Fun in the Rain

It all starts Thursday afternoon… the neighbor spots me outside and asks us to go to the local bar for dollar burgers (the cheeseburgers are a buck on Thursdays!) and I tell her I threw a roast in the crockpot this morning so we won’t be going. 

Later that afternoon the other neighbor asks me if we are going for dollar burgers?  All the neighbors are going!  Pure pressure!!

5 o’clock rolls around and my roast is not done yet!!  We go for dollar burgers with the neighbors!  : )

I get a kick out of going to public places with my dear sweet neighbor ladies.  They know (literally) everyone in town – their name, what they do, how many times they have been married, been in the trouble with the law, where they live, how many kids… it’s wild!  While we chat and eat I get to learn everything about the others in the restaurant with us.  Actually scratch that… we were not in a restaurant we were in a bar.  So you really know the kind of dirt they had to share with me about the locals.

While they are dishing out dirt the one neighbor tells us that they have free Country Fest tickets if we know anyone who wants to go.  REALLY?  Then we found a Country Fest flyer in the bar and I got to see the line-up for the weekend and Friday night was Lady Antebellum and Tim McGraw!!!  You’ve got to be kidding me.  I immediately screamed to Jesse… Can you and Jerry stay home with Mallory while Steph and I go to Fest?  He said, of course.  I had him call Steph and talk her into going with me.  : )  I don’t think he had to do too much talking to get her to go!  Then I made her say… Lynn is the coolest sister-in-law ever!  : )  Okay, I’m her only sister-in-law… but I’m the coolest!!  I just scored us free tickets!!

Friday rolls around and it starts out nice and hot!  Perfect for an outdoor concert!  I can’t wait.  Then I decided to check the weather – big storms headed our way.  Tornado watches!  Ick!  We go anyway – I just pack my umbrella and my full rain suit from when I lived in Rainy Oregon.

I bet not after 10 minutes of arriving – we had to put on our rain jackets and hats!  It was starting to rain already and we hadn’t seen anyone play yet.

Guess who I found?  My little brother and his girlfriend!!  They are at Fest for the entire weekend and saved us seats… third row behind VIP!  So sweet of them!!

JoDee Mosina played first.  I forgot how many good songs she has.  She was very funny too.  I liked her!

  Then it really started to rain and the crowd started to look like this…

  Oh not the entire place looked like us!!!  I was literally in my rain jacket and my rain pants!  Yes I had rain pants on!!!  There were girls running around in their skimpy bikinis and cowboy hats in this down pour!  Guys running around with no shirts on in this down pour!  They acted like they didn’t even know it was raining!!  I did not see a single other person in their rain pants and jacket – but Steph tells me she did – I think she lied to make me feel better!  : )

Half way thru Lady A we spotted some clearer skies headed our direction!!

During slow songs Steph and I had some fun with the camera!  :)

Then as we are playing and giggling and screaming – don’t post THAT picture on the blog of me!  This guy is walking by us talking on his cell phone.  He stops in front of us and sticks his hand in front of my camera and says- oops.  My camera didn’t flash and I yell – You broke my camera!  He just says sorry and continues standing in front of us talking away about I don’t even know what.  Then he wanted to be in the picture with us. My camera was still not working (I think it was on the verge of rain damage) and we told him he better go talk to his girlfriend he had on his cell phone.  To which he replys… What girlfriend?  Hahaha!  We finally got rid of him!

I really liked Lady A!  Thought they were super fantastic!

Then came Tim McGraw!  Now, I think this was my 4th time seeing him.  My first time was at this same place when I was about 16 or 17!  My parents had went to Fest for the weekend and came back early on Sunday and that night Faith Hill and Tim McGraw were to play and they weren’t going!  I was in shock!  So they slipped off their wrist bands and off I went with Jesse (who I was dating at the time), his brother, and his friend Brad.  I remember Jerry got sick on something we ate and spent the night laying in the back seat of the car.  I think Brad had recently broke up with a girlfriend and was singing this funny song about girls.  Good memories!

I don’t know what it is about me – but I get sassy when I get around… well… drunk people.  I think they are funny!!  I talk back to them.  I sometimes yell back.  Let me give you a few examples from the night…

We are in row 3… but to everyone else it was Main Street.  Everyone walked up and down our row in front of us!  One guy walks by and stops right in front of me and says to me “Do you have a cigarette?”  I looked at him and said “I never smoked a day in my life!  Now move it!”  To which he replied “How rude.” and slowly slinked away.

