Again with the photos

Here are a few photos. As you can see, I tried putting Roxanne's hair in a pony tail yesterday. She wore it for most of the day, but she was getting it loose every couple of hours, and Ben kept trying to pull on it. I can't blame him. And yes, I do realize it's silly looking, but it's fun to see Roxanne having enough hair to do anything different! I still try to put barrettes in there sometimes, but she pulls them out so quickly. I think she looks cute with her hair completely unadorned, but I have to admit that sometimes I get tired of people calling her a boy. For the most part, they don't do it when she has a clip in her hair. Although, we were at Ansley Mall on Thursday night to get Justin's new tennis shoes, and these older ladies kept going on and on about what a handsome boy Roxanne was. I don't usually bother to correct anyone, but I do make a point to talk to her and mention her name and call her baby girl. She was wearing a pink shirt, too. I guess if you aren't one of those moms who ALWAYS has their baby in pink bows and dresses, you might as well have a boy. It just seems to me that a dress is hard to play in. Although once summer rolls around, I'm sure she will wear them more often. In any case, enjoy the photos!

Some photos and videos

Busy weekend

So last weekend was Ella's fifth birthday party, and Roxanne had SO MUCH fun. That party was at Gymboree. Saturday she got to go to Sarah Ellen and Anna's birthday party at Monkey Joe's. She had a big time. She always loves seeing her cousins, but add in inflatable jumpy playgrounds and lots of other yelling and playing kids, and it's the perfect recipe for big fun. Most of the areas were really not quite age appropriate for Roxanne, but I bought myself some socks and took her on a few of the jumpy things. A lot of them had slides, BIG slides, and I took her down several of them in my lap. She LOVES going down slides. She gets a huge smile at the bottom and does this really funny belly giggle and promptly tries to climb back up the slide. The funniest part is her saying "whooooaaaa whoooaaaa" over and over. She has started saying this often. Anytime she's on a slide, and on a rocking toy that Ben has. She has really taken to the rocking toy. She has a little bit of a hard time climbing off of it, so she usually just screams until I come pull her off of it. Then she climbs back on and we start over. Simple things....
Her temper is making itself more and more apparent. Fortunately, it works to her advantage sometimes, too, since she is charmingly chatty and wild and spunky when she's not irritated or tired. She is SO chatty. The fun part is that she occasionally says words that sound perfect, even though we realize that it's kind of like a parrot. She has learned to say "woof woof" when you ask her what a doggy says. And she has several other party tricks, like when you ask her where her head is, she can pat the top of it. I just read in one of the pediatrician books I read that one year olds are hams, and they know when they are being cute. Further, they persist with it as much as possible to ham it up. Ooooh, this is true.
Roxanne is really enjoying coloring these days, too. She is getting better about not eating the crayons/paints, too. She tries occasionally, but she knows enough to pretend that she's not eating it when she sees me looking at her. She acts like she was just delicately putting the crayon to her lips or kissing it. I let her finger paint today (all three little ones painted this afternoon... I am exhausted) and she got more paint on herself than the paper again. But she does seem to actually enjoy seeing the paint smearing all over the page.
What else is new...? Oh, she is getting more and more teeth. I think she has somewhere between 14 and 16 teeth by now! We're working on toothbrushing at least once a day, but we're at a little bit of an impass. We can't use the finger brush any more since she chomps down on my finger like a piranha and she's not a huge fan of the regular tooth brush (even though it has Elmo on it). She wants to eat the tooth paste but not really get her teeth brushed. Tonight we had good luck when Justin let her stand on the bathroom counter and he sang that Raffi song about brushing your teeth. At the end, I came in and brushed my teeth a little while trying to brush her, too. That worked pretty well.
OK, sorry, this is kind of a boring post. I'm going to try and upload some photos. If I do, I'll post a couple. I have some good ones of Ben painting today, but I try to keep them on the private setting on my Flickr account. So you would have to sign into Flickr to see them. But it's worth it. He's so cute.

Some favorite new photos

Yeppers. Roxanne is walking now. And tantrum-ing, which includes arm waving, yelling "no,no,no" which actually sounds a little more like "doh, doh, doh" and occasionally full body thrashing. Whew, she has a pretty serious temper. Her bottom two eye teeth are breaking through her gums right now, and they look scary! And painful. Poor thing. But other than that, she's been lots of fun lately! She's getting better with her sippy cups, and her new favorite thing to do is eat big slices of food. Like when she eats banana, she wants a big hunk of it, and the same goes for bread, apples, etc. It makes me nervous, but I hover around her when she's doing it. She's pretty good at just spitting food out when she's got too much in her mouth.

