It's all fun and games until there's no rsvp date and you have no idea how many guests are actually coming

I'm hosting a baby shower this weekend for a lady from church. Originally it was going to be a floral themed shower for just the ladies in our Sunday school class. I was 14 kinds of excited to plan the partay. It gave me the perfect excuse to use my most ornament silverware, break out fancy dishes and practice decorating for when Princess Kate comes over. We were going to eat cute food and maybe have a mimosa or two. I was contemplating putting some diamond confetti on the table because WHY NOT.

Then I had a conversation with the Sunday school teacher's wife and we decided to change the shower from a ladies only affair to a social for the whole class and their many children.

You know who won't appreciate the fancy straws I bought two months ago that inspired the color theme? Or the embossed paper napkins I ordered off etsy from a shop in British Columbia? ALL THE MEN IN OUR CLASS.

I am determined to keep this shower as classy as possible, but 12 children playing/wrestling/having a pillow fight in our living room slightly changes the dynamic of the party. I have no toys for big kids. All I have are board games, a Wii, and an impressive collection of rubber ducks. Is it brave or insane to break out the finger paints for them? 

Maybe it's for the better that the party got changed. I've been getting a little carried away and need to reign it in. I spent more than forty five minutes of my one and only life looking at paper napkins online. (I need green, but not too green. Or maybe floral. Which would be better? The straws have pink so maybe the napkins should be pink. Or gold! Gold would be lovely! But we don't want to go overboard with the gold since it's only the accent color.) 

If you need me between now and Saturday night, I'll be deliberating between utensil colors, making a tiny banner out of paper and gold thread for the cake and wrapping mason jars in burlap ribbon. 

all about Annabelle

Or Why I no longer have time to blog

* She's made it her personal goal this month to never be farther than 6 centimeters away from me. She's reached that goal over and over and over and over and over again.

A little light reading about the inventions of Benjamin Franklin.

* When she's not six centimeters away from me, I stay VERY VERY quiet and not make sudden movements so she won't realize she's not glued to my legs. One day she was occupying herself and it was so glorious that I wanted the moment to last forever. When I did look at her, she was stuffing her mouth with dirt from the little potted pine tree I bought at Christmas. I fished out as much as I could then gave her water to wash down the rest.

* Her favorite past times include:

snacks

pulling things off shelves

tugging on my pants

pushing things off the side of the tub

mealtime

investigating the trash

pulling the towel off the oven door

eating

ripping paper, specifically the mail

reading books

finding microscopic crumbs on the floor and eating them 

going for walks

banging on the bathroom door until I come out

 

 

* Sesame can say daddy, mama (rarely), duckie/duck duck, hi, bye and uhoh.

* She can sign 'please' and sometimes all done. The signing is so much nicer than her yelling for more. Sometimes she sits in the middle of the floor signing please over and over and I have no idea what she wants.

 

* Skinny Minnie is still rocking mostly 6 or 6-9 clothes. Some of her 6 month pants still fit perfectly around the waist but they've gone from pants to capris. Maybe she'll still fit in them when summer rolls around?

* She has two teeth on the bottom and some coming in on top.



* She loves music. When she hears the Gilmore Girls theme song, she'll will stop whatever she's doing and start dancing and smiling. The song All About that Bass always makes her dance. I change the words a little to make it more child appropriate. Sometimes we sing Jesus Loves Me afterwards to cleanse her mind.

* She can stand up by herself but she doesn't take any steps. 

She likes to feed Thornton his bottle after trying to drink it herself.

Do you want to build a snowman? Cause there's finally enough snow!

The unthinkable happened! It finally snowed more than 1/4 of a centimeter! Have pigs started to fly?! Is that really 6'' that I see?! No one is more beside themselves with joy than Sesame and I. She may have been born in the south but my baby is a good little northerner. She loves the snow.

I want to proclaim from the rooftops that this is the best weather we've had all year and we should drink hot chocolate to celebrate! Let's go shopping while there are no lines, no waiting! I can finally wear my snow boots! Six inches is basically only a heavy dusting!