Then there was this couple -  Sober girlfriend trying to lead her drunk boyfriend out of a crowd of people.  Yup, she picked “Main Street” to lead him down and then decided to go up to “2nd Street” and got stuck right in front of us.  She turned around to go back down “Main Street” except drunk boyfriend thought she wanted to kiss.  I yell “Kiss at the campground!”  They were standing right in front of us blocking our view!  She replied… “I know, I’m trying to get him there.”  Hahaha!  Now that he had gotten one kiss, he wanted more!  She had a heck of time getting him out of there!

We got so tired of people walking in front of us and stopping in front us of that we decided we were moving our row up right next to the row in front of us.  I kid you not… People still tried to get thru there!!!  Then they would realize they would get stuck and try to go behind us and move our chairs – pretty soon our chairs and not even by us anymore. 

One guy steps on Steph foot and she screams “OUCH!”  It immediately stops him in his tracks and he apologizes and points to his cheek and says – lets make it even, hit me.  Hahaha!  She gives him a little tiny slap and he says – you can hit harder then that!

One group of guys came and they are chatty and trying to walk between my brother and I and go behind us.  I yell, $5 to cross here.  They thought it was only $5 to stand next to me and then wanted to stand there the rest of the night.  Beat it Punks!

Concert is over and it is almost 1am and we are sitting in a parking lot going no where.  We crank the radio and dance and scheme up ways to get us out quicker.  A group of punks is walking by and they are running up to vehicles and folding in the side mirrors and shouting out numbers.  I think the number had to do with how many mirrors they had folded.  The girls runs up to our vehicle on my passenger side and slams my mirror shut and yells out a number and takes off running.  I yell “Don’t mess with a Jeep!” (We took the Jeep – I figured we could get into some nasty parking and I didn’t want the beast of a truck to deal with!)  To which a guy comes up and says, “You’re right this is a nice jeep, sir!”  “I’m not a sir!!!”

What more can you ask for when it comes to a country concert in the middle of a farmers field and the pouring down rain?!  It made for one tired mommy the rest of the weekend!!

Mally in Action

I pulled out my old (much smaller camera) last night to clear off the memory stick so I could use it tonight.  Much to my surprise it was full of videos of when Mally was a baby!  She was just beginning to roll over!  They could almost bring tears to a mommy’s eyes!! 

Then it made me sad that I haven’t taken any videos of her since she was beginning to roll!!  So I took one of her this afternoon while she was playing in the kitchen cupboards.  She is usually not very patient while I do the dishes, but today she was playing hard.

Hope you enjoy seeing her in action and hearing her little voice.  : )

Jesse Dirt

When my cousins were little they called Jesse… Jesse Dirt.  Something to do with the movie Joe Dirt and that Jesse’s parents house had piles of gravel and dirt (for their construction business) in the yard.  I think at one my point they even thought that Joe Dirt was Jesse’s brother.  I know.  Lovely!  : ) 

However, if Jesse had a landscape business I think he would have to call it Jesse Dirt.  He has been landscaping up a storm the last couple of weeks… make that months.  The last two weekend he tackled landscaping around the house, which entailed many trips to his Dad’s gravel pit to pick rock.  Trips to the garden center for wood chips, bushes, trees, plants.  Trips to my Mom’s for flowers.  Flagging down a random dump truck that kept driving by the house to see if they would bring him a load dirt – they did.  Trips to the neighbor’s to get their rock they no longer needed.  And a lot of hard work and heavy lifting in the hot sun!

I tried to get some pictures, but I can’t stand the color of our house so I didn’t take very many.  I think next summer’s project is to get different siding.

This tree is called Summer Glow Tamarack.  I think this is my favorite tree/bush that we planted.  It will “glow” this pink in the summer.

Jesse Dirt being creative and planting plants in the cracks of rocks.

Jesse Dirt took a few breaks and let Maggie do her job… lick his legs and get all the dirt and sweat off them.

Mallory playing on her most awesome birthday present ever.  (My sister got it for her – and she kept telling me, “Lynn!  I got Mal the most awesome birthday present ever!”)

