My Name Is Now Mom

The other day, DH and I were getting ready to leave the house and DH asked me to run downstairs to grab his wallet.  Sure thing, no problem.  I spent 10 minutes looking for his wallet before giving up.  DH looked downstairs for his wallet while I looked upstairs and in the car.  DH looked upstairs and in the car.  We finally gave up and left.  I had to drive instead of DH.  We spent a whole day thinking DH's wallet was missing.  Since he hadn't left the house in a week, we figured he lost it the last time he did leave.  When we finally got back to the house DH found this gadget  that links to your phone.  When you lose your wallet, you phone pings the card and it makes a noise so you can find the wallet.  Apparently, DH isn't the only one to have this problem.  ;)  Oh, and we found his wallet.  Phew!  It was in the pocket of his pants in the laundry basket.  Which we BOTH checked, multiple times.  ...

Post hike cool down We went on a hike near the coast.  It was super sunny and hot during the hike.  Afterwards, we decided to go to the beach to cool down a bit.  In the 20 minutes it took us to get on the beach the wind picked up, the clouds completely covered the sky, and the temperature had dropped 20 degrees.  Not exactly an ideal trip to the beach.  But we still had fun.  Here is TerraDactyl's first experience with standing/walking in the sand: And here is TerraDactyl's second experience in standing in sand.  We tried wet sand, so that it would be a bit firmer.  The original video is 7.5 minutes long and I cut it off after TerraDactyl made a friend.  Another little girl ran up to her and started talking at her and trying (unsuccessfully) to get TerraDactyl to interact with her.  Anyways, all told, TerraDactyl stood there in the same place for more than 10 minutes before DH finally gave in and just picked her back up....

Adding the fifth block! TerraDactyl has made great strides in her play with wooden blocks.  She can stack a tower of five blocks!  All by herself.  But I think the most impressive development happened last night.  While I was putting all the wood blocks back in their bag, TerraDactyl picked up a block and put it in the bag, too.  She continued to put half a dozen or so blocks into the bag, only pulling a few of her favorites back out.  I've tried to coax her into helping me pick up at bedtime before, but she chose to help all on her own this time.  And now it's time to fall!  Muahahaha! You know in horror/action movies how the people are always looking around for the bad guys on the ground level?  They never look up?  Well.  TerraDactyl is not going to be one of those poor dupes.  She's definitely aware of the ceilings, and light fixtures, and projection clocks.  But her favorite object right now is the smoke d...

DH found a wild cherry tree that hangs over our fence After reading "Where is Baby's Belly Button" (with accompanying motions) for months , TerraDactyl has finally figured out that she has a belly button.  She now points it out and asks to see mine.  She has yet to work up the courage to ask the see DH's.  Or maybe she has and he declined to show her and she just accepted that Da Da doesn't have a belly button.  ;)  I'm pretty excited about the belly button development because it gives me one more distraction technique for diaper changes.  Sometimes TerraDactyl spends the whole time pointing out belly buttons while I change her diaper. The other day, TerraDactyl crawled over to me while holding one of her pink moccasins.  She handed me the shoe and then thrust her foot out at me.  So I put on her shoe.  Then she crawled back over to where the other shoe was and repeated the process.  It was pretty funny.  I thought she was...

Due to the whole COVID-19 social isolation and travel restrictions, our friends had to cancel their wedding.  Instead, they hosted a Zoom wedding ceremony and are hoping to have an in person celebration next year.  In a show of support we went ahead and dressed up for the ceremony - DH even shaved!  It's interesting raising a kid during social isolation.  I worry about TerraDactyl missing opportunities to meet people and play with other kids.  However, I do really appreciate the mute function on zoom.  It really reduces those "what if my baby ruins this wedding" fears.  :)  She did great at the wedding.  It was right after her naptime, so TerraDactyl was still super sleepy and snuggly.  Attending our first virtual wedding We've hit a small snag in the eating department.  A few days ago TerraDactyl basically decided that she was switching to a Cheerio-only diet.  After a day of eating basically nothing but Cheerios, we rem...

Hear what?!?! DH asked me that question yesterday while I was downstairs eating lunch.  Of course, I had not heard anything, so he took me up to SEE the firecrackers... That's a lot of tree Yup, that's right.  A giant chunk of our maple tree just up and fell over.  It looks like maybe there was some damage inside the branch.  Or something.  I'm not exactly an expert.  Doesn't exactly look like healthy wood to me We were going to mow the lawn that evening, but first we had to get that giant mess off the grass.  DH started off with the chain saw chopping off branches.  He didn't make it very far before the chainsaw got messed up.  So while he tried to fix it, I used the pruners and loppers to get off what I could.  Turns out, the chainsaw was broke.  So we had to use a hand saw to chop up the big parts.  It was super awkward sawing through 12 inches of wood at head height.  But we did it!  Too ...

Snuggling with the stuffed animals TerraDactyl continues to climb into small spaces.  She seems to really like them.  She keeps finding more and more places to cram herself into.  Da Da got new shoes!! Our garden harvesting continues.  We're still getting rhubarb and asparagus, but we've added strawberries and raspberries!  It's been super rainy lately though, so harvesting the berries is less fun.  It's awkward enough crouching down when TerraDactyl is in her Tula carrier and grabbing at everything, but being rainy on top of that?  It's just too much. First day's harvest The other day, DH saw a weird bird hanging out on our hummingbird feeder.  We were extra confused when we saw a humming bird come in to eat and then leave the feeder.  We thought humming birds were super territorial, so we figured it would attack the other bird.  So, DH slowly crept out there to find out what kind of bird was just chilling there....

The proper way to cook a Baby Meal.  Step one:  marinate the baby in your flavor of choice.  Below, we've depicted kidney bean juice. The original Beanie Baby Step two:  Place the baby in a roasting pan. TerraDactyl LOVES playing with her cake pan Step three:  Insert into oven.  (If it's not clear this is a joke - never put your baby in the oven!!) The perfect size drawer... Step four:  Enjoy your baby meal! Make sure they can't escape! NONE of these photos were coaxed or staged.  TerraDactyl managed to get herself into all these situations on her own.  Including finding the cake pan, removing it from the drawer, and sitting in it.  She LOVES sitting in that cake pan.  She's also discovered the joys of banging the pan on the floor.  But fortunately, she prefers to sit in the pan. TerraDactyl is an old hand at traveling the stairs, so she's started increasing the difficulty by carrying things down...