Wednesday, December 30, 2009

p-h-o-t-o-s

Inside the Pink Pig
Waiting for the Pink Pig.
She's a celebrity. Did you know?
Feeding a bunny at Yellow River Game Ranch.
Hungry bunnies!
Insisting on riding the bike while wearing roller skates.
I can't get this photo to flip... Christmas at Nana's house.
Nana hug!
Roxanne's fancy new jewelry from Ann and John.
Opening her present from Ann and John.

Christmas, Birthday Party, Vacation... Oh My.

So. We are enjoying our family vacation. We aren't going anywhere, but this week, we've been doing fun stuff at home and around town that we normally can't fit into a weekend. Monday we went to Yellow River Game Ranch and got to feed all kinds of animals and just stare at some others (cougar, foxes, coyote, mountain lion, bobcat, etc. etc.). It was a very strange experience, since it literally feels like that place hasn't been updated in 30 years, and some of the pens that the animals live in just look really sad and depressing, but it is undeniably enjoyable to feed and pet squirrels, goats, donkeys, deer, ducks, chickens, etc. I think Roxanne's favorites were the bunnies that would hop around after you looking for more crackers. She also really liked the ducks. Yesterday, we went to Lenox to ride the Pink Pig. My mom and Leah met us there and helped me keep Roxanne entertained while we waited to get on the ride. I still remember riding the old one with my sister when we were little. It was really fun to ride it with Roxanne, even though it just sort of feels like an advertisement for Macy's. Justin used it as a chance to hang out in the Apple store. Sigh.

This morning was Roxanne's two year check up. The doctor said she looked great, and her height is around the 80th percentile, and her weight is around the 65th. I was a little nervous about her weight only because of our recent bout with the stomach virus, so I'm glad it's still a healthy number. We also chatted about dairy, since Roxanne is finally weaned, but doesn't like cows milk at all. The doctor said it was fine to rely on other sources of low fat dairy, like yogurt and cheese. So that's a relief. Hopefully at some point Roxanne will come around though and like cows milk. We'll see.

We had a lovely Christmas, and got to spend time with a lot of different parts of our family. It was so nice. And we really loved having Christmas Eve/Christmas morning in our very own home. It was so fun to set out cookies and milk for Santa and an apple for the reindeer. Roxanne was really excited, and when she got up on Christmas morning, she had a lot of fun opening her gifts. It took quite a while because she wanted to open all of her toys as soon as she unwrapped them, but we decided we should let her take her time. And it was so funny listening to her open them, since each time, she would pull the paper back and say "Oh my! Look at this!" or some variation. She sounds sort of condescending when she says these things, but in a hilarious kind of way. Like how a pre-school teacher might talk to a toddler. She loves to talk like that to me and Justin. She'll give Justin a bite of something, or order him to perform some kind of task, and when he does it, she'll say "Good girl, Dada, I so proud of you [eat food or perform task]."

Roxanne's birthday party was on Sunday afternoon, and it was wonderful! Justin and I were both a little overwhelmed, and we talked later how it ended up feeling kind of like our wedding, in that we felt like we didn't really get to talk to anyone, even though we wanted to talk to everyone and thank them for coming. So we apologize if we didn't talk to you! We really had a great time, and Roxanne definitely loved every minute of it. After she had opened all of her presents, she came and sat in my lap and asked me to sing the Happy Birthday song to her again. I asked her, "Roxanne sing it?" and she said, "No, everyone sing it!" so everyone obliged and sang her the birthday song again. She LOVED it. And asked for it again, but I told her that that was enough. She has so many wonderful, thoughtful gifts, and she has been having a great time all week playing with everything. We still haven't taken the decorations down. It's like we're still kind of exhausted from the party. Sad, but true.

Also, a special thanks to Jesse and Jacquelyn (and Evie and Owen) for our fabulous new kitchen cart! We still have to put it together, but I can't wait. It's going to be so nice to have the extra prep space. We can't thank them enough for such a nice housewarming gift. Thanks guys!

Oh, and we didn't take any photos at the birthday party (yeah, seriously) so if anyone has any, please send them to us. We would be SO appreciative.

We hope everyone had WONDERFUL holidays, and lots of good thinks in the New Year!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Happy Birthday Justin!

Justin is 28 today! Happy Birthday to a wonderful Dada and husband. As cliche as it sounds, it seems like yesterday that we were still in high school. Justin is just as sweet now as he was then. Roxanne and I are so lucky. :)

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Happy Birthday Roxanne!






Wow. Roxanne is two today! We have tried to do some fun things today even though we had to postpone her birthday party. First, we took her to a paint your own pottery place and let her paint a cupcake box, which was fine except that I took too long to paint my ornament and she had a melt down waiting for me. Oops. After that, we went to Bagel Palace and she had a birthday pancake followed by a cookie (with sprinkles of course, since she LOVES everything with sprinkles) and a dum dum lollipop. Sigh. Then we went home and all took a nap. After spending some groggy time trying to wake up, we headed over to Harry's in Alpharetta so Roxanne could visit with the real reindeer and Santa. It was so cool! The reindeer were really neat, but unfortunately, we couldn't touch them. I finally realized that having animals with giant antlers as part of a petting thing is in fact probably a bad idea. Duh. But she did have a good time, and she got an antler crown that she wore for the rest of the evening. We couldn't coax her to sit with Santa, but we finally got her to give him some fist bumps. He was a hip Santa who was totally on board with that. Unfortunately, our camera was too slow to capture any of said fist bumps, but I assure you they were funny.

Roxanne is getting to bed now, which is good, since she's exhausted. Oddly, she's also pretty dehydrated today, which is weird since she has been able to eat almost normally today and has been drinking. It makes me really nervous and I've been trying to get her to drink Pedialyte. Why do they hate the things that are good for them? That stuff is gross though, I have to say. It's weirdly salty...

Anyways, I'll try to post a nicer post later when I'm more settled. Something more like a "reflecting on Roxanne's first two years" post. Right.

Friday, December 18, 2009

Afflicted

Most of you have heard by now, but we are all sick over here at our place. It's been like a horror movie. Fortunately, we are all starting to feel a little better, but I think it will take a few days to be back to normal. Roxanne seems to have been running a low grade fever off and on today (of course, our thermometer isn't working and won't register any higher than 96 degrees, and since Roxanne isn't an iguana, I'm pretty sure it is broken) and she's been sleeping a lot. Which is good, since Justin is still feeling pretty awful. I'm mostly better, but really achy and worn out. I ran a couple of errands this morning and by the time I got home I had to lay down. None of us have eaten anything other than crackers, popsicles and chicken soup lately, so that doesn't help with the whole feeling weak thing.