Maggie and Mallory playing.  Ugh.  That licking stuff!  I can’t take it!  You can be sure I was yelling, “Maggie!  Stop it!”  The trouble is Mallory kind of likes it.  She giggles and chases after Maggie for more.  GROSS!  She is not my kid!

We also planted hostas around our pine trees that we trimmed up.  Jesse Dirt had us move them twice!  We planted them and then he really did not like where we planted them and we had to move them all again – closer to the tree.

Almost a month ago now, we put in this firepit.  Talk about a lot of hard work- this was hard work!  We went out to the gravel pit and search and search and searched for flat rocks that we could use.  We then rented a tiller from the hardware store and tilled up a huge square of lawn so that we could bury the rocks.  We dug a hole and nested EACH rock into the ground.  Then we had to completely bury the rocks and rented a compactor to compact the dirt and rocks in so that they were nice and snug and wouldn’t move.  THEN we had to find the rocks we buried!  That took so long, because we didn’t remember where they all were.  We looked like we were digging for bones out there with our little brooms searching for these rocks.  However, when you found one we got very excited.  And when we found a big one the excitement was even more!  Of course once that was all done, we had to plant more grass seed and wait for the grass to grow before we could use it.

We have it nestled in the back yard near the gardens.  Now I need to wait for Walmart to clearance their big huge mega pots so I can snag a few and put them around edge of the pit next summer for my pops of color!!

Mallory loves to garden!  She would seriously stand here all day if I let her.  She jabbers away and torments my plants.

She even chews on these rocks.  When I’m not looking she rubs her bottom teeth on the rocks.  I don’t know how she can do it – makes my skin crawl.

I already have a pepper!  This one is called a Chinese Giant.  He is not very giant like… but maybe he will get bigger.

On Saturday we worked from the time we got up to the time it got dark out.  When it got dark we called all the neighbors and had them come over for a fire, drinks and smores.  The one neighbor came and he says… I went for a ride in my car (he has an old huge white convertible that he takes out on only super nice days) and I get back and that dang neighbor is still working.  I can’t have that so I planted four more rows of corn.

Now, this neighbor is probably in his 50s or maybe even in his 60s.  He says he always use to be the last one in the neighborhood to stop working now this punk kid comes here and works longer then him and he can’t have that. 

Swimming Backwards

We are finally getting our hot weather back.  This means that Mallory and I can go back outside.

I had her help me weed the garden.  Since we have raised beds she can stand next to them – which she loves!  When I pull her away to go she throws her little fit.

However, you must keep a close eye on her because she likes to eat the dirt.  I caught her with a HUGE clump of dirt in her mouth.  We are talking like the size of a grape… not nothing little.  I removed the clump, but she still had a mouth full of gritty dirty dirt. 

Then she likes to pick the plants instead of the weeds.  She tortured a pea plant.  Tried to eat a potato plant leave.  If she would only eat the lunch I provide her then she wouldn’t have to resort to eating my plants and dirt.  : )

Yesterday I took her baby tub outside, filled it with water and toys and let her go to town.  I thought she would be a little more into it then she was.

 

Until she discovered my lens cap on the ground and went crawling for it.

She even tried to put it back on while I am trying to take pictures of her.

The last month or so I went back to Auto on my camera.  I don’t know why… I think I was just lazy and didn’t want to think about all the steps in manual mode.  But during this outing I went back to manual mode.  I need to stay here because the colors are so much brighter when in manual vs. auto… at least I think so.

 

My crawler took off! 

 

 

Just in case you were thinking… Aw Mally’s swimsuit is so cute.  Um, it might be even more cute if her Mommy didn’t put it on backwards!!!

I didn’t notice it was backwards until we were almost done outside and she got away from me and I looked at her and thought… why does this show so much of your diaper?  That looks really stupid and not appropriate for babies.  Then I look to see if I have it on right, nope!  It is backwards!

That Mom

Have you seen that mom at the grocery store where the kids are crying and that mom is just pushing her cart still doing her thing totally ignoring her children?  I’m not proud to say it, but I was that mom yesterday!!

