Ch..ch..ch...changes

This is how we found BellaRose the other day while she was supposed to be asleep for her nap. Like Matt said she was up reading. I guess she was wondering why her name was not spelled correct on her wall. I had to explain to her that we did it before we decided how we were going to spell her name at the hospital. She has also been trying like crazy to get to her mobile and finally succeded. Perseverance, my child.

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Because of this latest development we had to do this, lower her crib mattress. She was helping out her dad. I think that she is going to be a good helper. I am still going to leave the mobile up and her bumper. I know it is against all baby rules, but I am just not ready to change her crib. Time can't be going this fast already. The mattress went down pretty far and until I really see her start to climb on the bumper, I am leaving it is. Please don't tell DSS!

I am married to a man who can do most things really well right away. You guys know this type of person right? You work months and years trying to do something perfect and then this guy comes in and does it right the very first time he tries. This is Worth. Like when he first learned how to snowboard that very day he was passing people that had been riding for years. He has this ability to do EVERYTHING perfect on the first try. Well I brought my "homework" from cake class home, we were to work on the Wilton rose I mentioned before. Worth read the directions in our course book and nailed the rose, first try. I will tell you that I was jealous, just a little bit. I mean really....... I am....... happy for the guy.

Apparently this is what Worth does all day at work. I had NO idea. You know, I mean I thought he was on roofs and things like this, but hanging out over the corner of a house while three guys are sitting on the other end of the board to hold him up, was not what I was thinking. He assured me he was harnessed in. I guess that is supposed to make me feel better, I think?

And in other un-related news, Worth and I are famous...... well sort of........in Atlanta really.............well in the skateboard scene in Atlanta. Come on, that is famous for some people! You know how a while back Worth was on his gigantic skatepark tour and I was his photographer? Well I sent in one of his pictures I took and it made it to the home page of Brook Run Skatepark! Pretty cool huh? I even get photo credit for the image. So I guess it is not really famous, but it is something and it made both of us happy, so there you go!

**i am having a very hard time getting my pictures where i want them....very frustrating****

MORE CAKE!!!!!!?????

Cake class was last night and we had to make clowns. Now I want you to know that I have no desire to make clowns out of striped icing, as odd as that may sound, but that was our assignment so I did as I was told. Clowns are pretty scary if you ask me, especially these plastic little numbers. We have to come to class with a cake iced, and then we decorate while we are there. You can see the different things we are learning, like the swirl flower, and The Wilton Rose. Last night was my first attempt at the rose. I think that you can tell it is a rose, can't you... please say yes, please say yes???? Next week is the finale to the classes so we will see what I come up with then.

We have been working on baby proofing the home as of late. I think that we are pretty well baby proofed, of course Will can come over and show us what else we need to do. He is good for a course in baby proofing! Look at Rainy behind BellaRosey, she looks VERY concerned now that there is a baby in motion.

Went to Greenville this past Saturday for a visit and Angela wanted me to get pictures of her kids hands and feet.

Well BellaRose and I have music class so I have to run. I will try to come back and update.

Game ON!

The game is on folks. BellaRose is officially a crawler. She is 9 months today, and yet another milestone. She likes doing things big when she changes age. IT. IS. JUST. HOW. SHE. ROLLS. She is not fast by any means. Just slow and steady. I hear that always wins the race. I can still put her on the floor and know she won't get into anything too terrible, at least not before I can catch her. Of course she is atrracted to wires and cords, and glass. Why would she not be! We also got our jogger stroller the other day so now I have some real accountability. I can't just let that nice new stroller sit there and not use. It is intended to go over some serious terrain and at a fast speed, mind you. So game on, I am up to the challenge, but I will do it once the weather is nicer ; ).

OK~look at this cutest outfit ever that I got BellaRose for the summer, eerr actually lets just say the spring, not sure if it will fit in the summer. I mean does she not look like she is going to go on a safari in that outfit. Maybe she could join Chris Baxter in the Peace Corps, while he is in Africa. Or maybe we will just pretend our backyard is Africa. I like that idea much better!