Ok, so anyways, here's some photos I posted on Flickr today. My favorites.

ch-ch-chugging along

Roxanne is really taking off now. Today is the first day that she has been walking more than crawling. She's such a cute walker. Very resolute and determined. She usually keeps her hands up in the air but arms bent at the elbows. It seems to help her balance. Unfortunately, by the time we get home she's pretty tired and doesn't walk nearly as much, so Justin still hasn't seen any of her real across-the-room walking. She uses her walker a lot at home, and last night found she could bang into one of her balls (it has jingle bells in it) and smash into the electric guitar on its stand at the same time. Does that make sense? It's basically the walker crashing into the ball which is crashing into the guitar. Nothing gets hurt, but holy moly it is loud. She still falls a lot, so she almost always has a red mark somewhere on her head. I've learned to just not react when she falls, and just casually pick her up for the worse spills and tell her she's OK. It's much more mild that way. It's also a survival technique you pick up when you are trying to keep up with 3 kids all day. But sometimes she falls in these big grandiose ways, and it's all I can do to keep from scooping her and trying to keep her crawling for a little longer. Oddly enough, it's usually these falls that don't bring any reaction from her. Not even a whimper. She usually just lays her head down for a moment before wriggling back up to standing. I guess she's getting used to the spills, too.

Oh, and I have to give a plug to the Atlanta History Center's Jim Henson exibhit. We went on Sunday with Nana and Mike and Leah (thanks guys!) and while Roxanne got a little (ahem, a lot) restless through parts of the gallery, it was wonderful for us adults. I really really really loved it. And with Nana and Mike entertaining Roxanne, Justin and I were spoiled and got to see almost everything at our leisure. It ends this weekend, and I would definitely recommend a visit. I learned so much about Jim Henson that I didn't know. I was most impressed by two things that he did/said:
*He did one commercial for a toy store that was directed at children, and then declined to do any more. It was marketing the Muppet toys, and you could almost tell he was uncomfortable doing it in the tone of the commercial. He felt that it was wrong to market directly to kids.
*The other was a quote from an award show during his acceptance speech. I think it was "We don't inherit the world from our parents, we borrow it from our children."

Finger Painting

Last night we decided to get a little crazy. I mean, it was Friday night. We let Roxanne finger paint for the first time! Roxanne got some wonderful finger paints and paper from Grandpa Jim and Mimi and I have really been wanting to try them out. She had a LOT of fun with it. Initially we thought we would just let her do one picture, but she totally saturated one page and still had so much paint on her hands that we decided to let her do another one. There are more photos on Flickr, and if I can get it to work correctly, I'm going to try and upload some video, too. I put lots of new photos on Flickr, including some from our Asheville trip. Enjoy!

Oh, and today we went to Imagine It! Children's Museum downtown by the Aquarium for a free cooking class. We made a really yummy chicken burrito with salsa. The event was sponsored by Clementines from Spain, so there were clementines in the salsa. And we got a tote bag full of clementines! Roxanne helped me mix up the salsa, but got a little antsy after that. The awesome part is that because we attended the cooking class, we got free admission to the museum. They have a special area for toddlers, and Roxanne really had a great time. Her favorite part was crawling over this little bump in the sidewalk area of the play zone. And there was a mini slide that she went down about a hundred times. After a few times of going up and down the slide and hearing me and Justin go "whoa!" she started saying it, too. It was cute to hear her. Of course, we forgot our camera when we left, so we have no pictures, but that's OK. We vowed to take her back soon. She's napping now, and I think she is going to take a long one. We wore her out.

Oh, and...

To anyone who was part of my cell phone drama, it's all resolved. I bought a new phone and for now, I'm keeping my old number (for anyone not involved, my phone got stolen/lost and was being used by someone else for about a week before I realized it *blush* so I apologize if you got any weird text messages from me).

Also, I promise to upload photos soon for anyone interested. I keep forgetting to do it.

A run down

I'm not feeling up to crafting a really nice and well written blog entry, since I assume that doing so would make me admit to myself that I'm procrastinating from doing other things I need to do, like finish thank you notes and laundry. But, I did want to share how much Roxanne is changing before she changes again. Just as long as we're all clear, I'm not really writing a blog entry instead of doing things that need to be doing, I'm just posting some notes that are important. Yes.

Roxanne has been changing on a daily basis for the last month or so. It's really strange. It's like a switch got thrown on her first birthday and her development has just taken off. Here's a little list of some new things she is doing:

*During her last cold, we kept having to attack her with tissues and saline spray for her runny nose and she absolutely hated it. But at some point I realized that if you let her hold the tissue and told her to blow her nose, she will hold it up to her face and make a sniffy sound with her nose. I think she got it from her dad (from his example). When her nose really was runny, it was actually a pretty productive thing. These days, she just does it for show, and I often give her a paper towel at the end of meals so that she can "blow her nose" and then shred the paper towel into teensy tiny pieces. She also enjoys pulling her socks off and "blowing her nose" into those, too.