We are really really really disappointed about having to postpone Roxanne's birthday party. We were really excited about it, but we don't really have the strength to sanitize the house (and please, let me tell you, when your 2 year old is vomiting every 3o minutes for six hours or so, you really need to sanitize the house) and the thought of us giving this AWFUL stomach bug to someone else is horrifying. Especially since the gestation period would probably make it so that it kicked in right in time for Christmas. Not nice... We are just thankful that we hadn't booked a party place like Monkey Joe's, which we were really considering. It would have been pretty frustrating to lose money on a deposit... And when I was researching how long you are contagious with one of these stomach viruses, it's not easy to find an answer. Some stomach bugs seem to stop being contagious 24 hours after you stop vomiting, but others can last up to 2 weeks after symptoms go away... Yikes. It's just not worth it to tempt it. We were given this lovely virus thanks to someone else being careless about exposing their sick child to others, and I really don't want to do the same.

But that's enough about that... We hope we can reschedule Roxanne's party for sometime in early January. We'll keep everyone posted. We'll just plan to have it here. I had to run to Target this morning to get some supplies (ginger ale, etc.) and I bought Roxanne some super cute decals for her wall. I've been eying them for months, and I finally decided to just get them. They are from the Woodland line of Circo room stuff, and they are so cute. Roxanne helped me put them on her wall today in one of the rare periods where we were able to be up and about. We put them on the walls above her crib, and she kept looking at them and saying, "I love them!" So cute... Well worth the $15 that I've been too cheap to shell out for them. They are perfect for that wall that you can't hang anything on because you know that the baby will probably pull it down...

Roxanne's talking is really getting serious. It still takes me by surprise when she says things, and uses these pretty complex sentences correctly. She has lately been talking about Santa, and how she wants him to "bring you presents." And on Wednesday, before she threw up the first time, she told me, "Mama, my tummy's hurt." When we watch TV now, she comments on what the characters are doing, like when we watched an episode of Spongebob earlier, she kept saying, "Squidward ate all the crabby patties Dada! haha!" Good and bad really, since we are going to have to be much more careful now. Last weekend, I was painting a picture frame for her room, and she came over and asked me if she could paint, too, and when I told her it was Mama's paint, she said "da*n it." Ah! I actually don't know where that came from, since I have a pretty immaculate vocabulary most of the time thanks to my job. I kept asking her "what did you say?" and she just kept repeating it. But I really thought I had to be mis-hearing her. Nope. I just said quietly, "we don't say that Roxanne, it's not nice," and then changed the subject. I've learned from experience that if you spend too much time teaching her something is bad, she just wants to say or do it more. Sigh.

Alright. I've worn myself out with typing. Poor pitiful me and my poor pitiful family. Hopefully we'll shake this soon!

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Christmas Mode


We have been shopping all weekend... Whew! Birthday presents and Christmas presents for Roxanne and we are trying to finish up our Christmas shopping for everyone else. Unfortunately, that hasn't left us time to finish a lot of the projects we wanted to get to around the house before Roxanne's party next weekend. Sigh. There are still weird spots on the ceiling in several rooms where we need to repair the water damage from the old roof, and the hall light is still disconnected. That is officially my least favorite room in the house... Oh well. Now I'm focusing on the food aspect of her party. We're going to aim for a menu of Roxanne's favorites. Yay!

Sunday, December 6, 2009

A busy weekend...





So, this weekend, we hosted a super fun baby shower for my friend Sarah (our first real event at our new house!), we picked Katie up from my Dad and Colleen's farm, we (I) decorated the house for Christmas, and even got to see my grandparents for a few minutes. You can see in the photos that Roxanne was very excited to have Katie back. In the photo with both of them, Roxanne is trying to simultaneously pet and try to get Katie to dance with her. We have an iPod doughnut that Mike gave us when we moved into our last apartment, and it's been getting a LOT of use in our new house, too. We often listen to music in the living room and have family dance parties, so that's what we were doing when Roxanne was trying to get Katie to dance. We've been listening to Christmas music, but the Squirrel Nut Zippers Christmas album is the house favorite. At least for dancing... We also listen to the Charlie Brown Christmas album a lot, but it's for dinner time. There's too many low key songs for dance parties.

I'm rambling... So yes, I'll post photos on the house blog of our Christmas decorations as well as some photos from the baby shower. I felt so grown up hosting an actual gathering! Roxanne apparently thought it was the best thing ever and flirted tirelessly with everyone.

We took Roxanne to see Santa today, and it was kind of a let down. She basically just looked slightly freaked out when I set her in Santa's lap, but not enough to cry or anything, just enough to make a zombie face in all the photos. We went to North Dekalb Mall, and since it was almost 6 when we went (closing time) I think everyone involved was just kind of "phoning it in." The Santa was very sweet though, and good with Roxanne, but no matter how many times I gently corrected him, he kept talking to Roxanne like she was a boy. Poor Roxanne. At least she knew about all the toys he was asking about. He asked if she wanted a "Thomas the Train," or a ball or some trucks. Of course, Roxanne kept saying "yes!" to all of these, since that what she plays with at work. Ben has a huge train table with Thomas trians, and Roxanne really does like it. Maybe I should start bringing a tutu to work for her to wear sometimes... But still, she was pretty zombied out overall. And I had put her in her one and only Christmas shirt with a pretty little felt poinsetta on it, and Santa let her have a huge sticker before the photo shoot, and she of course put it right over the flower. Sigh. I'll try and post the Santa photo later. I'm tempted to take her to a different Santa and just not buy any photos. It's totally annoying that you can't use your personal camera, but I guess that's the only way they make money.

I just have to say, we are really enjoying our home. It's just nice to be able to spend time together here. Justin and Roxanne have been playing a lot in the playroom with the Kinex that Kendree passed on to us, and it's so cute to hear them in there. The cutest is when Roxanne walks up to Justin and says "come play with me Dada!" and drags him into the playroom. Last Sunday we were all able to play in Justin's "music room" in the basement for a while and make silly music. And Justin and Roxanne played ball in the backyard last weekend, too. It's just such a nice change from our old apartment, where we felt so cramped that we often wanted to spend most of our time out of the house. We really are lucky.

