My Name Is Now Mom

The last few days I've been waking up to the strangest noise.  It sounds like someone is either walking around on the roof, or things are being tossed up there.  Yesterday morning, DH caught the culprits in the act.  It was just one or two squirrels, high up in the trees.  They were pelting our house with pine cones.  I'm dead serious.  It's pretty ridiculous.  Plus, it wakes TerraDactyl up as well, so even though I can ignore them and go back to sleep, I can't because I have to take care of my baby.  I was perfectly content to let the squirrels do whatever, but I'm feeling less generous towards them these days.  They've definitely escalated the bad neighbor behavior. Yesterday TerraDactyl spent some time harvesting and inspecting her hops.  She's checking to see if they're ripe enough to make an IPA...  If you can't tell by her face, it's a very serious business.  It's been fun watching things grow and ripen and then trying ...

Oma and Opa came for a visit this weekend.  TerraDactyl spent most of the weekend trying to wear everyone's shoes/slippers.  After a thorough study, she's decided she likes Oma's tiny slippers (above) the best.  They stay on her feet the best and they're lightweight, so they're easier to walk in. Oma spent a lot of time with TerraDactyl outside so that I could get some much needed time canning our abundant produce.  Opa and I made three batches of jam:  Raspberry, Raspberry-Plum, and Blackberry-Plum.  So now I've got about 15 pints of homemade jam.  There's still a bunch of raspberries in the freezer (and now some blackberries, courtesy of Opa spending a morning picking blackberries), and...  now there's a bunch of plum in there, too.   Check out the crazy air bubbles that form around the plums when you submerge them in water!  We have a golden plum tree in back yard.  Between DH and I, we harvested about 14 pounds of plums thi...

  TerraDactyl's first skinned knee.  She wasn't even running -- just walking and she tripped in our driveway.  She was only wearing a onesie, so the asphalt did a number on her delicate skin.  So now TerraDactyl wears pants outside, even if its 100 degrees.   On Monday, TerraDactyl insisted on wearing her swimsuit while we were just wandering around the house.  We never even played in the hose that day.  She just really likes her swimsuit.  :) After getting back from a walk, TerraDactyl insisted on carrying Riley's leash and wearing DaDa's hat.  It was pretty adorable.  She was so proud of herself.   Unfortunately, I do not have a photo or video of this, but it was SO funny.  It's been pretty hot here and we don't have air conditioning, so on the really hot nights I've been putting TerraDactyl to sleep at night in nothing but her diaper.  Well, yesterday morning when I walked into her room to get her up, TerraDac...

TerraDactyl loves wearing her teething necklaces.  They pop open pretty easy, so she's often bringing them to me so I can snap them back together.  Then she'll drape it back over her head and wander off.  I find this absolutely fascinating because I do not wear necklaces.  I used to wear the teething necklaces sometimes, but TerraDactyl never really got into chewing on them.  So I'm not really sure if she's just found a convenient storage place for the necklace, or if she likes accessorizing, or what.  I think we might be raising a fashionista. We live just outside of a neighborhood that has organized a "Food Truck Friday".  Every Friday a different food truck comes to the neighborhood.  We saw the signs while we were out on our daily walks.  It was burgers this week.  DH and I don't usually eat out, but it seemed like a fun summer thing to do, so we went ahead and walked there with TerraDactyl in the stroller. And it was fun.  Ther...

TerraDactyl's obsession with knee socks has spread to include MY socks.  The other day she insisted that I put my socks on her.  And as these socks go up to my knees, they're ridiculously long on TerraDactyl.  Even with them pulled up all the way to her hips.  And since they're my socks, they don't have grippies on the bottom, so she slides a bit when she walks fast.  So she was walking pretty exaggeratedly.  But she still insisted on wearing them for three hours. When we were walking around the yard, TerraDactyl asked to go in the car.  And by asked, I mean she pointed at it and looked at me.  When I opened the door, she moved to get inside.  Of course, when Riley saw the open door, he had to get in, too.  And somehow, with the entire car for them to play in, they both ended up in the same foot-well.   This is TerraDactyl spying on the neighbors.  They were in their yard talking, and she just about walked up to the fence ...