I haven’t been real grocery shopping in over a month.  Sunday night I sat down and picked out 10 meals and made a list.  Yesterday afternoon after Mally had all her naps and a snack, her and I head to the store.  It starts out all fun and giddy.  She stares down people who walk by and smiles at the ones who look back.  She is chewing on my car keys and showing them to me over and over.  A couple isles in I think… man my key fob is soaked I hope baby drool doesn’t break it.  I then take them away because I fear that she will ruin them.  Her world has been crushed – she starts crying!  I try to distract her, but she is trying to turn around in the cart and reach back to the diaper and grab the keys.  I pick up a box of mac ‘n cheese and show her that if she shakes it it will make noise.  Content!  She shakes and chews on the mac ‘n cheese for a few more isles… until I look down and see that she has chewed a HOLE in the box and has cardboard dust all over face!!! 

I’m only half way into my shopping and break down and bust out the snacks.  I try to hold off as long as I can for fear of running out too soon.  I take away the box and give her a graham cracker. 

Once the graham crackers are gone she starts turning around in the cart and grabbing the groceries.  She grabs a bag of chips and starts banging.  Pretty soon she throws them out.  Now I have moved everything out of her reach and she is trying to grab a frozen pizza, but she can’t get a good grip on it and is starting to get mad.  I keep moving her hand off the pizza and telling her no.  After about 189 times she finally got really mad and my telling her no and she starting crying.  To which I was like, YES!  I WIN!  and keep pushing my cart with  a wailing child in it.  I even had a little old grandma walk by and she turned to stare at my red faced, running nose, crying child.  Except… I wanted out of this grocery store and I was on a mission to get this done – so I keep on doing my thing totally ignoring her. 

Then we get to the checkout.  Checkouts are a parents worse nightmare!  They are tight isles!  They have lots of colors and fun things to look at!  I have to strategically place my cart so that I can unload it – yet Mally is out of reach of all things colorful and fun.

My checkout guy is kind of slow and Mally is on the verge of loosing it even more.  I’m talking to Mally trying to distract her from the waiting and waiting.  The checkout guy says… are you trying to teach her?  I looked at him and said, yes I’m trying to teach her to be patient!  (Now hurry it up because she gets her patience from her mother!)

Finally we get back to the safety of our truck and I plop her in her seat and she is quiet as a mouse and just sits there and watches me get drenched in the rain while I unload the groceries.

Now I know why Moms shop alone in the wee hours of the night while their babies are at home safe in bed!!

Slumber Party!

Guess who came over for Mallory’s first slumber party!?! 

Cousin Ellyn!!!

These two are trouble!!

We made a little nest on Mallory’s floor for Ellyn to sleep.  

In the morning around 7:30 Mallory is crying.  I go in there to find Mallory standing up in her crib crying and Ellyn missing.  I had a moment of panic that I lost Ellyn.  I feared that she sleep walked right out of my house and I never heard her.  Then I became rational again and checked the bathroom and she was in there. 

When Ellyn came back into Mallory’s room she tells me that they have been playing in there and that Mallory was just crying because she left to go to the bathroom.  I never heard them playing.  Ellyn even said that Mallory was giggling pretty loud.  Makes my heart melt thinking of them two waking up and playing.  Too cute!

During Mally’s morning nap El and I went outside.  We started out weeding the garden but that got boring for her.  Then she wanted to play hopscotch. 

She even got Jesse to play once!  : )

Ellyn didn’t even want to go home on Saturday morning.  She kept asking us if we knew where her babysitter lived and if we could just take her there on Monday morning.  Oh silly girl!  We will have to have more slumber parties for these girls!  They both loved it!

12 Months!

My last monthly update… or maybe not.  : )  I can’t decide if I want my updates to be done now that she is one or if I should keep doing them.  I guess I’ll see what the next month brings.  Maybe I could do them quarterly.

~ Toddler!  I get weekly updates from babycenter.com and they always said something like “Your baby at Month 6”  Now they say “Your Toddler”.

~ Giggles!  She giggles more now.  It use to be really hard to get her to giggle and now she seems to do it all the time. 

~ Cheesy Grins!  She has this cheesy little grin she does.  Last night we were eating supper and she went to drop a piece of food overboard and Jesse was telling her “No.  Mally you eat it.”  and she would just grin at him.  Then she would eat it.  Next piece – try to drop it overboard and look at Jesse to see what he was going to do.  He would tell her no again and she flashes that cheesy grin.  This time he couldn’t hold off the giggles – he put his head down and started laughing.  Which caused me to laugh.  Which caused Mally to laugh. 