We hope everyone had a great weekend!

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The tantrum thrower

Whew. Terrible twos have arrived. As any member of my family can attest to... She was a doll at Thanksgiving at Pop Pop and Yaya's farm, but that was mainly because random strangers were apparently giving her chocolate through most of the event. But we went to Callaway on Saturday to be with my mom's side of the family (lots of us nowadays!) and Roxanne had several full-on meltdowns. She likes to lay on the floor in public places when she's throwing these fits. It's really charming. On the "Magical Night of Lights" tour, she threw a prolonged fit because Justin wouldn't let her climb under the bench of our moving trolley car. Before that, she had been totally mesmerized by the lights. We still had a great time, but I think maybe some of the other people on the train might have felt differently... :) In any case, we are hoping this phase ends soon. Ugh.

Not to be too negative. She's doing lots of really super cute new things, and her talking is still getting better and better. She says really hilarious things all the time. Her favorite phrase right now is "I don't like ____." Justin is convinced that it came from him reading her Green Eggs and Ham but I don't know. It kind of seems like a normal step in development. She often says that she doesn't like things, and then five seconds later she says, "I do like ____!" about whatever it was she was talking about before. Which supports the green eggs and ham thing. The only real downside to that is that sometimes she says she doesn't like Dada, or kisses, or whatever nice thing that she is currently grumpy with. We always tell her that she shouldn't say those things, but it's always hard to tell what is getting through. The most noticeable thing about her personality these days is that she's very sassy. Cute, but sassy. She thinks it's hilarious to be contrary. And it usually is...

In other news, we are still trying to get settled into the house. We are really loving it, but there are a million little projects we need to work on. We are obssessing over each detail since we hope that these things will be in place for a very very long time. I'm working on my graduate school application, and I'm officially locked in, since I've registered to take the GRE on January 8. That is one expensive test... Justin has been stressed at work, but at least it should slow down once the holidays roll around.

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Monday, November 23, 2009

Princess Haircut








So, Roxanne had a great time at Ms. Lisa's. It took a little while for her to get comfortable but then she was pretty good. Ms. Lisa is really amazing at her job. Maybe it's because she has five kids of her own... Her sign even says "Screamers are welcome" when you walk in. She told me that when she took a career aptitude test, it told her she should do something like parachute jumping. I think that's definitely the same level of anxiety as toddler haircuts. But she definitely is lovely and makes you feel like your child is an angel. Which I could maybe have believed if Roxanne wasn't swatting at her so often. But, between a well-timed lollipop, an episode of Sesame Street, and a warm up playtime on a Lego table, she did fine. And her hair is so cute! We told Ms. Lisa that we thought Roxanne would look cute with a bob and short bangs, but we weren't sure that it would work for her. But she agreed right away and said that she needed a European haircut to go with her hip style. :) Again, she knows what to say... So anyways, enjoy the photos!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Roxanne's first haircut

I can't believe she is almost 2! I made an appointment for her first haircut on Saturday morning. She's going to see "Ms. Lisa" in downtown Decatur. We've heard a lot of amazing things about her, and Ben actually got his haircut with her last weekend. So hopefully it will go well. I don't want to chop it short, but it just needs a little shaping. She has a mullet. Apparently Ms. Lisa is great at cutting kids hair while they squirm and scream, and based on my last attempt at trimming her bangs out of her eyes, she will be doing both. She only charges $15 for little ones, so as long as we don't make this a regular thing, I think it will be fine. I'm totally going to bring the camera and take pictures of her while she's getting it cut. I'm so excited!

In other news, we've been getting things back on track with her sleeping, since we were a MESS with all of the moving. She's been sleeping through the night for the last couple of nights, which has been wonderful. I've got a cold that I can't seem to shake, and Roxanne seems to be in the last few days of hers. I guess it's just that time of year!

In Roxanne news, she is talking more and more every day. She is getting easier to understand, too. She has really been loving playing pretend, especially taking play food and "feeding" Ben's stuffed animals. The cutest is this GIANT teddy bear that Ben has in his room. She snuggles up and sits in his lap and offers him plastic hot dogs and tea. She sings to him sometimes, too. She has started giving silly responses all by herself, too. Today, she was putting her fingers in her ears, and I asked her if she had something in them, and she said "uuuuh, monkey tails!" And if you ask her what she has in her mouth, she sticks out her tongue and says "aaaaaah, a tongue." It would be sassy if it weren't just toddler honesty.

She has been enjoying "Roxanne's house" a lot. I bought her a cheapie baby doll stroller on Sunday, and she pushes her babies around the house non-stop now. Her other favorite home activities are painting and playing with her weebles. She and Justin like to throw balls around, too, especially at the blow-up hedge hog that she sits on in the living room. She will throw a ball at it, and then say "Mama, throw ball at hedgehog's face" in a very sad tone. Then I tell her it's OK, and she giggles like a maniac. Ah. Important life skills I'm imparting... :)

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Finally! Photos!






I totally would like to blame my lack of photos on not being able to find something for the camera, but no. Just laziness. Sorry! So I'm posting photos. There are more on Flickr. The top few are from our visit to the children's hospital. Last Thursday, Roxanne stuck a little berry from some monkey grass up her nose. She calls them "acorns" and she kept saying "acorn in nose, mama." over and over. I saw it in there (up high) but by the time we were seen at the ER, it was gone. Phew! But yes, you can see she was having a big time there. Every time someone came into the room, she would yell "Hey there!" and wave. The likely story is that the berry came out through her throat and she swallowed it. Fortunately, those are not poisonous berries. The ER doctor apparently had just had to call poison control about them because a little boy had eaten a huge amount of them. Ah, kids.

The last photo is old, but it's from a trip to Kendree and Jon's house, where Roxanne was playing dress-up with her cousins. Just proof that we do let her do girly things, too!