~Hey, go check out Jessica's blog for some super exciting news. I can't tell you, just look!

You maybe tired of hearing about cake, but I am in the depths of cake making and decorating so you will just have to bare with me. This is the terribly tacky pastel nightmare of a cake I made the other night. The teacher tells us to practice, practice, practice....so I did. I practiced my stars like it was going out of style. This cakes icing has crumbs all in it, but I iced another cake last night, and not one crumb to be found! SO excited. It's the little things right?

Hope you have a wonderful weekend, and you eat some cake (hint) and hope you find out some wonderful news. If you do, don't forget to share.

PS~check out my "goodreads" over there on the left. If you have an account don't forget to add me as a friend. My other account messed up.

good friends, birthdays, and crawling

I would like to give a BIG shout out to my mom on her birthday! We love you dearly Mom. Thanks for always coming up here to help us out and for being so good to us. I would like to also mention that she is a Real Estate Agent

in Greenville, SC. SO if you need a home in that area, she is your woman for sure.

I want to tell you mom, that on this day, February 18th, your sweet BellaRose started to crawl! It is true. 4 days before her 9 month birthday she crawled for the 1st time. Now I am not going to say she is a crawler, but she moved a couple of feet....hand, knee, hand, knee. It was so very sweet, and she was so very proud of herself and now she is so very tired and asleep. So Happy Birthday OG, you got a milestone on your birthday. This will go down in Baby Book History!

We had a very special visitor this weekend as well. Newell came down from Chicago just to see us and Sweet BellaRose. It was such a short visit but we loved every minute of it. Thank you so much for making the journey and coming in your Red Mustang rental car. That sure did provide for some good times. Even if I could not really figure out the alarm. I look forward to coming to see you in Chicago and then Hilton Head! What fun times lie ahead for us. We also LOVE our bib from Barneys. It is true it is her 1st present from there!

MOVIE MADNESS MONDAY

Now we are going to play a little game so we don't "get a case of the Monday's"!

Name these movie quotes:

~"Easy peasy japanesey"

~ "I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man felt free. "

Now don't go looking on the internet for the answer. You just have to pull it somewhere out of your own memory. I will give you a hint it is one of my all time favorite movies and both quotes are from it. I have no handmade prize to give you unless you want some cake. Just know your prize is being the smartest person on the blog today!

PS- there was a bonus quote in there, but it was pretty easy to get, not from the same movie.

Well, well, well

We are having such a great week. We have gotten into a groove, me and my little buddy BellaRose. We hang out together, we talk together, we do everything together, and it is pretty darn cool. I never knew how I would take this "mother gig" but it is one of the best choices I, we, have ever made. My mind is so full of possiblities on things that BellaRose and I can do together. As you know I am taking the cake decorating class and it is really going to be fun. I just have a feeling that BellaRose is really going to love to make cakes. I mean why would she not? Just think of all the batter and dough she will be able to stick her little fingers in! I am ready to start to decorate, or at least just get the icing on smooth, baby steps right?!

Another thing that I love to do and I hope Sweetie Baby will join me on is gardening. I have discovered a book called "Sunflower Houses, A Book for Children and Their Grown-Ups". How sweet does that sound? We are going to make a sunflower house this summer right along side our garden. It will have an entry way and then a little play area will be in the center of these huge enormous sunflowers and morning glories. Last summer I had big lofty goals to tend to my garden with my newborn baby. When my ole naive pregnant self told seasoned mothers of this plan they would just shake their head and pat me sweetly on the back. I thought that they were telling me "YES you can do this!". Little did I know they were telling me "Honey, you have no Idea!". Oh well, you live and you learn. This year I hope to not recieve those glances and shakes of heads from moms. I will have a walking baby by then (maybe), she will love a sunflower house!

Sharon Lovejoy is the author of this book and I included her blog over there on the left. Check it out. She will have cool ideas and recipes from the garden. This warm weather is getting to me. I am already scheming on my garden plans. Maybe I will start some seedlings out of some cardboard egg carton to fill the need to dig in the dirt.