The rest of the town doesn't share our enthusiasm. Everything is shut down. School was canceled today because it snowed an additional .5'' last night. There are no plows to clear the roads. The

mailman abandoned his motto of "neither snow nor sleet nor rain shall keep me from my job" and hasn't shown up in days. Fort Campbell has shut down so Christopher hasn't gone to work all week. THE END OF THE WORLD HAS COME.

A wise man once said, "There is no one as self-righteous as a northerner living in the south when it snow." How right he is.

true love isn't all roses and rainbows

We had plans to be out of town this weekend so I didn't decorate the house with hearts, buy ingredients to make red pancakes or spend precious moments of my life cutting strawberries into X's and O's. I planned on being reunited with Michelle and spending the day wandering the streets of Ohio in search of the thieves who stole my computer talking a mile a minute about everything and nothing. As life goes, Christopher caught the stomach bug a few hours before we were scheduled to leave. As much as I wanted to see Big Belly Shelly (her words, not mine!), we didn't want Christopher to have to suffer through ride as sick as he was so we stayed home.

Annabelle had a great day. She ate fried rice for lunch and her little life was made. I thought I was SO WITTY to think up this little tag to put on her fruit squeezie valentine. Turns out 148 other moms on pinterest had the same idea.

I left this sweet note for Christopher earlier in the week.

Let it never be said I don't know how to write a love letter.

time to kick this infections butt

This morning I went to the doctor for the fourth time in six weeks about my lingering sinus infection/ear infection/intense pressure/I'd like a face transplant problems. The doctor said not only would she give me a new extra extra strength prescription, she'd have the nurse give me a steroid shot. She said, "Generally we don't give it in the arm because it's a big needle."

That's how I ended up like this-

So how was your day? Any awkward moments? 

overall it was one fashion I throughly enjoyed

The other day Annabelle and I were wandering around Gap looking for nothing in particular. I saw these overalls and said to her, "Mama would have loved that outfit when she was 12."

Not four hours later Autumn texted me this picture. It's my twelve year old self in my favorite overalls. The turtleneck and party hat really finish the ensemble off nicely.

I believe the word you're searching for is h-o-t.

and just like that January is over

It snowed yesterday!! Our backs almost broke from all the shoveling.

I can't believe it's already February. That means my baby will be one next month. ONE YEAR OLD. How did this happen? Wasn't she just born eight minutes ago? Wasn't I just sobbing uncontrollably after my csection? I still haven't recovered from that experience. Wasn't I just taking fourteen million pictures of her first bath? Now she's outgrown her baby tub so she sits in a laundry basket in the big tub and eats the shampoo bottle. Wasn't I just watching Christopher give her a bottle for the first time? This morning she ate pancakes for breakfast with the appetite of a teenage boy. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE AND HOW CAN I MAKE IT STOP. The only thing keeping me from going into deep, deep depression is planning her birthday party. I almost can't type the words "birthday party" without hyperventilating. It's bumblebee themed and naturally she'll wear her tiara because she's the queen bee. We've mailed an invitation to Prince George but he hasn't replied yet. We'd be happy to reschedule the party to accommodate any conflicts with his social calendar. 

(Brief intermission. I hear some screeching from the crib.)

(Four hours, one lunch, two nursing sessions, a trip to Gap, a stop at Walgreens and I'm back.)

I declared We decided as a couple to make February the month of no unnecessary spending. I don't generally spend much money anyway but someone around here really needs to learn how to rein it in. That Annabelle thinks money grows on trees. I thought we were going to fail before we started when, on February 1st, Christopher suggested we stop at Panera on the way home from church. I shut that down real fast. Yesterday Sesame and I went to Once Upon A Child to find some pants that fit. She has the waist of a 6 month old but the legs of a five year old. Wouldn't you know that the ONE time they have bows 50% off is three days after I start my self-imposed spending ban. I tried to justify buying twelve by saying they were different styles than she already has and, everyone knows, bows are as vital to life as oxygen so it was a necessary purchase. I wonder if there's therapy for bow addicts.  

If we can't have new bows at least we have crowns.