Mid-Trip Update

So, a few weeks ago Mike and I decided a trip to Miami was in order for Logan and I. He has some big projects for school and is getting ready to finish out the semester, so we figured now would be as good a time as any to leave the house quiet and peaceful for him. I envy the fact that he's getting complete nights of sleep and is able to sleep past 8:15am when our alarm clock (cough...Logan...cough) usually wakes us up.

We've been having a great time hanging out in the warmer weather here with family. I figured I'd share some of our adventures through pictures! So here ya go:


We got in Wednesday evening and ate a quick dinner, stocked up on baby necessities and came home to take a bath and go to bed. Thursday mid-morning, Tita (my grandmother) came to pick us up and we went to Babies-R-Us and to lunch with her. Logan didn't quite know what to think of the big store but sure was happy with all of the goodies that were bestowed upon her by her "bis"tita (in Spanish, bisabuela is how you say great grandma and since I've always called her tita, we jokingly call her bistita in reference to she and Logan). We FINALLY got our shopping cart/high chair cover that we've been craving for weeks now that Logan has discovered the joys of sucking on carts, some sweet little outfits, and some new toys! We had lunch at my favorite salad place in Miami afterwards and got to spend some quality time with Tita:This is Logan with her vibrating teether--it is by far her favorite toy in the whole wide world. One time, it got left in the nursery at church and we were miserable until we got it back again the following Sunday. Another time, she dropped it in an aisle at Walmart and when I got to the car and she realized I was not handing her the toy as she was being put in her carseat and she made sure that we went back in and searched high and low for the thing until we got it. She loves her other toys, but I think this one brings welcome relief to the teething pains and so she just always wants it around.

Here's Logan and Tita at lunch.

And Logan with her teether again (don't you LOVE that highchair cover??? It's our new favorite accessory!)

Yesterday, Logan and I ventured back to my old stomping grounds at the school I taught at for a couple of years. I was anxious to see some of my old coworkers and was so excited to be able to spend a little time with them and show off my sweet girl! They oo-ed and ahh-ed over her and how "porcelain" she looks. White skin is not a thing people see here very often. I also got to hand out several business cards as the outfit she wore was an original that I designed and created for her (you'll see in the next few pictures)! Then we came home and hung out for a while:

We crawled and read and played with the doggies. Speaking of which, Logan is quite taken with my parents' older dog, Cookie. She's the smaller of the two and has been very patient as Logan pulls her tail and pulls her ears and kind of slaps her on the back. Logan has a great time doing all of this so long as Cookie doesn't move or look at her...the second she looks at Logan, Logan turns around and quickly scampers away. She likes the dogs, but she likes them on HER terms! (you can see her two little teeth really well in the picture below)
This is Logan's favorite chair in the house. I think she likes it so much because it's shorter than any of the furniture that we have at home and she's able to stand up tall and move around it because it gives her the upper hand. I have a better standing picture but it's in my camera memory (not on the SD card) and I don't have the reader with me here, so I'll definitely post that one when we get home! You can really get a good shot of the outfit, here, though.
Today we went shopping with my mom then had a girls lunch. It was so nice to get to spend some time together! It's fun to have three generations of the girls to out and do girly things (we missed Carolyn, though). Then we came home and have been playing with pots ever since.

Up up up

Logan has been pulling up for a while now, but she's not been a steady stander. She'd pull up halfway or close to all the way and then fall back down. In the last week or so, she's become very steady and has started pulling up on everything (coffee tables, her walker, tv stands--see below, the bed, her crib, the rocking chair--that's a fun one, her jumperoo, the couch, mommy and daddy's legs, pretty much anything she can get her hands on) and she'll stand for a good 3-4 minutes without wobbling.

It's fun to watch her, but it's bittersweet because it's one more step towards independence and not needing mommy and daddy quite as much as she does now (though, even though she's crawling she still wants to be held by one of us 75% of the day). Anyway, I snapped some pictures of her this morning watching her new favorite show, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse--I don't normally let her stand this close to the TV when it's on.

Here she is trying to mess with the DVR...guess she's already seen this episode.

Really mom? Can you just let me watch my show, please?

Ok, one smile and then we're done.

RIP

My pink razor phone that I just about died for a couple of years ago is officially and totally d-e-a-d.

The culprit:

That's right, none other than my sweet baby girl herself.

Logan got ahold of my phone about a week ago and drooled a massive amount of water onto it causing it to short out. It was a sad day when my pink phone died. Did I mention it was pink and that was my favorite part about it? Sigh. It's a good thing I was up for an upgrade or I may have been more upset and not found this quite as humorous as I do.
So, miss Logan now has a cell phone of her own and has not even SEEN my new phone so as to protect it from her and her weapons. For now she's perfectly content thinking that she's got my connection to the outside world in her mouth, and I'm ok with her thinking that. Maybe she doesn't need a Christmas present after all? :)

Tis The Season

The collection for Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child has started and it goes for another week and a half and so this week we got out one of our old shoeboxes and got ready to fill it up.

