little BIG girl

Well well well. Today was quite the day for little Miss A.... *ahem* BIG Miss A. Is tomorrow her birthday? Is she turning 18? You'd think so.

Less than an hour ago, I was getting Miss A ready for bed. She insisted on having four cookies for a snack (that of which she ate all at one time!) and then when I gave her a reminder that it was bedtime she said "No." As soon as D heard that he was immediately on her and said, "YES. It's BEDTIME." And I followed up with, "Nigh-night time!" And Miss A proclaimed to everyone who was listening, "NO nigh-night!!" I tell you - I'm surprised that there's wasn't a local earthquake because both D's and my jaws dropped straight to the floor that it had to have been heard and felt by all in our neighborhood.

And D, just because he wanted to be sure that he heard Miss A right said, again, "Nigh-night!" And Miss A promptly responded with, "NO NIGH-NIGHT." Amazing. Truly Amazing! And it's officially her first sentence of her own design as all of what she's said to this point "Where is he/she?" and "Sit down" and "Bye-bye kids!" has been things that she has heard D and I say and she's merely echoed. If this is just a sampling of what Miss A has in store for us, I'm sure she's going to be saying WAY more than just the "darnedest" things that most kids are known to say.

And if all of the aforementioned wasn't enough, guess what else! Tonight Miss A sat at her own little table and ate her dinner all by herself on a little plate of her own with some new Minnie Mouse silverware from her Godfather E! Check it out...

I've listened to what everyone has told me about how she's going to grow up SO fast and I better enjoy it while it lasted but all of this? Well, all of this is just more than I ever bargained for. Who has the "pause" button to keep Miss A little a little longer?

Have your people call her people

Few people know this about me but when I was younger I considered myself a budding fashionista-type designer. I used to full notebook after notebook with "designs" that I came up for everything from everyday clothing to swimwear to purses and accessories. Looks like Miss A has inherited the "styling" gene from me because she's already into starting some new trends! This is the outfit she picked out for herself yesterday.

Interested in her personal styling services? You're in luck! She's available for hire! And she's now booking through the 2010 calendar year! :)

More spontaneous dancing for the masses

There's just no stopping her! She's got music in her heart and groove in her bones! There's no stopping her when it comes to her shakin' her little "groove thang"...

She'd like that "to go" please

Common sense would suggest that, if you come to our house, you would want to protect your food from the dog. Well... please be advised... common sense does not apply in our house! It's Miss A who is the chowhound in OUR house.

If Miss A sees you eating ANYthing, she won't hesitate to make a beeline approach for you, loudly demonstrate the sign for "more," and then simply take a bite of whatever you are eating even if you don't readily offer it up. Consider yourself warned!

Merry Christmas to all

I am amazed that I'm still able to keep my eyes open! I don't know what's happened to me but it's gotten to the point that I can barely keep myself awake beyond 9PM every night.

I was planning on saving this post for tomorrow but after talking to Grammy and Grandpap Ellwood and finding out that nobody is going to be able to bunk with them tonight and celebrate an early Christmas morning with them, I wanted to put this up here for them to enjoy especially!!

So to not overwhelm Miss A with gifts tomorrow morning, we've been letting her enjoy them as they've rolled in. Today she received her first purse of her own ever! It's a toy poodle and pink as pink can be and so (of course!) Miss A LOOOOOOOVES it. Part way through you can hear her exclaim, "Puppy purse!"

Tomorrow morning she will be receiving a very fun gift - BUBBLE WRAP!!! She discovered the joy of popping bubble wrap a couple of weeks ago and ever since seeing how much she loved it, it was decided that we would give her a huge wad of it to play with. She's been "in training" so that she'll be a pro at knowing how to enjoy it tomorrow when she opens it.

And because this is Christmas and all. Here's an extra special bonus video that we took the other day when we were playing "rock star." She's a natural at it if you ask me.

Merry Christmas to you - and ESPECIALLY to Grammy and Grandpap Ellwood!!!! Hope your holidays are as blessed and wonderful as ours have been so far.

P.S. The answer to the question that you are asking yourself is: YES. I did in fact cut all of my hair off. I got eight inches taken off (to be exact) and I LOVE it!!!!

She's a dancin' fool

Miss A has got a sweet new dance move. I have no idea where she picked this up from. Check out what she does with her arms now!

Miss Manners

Oh Miss A! Such a proper young lady she is now that she can eat with utensils instead of with her hands the way she used to like a cave girl...

We've been elved!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

She's got a fever! And the only prescription is more dancing!

Miss A is sick today. What seemed like a mild case of the sniffles started sometime in the middle of last week and it has quickly evolved into a fever, much more severe sniffles, sneezing, coughing, and Miss A just generally feeling like doo-doo. Between the two of us, we probably slept a combined of two hours last night and she got the majority of that. We will be heading to the doctor's later on today so that Miss A can be poked at and stuck with needles (probably) and be made to cry because she hates going to the doctor's. (Can you tell how much I hate taking her to the doctor's as well?)

Anyway, Miss A being the perfectly pleasant and adorable little thing she is, none of this has stopped her from being absolutely a sweetheart the way she always is and just plain wanting to dance. Note that she is also wearing a "pretty necklace" that she has copped from my jewelry collection and decided is now her own. She has been wearing this necklace for two days straight now.

It's always 80s night at the Elwood house!

She's a regular twinkle toes. I'm thinking she needs some real MC Hammer pants for Christmas.

Uh-oh! Spaghetti-oh!

Last night I ended up coming home a little late because of stuff going on with work. As soon as I walked in the door, D said, "Dinner's ready! It's spaghetti!" Everyone was very hungry but the way it always works, Miss A is the hungriest and gets fed first.

D already had the food plated up and was portioning off some for Miss A so she could dig in. And did she EVER dig in...



Would you believe this picture was taken no more than three minutes after she got her "dinner." My favorite part is the "stripe" of spaghetti that somehow got positioned across her nose. Would you believe that she left it that way and I am the one who had to peel it off of her when I got her cleaned up?

little Clodhopper

When I was little, one of my favorite things was to put on my mother's shoes and clomp around the house. As it turns out, Miss A has discovered the almost the same joy! Well... ALMOST...

EW!!!! Did you notice that she's wearing one of D's stinky athletic sandals instead of a cute pair of my shoes??


I even tried to change her mind and offered up a really REALLY cute pair of my shoes and she still insisted on wearing his instead. *sigh*

She's a little lady who knows exactly what she wants - that's for sure!

Solid gold dancer

Turns out she's a Taylor Swift fan...

Peek-a-boo! I see you!

With Miss A now officially a toddler, it's hard not to be entertained by her on a daily basis. The other night she spent a good hour stuffing as many of her stuffed animals as possible into one her doll strollers. This wouldn't be worth mentioning except her doll stroller is made for exactly one stuffed animal and she (with my help) had crammed almost 10 in it. Sadly, we didn't get pictures of it. I had thought that I was once very quick on the draw with my camera but it's just not that easy these days! Luckily it's not always like that.

Yesterday D was able to spend the day with Miss A. She was out of his sight for no less than a minute and guess where he found her...

She has never done this before but something tells me this won't be the last time it happens. :)

The P-word

Miss A has many many nicknames but the one that we've never called her is princess. It's such a typical nickname for a daughter but for D and I? We've been reluctant to use it because of the things that it can imply. We don't want people thinking that we do or they should cater to Miss A the way real princesses have it. We also don't want Miss A thinking that she can get or have whatever she wants whenever she wants or that she can't be rough and tumble if she wants to. And so, we've never called her princess!

Today, though, we ran into a bit of a problem. I put her hanbok on her (that never fit her the way it should have when she turned one because she's just a tiny girl) and she was just completely transformed into a little tiny person that could only be described as a princess...


I don't know what it is about dresses that are like this but it's like they inspire full on twirling and dancing and all kinds of princess-like mannerisms and even Miss A was immune to them in all of her one and a half years!!

The dress still has at least another two inches that the strap will be able to extend to and I'm so happy about that. Not every little girl gets to have a real dress that is so princess-like to call her own, y'know?

We've lost count of our many blessings

I have been sitting her for the past 15 minutes trying to come up with a decent lead in for our Thanksgiving rundown. The fact of the matter is that there's just no way of quantifying all of the things that we are grateful for this year. In a time such as this, when so much of the rest of the world is struggling to just tread water in an economy that seems to be a neverending tidal wave of loss, every last one of us Ellwoods has more than we could ever be thankful enough for.

