New tricks

K, I know it's long, but this video includes: crawling, sitting, giggling, standing, dancing, and walking- with assistance (note, if you hang out til the end, the second round of walking is much better than the first).
I won't be offended in the slightest if you fast forward over the crawling... it does get better, I think, really...

He does crawl faster than that- just not on cue:). When I want him to be still, that's when he's a speeding bullet.
Forgive my frumpy clothes. I realized if I were to wait until I both had time and was presentable and Daniel was agreeable, I'd be showing off his walking skills sometime around his 5th birthday.
Note: all of our lego creations are behind the kiddy-fence in the background. Thanks to Kevin and Candace's gift, our legos (and DVDs, and harp) are kiddy-fence protected.

PS May I just say how proud I am that when he took two left steps, I said "two left feet" without even thinking about it? Usually I have to stop and make an "L" with my left hand before saying a direction.

How those resolutions are coming

The last week has been glorious. I've managed to keep my resolutions- I've cooked half our meals (a marked improvement), and Kenny has come home to no dishes, a nicely vacuumed house, and a freshly washed baby every day. I've kept internet time to a minimum (sorry for the lack of blogging), I've learned some new fancy things in photoshop (I made my own blog background entirely from scratch- I even learned how to make a flower brush and ribbon texture), I've worked on my book, I get out of my sweats at least once every day, I'm finally getting to focus on my calling a bit more, and I'm still getting enough time to relax and stay sane (only after Kenny gets home, of course).
One of our resolutions was to limit the amount of candy we buy. I know it sounds silly, but I'm a candy fiend- and when you buy a 1.50 candy each shopping trip (candy has gotten expensive!), and you end up hitting the store every day or two, it adds up. So our goal is two fold: one, only go to the store once a week (so far, so good- planning meals in advance helps a lot) and two, only buy $7.50 worth of candy each month. Anyone who knows me well will know what a trial that is for me.
The first week went great- I bought myself a bag of tootsie roll midgees for under 2 bucks and it lasted the whole week. This week didn't go as well- I bought a 1 dollar thing of Charleston Chews and downed them all the first night (mmmmmmmm). So my dear sweet husband, knowing I was finishing them off on my way to a RS presidency meeting, made me PB Cookies while I was gone so I could still have sweets (Kenny makes a WONDERFUL PB Cookie).
As I said, we're planning our menus out for the week and only shopping once a week. This has been great, if only because we both stink at making decisions and now we don't have to play the "what do you want to eat tonight?" game anymore. Also, I've listed out all the meals we eat, and we've rediscovered a few we had forgotten (like a favorite that we call "Greasy Cheesy Fatty"..... mmmmmmmmm).
I hope to be back on later to post some videos of Daniel's new tricks.

Pardon my dust

As I play with my blog layout. As much as I love cutest blog on the block, it's about time I make these things myself. I'm just fiddling with dimensions right now... I'll do something more noteworthy later.

Happy Ending for Lady

I found lady's owner through fidofinder.com. Well, not the original owner, but a nice lady who had picked her up as a stray previously and had "adopted" her so to speak. We chatted on the phone, compared notes, and I sent her the info for the shelter, so assuming Lady is still at the shelter 5 days after we dropped her off, she will be home again soon. Yay!

Resolutions

Sorry for all the posts at once, but I've been needing to get caught up and I'm on a roll.
Since my release from working full time coincided so well with New Years, and since I've always been a sucker for resolutions (I like to think I do pretty well with them), we went a bit over the top with resolutions this year. Mostly, we worked out a schedule for things to do on a weekly basis (ie- tuesday- clean the bathrooms, wednesday- vacuum). They're mostly small things- I'm not under any illusions about having tons of free time just because I am a Stay At Home mom now. No, Daniel keeps me plenty busy. But if I don't do at least one productive non-mommy thing each day, I'm pretty sure my self-esteem would take a severe blow. We're going to try it out for a little while and see how much time I have to work with, then adjust accordingly.
I also decided to limit my internet time to one hour per day. I'm a bit of an internet addict- I develop a funny twitch if I've been away from my online bulletin boards too long. So I found a nifty firefox add-on that will keep track of the amount of time you spend on the internet (you can even specify websites that "don't count" against your alloted time.)
My last resolution is to work on my novel at least a little every day. Kenny is so sweet and supportive, if this ever gets off the ground it will be thanks to him pushing me along. I'm not looking to be published (though maybe I'll try, we'll see)- I'd just be so proud of myself if I simply wrote and finished the darn thing. I also resolve to work up the guts to share aspects of the novel with people someday- right now I'm too sheepish to even talk about the plot (it's a fantasy novel).