   ~ Naughty!  She is not allowed to stand up at the bookshelf and pull the big books off.  She just can’t resist the big books with all the pages.  And I know when she is up there because she yells.  It is as if she wants me to know she is being naughty.  One day I squat down to her eye level (because that is what super nanny says to do) and I tell her, “No, you sit on your butt.”  And she starts poking at my face going “gonga gonga gonga!”  OMG!!  I couldn’t hold in the laughter.  I put my head down so she couldn’t see me and I silently giggled.  Pretty soon she is full on giggling!!!  How does she even know I am giggling!  Naughty girl!

~ She understands so much of what we tell her.  When she is standing at the baby gate and I need to get in – I tell her to sit on her butt and she plops right down.  One afternoon I was so exhausted I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer so I told Mally that Mommy needs a 5 second nap and to go get me her blanket.  She went and got her blanket and gave it to me.  Then I told her that Mommy need her giraffe to sleep with.  She surveyed the room for the giraffe, spotted it, and off she went to get it and bring it back to me.  I also made her go get her bunny… which she did and brought it back. 

~ Her Memory!  One afternoon I was playing with her little bunny and singing “Little Bunny Fu Fu”.  The next afternoon I was in the kitchen doing dishes and she was starting to get fussy and climb up my legs so I started signing songs with her.  I started signing Little Bunny Fu Fu and all of sudden she took off for the living room and I couldn’t figure out what she was doing.  Pretty soon she brings me that little bunny I was playing with the day before.  I was shocked!

~ Talking!  She doesn’t say a whole lot of anything that is too understandable.  She says, Momma and Dada and I haven’t figured out if she is using them correctly yet.  She was saying “uppy” for puppy, but now she says “woof woof” when she sees the puppy.  If you ask her what a puppy says she will do her little “woof woof”.  I almost think she said “eese” (cheese) when I held up the block of cheese yesterday.

~ She claps!  I had been trying to get her to clap for so long and she would just hold onto my hands and clap them together.  One day while she was in her high chair she started clapping and hasn’t stopped since. 

~ Eating!  She is on 100% table food.  She eats just about anything and everything you give her.  If she doesn’t like it – she spits it out.  Her favorite is toast.  If I am going to give her applesauce and toast for breakfast she will refuse the applesauce until her toast is gone.  Although, if I tell her she has to take one bite – she will immediately open up her mouth and take her one bite.

~ 75th Percentile!  She had her one year appointment yesterday and she is weighing in at 22 pounds and 30 inches long.  They also gave her FOUR shots and then had to poke her finger and take blood.  Oh she was not happy!  It breaks my heart seeing her get these shots.  When they pricked her finger they put a bright pink band aid on it and she just sat there crying and wiggling her finger with that band aid on it.  I got her all calmed down and went to the truck and when I put her in the carseat and she saw that bright pink band aid she started crying all over again.

~ Teeth!  She currently has 3 teeth, one on top and two on the bottom.  She is also working on 3 more right now.  Between the teeth coming and the mean nurses giving her shots… poor little sweetie pie!

~ Climbing!  She climbs up the stairs all by herself.  She has also now figured out how to lift her legs up when we are walking up stairs.  Before she would just stand there and you would have to pick her up, but now she can “walk up them”. 

~ Walking!  She loves to walk – but isn’t anywhere close to being ready to do it on her own.  She holds onto both hands to walk or she pushes her toys around to walk.  I’ve tried to make her walk only holding one hand and she doesn’t like it.  She will only take a few steps and then refuses to move and whines.   

~ Sleeping!  She is my fantastic little sleeper.  She is still taking two naps a day.  (I’m not ready for one nap a day – I work during naps and most of the time I am trying to get both my jobs squeezed into those two naps.  So when she goes down to one nap I’m really going to have work even faster then I already do!)  She goes to bed about 7:30 and wakes up around 7:30.  I love it!!  Hopefully all our children will sleep this well – makes me a bit nervous to have anymore.

See that little giraffe laying on the ground – she loves it!  She takes it every where.  It is funny to us that she has taken a liking to this hard plastic giraffe. 

Thanks for enjoying these monthly updates and watching our sweet baby girl grow into a giggly toddler!  : )