Hope all is well! I'll try to post to the house blog soon. We've been busy, what with ER trips, painting, etc. etc.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Happy Birthday to Me

So, Roxanne has really really been into singing the birthday song lately. Our family has a lot of fall birthdays, so I guess she's just been hearing it a lot, too. Mine was most recent, so Justin taught her to sing me the happy birthday song, which she kept singing after my birthday, too. To try and explain that it was not my birthday any more, I told her it would be her birthday next, and told her she could sing "Happy Birthday to Me!" and apparently it caught on. She just sings it at random times. Some of her other new favorite phrases are "I did it!," "I'm so scared!," "I busted it,"What's going on?," and her newest, "I want candy, Mama!" Thanks Halloween. She is less of a parrot these days and more of a little person. She puts words and concepts together in a really neat way. On Monday morning (our first morning waking up in the house) she ran into our footboard and hit her lip. She told me, "I am busted my lip mama." When I put her on the phone with people, she is getting pretty good at making conversation. Today on our drive home, she was talking to Nana on the phone, and I told her to tell Nana where we were going, and she said, "Roxanne go get Dada." It's funny how sometimes she talks about her self as "I" but other times says her name.

In not so nice news, I have been having a lot of trouble with her biting. She doesn't bite me, just Ben. They bite each other, but it's still bad. It's especially frustrating because she is verbal enough to tell me or Ben why she's upset. She tells me all the time "I want to play with Ben's car" or "Ben take it away," but when they get into scuffles, she loses control. She's only bitten him 3 times, but that's enough for me. She's tried to bite him many more, but I've caught it in time. Of course, one of those bites was a result of Ben putting his finger in her mouth. But one of the bites I found out about much later. Apparently, his grandparents noticed he had a bite mark on his little booty. Sigh. I guess I missed that one.

She has been having a lot of fun re-meeting all of her old toys. She really missed them all. And she got lots of new ones from Mimi and from Chloe and Ella, and Nana. She's so spoiled! Honestly, we now have enough toys for three kids. But Justin and I both really like the play room that we'll have here. One advantage of a small house is that she can be in the playroom and we are in the kitchen or living room and we can hear her perfectly. And in two steps, we can see her. We do need to find a good storage solution for in there though. Right now there are still lots of boxes everywhere.

Oh, and because I'm constantly overextending myself and taking on projects that I can't complete, I set up a house blog. I wanted to make sure that I didn't spend all my time on Roxanne's blog talking about the house, like I have been. And I'd like to have it as a record for later. If you want to check it out, the URL is www.atomiclilly.blogspot.com and I'll probably put a link up for it on this blog. So, if you are interested in that stuff, check it out. It's still really stripped down for now, but some day I'll spend some time making it look better and put up some links to other design blogs I like. My mom told me about one in particular written by a young guy in Athens who is renovating his first mid-century ranch. And while I don't like some of the choices he makes, it's nice to see some of his projects. So yes. I'm off to try and get some work done. And charge the camera! We finally found the charger! Yay!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Halloween Photos!






This is my first post from the new house... I'm just doing a quick one because we are all exhausted and Roxanne is going nuts. We're going to watch some TV on our computer, thanks to Mike setting up our network for us! Thanks Mike! And thanks Nana for keeping up with Roxanne. She has been walking around since Nana left a little while ago saying "miss Nana, Mama. Miss Nana, Mama." Awww. And thank you to Mimi and Kaitlin for visiting this morning and paying lots of attention to Roxanne. She needs it. And thanks to Ariel and Luke for coming over today with food and helping lots and lots. And thanks to Kendree and Chloe for coming and helping so much yesterday. We truly are so lucky to have such a helpful and loving family. We still have lots of work to do. But it's coming along nicely.

Anyways, I'm posting some photos Mike took of us on Halloween. We went trick or treating with Roxanne in Nana and Mike's neighborhood. Roxanne had a great time and is demanding candy as often as possible. I made Roxanne's owl costume. Hopefully it doesn't look to cobbled together. We had a great time.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

I know, I know...

I'm such a bad blogger lately. We've just been so busy. As I'm sure most of you have heard either via my neurotically frequent Facebook postings, or via e-mail, we closed on the house last Friday. We've been working really hard to get the house up to snuff before moving in, so we are working on the house but still driving back to my mom's at night. We are hoping to move into our house this weekend (ah, our house!). We've had a lot of help from our friends and family and we really appreciate it. This week, Justin was at the house on Monday and today working all by himself to finish up the painting. We had finished up the priming over the weekend, and today, Justin finished most of the painting. We still have the hallway and kitchen to paint, but they aren't as urgent to us. And the basement still looks like a mess for now. I'm trying to keep our focus upstairs for now. But I'm pleased with our progress for now. My stepdad took some photos for us, and I'll post those soon (the same as the ones I posted on Facebook and e-mailed to a few of you). Once we start getting moved in, I hope to add some more photos showing our progress. We LOVE the paint colors we chose. And I can't wait to finish up the kitchen. I have to get that paint off the cabinets and we got new hardware for them. At some point, we have to address the tile backsplash, too. It's not in great shape.

In the less fun areas of the house, we've got to get the roof replaced ASAP. Apparently all of the flooding in the metro area has led to roofers being in high demand. Even getting a company out to give us an estimate was tough, and the first company we asked just didn't show. The second came today and seemed good, but we want another estimate to see how they compare price-wise. Sigh. We've got the new locks, we had pest control come out, all the utilities are finally on, and we had the estimate from the security company. We still haven't decided what to do about that. It's going to be more than we wanted to pay in order to get the security system. We'll see.

In Roxanne news, she is talking like a little person these days. She still sings all the time, and she is becoming quite the dancer. She is starting to throw tantrums more frequently though. We're thinking a lot of it has to do with all of the back and forth and late nights. It will be nice to get settled. But of course, part of the tantrums are also just her age. Her and Ben fight more often these days. She tried to bite his foot yesterday when they were scuffling over a toy. Whew! I'm trying to keep that curbed. Of course, he bit her on the arm last week. Twice. It's the baby jungle some days. Baby eat baby. She is really into stuffed animals these days, but she only sticks with the same one for a few weeks at a time. Although her Jellycat is her constant in her crib. He's really soft and big. She loves him.

I promise to post more often!

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Mustache Mystery

So last night, Roxanne pointed at Justin's upper lip and said "mustache." He currently has a beard, which of course, includes a mustache. We were talking about all of Dada's face, like the "nose, eyes, ears, chin, cheeks," etc., and then she pointed out the mustache. Where do they learn these things? We both spent a lot of time trying to figure out how she could possibly know what that is, or where she learned that word. Toddlers are hilarious. The level of understanding Roxanne has is just a constant surprise. It's really exciting to have so much time with her.