I just have to share this delicious bag that I bought from Katie and her TexasNorth by KatieKate etsy shop. It is way better then this picture shows you. The orange satin ribbon is just so shiny and perfect for a bag that I would own. The quality is impeccable! Go to her shop and look around. She updates it about once a month, right Katie? This is the market bag just so you know.

Since no one has asked ........ahem.... my running is improving. I hate to share this with you b/c I know it will sound so dismal to you runners out there, but I ran .55 miles without stopping. That is one lap around Lake Tomahawk and then I walked 1.60 miles. So there is a slight improvement from last week. We will get better. Annie is trying to get me to run a 5k, we shall see.

If I could

If I could bottle this baby's sweetness in a apothecary jar and give it out to all of you I would. She is just so good. She was fighting a cold last week and she put up a good fight. She NEVER once was grouchy. She stayed sweet the whole time. She sounded so pathetic though. Poor little bean. She is doing much better this week.



If you blog you shall receive. That is the new motto. I spoke you last week about running and the need for a jogger stroller. Well that afternoon my friend Kiersten called me to tell me she had a jogger stroller I could borrow. So I went and picked it up. Thank you dear friend! Then on Saturday afternoon my Dad called me to tell me that he wanted to buy me a jogger stroller! So he and Charlotte ordered me one and should be coming this week. Thank you!! So Kiersten I will be bringing yours back with pumped up tires once my B.O.B stroller comes in. Yes Bob bought me a B.O.B! Lets have a big WAHOO!

On to cake! I decided to go ahead and make a cake for a friend's birthday this weekend from my whimsical bakehouse book. Everything was going so smoothly, the cake was coming out, the icing was so light and fluffy (even though I messed up the recipe a bit), the filling was out of this world. Then the cake decided it did not want to come out of the pan even though I greased it and it was a non-stick pan. I referenced the internet (becuase it is always right of course) to see how the cake can come out. It told me to put it over boiling water and the steam will loosen the cake. Well that did not happen! So we did surgery to get it out of the pan, and then cosmestic surgery to make it look better. It was not decorated, but I think it came out pretty good. As you can see it got 4 "dirty" thumbs up.

Cake class is on Wednesday which I will be taking with Rachel, Becky, and Niki. I will let you know how that goes. Maybe next time you will see a decorated cake!

FYI- for you non-bloggers our there, I wanted to let you know that if you ever see words in a different color and highlighted, you just roll your little mouse over the word and it will take you to a different link. Usually the one that I am referring to. Go ahead, try it!

Accountability Friday

Ok, I have been thinking, again! No, no, don't worry, this will not be another long winded, refective fueled blog. I have been thinking about goals, and things that I would like to accomplish. Not New Years resolutions! I don't do those, they only lead to disappointment. I am just talking goals, that can be completed whenever I feel like. They don't have to be done at a certain time when the clock stricks 12 or anything. So here goes.......

1. I would like to find a workout that involves BellaRose. I don't want to join the gym b/c it is too expensive, and I would have to pay for childcare. Plus the weather will be getting nice soon and I would love to be outside. This leads me to running! Ah, I hate to run. I just don't think it is any fun, but who knows maybe I will have a different perspective on it now. I am not sure if the Atlanta girls remember my brief stint on The Lovett track team. They may not because it lasted 2 weeks. Thats right 2 whole weeks, and they were probably the worst 2 weeks of my high school life. I remember the coach telling us to do a mile warm up. A mile warm up, who does that for a warm up!!?? Oh man I was doomed from the start. One of my friends thought that I looked like the water girl chasing the track team, that is how far back I was. So needless to say running is not my forte, as I learned yesterday, AGAIN! I borrowed Annie's B.O.B stroller and took BellaRose on a run. I would call it a run, some might call it a fast walk. Anyway, I ran.....some and walked more. I think that I will get better at least I hope I will get better. So this is where you come in, just ask me about how running is going every once in awhile. Hold me accountable. I know this is a big deal posting it on the blog, and one day I may tell you to cut it out, but until then ask away. Now I need to find a jogger stroller. If you know of a cheap one, or a place I can get one for not a lot, that would be great! I don't need the B.O.B, b/c I am just not that serious, but I do need a jogger.




