getting older, games, simply grateful, and good deals

This is going to be a very random post so try to follow...

Firstly, my baby is NINE months old today! I can hardly believe it. The little bugger's been a part of our lives for a year and a half. Crazy!!
Unfortunately, she's celebrating like this:


The poor pumpkin has a cold so she's been alternating between getting her nose suckered out and snuggling up in my bed snoozing.
Most days she keeps me on my toes quite well. All 16lbs, 26.5" of her little self is in nearly constant motion. Climbing, cruising, and generally being mischievous. She's still not into the whole eating thing. We've offered her apples slices, carrot sticks, avocado wedges, and a banana. She'll gnaw on them for a while and then throw them on the floor, rip off her bib, and declare herself done. She's a champion nurser though and as you can see from the picture above, she's not lacking in the chub department. :)
She is gaining quite the vocabulary. She says mama, dada, hi, ball, bock bock(chicken), woof(puppy), no, and some others that I'm sure I'm forgetting.

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Chris has been working 15hr days for nearly two weeks now. Needless to say he's exhausted and we rarely see him. :( We were all very happy for the brief rain last night. It meant that he was able to come in a few hours early and spend some quality time with us all. Much to my surprise, he wanted to play Twister, it was a fun time had by all. When it was Ian's turn to run the spinner, he grabbed the camera...

{yikes! I hadn't realized quite how bad that dreadful postnatal sprouting of hair along my hairline was looking these days!!}

Part of the challenge was not falling on top of the baby who was excitedly scrambling between the mess of arms and legs squealing with delight. :)


{dog pile the cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater!!}

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Today, I am enormously grateful for my oven! I have been without for over a week and it has been HARD. There seemed to be one problem after another as we were able to get the new one right away but then some of the parts were defective so we had to get replacements. Then, the plumber couldn't come to install it until this morning. I am delighted to say that the new oven, while nothing fancy, is now IN my kitchen and it WORKS. The first thing I made was bread. My how we missed fresh bread this past week. We hadn't had store bought bread in many, many months and we'll be glad if we don't have it again for that long.


You'll notice that "thing" hanging on the front of my oven. That "thing" is a kitchen wetbag. I love it. We use un-paper lots of things, including "paper" towels. Ours are a lot like these, but they are unbleached velour backed with terry. An Etsy or HyenaCart search will yield lots of results. Anyway, a kitchen wetbag is a very handy thing if, like me, your laundry room isn't right next to your kitchen and you want a place to toss your unpaper items or just dishrags and towels. It just so happens that Heather, the wonderful mama who made my bag is clearancing her store and quitting business for the time being to focus on being a mama. She's having a big ol' sale, so please do head on over and check it out. She has mama pad bags, kitchen bags, hanging pails, soap, all kinds of stuff.

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That should about wrap up my rambling for tonight, I'm going to go throw one of my famous pizzas in the oven because, you know, I actually have one. :)