So, I think that's it for now as far as news. We still don't have a closing date. We had a second couple of conditions issued this morning from the DCA, which is good since it means that they are working on our loan application, but annoying because we don't know how many times they will come back and ask for something. Hopefully it will be done soon. Our mortgage guy with SunTrust, Marc D'Angelo (in case anyone needs a good mortgage guy, he's pretty awesome) is on the ball, but very matter of fact. And he's not interested in giving us time-frame promises. So we aren't sure how much longer we have. But like I said, we trust Marc and feel like he will get things done the right way. So keep your fingers crossed. We've been hogging up my Mom and Mike's house for a staggering amount of time now. We are so grateful to them! We would have run up quite a bill at Extended Stay America by now. :)

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Longest pause ever...

Sorry guys! I need to get back on the blog ball. Seriously. I joined a gym near my parents' house (thanks in part to Mike's good influence and Justin's helpfulness in keeping Roxanne) and I really am starting to like it, but it keeps me busy. My time to write my blog has been transferred to the eliptical machine. Sigh. Anyways, there's not a whole lot of news from us. We still don't have a firm closing date, but we know that our loan is now with the DCA. I realize this means nothing to you guys, but it's good, since it means that we are only a few steps from closing. Our agent thinks it will be next week. We are never as optimistic as he is, but we would LOVE for that to happen! Once the loan leaves the DCA (which should only be a couple of days) it goes to the closing attorneys, and they should only need 24-48 hours with it before we close. So we are at the tail end. Of course, Justin and I have maintained a pretty big emotional distance with this house. This is almost exactly where we were last time when the house falls through, so we aren't going to think anything is done until it's done. We are thinking that we might even have issues at the closing table. You just never know. This has been such a complicated process!

In Roxanne news, she is really turning into a toddler. I'm going to list out some of her new fun stuff:

*About 15 minutes ago, she told me she needed to peepee in her pink potty, and much much much to my shock, she actually did! So that's pretty neat! I guess I'll get started with her now. Ben has been pretty much potty-trained for a month or so. We've already bought Roxanne some Elmo and Zoe "Big girl pants," and she really likes them. I have only let her wear them over her diaper, but she kept asking to wear Ben's "big boy pants," so I wanted her to have some of her own.

*She is really grasping the concept of counting. Don't get me wrong, she does not know how to count; but she lines things up, points at them one by one and says "eight, nine, ten" or some other sequence of numbers. She can count to ten with a grown-up counting with her, but on her own, she just says two three numbers at a time in order. She also can see pictures of numbers and start saying random numbers. Like, she has no idea what numbers are which, but if I'm on the computer working on a spreadsheet, she points to the screen and starts saying "four, five, six," etc. It's really cute.

*She has learned several new songs. She likes to sing the ABC's most often, but she also likes "You are my sunshine," and the "Yo Gabba Gabba" theme song. Thanks to Nana and Mike's DVR, she's been getting to watch some episodes of Yo Gabba Gabba, and I can't tell you how much she loves it. She gets ecstatic. She calls it "Don't bite your friends" because that was her first exposure to the show (although she saw the characters at her friend Evie's house and Evie's awesome Yo Gabba Gabba birthday party!). We would let her watch the clip of the show from their website, which was the song "Don't bite your friends." I also found a Yo Gabba Gabba boom box at Target, and she has been wearing it out. I'm almost regretting that purchase... But it has this feature where you can "spin" the songs, and it's pretty cool.

*This morning, completely out of the blue, she told me, clear as a bell, "I like your outfit mama." Wow. I have no idea where that came from. I know I tell her that every once in a while, but I guess maybe I say it more than I thought. So yeah, that's not super exciting, but she just sounded so grown up. It was so funny.

*Roxanne got her first professional photos taken last night with Ella and Chloe. She was very very good for the photographer, in spite of the fact that it was 8:00pm when we were there. This is probably in part due to the awesome photographer, who was great with kids, and the fact that she LOVES Ella and Chloe. She told me she missed them this morning. In any case, we got some really cute photos of the three girls, and I bought a few of just Roxanne. They are really cute. The only drawback is that Roxanne has a bruise on her face. I thought about paying extra to get the bruise airbrushed out, but I decided that it was appropriate to leave it. So some of you will be getting some charming photos of Roxanne for Christmas in which she has a shiner. I'm tempted to go back to the store and order some more. I only got two poses. I think there were like 5 of Roxanne. And a couple of the ones I passed on were hilarious. She looked WILD. They keep the photos for a year or so I think. Or maybe 30 days... I can't remember.

I'm still cameraless. I am almost positive that our camera charger is packed. Boo. Roxanne is going to have this weird gap in her childhood photos. Oh well.

So I leave you with some sage advice. Don't bite your friends.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Cheesy bagel versus Mama bagel

Whew. This morning, Roxanne and I got into world war three this morning over our bagels. There was no yelling or crying, but there was ordering around and tattling. My mom got bagels for breakfast (the Sunday morning tradition) and I got Roxanne her favorite "cheesy bagel" and cut it into four sections for her. She ate one section, and then starting ordering me to give her my "mama bagel." I had a wheat bagel, and for anyone who has done or is doing weight watchers, you know that once you have the points value figured out for the food you are eating, you want that food. Making changes just complicates things. But in the end, I swapped a quarter of my mama bagel for a quarter of Roxanne's cheesy bagel. When my mom walked through, I told her what happened, and Roxanne said, "mama take it away." That's the second time in the last few weeks that she's tattled on me. Sigh.

In other news, we got our appraisal back, and it came in over the sales price. So that's great for us. Things are moving along with the loan, but I've apparently got to do a lot of really tedious paperwork to prove that my income is handled correctly. Ugh. On the flip side, this time around, we are much less involved with everything, and it's just less stressful.

We hope everyone is doing well!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Our singing baby

Roxanne is really into singing these days. We are often treated to medleys of "eensy weensy spider," "ABC," "raining pouring," etc. etc. Roxanne's talking is just really taking off (singing included). When she's hungry in the car on the ride home, she asks me for whatever food pops into her head, so it usually sounds like this: "want bacon mama...cookies mama....popcorn mama...turkey mama...cheese mama..." and on and on. I promise, that is not all she eats, but she is a tough eater these days. I've been cooking with the kids out of a Sesame Street cook book, but they are most excited about the chicken nuggets, pasta dishes, and smoothies. Oh, and they will eat the sweets, too. Shocking. She can ask for specific books to read, and she is learning her colors pretty well with crayons and blocks. Her favorite book of the moment is "Little Hoot." It's a really cute book, and she asks to read it EVERY night. She says "lil hoo, Dada!" It's so cute. She also has a 70's book I bought at a consignment sale about a baby duck called "Butterball." She likes that one a lot, too, and calls it "bayaba." So yeah, I understand her most of the time, but I realize that some of it sounds like gibberish to the untrained ear.

