She Makes Me Laugh :)

I usually keep Karys's jacket hanging on the chair I unload my purse and diaper bag on. No real reason, just laziness I guess. :) Keeps me from having to hang it up all the time and then get it back out of the closet (although this is what I do with my own coats!!). So anyway, tonight there were two jackets hanging up on the chair. Karys saw them hanging there, pulled both of them down and brought them to me, which meant she wanted them put on her. So as the air conditioner is running to cool down our too-warm house, she's wandering around wearing two jackets at the same time. :) Silly girl!

And THIS is what happens.... :)

...When Karys has to spend extra time in her bed because she wakes up from nap too early!! :)Let me give just a little bit of explanation. This week I've been trying to start eliminating the morning nap from our routine. She was getting to the point that she would either just play in bed for an hour, or she might actually sleep which would mean she wouldn't sleep as long in the afternoon. So I've been putting her down for one nap somewhere between 12:30 and 1:00 with the idea that nap time isn't "over" until 4:00. The only problem I've had is that she has a tendency to "do her business" during naptime, unfortunately. It's not cool because it always wakes her up. So on a day that she's only taken one nap, if she goes to sleep at 1 and wakes up at 2:30 because her diaper's dirty, that's totally not enough sleep for her!! So I'll go in and change her quickly, and put her back into bed knowing that there's like a 90% chance she's not going back to sleep. But at least she'll have had a "rest time" if nothing else.

This is what happened today. She was asleep somewhere around 1ish and woke up around 3 with her dirty diaper. I went in and changed her and put her back in bed. Obviously she stayed awake the rest of the time. When I went in to get her at 4, the first thing I noticed was one of her socks on the floor outside of her crib. This isn't all that unusual. I actually had to look at her for a second before I realized SHE TOOK HER SHIRT OFF!!!! :) Once I realized that, I started laughing hysterically and called Ryan in to see her. He didn't find it as humorous as I did, but apparently he was trying to decide if I was laughing because I realized that I had forgotten to put her shirt on her or if she had taken it off herself. But it was hilarious to me!! :)

This Is What Happens....

....when a 17 month old has to have her food taken away because she was throwing it on the floor, but she wasn't allowed to leave the table. :)

This picture was from lunch today. For months now we've been dealing with Karys throwing food she's tired of eating onto the floor. We've tried so many things to make it stop, but we have a stubborn child. Slapping her hand does nothing for her...doesn't phase her one bit. TAlk about frustrating!! I've told her "no" about this and explained that we don't throw food on the floor so much I think I should just record it and push "play" a million times a day!! Obviously what we've been doing hasn't been working or we wouldn't be dealing with this problem. So we decided to try something new, and hopefully this will work. The new plan is that whenever she throws food on the floor, it's going to mean she's done and her food will be taken away. Then she has to pick up whatever she threw on the floor and throw it away, and if it made the floor dirty, she is given a paper towel and has to help me wipe it up. We just started this yesterday. At breakfast this morning, we did have a "nothing on the floor" meal, but then at lunch, a piece of cracker and a piece of ham, and a cup ended up on the floor. Hopefully if we're consistant it's going to work.

Back to the picture. At lunch, I fixed her lunch and she was already eating while I was fixing my lunch. Then stuff ended up on the floor so I took her food away. (And I'm not being totally rigid with this. If she's barely eaten anything, then she does have to clean up her mess, but she gets another chance. I promise, I'm not starving her!!) However, I still hadn't eaten lunch so she had to sit in her high chair while I ate my lunch. Apparently she was getting bored with not too much to do, so she started playing with her shirt. First it was playing with the sleeves...and then she did what you see in the picture. I have to admit, it made me laugh. :)

If you're reading this and you have another suggestion, I would LOVE to hear it!! :)

A Girl After My Own Heart

I'll start by saying, I love organization. When things have a place, and everything is in its place, the world just feels right. When my house is a mess and cluttered, it makes me anxious and just leaves me feeling unsettled. However, when everything is put away, I feel relief. Today was a happy day for me because I was able to create more space in our house. Allow me to share, in pictures. :)

My parents gave us money for Christmas to get a new entertainment center. The one we picked allows us to hide our DVDs inside of it (something else I love...hiding junk!!). We weren't able to get it until yesterday, because we had to do something with our old entertainment center (my parents took it from us). Here's our nice, new entertainment "credenza" (as it is called on the box!):