*She has still not really taken off with her walking, but she's getting better. Last night I stayed at work until about 10:15 to babysit Ben, and I let Roxanne and Ben have a lot more freedom than normal as far as their play parameters. Roxanne kept pulling up on the couch or ottoman and then taking three or four steps after Ben. That's the first time she's taken steps other than from one surface to me. She has also started taking steps between furniture pieces, or from pieces of furniture to the wall. It's funny watching her cruise along the wall. She's like Spider-baby. I guess I thought she would go from taking her first steps to really walking really quickly, because Ben did, but she's taking her time. I'm not in a big rush, since this wobbly time is so cute to watch.

*She has learned that fussing gets results. This is a problem. It really only dawned on me the last couple of days that she had started manipulating me with crying, believe it or not, and now I've got to read up on the best ways to curb it. I think it started because she's been feeling so bad while her molars are coming in and I've been spoiling her. I've read that at this age babies get more difficult as far as their being more clingy, more fussy, and sleeping poorly, since they are often meeting so many milestones, like walking and talking more and getting their one year molars. This has definitely been true for the baby girl. She's starting to come out of it, but the last few weeks have been rough. She wouldn't let her daddy hold her and she wouldn't let me out of her sight. But if I did leave her with Justin, she would flip out if he left her alone for a second. We're both trying to maintain that tough balance between patience/empathy and not letting her totally rule the house. So far, she pretty much rules the house. Oops.

*She has learned the art of the fake laugh. We fake laugh in the car a lot, but after a few minutes, it usually turns into a real one. The best part about it is that she seems to know when it is appropriate. Like if she hears anyone else laugh, even on TV, she does it, too. It's a very obviously fake laugh that is so funny to watch.

*She is getting much more sensitive to approval and to our moods in general. You can watch her read your face in different situations, and she's an astute student. She gets offended sometimes, and has a highly pitiful reaction. Like this evening, when I was laying on the couch and she toddled over to me and bit my foot. I didn't see it coming and yelled out "Ow!" almost as an instinct. She looked very very surprised and spent about 20 seconds transitioning from a shocked pout to a genuine wail. She also does this when you tell her "No" in a stern voice. But only sometimes... Her and Ben have been fighting over toys a lot this week, I think since they are re-establishing the baby pecking order, and that has caused quite a bit of fussing. From her, not Ben. On the flip side, they have also been extremely affectionate with each other, giving random kisses, hugs, head pats, etc. throughout the day. Yesterday they even laid on the floor facing each other and took turns patting each other gently on the face and head. They are so cute. They also like to show each other their bellies sometimes. Which brings me to another new thing. Roxanne has started pulling her shirt up to show off her belly.

OK, I think that's all I've got for now. I promise to post more often. Even if it's just these listy things. I don't think I have a huge audience, but I know nothing alienates blog readers like infrequent posting. Plus, let's be honest, I love writing about the baby. It makes me really think about her and how she's changing and growing. And sometimes when I go back and read old postings, I just am thankful that I have this blog. Reading entries from 2007 is especially fun. I can't even remember being pregnant any more, so reading about it is good. The cankles. Oh the cankles.

Sleep Deprived

So, I know it's been a long time since I've posted. I've just been running on empty. Roxanne is not sick anymore, but she's being an absolute terror when it comes to sleep. She is taking at least a half hour to go down at night, and today she just refused to take an afternoon nap. Justin and I are both a little bit zombie-like. Our vacation has gone way too fast! We've really enjoyed having so much time together, and it will be sad to get back in the everyday groove where we are just rushing and rushing. One of my New Year's resolutions is to spend more time paying attention and enjoying things as they happen. The other part of that one is to appreciate what I have and not think about what I don't have.

And to sum things up, we had a wonderful Christmas with way too many presents for our little lady. We were lucky enough to have three Christmas celebrations this year. One at my Dad and Colleen's farm before Christmas, and on Christmas day we were at my Mom and Mike's house with all that big family and then we went to Justin's Mom and Terry's house after that. We went to Asheville with my sister and her family from December 27 through the 30th. It was such a wonderful trip! We stayed in a little cabin that was built in the 1930's. I had never been to Asheville, and it really is a beautiful place. Roxanne had such a good time with her cousins, and she is smitten with Kendree and Jon. We ate at great local restaurants, visited some neat things like the Health Museum, the Arboretum, a beautiful Catholic church called the Basilica (I think that's right) and went on a historic trolley tour like good little tourists. The trolley ride was really fun, and gave us a chance to see a lot of things that we would probably have missed otherwise. Our last day there, we split up and Justin and Roxanne and I went to West Asheville, which was kind of like a mix between Candler Park and Decatur. So cute.

OK, I will post some photos soon, although there are already lots on there from Christmas. I've got to get some sleep. For real.

Happy 2009! Can you believe it?