We don't have any house news for now. We are waiting for the appraisal to come back, which will probably take another week, and we will really be relieved once that is done. Because of our loan program, the house has to appraise for at least 1% above the sales price. So if it comes in too low, we will be in trouble. The good news is that we were able to lock in our interest rate at 4.875% and our mortgage banker thinks there is a distant possibility that we might close on our closing date of October 7. Justin and I aren't buying it, but we're hopeful. At this point, as long as we close by November, and close at all, we'll be thrilled. Over the moon thrilled. In the meantime, we are still enjoying living with Nana and Mike and Leah (can you believe they haven't kicked us out into a hobo camp yet?). We house-sat for Ben's family last weekend, and Roxanne was asking for "Nana, Mike and Eah" every once in a while. She's getting spoiled rotten. :)

We hope everyone is well, and for all of our Georgia friends and family, stay dry and safe. It seems like the worst is over with the flooding, but it is really scary.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Inspections are over...

and the house did pretty well! The HUD Inspection was yesterday, and the house passed. That inspection is not very intense, but it's the most important in terms of our loan program, since any issues that come up have to be addressed for us to get the grant money. The only thing the guy brought up was that one of the smoke detectors needed a new battery, but he didn't write it down, since it would have made us fail the inspection. That inspection is silly. They don't check things like foundation problems, but if you have a cracked window, you fail. The other house we had under contract failed the HUD inspection times a million. There were like fifty things they noted on there, and that's what pushed us into the renovation loan. It's complicated and I won't explain it, but it's good news. The regular inspection was this morning, and it went surprisingly well. There were quite a few little things to be taken care of, but most of them are things that most houses need. Caulking, painting, etc. etc. The biggest problem is the roof. We would like to replace it as soon as we can. That's one thing we learned in our last experience... replacing a roof is surprisingly inexpensive. But the electrical and HVAC systems are fine. As is the plumbing. So that's a huge relief. We are planning to move ahead as quickly as possible and hope that we can close in a month. Fingers crossed. :)

Justin had the day off today, since he met the inspector at the house this morning, so he took Roxanne and Ben and me to Monkey Joe's this afternoon. We had a wonderful time, and for the rest of the day, Roxanne has been talking about it. she has started this funny thing where she says something very definitive, like "Ben at Monkey Joe's" and then follows it with "Mama," in a very pointed way. Like she wants to make sure I'm listening. For dinner tonight, we met Ariel and Luke at a restaurant in Historic Roswell (Fickle Pickle...mmm) and Roxanne really hammed it up. She danced a lot, said hello and blew kisses at several people walking by, and did lots of chatting with Ariel and Luke. The funny thing about her now is that she clearly knows when she is being cute, and makes little faces that are only for those times. It's like her fake laugh, where she fake smiles, wheezes, and lifts her shoulders up and down. Seriously, she is a ham.

At the end of dinner, she kept saying it was time to go night night. We left, but hung around in the parking lot chatting with Ariel and Luke for a few minutes. Roxanne finally turned to them and said "bye bye Ariel! bye bye Luke!" and blew them some kisses and waved. She was done. She always gets excited now when we tell her we are going home to Nana's house to go home, and she talks about Mike and "eah." She is going to miss them when we finally leave.

I promise, I will find the camera accessories this weekend!

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Aaargh

We still haven't gotten the inspection done. We all showed up yesterday only to find out that the electricity wasn't turned on. At least the gas and water were... Apparently it is probably going to be Saturday before they get it hooked up. At this point, we are thinking about getting an inspection done now on everything that doesn't involve the electricity, and then have the guy come back out when it gets turned on (assuming there aren't any deal breaker things they find not related to the electricity). We'll see.

I still haven't fished out my camera stuff. Sorry. Roxanne's going to have this big gap in her childhood photos. We'll just tell her to blame the Department of Community Affairs. And their stupid down payment assistance program. In lieu of photos, here's my current favorite Roxanne story:

On Friday night, Justin went to Sweetwater Brewery with some co-workers, and Roxanne and I had to kill time until we met up with him for dinner. We went to Target, and I bought Roxanne one of those horrible soft pretzels to snack on while we wandered around. At one point, I was looking at some shoes and Roxanne started fussing. When I looked at her, she had her finger shoved in her nose. I pulled it out and scolded her a little and she calmed down pretty quickly. Um, just as a disclaimer, she puts her finger in her nose fairly often. Like several times a day... So we have a nice dinner, etc., and sometime around midnight, Roxanne woke up crying and when I went to her, she sounded really stuffed up. Since we've all been fighting colds with sore throats, aches, congestion, I was instantly worried that she was showing the first symptoms of a nasty cold. I gave her some water to drink, and in the process, she blew a GIANT pretzel chunk out of her nose. Immediately, any congestion sounds disappeared, and she was totally breathing normally. So now I'm going to have to be always worried about her sticking things up her nose. That can get really dangerous! Sigh.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Holy Cow...

I have let waaaay too much time pass since my last post. Sorry! We've been really busy. Lots of frantic house hunting, errands after work, etc. etc. We are doing well, and still having lots of fun staying with Nana and Mike and Leah. We put an offer on a house in Decatur last Thursday! It's the one that I mentioned previously, over near North Dekalb Mall. We aren't crazy about the neighborhood, but we were able to get some feedback on the area from a friend of my boss who lives near the house we are looking at, and it was all very positive. That went a long way for both of us. I also did exhaustive searches on crime maps, sex offender registries, and my new favorite website, www.greatschools.net, where I obsessively researched schools in the area. The elementary school this house is zoned for is slightly better than the one the other house was zoned for, so that's nice. It is still rated a 7 out of 10 on the aforementioned website, unlike the super duper 10 out of 10 that a lot of suburban schools get, but hopefully Roxanne will come out OK. :) Of course, this time around, Justin and I are both being very very very detached. We like the house, and we hope this works out, but we are very well aware that it might not. So far, things have been much much more smooth than our last experience. We had some hiccups at first, like the fact that once we finally decided to put an offer on the house, we found out someone else had already submitted one (ah!). Magically, ours was accepted. We don't have a binding contract yet, but our agent suggested it might happen tomorrow. We have the inspection scheduled for Monday morning. That will be a momentous event. We're keeping our fingers crossed that the house is in good shape. It seems like it is. It's updated, and actually has appliances! Whoa! My favorite part is that the utilities are connected, and we don't have to turn them on ourselves. This house is owned by Chase, and apparently they are easier to deal with than Bank of America. Let's hope.