I also decided to commit a bit more to the photography idea, I'm really enjoying it:

(though I can't wait til the baby stops wiggling so much)

PS I just wanted to note that I am now the thinnest I have been in 2 years, including the lowest points of my pregnancy. I've lost almost 40 pounds since I had Daniel. I'd pretend like diet and exercise had something to do with it, but... who are we kidding. I'm a lucky lucky girl, where "diet" means "cutting back to one candy bar a day" and "drinking more water", and "exercise" means lifting the 20 pound baby 150 times a day.

Lucy lovin

you may have already gotten the impression that Lucy and Daniel are the best of friends. They really are, and it warms my heart to see them play together. Still I didn't expect this:
Daniel is now mobile. He crawls at full speed, and gets into everything. He really loves plying with Lucy's kennel door (on her new kennel she got for christmas, which we jokingly call the "baby cage" but never use it as such:)

Kenny was watching Daniel, turned away, and when he turned back this is what he saw:


How cute is that!? He did it all by himself. And Lucy didn't move an inch.

In other news, driving home the other night Kenny nearly ran into a stray Beagle we called Lady:

She stank to high heavens, but was very sweet, very well trained and obedient, and very lonely. She'd obviously been on her own a little while, and may have recently had puppies. Unfortunately she didn't appear to be the healthiest dog so we kept her seperate from Lucy- meaning both dogs were whining all the time. This dog definitely made me appreciate what a good looking and QUIET Beagle we have- we put a lot of work into training her not to be loud and obnoxious as beagles like to be.
We couldn't keep her (financially, emotionally... we're not ready for another dog right now, nor do we want a beagle again- though we LOVE lucy, we'd like to experience another breed next time) so after posting fliers and posting her all over the web, we gave in and Kenny took her to the animal shelter. I'm glad I couldn't go, Kenny says it was heart-breaking to see. We will never "buy" a dog again- we'll always get shelter dogs in the future. Lady seemed like she'd be easy to find a home for; if not, there is a beagle-rescue organization in the area that will save her from being euthanized if it comes to that.
For my readers who have dogs: if you haven't gotten your dog micro-chipped, DO IT! I can't tell you how many "lost dog" ads I've seen online where the dog's collar or tag came off in the escape process.

Christmas

Alrighty, I'm going to have a whole bunch of posts tonight and tomorrow as I try to get caught up.
First: Christmas. Christmas was wonderful! We had a fun time on Christmas Eve at Kevin and Candaces, who provided us a DELICIOUS christmas dinner then with a re-enactment of the Christmas story:

From Christmas Pics 2008

Christmas morning, Daniel opened his first-ever present, a gift from my mom:

From Christmas Pics 2008

Kenny really did a great job of making Christmas special. Among the loot:
Kenny got a lego set, a comic book, and a video game (final fantasy tactics A2). We joke that Santa confused Kenny with a 13 year old boy, but I'm pretty sure he got it right:). I got a tripod for my camera (yay), a 640 gig external hard drive so I could reformat my compy, Spore (computer game, from my mom), MANY books (including a roald dahl collection), a lovely white sweater from my mother-in-law (who seems to have an uncanny ability for buying exactly what I need)

From Christmas Pics 2008

(by the way, this is Daniel's new favorite way to relax)
and... wait for it...
AN XBOX! Now, we had a $100 limit for buying for each other, so this was VERY unexpected. Apparently with the xbox 360 well established in the market, used original xboxs are pretty darn cheap. So kenny got me a bundle- the Xbox, Halo, Halo 2, some maps for Halo 2, and Morrowind.
The funny thing is that Kenny gave me a hint- "that I'd never guess what he bought me, but that it was VERY hard to buy because it goes so strongly against his principles". See, my husband is a nintendo man. We like the simpler games, the non-life-consuming games, that you can pick up and play with friends, where the focus is fun, ease of use, and not graphics. He also doesn't like first-person shooters very much. Combine that with some disagreements with Microsoft, and the xbox isn't high on our list of consoles (the only thing below it is the playstation3).

This purchase, especially for christmas, has some deeper significance as well. 3 years ago while we were dating, we both went to our respective homes for Christmas, and I got to play halo a bunch with my sister Becky. Kenny and I talked a lot over the phone that break, and I told him how much fun I was having with the xbox. He says the day he realized he would marry me was the day he realized he would actually consider buying an xbox for me:)- with that realization, he realized he should rather save up his money and buy me a ring instead. A good choice. All the same, I'm so happy to finally have an xbox, so we can play halo and fable and oblivion. Halo's a good co-op game we can play together- we've already been through the easy campaign and are now going through on normal (fortunately we both suck equally). We joke that I am lucky to have a husband who would buy me an xbox, and he is lucky to have the kind of wife that would ask for one:).
All in all, a WONDERFUL christmas. Having Kenny home for these two weeks has been great, I'll be sad to send him back to work on Monday.