We had a bit of a rough go of it this past week in our house, as Leah and I both got pretty sick with a stomach virus. It wasn't pretty! But on the upside, Leah and I got to hang out together all week long, so that was a fun experience.


Here she is looking all sick and stuff.

We often let Leah play on her own in her room. This chaos is the result of one of those play sessions.

As the week progressed, we both began to feel like human beings again. That's when we started to get silly and do things like put on Mommy's shoes.

This is pretty triiiiiiickkyyyy.

Oh wait! I think I'm getting the hang of it!

Oh, and she's saying "Cheeeese!" to the camera at the start of the video. She likes to put on her cheese face every time the camera comes out. (Sorry, Laurie!)

Leah's trying to cover Heidi with the blanket and tell her that it's time for bed.

Enjoying some nice weather outside.

The girls both had haircuts the day this picture was taken.

Question: Do you like sea food?

See food!!! Sorry, I had to. :)

What's Leah doing these days? So glad you asked!

• She is learning her numbers! So far she sort of knows 1, 2, 3, and 9. But 2 is by far her favorite.
• She talks. Constantly. Up until last week, she understood the concept of sentences, but didn't quite know how to put words together yet. So she would just make noises and string them in between words she knew. (For instance, "Eeeehhhh Mommy Eeeeeen Daddy?") Last week she actually started to piece words together, the most popular phrase being "Up, please?" Which of course is tough to resist. She knows I'm a sucker.
• She likes to talk about her friends, Mia, Micah (Midah), and Ella (Owwa). On Thursday, we had friends from CT come visit, and while driving home in the car, I told her that we would have friends at our house when we got home. It was quiet for a minute, and then I heard, "Midahhh...an Miaaaa.... an Owwaaaa". Unfortunately that's not who I meant, but it's so cute how much she loves her little friends!
• She looooves to dance on our bed. So much so that whenever one of us heads to our bedroom she runs in behind us and pats her hands on the bed asking "P up? P up? Pup?" (P up = pick up). Which leads me to my next point...
• Jared and I joke about how Leah needs her own little dictionary for her Leah translations. She has a bunch of words that we know what they mean, and she knows what they mean, but anybody who is not around her all the time would have no clue. For example, "dew"=juice, "doda"= cookie, and "wee mee"=raisin. And believe me, "wee-mee" is a step up from wee-wee, which is what she used to call them. (And yes, she does have actual words that you can interpret-- lots of them! The Leah-isms are much more amusing though.)
• She likes to gently stroke your cheek, give eskimo kisses, and hugs.
• Particularly when she's tired, she likes to go "night night" on the floor in the living room. She'll pull a blanket off the couch, lay down, and pull it over herself while yelling "Night night!!"
• We have a very little slide in our yard, and she has just recently learned how to do it all on her own. The steps, the manuevering of the feet at the top, and sliding down. Her only preference is that you sit at the bottom to catch her.
• She likes to lift up my shirt, poke my bellybutton, and say "Baby".
• Old Macdonald is her favorite song to sing, and Twinkle Twinkle is her favorite song to listen to. (Who knew there are actually 4 or 5 verses to this song? And who knew that I'd be able to sing every one of them?)
• And of course, she likes to say no. A lot. She tests limits, is defiant, and is smart enough to know when I'm too tired to stand my ground (like when Jared is out of town for a while and I've had a long day at work). After all, she's 17 months old. It's to be expected.

And naturally, she is an absolute joy in our lives. We just can't imagine what it would be like without her.

Ella's Birthday Party

Ok, folks. I'm getting ready to jam weeks worth of pictures into a few short blogs. Because I am more than behind and need to catch up. (One of the items on my before-we-have-a-second-baby checklist. Right in between finish Leah's baby book to date [mostly done] and finish baby quilt that I began 4 years ago...)

A few weeks ago we went to Leah's friend Ella's birthday party. First we played on the slide...

Not so sure about this at first.
And after some words of encouragement, she finally gave in.
But the slide is the most fun when you go down with Alley!

... and then we played on the Big Bouncy Bus!

It was a little overwhelming, to say the least.

Cute conversation

As part of our pre-bed time routine, I was reading Leah her favorite book. Once we finished reading the story, I went back through some of the pages and showed her the puppies and pointed out their tails, ears, noses, etc.