Now, we do not make a lot of money. I'll just throw that out there. However, the children who receive these boxes are immeasurabley worse off than we are and Mike and I feel that it's incredibly important to teach all of our children the value in giving to others, especially those less fortunate than ourselves. And how can we not call ourselves fortunate? We have a roof over our head (that's not tin), we have a carpet to walk on (instead of dirt or mud), we have beds to sleep in (we don't have to share one tiny bed for our entire family...well, some nights we do--but we don't HAVE to), we have food to eat at every meal, we have running water and electricity, we are all healthy and have wonderful Dr.'s who help us when we're not, and we have a great God who sustains us. I think we're MORE than fortunate!

That being said, if we can fill a shoebox, anyone can fill one. It took about $10--total, and that $10 is going to make some little girl's YEAR. You don't even have to donate through a church! Go to Samaritan's Purse and it gives you all of the details. Participating in Operation Christmas child has really been wonderful for me. I did it before Mike and I even met and when I've had to opportunity since, I've taken it. It really helps you put life into perspective and makes you more thankful than ever (and what a great thing to be so near Thanksgiving) for all that you have!

When Mike and I went through the holiday season last year with a baby on the way, we talked a lot about how we wanted to raise our children to really see the value in giving to others. Especially those who don't have anything. I think it's been really convicting to me because I lived around such extreme poverty while we were in Guatemala and know what a gift like a shoebox would mean to those children. When you see something like that first hand, it touches you in a way that makes you totally re-evaluate the way you do things and even though I was just a middle schooler while we were there, I still think about it daily and how it changed me.

So, when we found out our church was doing OCC here we jumped on it. We chose to do a box for a little girl aged somewhere from 2-4 since we've got one closest to that age group. Then Logan and I made a trip to Target (what a GREAT excuse to go, right?) and just browsed and picked out several things that we thought (I thought) would be fun for a little girl to get. I actually saw several other families there who were talking about things to put in shoeboxes so I was excited to see that we weren't the only ones there doing it! I look forward to when Logan can pick things out for the shoebox, herself. How fun for her to pick something that someone her own age would enjoy!

Enough of my novel. :) Here are the pictures from when L and I put the box together:

Logan wanted to help with wrapping the box:

Checking it out to make sure it was done correctly:

Inspecting the toys to make sure that they're what SHE would want:

Ok, mommy, keep it up!

She even helped load some of the items into the box. Here she is putting the toothbrush in that she picked out at Target:

I think we got everything in there and it's ready to go!

Of course, we had to add a homemade bow to the pack for the sweet girl who will receive this.

Close her on up and she's all ready to go, guys! We did good work.

And a sweet picture of my sweet, sweet girl to finish up:

Craft Fair Fun

Well, it's finally O-V-E-R! Thank goodness, it's been such a long two weeks getting ready for it. I spent every second that Logan was asleep sewing or bowing and I am tired. Definitely am ready for a little break (though, I've done some sewing since for Logan). We did fairly well at the show, I sold about 1/4 of my stock and handed out over 150 business cards so we're calling it a great success.

My friend, Patty, helped me set up on Friday night. She was a life saver as Mike had to work and I had Logan--it would have been near impossible to do it on my own without some help because L requires so much attention. Patty also helped out on Saturday morning because Mike had a paper to write and needed to be in the library that morning. It's so wonderful to have such a great friend SO near! We actually live closer to each other here than we did in Miami. Here's our spread on Saturday morning:

Logan modeled some of our products for the first part of the morning and actually several people came to the booth after seeing her with her appliqued shirt. (doesn't she look like a red head in this outfit?)
Here are some closeup shots of the products:

Bows, bows and MORE bows!

Fun to be one tutu set with the appliqued cupcake bootie:
So what have Logan and I been up to now that we're not elbow deep in sewing projects? Well, for starters, we've been tearing up some paper towels:
It's our new favorite thing to do. Don't you want to join us? Logan has also been modeling some more of my onesies as we do errands around town, like this one (along with the bow).

These ruffle butt onesies were actually the star of the show this weekend. Several people said they'd be getting them for Christmas through our website (which you can go to from the link on the right side of the blog now).
Logan has also been pulling up like CRAZY this last week. She'll pull up on just about anything that she can reach. I've actually, on a couple of occasions, had to grab her to stop her from pulling up on the toilet (because after she pulls up on something, she usually proceeds to taste it...not so cool when it's the toilet). Speaking of tasting...yesterday, I walked in to our bathroom to get Logan (who had crawled in there) and found her sucking on a bar of soap...nice...at least I didn't have to scold her with, "that's dirty!" like I do five million other times a day, right? Here are a few pulling up pictures:

And the whole tasting what she pulls up on thing:

Have a great Monday!!

Happy Halloween!