2. This whole cake thing I talked about the other day. I am pretty serious and pretty excited about it too. Who knows maybe one day I will have my own cake/bread book (those 2 things go together right?). I got this book yesterday in the mail, The Whimsical Bakehouse . It is awesome, well so far it is awesome. The website is cool too. So I need your help in trying out cake. I am going to be making lots of practice cakes, to get to the perfect cake. I am going to need eaters. You just come, or I will bring it to you. That is all you need is you, and I will bring the rest.


So accountability Friday is not so bad, huh? You ask me about running and eat the cake I make!

Lets Talk

So lets talk. I have had a lot on my mind lately. Most of it, of course, having to do with BellaRose. She is 8 months old now and I think about how far we have come since May 22, 2007 at 1:46 pm. BellaRose was no easy baby in beginning. In fact it was down right hard. She was so fussy and at times causing us to flee Atlanta like thiefs in the night. Who knows why she was fussy. Maybe she had colic, maybe it was because she got teeth so early, or maybe it is just. who. she. is. I had a wonderfully easy pregnancy, in fact I forgot that I was pregnant until my belly stuck out and reminded me otherwise. Labor was much the same as pregnancy, probably pretty easy as far as labor goes, still really painful, but no complications what so ever. Some may say that is why I ended up with a fussy baby,Easy pregnancy = hard baby. Some even tell me that I will have a easy toddler because I have "paid my dues" in the baby years. We all have to have a reason for things, a cause and effect. I am no different. I like to know why things happen and how they will end up, always! That is the funny thing about being a parent, all 8 months of my experience, is that we really just have no idea how our precious baby will end up. We just hope and pray we make the right choices for her and our family. Hopefully one day she may understand why I had to leave her in her crib and let her cry, or why I would not let her drive when she turned 16 (what!?) Oh well, you get the idea. I think for the most part I have understood the choices my parents made regarding me. If I haven't figured it out now, I guess it really doesn't matter all that much. I think I turned out okay, they may even agree. So by God's grace I will continue to be a mom to BellaRose making choices the best I see fit.
I am not sure if we have just settled into being parents or BellaRose just got easier. I am sure it is a combination of many things. She is such a joy. She has so much personality and she makes most people shriek in delight when they see her. Friends no longer believe us when we tell them how hard it was in the beginning and how this baby can scream. They just see a sweet little baby with chubby thighs already talking their ear off! She is so full of goodness.
These are just some of the things I have been thinking lately. I guess they are brought on becuase we really see such a change in her. We can acutally sit down with her now. You see we never could before. We always had to be standing and we always had to be holding her. We can put her down on the floor with her toys and cheerios and she is content. She is also desperately trying to crawl right now. She is so close. She will get there and surprisingly we really don't have to do anything to teach her to crawl, learn to walk, or learn to talk. It may not be in the doctor's timing or in the world's timing, but it will happen I am sure of it. We may not have all the toys and books and movies to teach her how to do different things, but she will grow and be strong, and always be showered in love. The bottom line is you just do what you can for your child whether they are easy or hard, crawl at 8 months or a year. It is all the same, we are all in the same fight. We are trying to fight the good fight, doing the best we can.
I appreciate you and your willness to go along with me on this one.
Cheers!

Ice, Ice, Baby..

As you might already know from Becky we woke to an ice storm yesterday. It was glorious! In the morning it was still a little rainy, but when that sun broke through it was amazing as you can tell from the bottom picture that Worth took. We were pretty excited to get out there with our camera (which is not broken, by the way). Hope you enjoy the images, you will find none of BellaRose which may be a shock to you, but we will of course have pictures of her next week. We have a busy day today which consists of many birthday parties. We will be starting off the day celebrating Davis Young's 1st bithday party. We can't believe this little man is 1! Then in the evening we will be celebrating Worth's mom's birthday and Brother Ben's birthday. We just can't believe that they are __ __ year's old :).

Have a wonderful weekend. Have no fear the ice is gone and it will be a beautiful 60 degrees and blue skies.

Worth took this picture.