Leah interrupts me with, "Mommy?"

"Yes, Miss Leah?"

"Night night."

Ahh, hint taken, Leah. Way to know your bedtime better than me. :)

Merry Christmas!

Opening the last day of the advent calendar on Christmas eve morning. And yes, that's chocolate dribbling down her chin. Then we spent some time riding our horsey (a Christmas present from last year that has come in handy lately). Daddy's hat is quite dirty, but Leah doesn't mind. It's all part of her rugged cowgirl theme.
Every cowgirl needs a pony, don't you think?

All decked out for church on Christmas Eve in her princess dress. Leah was very cooperative with the picture taking this Christmas. All I had to do was ask her to sit in front of the tree and she would. The pointing fingers was her own creative flair.

Some post church present-opening at Oma and Opa's house.

Christmas morning... I don't know what's with that fuzzy glow, I just liked her can-we-take-the-picture-and-open-the-presents-already look she's giving me.

This was our attempt at taking a Christmas morning photo of the "kids". It's tough to take a photo when you have 3 moving creatures. And the kitties weren't even close to cooperating, so they didn't get to be in the picture.

Daddy helping Leah open some presents.

Whew! Opening presents is tiring! I'm just going to take a little break here.

Playing with her new blocks, which she was adamant about putting on our windowsill. The silly girl would pick up two blocks at a time and run to our room to put them on our windowsill, and then run back to the living room to get two more. She was huffing and puffing the whole way. This went on for about 5 minutes, until I showed her that the blocks came on a little pull cart. It made her task much easier!

Christmas day, peering into Opa's juice cabinet. Pah! "Juice."

Pushing around her new little grocery cart with the ever essential ball and toy trucks. What good grocery store purchases.

Thanks to all of our friends and family who made this Christmas special for us!

Since we moved into our house, we've been talking about one day putting a TV above the fireplace. It only took us 3 and a half years to finally do it. I knew Jared was pretty handy around the house and good at fixing things, but he had a vision as to how this was all going to look once complete. And he was going to do it all himself. And he's never done anything like this before. And he didn't tell me a thing about just how he was going to do it. Now, you may be thinking 'Big deal, I put my TV on my wall too'. But there was a lot more to it than that. For one, we don't have an attic. So the wires had to be run through the wall. Two, part of the plan was to put a recessed cabinet in the wall to hold all of our entertainment accoutrement. Three, we couldn't find a cabinet that fit what we were looking for, so Jared was going to build it. And four, both the electric and the plumbing (because the entertainment cabinet was going to share a wall with the bathroom and reside in the cabinet under the bathroom sink) had to be rerouted in the process.

I don't know why I was skeptical about the whole thing, seeing as how Jared pretty much singlehandedly built our barn and has always been good at that kind of thing. Turns out I was being plain ol' silly because it's all done now, and it looks AMAZING. See for yourself.

The before photo. (Of course, it's not really the original before photo, seeing as how it doesn't have the original TV in it. But you get the idea.)

This is under the bathroom sink where the plumbing had to be rerouted from the right side (notice the hole) to the left side.

There used to be a cabinet above the toilet here. And now there are two big holes in the wall!! (These were used for running the many, many electric wires. And don't worry, the cabinet is back up in its original position.)

If you thought those holes were big, check out this giant one! Ack!! Just to give you some perspective, Leah is in the bathroom. I am in the living room. Talk about a lack of privacy in there!

Oh, the chaos of our living room mid-project. Notice the circular saw and caulk gun on the living room floor. That's normal, right?

With the help of some friends, the TV was mounted just in time for us to catch the last 4 minutes of last week's Eagles game (one of the few games that are seldomly televised down here in Cowboys country). Yay!!!

And the final product! Complete with shelves for photos and candles, and for our laptop and docking station, so we can watch things off of our computer on our TV (It's all connected). Combine all of the above with our new surround sound system that we got for Christmas and Jared's new Xbox 360, and you've got quite the entertainment experience!

Here you can see the rearranged furniture, which makes the room seem so much bigger. And there's Jared, playing his new toy on Christmas night. :) (Notice the sad, discarded original Xbox on the floor to the right.)