at the time, I bandaged it up with packing tape and left the doors unlocked from then on.  Later I found my car had been rifled through again, and my gas-milage notebook and CD's had been taken.  Seriously, who still steals CD's?
In September 2010 we moved to Virginia, and so my first year with my car had come to an end.  In that whole time I had been pulled over twice, received three parking tickets, spun out in the snow once, bought two pairs of tires and had been broken into twice.  Not a big deal for a year in the life of a car.
The first few months that we lived in Virginia, we left the car in Minnesota to the care of my brother, who lovingly nursed it back to health.  He changed the tires, the wipers, fixed the radiator, and who-knows-what else.  While visiting our family over Christmas, we were reunited with our dear car, and decided it was time to take her home with us.  She carried us on the long journey home to Virginia where a knew life awaited her.
Her first couple weeks home were pretty quiet.  We visited friends, went grocery shopping, went sight-seeing.  The third week we had the car, she was towed from a friend's apartment building.  The fourth week we got a parking ticket during a snow storm.  The fifth week we got lost looking for our church, ran a stop sign and got a traffic ticket.  The sixth week the car wouldn't start and we found that the starter needed to be replaced.  The seventh week (this morning) David went outside to replace the starter and found that the car had been towed from our own parking lot (where we pay to park) for being parked over the line in an abandoned corner at three in the morning.
Considering that more bad has happened in the past four weeks than has happened in the last year, I think either my car hates Virginia and wants to go back to Minnesota, or God hates my car.  Either way, I think it's time to reconsider the future of our personal transportation, because, at this rate, our car is going to end up costing more than David's education.  There goes my ticket to personal sanity and freedom. 
One more ironic fact: today happened to be the day that David was going to take me out for dinner for the first time in two years.  Interesting.