Roxanne is a firecracker. She's been having some tough times, courtesy of her two year molars wreaking havoc in her poor little mouth. We've been giving her Motrin almost every night and sometimes during the day. We were worried she might have an ear infection because she was pulling and poking at her ears and screaming for a few days. I was pretty sure it was her teeth, since she didn't have a fever or anything, but it was just so bad! She would wake up at night and put her finger in her ear and scream. I took her to the pediatrician, who said her ears are fine, and showed me those mean little molars poking through. She okayed the pain killers, and they have made a big difference.

One of Roxanne's favorite things right now is draping herself in clothes. Anything that is within her reach is fair game. The other morning, she found one of my bras, and pulled it over her head so it was like a necklace. she had a complete and utter meltdown when I took it off of her so we could leave for work. But mamas have to draw the line somewhere... luckily, she got some well timed dress-up clothes from her cousins a couple of weeks ago, including some ballet slippers that she insisted on wearing today. She spins around in circles when she wears them, but don't worry, I don't let her walk on anything but carpet in them. We'll keep them nice so that maybe she can someday use them in a dance class. I suggested to Justin that we look into a ballet class for her, and he responded, "She's not really built like a ballerina." I promised him I wasn't picking her future occupation, and that I thought she'd be OK for some toddler twirling, and he agreed. Once things settle down, I'm going to start looking. She loves to sing and dance, so I think it might be a great fit for her. She's a ham and a half. She waves at people, initiates peekaboo games, and even occasionally blows kisses to strangers. Sometimes people fall over themselves for her, but sometimes she is ignored. When the latter happens, she just tries harder to ham it up.

Roxanne still loves Spongebob Squarepants. My mom found her a "bob bob" chair recently, and Roxanne had a really hilarious reaction to it. When she first saw it, she acted afraid of it, and wouldn't get anywhere near it. After about ten minutes of keeping an eye on it, she eased over to it and sat in it while Nana read her a book. A few pages in, she turned to my mom and said "bob bob's a chair." It made my day. It's really a fun chair, kind of like a little nest, since it's round and sits on a frame. She really likes it. In other Roxanne news, I let her play Leah's drumset a little the other night, and she LOVED it. If this house works out, we are definitely getting her some drums for Christmas. They will be perfect in the basement. Of course, we are wondering if we should just get her a full size set so it will last longer, but we'll see. I have to admit that would be partly for me and Justin... :)

Alright, I'm off to eat a late dinner. Tomorrow night we are going to my dad and Colleen's farm for dinner and a visit with Katie! We have been missing her so much, but we are so thankful that they are letting her be a farm dog during this transitional time. Apparently Katie is very happy up there living with their other dogs, and getting totally spoiled. She's going to be so disappointed coming back in the city...

We hope everyone is well!

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

We're still here :)

Whew, my posts have been awful lately! We have just been very very occupied lately trying to figure things out. We still haven't decided what we are going to do in terms of our housing, but we have been looking at some houses. We're going back out on Saturday morning to see some more, and there is one that we are going to see for a second time. We like the house a lot, but we just aren't totally sure about the area. It's Decatur, but pretty far out, like close to North Dekalb Mall (ick). But it is a really good school district, so that's definitely a plus. We'll see.

So, finally for some Roxanne updates. She is WILD these days. Her verbal skills are really amazing, too. She has started singing some songs pretty well, including "eensy weensy spider," "ABC's" and "Don't Bite Your Friends" from Yo Gabba Gabba. She especially loves that last one. It's hilarious. I'm going to try and video tape her singing it soon. She dances to it, too. I have been AWFUL with the photos lately, since I don't know where most of the parts are, like the charger and the uploader thingy. I think they are packed. I'll find it at some point, I promise. Roxanne is very clear in expressing herself these days, and she can usually tell me what she wants or why she is upset. We are working on asking for things, instead of whining, but we all know how that goes... Usually, it sounds like this:
Roxanne: "mmmmaaaaaammmmmmaaaaaaa" accompanied by arm waving, crying, and thrashing in the general direction of her water cup
Me: "Roxanne, if you want water, then ask for it nicely."
Roxanne: "Water, pheeeeez." now sitting nicely in her seat and looking at me sweetly.

She is very into naming things, especially colors. She holds up different things, like blocks or cars or crayons, and says "yellow block," (etc.) and she's right about 50% of the time. She knows orange and yellow, but the others seem to confuse her a little. She likes to name things in terms of possession, too, so she will put on my shoes and say "mama shoes" or get one of Justin's shirts and say "dada shirt." She knows her own name now, too, and has started saying it more often. Mainly just in terms of things, like her water or her food. It sounds kind of like "reh-zann" when she says her name. She says some sentences, like "open the water peez" when she wants the lid taken off of her sippy cup, or "I'm all done" when she wants to get out of her seat. Of course, she doesn't speak totally clearly, but it's eerily clear. I think she might be a touch ahead of the curve on her language skills, but I think it's from spending so much time with a 3 year old. On days when it's just Ben and Roxanne, our conversations are not nearly as complete or complex. Three year olds like to talk. A lot. A lot a lot.

She's a very cuddly thing these days. She loves snuggling still, and she gives lots of kisses. She likes to say hi to people when they walk in a room, especially Mike, my stepdad, and Leah and my Mom. And me and Justin... When I walk into the room with her, she looks up and says "Hey Mama." So grown up. She absolutely loves staying with Nana, Mike and Leah. When we pull up to the house, she lists out all of their names, even though she is sometimes shy when they first say hi to her. We really feel lucky to be staying here. But we do hope to get things figured out sooner rather than later. We hope to make an offer on a house in the next two weeks, or just go back to renting if we really can't find anything. But we would like to take advantage of all of the buyer incentives in front of us. But holy cow, I have been looking at real estate listings CONSTANTLY lately. My mom has been helping me search, too. It's nice to have a second set of eyes. Looking for foreclosures is really tough.