In trying to recover from both my sickness and Logan's little bout with it, and in catching our breath after the crazy weekend-I've neglected to post pictures from Logan's first Halloween! After Mike started working at Starbucks a couple of years ago, we immediately knew that our first baby's first halloween would be as:

A baby barista!

We saw the apron a couple of years back (you can only get it through someone who works there) and thought it was such a great, unique costume and she could be just like daddy for a day.

This was the bow I made for her. Isn't that coffee cup topper just adorable?!

We spent the morning with Mike at work where he showed his little barista off to anyone who took notice. She helped him with maybe one order before deciding that it was more fun to chew on a coffee sleeve.

She also decided she prefers bows to hats.

Then Logan and I came home, took a nap and had to do a quick change when something happened that required that we launder her costume for use later in the evening. Good thing I had this one up my sleeve:

I found this fun halloween print a while back and got a yard of it not really knowing what I wanted to do with it. Then I found a great A-Line pattern that I wanted to try but didn't know what to try it on and realized that I also had this great halloween ribbon and topper that pretty much matched the fabric spot on and so I used the A-line pattern for the dress, made the bow, and voila! Had a ready made quick change when Logan destroyed her costume.

Playing on the porch while we waited for her costume to dry so we could go back out.

Showing off the whole ensemble.

When Mike got home we had a quick meal and then got Logan back in her costume and headed out to the mall where they had some stuff going on. We only caught the tail end of it. We didn't feel like it would be fair to trick or treat and take candy away from kids who would actually enjoy it this year so we pretty much just walked around and looked at other costumes.

And she's back!

Ready to take your order.

Would you like to try a pumpkin spice latte tonight?

I would! Yummo!

Then we came home, changed into our halloween jammies, watched some TV and crashed for the night!

9 months old

It's that time of the month again! We've hit the 9 month mark today and, as someone reminded me, Logan is now a whole pregnancy old. :) Those 9 months seemed a heck of a lot longer that these 9 months--it seems like time is just flying. Once we got past those first pesky months where she was only sleeping a few hours a night things started to go much quicker.

Logan is a very happy baby today.

Once again, her photo shoot proved to be difficult. We couldn't quite capture her face on without her doing something else.

She says, "Mommy made my outfit today, from the bow to the onesie." I learned to applique this month and have been going to town with it! It's so relaxing for me and I have so much fun creating clothing for her that costs way too much money if bought directly from someone else.

Here she is flapping her "wings" excitedly.

ANYWAY! Logan, you are NINE months old today! What have you been up to this month?!?!

- You got not one but TWO teeth this month! After months of agony, your first tooth finally popped through and then the second one (right next to it) popped in about two days later. No more toothless, gummy grinning.

- You have started to eat some table foods this month. So far you've tried spaghetti, pancakes, a little bit of chicken, and some bread. Your favorite BY FAR is pancakes. Whenever I eat them for breakfast you make all kinds of noise until you get to taste.

- You started officially crawling. You are no longer just scooting along, you're full blown crawling around now. You can get places pretty quickly, too! I'll leave you in the living room for a minute or two to go get something from the kitchen and before I know it you're right behind me. You especially love it when people get down on the floor and crawl with you.

- You haven't really taken to any new toys this month. Instead, you're full blown crazy about books! I have all of your books on the bottom shelf of daddy's bookcase and your favorite thing to do is crawl over there and pull out all of the books. Then you like to look through the books at their pictures. You also love being read to, you really will sit still in mommy or daddy's lap for as long as we'll read to you.

- You're using your sign language a little more this month to get what you want. You know how to sign for more, you've signed once or twice for thank you, you point to some of the things you want and you can shake your head no if you don't want something...or if you do....or for anything pretty much.

- You haven't learned any new words this month but are getting really good at imitating the different sounds that you hear. When we say "bye bye" to you, you respond with a loud "b", when we talk about your rubber duck you say "d" when we say something is yummy you say "mmm" and so on.

- You love to laugh at yourself! If you do something that we think is funny, you'll proceed to do it 50,000 more times and laugh harder and harder at yourself each time you do it.

- You think daddy lives in the phone. When he calls from work or on his way home from school I'll put him on speaker phone so that you can hear him and now any time my phone rings you say "dada." It's very sweet.

- You have started to really pull up on things lately. I think you enjoy the challenge of it because you'll work really hard to get up and the reward just isn't enough for you because you get a look of satisfaction and then disappointment and you sit down. You find more entertainment with getting yourself into tight spaces and then finding a way out. For example, today you crawled UNDER your walker and it took you a few minutes to figure out how to duck your head under so you could get back out but as soon as you were out you laughed and did it again.

- You started to clap this month! Out of nowhere you just started to put your hands together and you clap when anything makes you happy now.

- You went to your first football game and LOVED it this month! You yelled and cheered when everyone else did and watched the game very intently.

And that's about all I can think of right now. We love having you in our lives and can't wait to watch you grow more and more! Here's your comparison shots:

And your 1 month vs. 9 month shot: