Photo Post

Here's Roxanne, all dressed for "watering" the new plants. :)
She loves that watering can.
Aren't her little water shoes so cute?
She's probably sassing me here. She's always sassing me...
Watering the grass.
She's showing Justin a green pepper she picked off our new pepper plant. She actually ate most of it!
What happens when Roxanne decides to put her bathing suit on with no help.
I think this is kind of a good look for her.

Whirlwinding

Hello everyone. Whew. We are finally catching our breath. The HGTV people have left, so we are now the proud owners of a beautiful home. We really really love everything they did. Roxanne likes it, too. There's going to be a pretty serious learning curve since we don't know how to take care of all our gorgeous new plants, but we're working on it. And between my sister and my grandma, we have some fantastic family advisers. So far, we've been watering diligently, but the plants are still looking a little droopy. Sigh. Maybe this weekend we'll venture somewhere to ask questions about things like fertilizer... Kim, from the show, suggested that we use some "weed and seed" on our yard, so we are going to look into that, too. Our yard is pretty heavy on the clover.
Roxanne is basically a teenager these days. She talks and talks and talks and says the weirdest/funniest things. Here's some quotes from recent days that I want to have written down (I figure Justin can use them for her wedding speech):
"Mommy, you have a big head. I'm going to squeeze it and make it a little head." this is followed by some energetic squeezing of my face/head. she also does the same routine to Justin.
"I just need chocolate for breakfast." when I say we don't have chocolate for breakfast, she says: "I just need a cookie for breakfast." if she's really determined by this point, she'll list out cupcakes and ice cream, etc., like maybe it's not that she can't have desert for breakfast, she just hasn't hit the right one.
"Be careful Daddy!" yelled loudly every time Justin leaves the house to go anywhere.

She's a very busy little bee, and is wonderful at entertaining herself. She is starting to want to stay at Ben's or Josh's houses at the end of the work day, and I think she is just getting super attached to them. She just seems very social, and likes having people over at our house, although any time there are more than three or four people here, she expects cake. On Monday, we had people over for our HGTV party, and towards the end, she came barreling through the living room going "where's the birthday cake Mommy? I need birthday cake!" Sigh. Lest you think we feed her sweets constantly, she also eats a lot of fruit, and a few types of veggies. She likes carrot sticks, but I think because Justin taught her to gnaw at them and say "what's up doc?" like Bugs Bunny. Not that she has ever seen Bugs Bunny... But she thinks it's funny to say that.

She loves loves loves music and singing. She likes to make up little songs to narrate whatever she's doing, and they are really funny. She also likes to draw and paint. Ben has an easel at his house, and she loves to draw on it for long stretches. Especially the dry erase side. Our big battle is keeping the markers at the easel. She tends to want to carry them around (open) and accidentally marks on stuff. She also wraps them up in the washcloths used to wipe the board down and says they are little babies. She is obsessed with wrapping herself and/or other things up in blankets or towels.

Her favorite new activity is swimming. She loves her little baby pool, but now that we've started going to a few "big" pools, she asks pretty constantly to go to the "big pool." We really wanted to join the pool in our neighborhood, but it's just too expensive. There are other pools that aren't too far that are much cheaper. Maybe next year we can join the neighborhood pool so that we could go sometimes on week nights. That would be awesome! And apparently it's a great place to meet neighbors. There is a neighborhood barbeque this weekend, so we plan to go and try to meet a few people. We've met a few people during this HGTV process, which has been nice. So far, people have all been complimentary about the house (phew) and seemed patient with all of the activity.

We hope you are all doing well and having a nice summer!

Our happy little monkey

Woops! It's been a month...

Sorry everyone. I've probably lost you all by now. It's been a rough month or so, but now everything is settling down. Today was our first day of filming with HGTV! Lots of demo and laying out the groundwork for the changes that are coming. I put some photos on facebook, and I'll post some later on our house blog. For now, here are some Roxanne photos. Please note that her guitar now has all of it's strings. We picked up some new strings for it and Justin fixed it up. The two of them sit and play together now. I posted a short a video of them playing together. She is actually singing a song that is her "favorite," which is a Dr. Dog song. Justin is singing it, too, but she definitely knows the words. It's great that she's starting to love our music as much as kids' music. The Yo Gabba Gabba CD is great, but it was starting to wear thin... Speaking of which, the Yo Gabba Gabba Live show is coming to the Fox Theater next October. We're broke right now, but I might try and get some babysitting work so that we can get tickets. They go on sale soon, and I'm worried they will sell out. Roxanne is definitely NOT the only Yo Gabba Gabba fanatic out there... :)

Some family photos

Finally!

Just a note to say that I found out today that I got accepted into Georgia State University for the fall! I'm in for a world of stress, but I think it will be more than worth it in the long run. :) For the record, I plan to work full time, and have Justin watch Roxanne for me at night while I go to class. It's so nice that GSU offers night classes. UGA didn't offer anything past 4 or so. Anyways, that's a relief for me!

Not old enough for a sleeping bag

Last Friday night, we were invited to spend the night in Ariel and Luke's lovely new guest bedroom. We decided it would be fun, and we could actually stay up later than 8 or 8:30 while at a friend's house. The bad part happened when I realized that I had left Roxanne's pack and play at Josh's house. In an effort to pretend like I didn't make a really big mistake, I was all "it's fine! We'll just bring her owl sleeping bag and she can sleep on the floor!" Yeah. She didn't fall asleep for good until 11:30 pm. And that was in the "big bed." I woke up at some time in the very early morning in the bed with Roxanne and looked down to see Justin crammed into that teensy pink sleeping back, zippered to his knees, and shivering a little. Please don't tell him I told you that. But it was very endearing, and says a lot about Justin's daddy sacrifices. The lesson learned is that probably even with the pack and play (which she can now climb out of) we might need to wait a little longer before we move onto slumber parties. But on the flip side, I feel like she needs to learn to be a little less sensitive to change. She's so incredibly routine oriented, which is great, but sometimes I think she needs to have a little bit of change to help her learn to be adaptable. We'll see...

We're still trying to get back on track with potty training. But basically, Roxanne was completely potty trained for like 2 weeks. And then something happened and she basically decided that she didn't want to be anymore. Now we're sort of a mixed bag. When the mood strikes her, she uses the potty. Other times, she insists on a pull up. I'm too worn out to push it, and since she is officially the only kid in diapers at work, I'm inclined to relax a little. I still put her on the potty frequently, but if she really throws a fit, I try to let it go. I don't want to give her potty trauma... I'm sure we'll get it figured out soon.

Also, I STILL haven't heard from GSU yet about my grad school application. I'm going a little nuts... Let's hope that for now, no news is good news?