Still, no matter the laundry list of 'things' that we have in our lives, there's one thing that we will all agree on, it's not what is in our lives that we love most but who are in our lives.




We could name names but that just wouldn't be fair because we thank God for ALL of our family. Glory be to God for His many blessings this year especially. As Miss A would say? A-MEN!

Thank you good genes!!!

My whole life I have longed for beautiful fluttery eyelashes. Mine are ridiculously sparse and nonexistent even with special thickening, darkening, and lengthening mascara. Thankfully, Miss A scored big in the genetic lottery to be able to get D's eyelashes instead of mine!


She's such a little beauty. I mean, I AM her mama but this isn't biased opinion that I'm offering here. Pictures don't lie, right? ;)

She wants to change her name to Noah

If Miss A's crib were spontaneously audited by a crib safety inspector, it (well, we) would surely fail...


Count the Hello Kitty slippers or not, there are 10 stuffies in there with her. TEN!!!! And there's actually one elephant that didn't fit in the frame that is tied to the one end of the crib (it's a music box of sorts). And this is pretty much how Miss A prefers to have her crib. Currently her favorite animals are the white bunny, the piggy, the big grey elephant (she uses it for a pillow), and the black cat (because it looks like our cat that we actually have). She's also got three blankets (including her favorite yellow one) that she has to have in there!

It's a wonder she can fit in there herself. *Sheesh!*

Better late than never!

If I could change anything about myself it would be that I would have much better timeliness. Seemingly no matter how hard I might try, I am always just barely missing the boat with things. Case in point? The other day when I posted something here I did so without recognizing the fact that it was my 100th post!!! Can you believe that? There have been ONE HUNDRED POSTINGS here since I started this blog a year or so ago!!!

Anyway, I wanted to recognize this occasion with some recent things that have been on the camera but - for whatever reason - haven't made it on the blog so far. These are all recent happenings and definitely important but still somehow weren't on the docket to be posted here. Don't ask me how or why it's been like this. The only thing that I could cite as the reason would be that Miss A spilled a whole glass of water on the desktop keyboard a week or so ago and since I've not been able to use it regularly I've been kind of out of sorts and therefore out of habit.

So here they are in all their glory! I give you some outtakes of my amazing family!!!

A weekend or so ago D took it upon himself to tear down the fence that has seemingly divided us from the rest of the neighborhood since long before we even lived here. It was (literally) blood, sweat, tears (and LOTS of rain!!!) at times but all of his toiling paid off and I'm sure you will agree that toiling is indeed what he did...

The A-frame contraption that he's using was his own genius design to try and create better leverage to lift some of the ridiculous cement blocks that were holding some of the fence posts in. The contraption was.... mildly helpful. Thankfully, our very kind neighborhood across the street came over and pulled the one post out with (literally) brute force. It definitely helped that he was about the size of an industrial sized refrigerator and probably could have walked onto any pro football team as one of their defensive lineman or something. (I don't know enough about football to know the positions but what I'm trying to say is the guy was HUGE.)

[EDIT: D has corrected me and the aforementioned and reports that he is the one who got the one pictured out and the neighborhood got a different one out.]

And then, of course, we've got Miss A and her best friend (our dog) hanging out on the couch watching a little bit of the Disney channel. I think they were watching Handy Manny actually.

Don't you just love how Miss A is hogging all of the blankets on the couch? Please note: She's also wearing her favorite cow print pajamas. Sadly, her lately growth spurt has her on the verge of being too big for them! Say it ain't so!!!

But I will tell you what IS so! It's Miss A's hair!!!! Check out how so very long it is these days. Think we will be able to get it into pigtails by next summer??? I would LOVE that! That would be awesome!!!

And finally... *sigh*... this is why Miss A cannot be trusted to be left to her own devices for even two measly seconds these days!!! Though I wasn't the "guilty party" who wasn't looking in the first place *coughDcough*, I will readily admit that this can (and will for that matter) happen to anyone of us who thinks that it could never happen to them!

The story behind the pictures? Well, D was doing his usual morning routine and trying to also eat some breakfast at the same time and while he was turned around doing something or other, