Life and such

Well, where to start. Life is flying so fast and I'm surprised how long it's been since I updated. On the other hand, it hasn't been nearly as long as some other people I know. tee hee. My brain is all fuzzy right now and I don't really know what has filled up the last few weeks. Time seems to be racing by and I can't believe it's almost November. What in the world?? Well, I guess I'll tell you the story of our little trip last week. Dave had fall break and we really wanted to get out of town but where to go? We didn't want to spend much on gas and hotels. So I found this really good deal on hotwire for a ritzy hotel in Biloxi, MS, 2 hours from here. That seemed doable. So we booked it and after we booked we found out it was a casino hotel. haha. I guess if we had been more up on Biloxi, we could have assumed. Anyway, Dave had to teach Wed. afternoon and we wanted to leave right after that. Aleah wasn't taking a good nap in the afternoon so finally I says, "you don't wanna sleep? Fine! You shall not sleep." And I kept her up for the next 3 hours or so. This was the first really dumb move of the day. The second was forgetting our GPS. The third was ... I'm getting ahead of myself. So we loaded up, and headed out to wade through nasty traffic and get out of town. My thought with keeping her up was that she'd conk out in the car and sleep the whole way there. It's true, we both forgot the GPS and because we always depend on that, didn't have maps or directions along. So we leave and Aleah does conk out but only slept about a half hour and then woke up rather fussy. She tried to get back to sleep for about an hour and a half. The third really dumb thing we did was not thinking to check her diaper when she couldn't sleep, despite being very tired. DOH!! The forth really dumb thing we did was not stop to get a map. Dave thought he knew how to get there, and we did eventually get there, but it took much longer than it could have. = L That, combined with the traffic, turned a 2 hour drive into over 3.5. When we FINALLY arrived, what seemed like an eternity later, we pulled up to our mansion and when I got Aleah out of her seat, realized that she had a huge blow out with poop all over herself and her car seat. I felt SO awful and just hoped to goodness that she had done it recently, but I suspect that was why she couldn't sleep. I felt like the most rotten mom on the planet. Here we were, arriving at this den of iniquity, with our very tired, very hungry, very poopy BABY, of all things. The fifth really dumb thing that we had nothing to do with, was that when we arrived in the parking garage, a car alarm was going off so loud it was insane. It was like a soothing balm to my frayed nerves. Or not. I didn't even want to get her out of the car. It was seriously loud. So anyway, we go to check in and felt sort of weird. There were many middle age men with gold chains, and few pink fuzzy pajamas. She was some what of a star there though - all the mid life crisis folks loved chatting it up with her. Anyway, that was the worst of the little trip, but overall, it wasn't overly relaxing. I'm not sure how you're supposed to have a relaxing vacation anymore, when you pack up the source of your exhaustion and bring it along with you. But anyway... It was nice to see the coast, get away, and um... see the coast. Aleah's sleeping habits have been interesting lately (see below. I think, or maybe above). She would be really tired in the morning so I'd out her to bed for a morning nap and she'd sleep for a half hour or so and then wake up. Then by the time we were ready to go out and about and explore, she'd be tired and cranky and wanting to sleep. arg. I'm figuring out that no matter how tired she is, if she's not awake at least 2 hours in the morning, she won't take a long nap. If I put her to bed 2 hours after she wakes up, she'll take a nice long one. Anyhoo, So we drug our cranky little turkey around the city seeing the sights and such. After not sleeping well again Friday morning, we were driving to a BBQ place that Dave had seen online. She had of course just fallen asleep as we approached the restaurant. So I took great care to set her car seat in the stroller every so gently and quietly. I thought she could sleep while we ate and then she wouldn't be a tired cranky mess. Well, we got inside and the cheery waitress saw the stroller and in order to make room for it, slid a table and bunch of chairs along the concrete floor creating quite a ruckus. Of course wide awake baby. The nice happy ending is that we left right after that and she slept the entire way home, as God intended babies to do on car trips. And that's the end of our trip. And I can't stay awake so that's all for now.

Trip pics

These are in chronological order, but seem random because of the order in which we did things. Make sense? good. This is the view from our window. nice, eh?

Just hanging out in our room.

This was so funny. Dave had found a state park on google maps that he thought we should check out. So we drove to the wonderful state park - turned out to be a row of about 6 trees, one of which had fallen over.
Apparently after hurricane Katrina, there were obviously a lot of splintered trees everywhere. Some one (several someones?) did some amazing carving in Biloxi out of some of the trees.

Heading to the beach.


At first she gasped at the water, then she decided she liked it.


The beach wasn't overly crowded. Understatement.

The pool at the hotel - not too shabby, eh?
check it out! Big screen and everything. We didn't swim. = (
In the elevator.
An oh so common sight - Aleah sound asleep in our hotel room. or NOT. arg.

Our little gamblin kiddo. Jenni, you wanted to see her off the couch, does a casino work?

She did quite well with the slot machines. ha. These were taken about 30 seconds before we were told she had to leave. Apparently since she's not 21, she wasn't allowed on the carpeted area. I'm just glad we got the pics first. = )

Our hotel - actually, the lobby, casino, eating areas all seemed really nice and glitzy, but our actual room was just average I'd say. Nothing too fancy. The place did look pretty impressive from the outside though. = )
Hanging out at the hotel.
Aw, how sweet - before you think we go out of our way to take our infant to parks so she can swing, here is the real reason we were at this park -

that's right - we saw an icosahedron with a truncated icosahedron inside of it! One of us was pretty excited about that and needed to take pictures.

Oh, the baby/swing combo with the icosahedron/truncated icosahedron combo in the same shot! This is just too much!!
Trying to get some nice palm tree pics without the nasty garbage cans in the shot.
More hurricane Katrina trees


This was less than a week ago - it was hot. = ) It's finally cooling off a little here and hopefully it stays this time.
Hey, no garbage cans. yeay.
Oh yeah, I threw in some bonus pics. Back at home on the couch again. Sorry, I'm boring.

little chubs. I don't think she looks like the same kid as the picture above this one.
Okay, that's all for now.

Five Months

I need to write this quick before she's 6 months. Always on the ball. At 5 months, she:

- weighs a little over 18 pounds. Carrying her in her car seat is becoming exceedingly unpleasant for me. She's 25.25 inches.

-- celebrated the morn of turning 5 months old by waking up before 5:00. I didn't know what to do with myself. She has not done this since she was newborn and needed to eat. I used to wake her up to eat at 7 and she'd keep sleeping till 10 or so. Those were the days. But after she grew out of that, she consistently would wake up between 7 and 8, occasionally later or a little earlier. Well, the next morning she woke up at 4:40. NOOOOOOO!!! She's not hungry and doesn't cry. Just coos or lays there. But it wakes me up and I can't sleep. And then because I'm a control freak or something, I have to know when she goes back to sleep, which isn't conducive to me sleeping. Anyway, since then she's woken up at 6:30 a lot. Right after we got back from our trip, there were a bunch of days when she slept till after 7, but now she's been waking up earlier again. I'm not a huge far of this new trend.

-- off her reflux meds! yeay!

-- still has very little use for rolling, but rolled back to front for the first time yesterday.

-- still hates being on her stomach.

-- still barfs a lot but it comes and goes.

-- Can sit up for short periods of time, but we can't leave her on her own yet.

-- is getting a lot more cuddly and that's really great. love it.

-- turns into a little savage when she eats. Only on one side - she wants very badly to claw at her face and eyeballs and ear and can leave really nasty marks. Sometimes she'll get really annoyed at me when I hold her hand back so she can't torture herself. hello.

-- is getting better at not crying when we sneeze. haha. But she still is not a fan of loud, sudden noises. At Bible study yesterday morning, she was sitting with me looking at everyone, when someone said something and everyone laughed. She waited a bit till the laughter died down of course, then burst into heartbroken sobs. Later an older kid was crying so she decided she had to as well.

-- I keep wondering if she's teething. She acts like it, but her gums don't look like it.

-- can pass toys from one hand to the other. whoo hoo, eh? I probably wouldn't even notice this but it's something we always had to check for at one of my jobs in Indiana.

-- It's fun to see her memory kicking in and see her anticipating what's coming next - like getting all excited when she sees the bathtub, or giggling before she's being tickled or what have you.

Okay, I've bored you long enough about her young life.

480,000 pictures from our afternoon

So it was a beautiful day today, a little on the warm side of life, but not too bad in the shade. Aleah had slept quite a bit in the church nursery so she was in a fairly good mood. In this age of digital cameras, we naturally went way overboard with the pics. But hey, it costs nothing (until printing and scrapping time - yikes!) and was just too much fun. So then when I went to blog them I got carried away as well, but I don't think you should mind too much. If you do you have no business reading my blog. hahahahahahahaha! At least that's what my friend Soo said. I'd never be so bold to say anything like that. So anyway, without further ado, here's a pile of pics from today. A friendly passerby offered to take our picture. Scowly baby?
Arg, why am I not looking at the camera on this one? Anyway, here we are in the antique setting. = )
Trying to get her to sit up on her own on the slippery bench.
A little finger goes a long way...

It's always the one corner of the mouth that turns up. haha.
Barfy drool anyone? Or drooly barf if you prefer. She was having quite the barfy afternoon - nice you can't tell from these pics that her dress was soaked. yucky.
or a drool string?
yummy pink bow for lunch.
How silly is this - ya, I'm even posting the SAME picture 2ce, cause I just couldn't decide. But hey, I didn't have to. I try to save decisions for when they're really necessary.

Got rid of barfy dress (Thanks LaRonda = )

First swing ride - wish you could hear her. She giggled her little brains out. It was pretty cute.

Whew! That was exhausting!