Teething again

The poopster is so-o-o crabby again. Thank God for Hyland's teething gel; she loves it. Here are some good moments from the last couple days.



Say "NO" to Crack





A happy moment

I have my fingers back

After almost a year of looking like an unwed mother, I can finally wear my wedding rings again. And I'm 3 lbs from being at my pre-pregnancy weight. That would really excite me if I was skinny before getting pregnant. :) Only 25 lbs more to go and I can get pregnant again! Woo-hoo! Time to start exercising. Yuck.

Hangin'

Sitting up and playing with toys... a new favorite.





"West Si-i-i-i-ide!"





Blowing bubbles





"...this little piggy stayed home..."





Sitting up and playing again. Look at those thunder thighs!

Dedicated to God

This month, we dedicated Amelie. Beforehand we had family come to the church for a pot luck, and Chris' family showed up with tons of food. I was bummed that none of my family came for that, but at least my parents and siblings came to the actual dedication. It was good to have our families there to show their support. Here are a couple photos (a little out of order, since I'm still a little slow learning how to post pics again):


We bought this dress (from the 70's) thinking that it would be good as an alternative to the usual baptism attire, being so long and all... well I figured we'd better try it on before going to church, just in case it looked ridiculous. Good thing we did. She looks like Wendy from Peter Pan, in her nightgown.





Here Amelie is being annointed with oil and blessed. She wasn't too keen on being touched or looked at or much of anything that day... (pic stolen from Jenie's blog)





The family is gathered around to take part in the promise to raise Amelie to live in the way of God in the world. (pic stolen from Jenie's blog)





This was taken before the service, while hanging out with our families.





This was the part where all the kids were asked to come up and promise, as Amelie's peers, to help her live in the way of God in the world, like the adults were asked before. (Also stolen from Jenie's blog)

More photos

OK, now that i can post pics again, here are a few from the last month or so:


Meeting great-grandma Alice





Crazy Baby





A chat with the cat





Amelie's first meal of solid food... mmm... rice cereal.

This is only a test

Learning to share...

Oh NO!

For some reason I can't post any pictures at ALL!

Some catching up

I guess I'll start with the biggest news, so even the skimmers will be in the know: Amelie cut her first tooth yesterday! She was so crabby last week, and didn't sleep well for a few days; I should have guessed it was a tooth coming in. Instead, I thought it was because I fed her peas for the first time. Peas are one of the easiest foods to digest, and here I thought she was having a bad reaction to them. Haha... It's a tooth! Oh, and also, I should give a little credit here: Sunday at church, Jenie swore she could see where teeth were going to come in, and she predicted they'd come this week. I couldn't see anything, not very well, at least, and didn't really think there would be a tooth coming in. I doubted it because I just don't think of Amelie as being old enough to have a tooth! She's my little baby, and now she's not so little... (and speaking of not-so-little: you should see those THIGHS!)

This last week, Amelie has acquired some other big-girl traits: she now sits up with very few tips, she babbles and blows raspberries and screeches constantly, and she's generally more active. She also blows her nose a LOT, but never in a tissue. I'm really seeing some personality coming out. She's got a sense of humor, which I suspected when she decided to be born on Labor Day.

So, we finally got our new computer hooked up, and it's awesome. Did I mention that it was like pulling teeth (to keep with the theme) to get Chris to agree to buying a MAC? Well, he has since admitted, repeatedly, that I was right: MACs are better than PCs. At least for doing fun/artsy-fartsy stuff. He love-love-loves it, and I'm so glad (not just to be right: I'm used to that... but glad that he's so happy with it).

So now that we're a bit comfortable with our computer, we can start posting pictures again. I'll do a separate post for that... I have a feeling I'd mess it up somehow if I tried on this one...

Oops I did it again!

Forgive me for quoting a young has-been pop star. I feel a self-imposed pressure to think of witty titles, and it seemed appropriate:

I had promised myself I wouldn't go this long without blogging. I just feel so busy recently. Doing what? Nothing in particular, and a whole lot at the same time. The house has been in a constant state of transition recently, every room with a huge pile to move into another room (furniture, too). Then there are the piles of everyday junk accumulating... Between episodes of avoiding breaking our necks navigating around the house, we go to our usual appointments and such.

The crazy chain of getting nothing done started when we got our tax return. "Let's see how fast we can spend it," we thought. So, off we ran to H&R Block to pick up the check. We flew to the bank to cash it before 6pm, and then went straight to microcenter to buy ourselves a new computer. (To our credit [no pun intended], we paid down some of our credit card debt first.) Yay! We got a mac mini! I haven't played with a mac in years, and Chris is new to macs, so we haven't really even set it up (we've had it for 10 days now). At the same time, I keep hesitating to do anything on our old computer because I keep thinking, "It's such a waste of time, it'll go much faster on the new computer. I'll just wait till I can use the new one." So then I get nothing done online, like blogging or research for my business or... bills. Luckily most of them are automatically paid. Anyways, soon after, we got an entertainment center off of craigslist, so we set that up and got all that organized, while making a mess by rearranging things and leaving extranneous (sp?) stuff laying around. Hmmm... what other details can I bore you with? I think that's it. Oh... and we borrowed the first season of LOST, so we've been wasting lots of time watching that this week too. I wish it were a book. I'd feel a lot better about how much time I've spent immersed in the story. :) Besides, the book's always better.

Now to the good stuff:

Amelie turned 6 months old last Sunday. She is getting too big! We fed her her first solids on her 6m b-day, and she LOVED it (pics to come)! And the weirdest thing is that she started acting older all of a sudden. It's not my imagination, either! She's been making funnier noises and faces, doing more with her hands, trying harder to roll over and sit, and she also decided she likes it when other people hold her. She thinks just because she's eating real food (rice cereal) that she's a big girl. Hmph.

Chris finished Amelie's room this week! It's a great storage room for all her stuff, also known as a nursery. We'll call it her bedroom in a few years when she starts sleeping in there... Anyways, it's beautiful, and we'll post pics when I'm done decorating it.

We are having Amelie dedicated this Sunday. It is like a baptism, kindof, but basically it's where we publically dedicate her to God and promise to raise her in a Christian home, and the church and family and friends pray blessings for her. Since we are promising to be godly parents, we are going to take a big first step in that direction on Sunday: we are quitting smoking (as someone said: if it isn't your will to smoke, and not God's, then whose will is it?). Pray for us please. :)

Well, I am super tired, and I just wanted to ramble at you quick since it's been so long... I'm going to bed now. I'll write again soon. None of this every couple of weeks business.