On Saturday my dad came down to empty out the storage building he had been renting us so we could take all of our stuff that doesn't fit in our new place to my parents' house since they are so generously going to store it for us. While we were at their house, we got to take this over-the-toilet shelf that had belonged to my grandmother, but wouldn't fit over the toilets in my parents' house. Today, I went to Big Lots and got a few baskets to go on it so that our toiletries can be in the bathroom, but not advertised to everyone who comes in!! That looks like this:Emptying out our old entertainment center meant finding a new place for all of the Wii accessories. Once again, I like my stuff HIDDEN!! I went to Big Lots today intending to find wicker baskets for the bathroom, and a big one for the Wii stuff. I didn't find the baskets I wanted, but I did find better things. I ended up finding this really pretty planter for only $12 and it holds all of the Wii stuff wonderfully, and looks great under the end table!
And finally, the reason for the title of this post. Tonight while Karys was in the bathtub, this is what she did with her toys. She did this all by herself, with no help or suggestions from me:WOO HOO!! :)

She's A Big Girl Now!!!

Don't worry, we're still around....even though I only seem to be able to talk myself into posting once a month (or sometimes less!!). I'll try to get better. I have lots of updating to do, but my child has already woken up from her nap, so I'll just do a short one right now with hopes of posting the video I took earlier later on today. For Christmas, my parents got Karys her "big girl" carseat. At her 15 mo. checkup (when she was actually 16 mos.), she weighed in at 19 lbs. 4 oz. and the doctor said it was okay to go ahead and turn her around. This was at the beginning of December, so we figured that by Christmas it'd be even more likely that maybe she'd hit that 20 lb. mark. I'm not sure that she really has quite yet, but she was really starting to outgrow that baby seat. So at 17 mos. old, she finally got to face forward in the car!!! :) She looked like such a giant in her infant seat, that now facing the other way in such a big seat, she looks tiny!! :)
(Oh, and I finally got around to changing my header and background!! :) Those pics that were on my header were over a year old!! And since I'm about 25 lbs. lighter than that picture, it was way past time to take that down!! :)

15 Months Old

Karys is really almost 15 1/2 months old, but it's occurred to me over the last couple of days that she's doing so much stuff now, and you'll just love it! :) Some new things she can do:

* Give hugs--as shown in these cute pictures with her puppy. This puppy dog was given to me by a school co-worker and I put it away when she was little and just remembered it a couple of weeks ago. He is a huge hit!! Karys loves him so much! :)

* Eats like a champ!! So much so, that today she decided she REALLY loves her milk! She was hugging all over her milk cup. :)

* Gets into things she's not supposed to (while Mommy takes her picture!)

* Grabs her puppy whenever I come to get her out of bed, carries him, and hugs all over him!

* Has learned some new animal sounds:

- Cow (she says, "Mmmm"

- Sheep (she says, "Aaaaa"

- Dog (she makes a whimper-type sound)

- Snake (she can make a "hiss" sound)

(The cow, sheep, and dog she can remember on her own and just has to be asked what they say! :)

* Knows where her eye is. Ryan taught her this one, because she kept trying to poke his eye, so he taught her, "Where's Daddy's eye? Where's Karys's eye?"

* Can "flap her arms like a chicken" with Elmo! Ryan taught her this one too. Usually, she'll do it with both hands, but she couldn't drop the puppy!!

* Can play pretend. She watched me pretend to drink out of a cup, and now she can do it too! She makes a smacking sound, which was basically what I was doing, while holding the cup to her face. :)

*She can also follow the directions of "sit down, stand up", but I couldn't get it on video today! :)

Nothing Big :)

I haven't posted in forever, but I don't know that I really have a lot to post about!! We have moved into a duplex now and we're still in the unpacking process. The stuff that's left is pretty much just junk, I guess, but it still needs a place!! :) It's starting to drive me crazy to have all of this stuff around and not have the place totally together, but I know it'll come. :) We're really thankful that our house sold with no complications and that it didn't take months to sell even though it's really sad to be out of our house and into a place that doesn't feel like "home" as much as a place to live. (Yes, there's a difference!). However, things are okay. The main time I miss our house is when it's raining because I don't have a garage anymore!! :)

I haven't really been taking pictures lately, but I'll share a few cute ones that I took back in August and September:

What I saw looking into the backseat one day...such a cutie!! :)

Wearing the princess stuff she got at Ethan's birthday party...and making a silly face! :)

She loves her princess wand!!

I love this picture!! This was taken at our last play date with Ethan and Stephanie before Ethan moved to Amarillo (We miss you, Ethan!!). Karys was not happy about something, but we were trying to take pictures of the babies. So here she is screaming, while Ethan gives one of his best smiles! :)

And finally, back at our old house, all of the baby utensils were in the bottom drawer in the kitchen. Karys had figured out how to open it and loved taking out a spoon for herself and just carrying it throughout the house!