 Well, TerraDactyl is now capable of not only unzipping her sleep sack, but completely removing it and chucking it across the room.  She doesn't do it every time she sleeps, but she's done it a few times.  Sometimes she just paces back and forth in her crib while wearing the sleep sack.  I think we'll continue to use it because I like the ritual of it.  I think it helps her to know that it's time to sleep, not play.  But sometimes she still uses nap time as a time to play with her stuffed animals for an hour instead of sleeping.   TerraDactyl had her first experience with crayons the other day.  She really liked it.  She loved emptying the entire box.  She liked dropping them all on the floor.  She liked picking through them all to choose the right crayon.  She even used them to draw.  She played for quite some time before she decided to start chewing on the crayons.  At that point I tried redirecting her back to...

  A good rule of thumb that I've discovered:  if it's annoying for me to try and dress myself in it, it's going to be way worse trying to get a toddler dressed in it.  Therefore, while pants are now acceptable clothing, tights are NOT.  I tried dressing TerraDactyl in tights and she was adorable.  But it was just such a huge pain that at the first diaper change those tights went straight into the laundry basket.   Also, the feet were rotated 90 degrees to the legs!  It made them even more annoying to put on.  And while TerraDactyl didn't exactly complain (it's not like she's talking yet), I can't imagine that it was comfortable.  Also, notice that in the picture above, TerraDactyl has started smiling crooked.  She's got both her bottom teeth under one of her upper teeth.  I'm not sure why she's started doing this, but it is kind of cute.  Speaking of cute...  I LOVE this dress.  It's adorable.  And it has po...

TerraDactyl has been experimenting with zippers for a while now.  But only the zippers on my sweatshirts - in an attempt to feed.  However, she has recently discovered that zippers exist elsewhere.  Yesterday morning I woke up to find that she had unzipped her sleep sack all the way to the neck and was walking around her crib.   I'd been thinking I'd keep TerraDactyl sleeping in a sleep sack for as long as possible to try and keep her from crib escape attempts.  But, if she can just unzip them, that seems unlikely to stop an escape attempt.  Clearly I need to look into the crib's aftermarket lid options...  :) While we were playing outside the other day, TerraDactyl was having trouble walking around the paths in our herb garden because the weeds kept tripping her.  Obviously, I haven't been doing a good job gardening lately.  So I did some weeding while TerraDactyl played.  Mostly I cleaned up the walkways so TerraDactyl wouldn't ge...

We had an exciting day yesterday.  On our way to give TerraDactyl a bath, she poked me in the eyeball.  It hurt BAD.  I basically couldn't do anything but ice it for 2 hours.  It was pretty terrible.  It hurt to open my eye, it hurt to move my eye, it hurt to not maintain pressure on my eye...  It even hurt to open up my unaffected eye.  DH got me a web doctor appointment and they said I needed to go to urgent care so the doctor could check me out in person.   Since I was actively icing my eyeball, I couldn't wear glasses.  I figured I would be OK without them for a bit.  I regularly walk around without my glasses at home.  I used to compete gymnastics without my glasses.  I didn't really think about the fact that I was going to a location where I'd never been before.  DH and TerraDactyl didn't come inside with me (to avoid unnecessary contact with the outside world).  And all the signs are written assuming patie...

TerraDactyl is transitioning into her fully carnivore self.  She's currently only eating meatballs (well, and Cheerios & bran flakes).  And not just any meatballs.  They have to be the meatballs from Winco that are a combo of chicken, beef, and pork.  Kirkland meatballs are not acceptable.   She can really eat those meatballs, too.  She can shovel them into her mouth faster than I can cut them up.  It's exciting to see her eating a new food, I just wish that she would still eat some of the other foods.  She's never really eaten veggies and now she's basically cut out her fruits too.  And beans!  I can't believe the way she turned her back on her most favored food.  Not that that I can really blame her.  If I had a choice between meatballs and beans, I'd choose meatballs.  :D One good thing about TerraDactyl loving the Winco meatballs is that they have both milk and cheese in them.  Earlier, she had some nega...

TerraDactyl has always been overly interested in the dishwasher.  Timing is essential when trying to load or unload it.  If she's too close, she tries to grab everything, or climb into it, or freaks out when you close it...  Lately, she's actually been helpful in unloading the dishwasher.  Well...  maybe "helpful" is pushing it a bit.  But, she's trying.  She'll remove one item at a time and hand it to me.  It's pretty sweet.  A bit slower than by myself, but not too bad.   Lately, TerraDactyl has been bringing DH or I a sock and insisting we put it on her.  She'll bring one over to me and lift up her right foot (always the right foot).  When she comes back with another sock and lifts her right foot I always say something along the lines of "you've already got a sock on that foot.  Let's put this one on your other foot." And she'll let me put it on the other foot no problem. The other morning, I came out of my bedroom...