OK, that's all for now. I'll try and get some pictures and/or video up soon.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

At least it's settled

We officially didn't get the house. We're hoping to at least get our earnest money back, but we won't know until Friday or so. At least we know we tried as many different things as possible to make it work, but in the end, the only option we had was paying an uncomfortably high interest rate which in turn created an uncomfortably high monthly payment. We aren't interested in making our lives more stressful. So now the big giant decision is whether to go back to renting or try to buy another foreclosure. Neither option is all that appealing right now. Well, I guess I should just say that there are definitely looming downsides to either one. I have to admit that it's comforting to be at home at my mom's house during this process. I feel taken care of and sheltered. We'll be back on our feet soon, and I have to admit that I feel some relief today to at least have a clear answer about the Decatur house.

And if anyone is house hunting, there's a nice place back on the market in North Decatur Heights!

Thursday, August 13, 2009

No good news

We still aren't any closer to a closing date. Unfortunately, the third bank I mentioned in the previous post didn't have a good offer either. The lowest interest rate was being offered by a bank who is now not offering any more loans to people getting our down payment assistance program. It might be a temporary thing, but no one knows. I'll keep you posted, but things are looking pretty bad right now for the house. I promise to give a Roxanne update soon. I'm just worn down and feeling sorry for myself. Blech.

Saturday, August 8, 2009

No news for now

We are still exploring our options. Sadly, this includes looking at some rental listings, but hopefully that will not be necessary. We just are running into a lot of problems because of the crazy fees and interest rates that are being offered by the two options we have for right now. There might be a third bank we can consider, but we won't find out until Monday. Hopefully that might work out. But who knows. We thank everyone for their well wishes, and e-mails. Sorry I haven't responded much to e-mails. I don't really have anything nice to say at the moment. Of course, I should say that my mom and Mike and Leah have been very gracious in letting us stay with them, and we can't thank them enough. For the second time in our married lives, we've stayed with my family during a tough spot. We are so lucky. Thanks to Kendree and Jon and Ella and Chloe for their hospitality back when we were newlyweds.

We are doing our best to stay positive. We will keep trying to find a solution that lets us get our house. We love it.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

A possibly fatal blow...

So, Taylor, Bean and Whitaker, the mortgage company that was supposed to be funding our loan, has been forced to cease all loan origination effective today. They apparently got into trouble for fraud or something, and are in big trouble. Our mortgage broker tells us that his contact at the DCA is going to send over a list of new lenders for us to look at, and our down payment assistance funds are still reserved, but we are back to square one on our mortgage. And our broker apparently can't help with the new loan, so he's out of the picture once we get a new lender set up, and he's not going to end up getting paid for all of the time and effort he's put into this. Oddly, my boss has been trying to refinance her house for four months, and finally closed last Friday, but they were supposed to be with Taylor, Bean and Whitaker, too, and now they are having to start over, too.

Justin and I have to talk about things. We are at a loss. We've got to regroup and figure out what our next step will be.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Avoidance tactic #244 - Post a blog entry

I should be doing about fifty things right now. But I'm posting a blog. Sigh. My nice and friendly contact at the DCA told me today that our loan is scheduled to be processed by an underwriter either late Wednesday or early Thursday. I'm not sure how long it takes from there, but that pretty much dashed my hopes of a closing date this week. On the upside, if we close after August 6, our first mortgage payment won't be due until October (according to our broker who I don't really trust anymore). Of course, we would still pay interest for the month of September, which is significant, but still a good savings for the month. I guess we'll just have to see how things shake out. In other news, our car is acting up again. We did finally get the brakes fixed, but apparently it had several instances today of not starting. Justin is taking it to the mechanic tomorrow, but he told him over the phone he thinks it is probably the alternator (spelling?). Also, Katie has developed a decidedly pitiful limp. She does this on and off sometimes, but if it keeps getting worse, we might have to take her to the doctor. I'm hoping that between the car, the dog, and the pseudo-homeless thing, that is our dose of three unlucky things, and soon, something nice will happen. And of course, everything is all about perspective. Even though right now it feels like we are not having anything nice happen, things could be much worse. I'm just wishing we had a money tree to pay for all these things. Living without credit cards gets sticky in these kinds of times, but I still think it's worth it. Justin's budgeting skills are approaching the sublime, but it's not easy for even him to figure out how to accomodate SO many unexpected expenses.

In other news, Roxanne seems to be a little off from the moving. I guess I picked a pretty unfair time to night wean, but I really wanted to start fresh at the new house and make sure that from day one, she sleeps in her own room. I'll probably be spending some time in her room with her when we first move in, but I don't even want to start out letting her sleep with me. She hasn't nursed overnight since the Thursday before last, and she's finally getting the hang of it. She still asks for water, which she drinks a TON of, but she doesn't insist on milk. She is also not sleeping in the bed with me any more. When she wakes up in the middle of the night, I let her sleep in her Pack and Play in our room, but she is not allowed in the bed until the sun comes up. For us, it's our first step towards fully weaning. I want to take it slow and be done by her second birthday. Even now, we are down to 2-4 nursing sessions a day. What a breeze! But yeah, back to Roxanne's grumpiness lately... I think she can tell we are stressed out. She's been very clingy and grumpy in the last couple of days. In the car today, Justin got cut off by another driver and went on a rant about how terrible everyone in Atlanta is at driving, and she gave him the dirtiest look ever. I asked her what was wrong, and she said in a very disapproving voice, *lots of jibber jabber "Dada, no Dada" jibber jabber* She is such a sensitive thing sometimes.

Also, I'm in shock because I just realized that I will have been at my job for a year as of August 1. I can't believe it! It seems like yesterday I was miserable at Paul Hastings, crying every morning after dropping Roxanne off at daycare, etc. etc. Instead, I get to hang out with her all day every day. I realize that my job is not exactly a lofty profession, and a lot of times when people ask me what I do, I feel the need to stammer out an explanation of why I'm a nanny, and how I hope to do this or that in the future, but at the end of the day, it's a nice job. It gets stressful and irrational, and sometimes I wish there weren't so many bodily fluids involved in my day to day life, but really, kids are fun. Especially mine.

And just for fun, here's a photo of Roxanne right when I started my job. She couldn't even crawl yet!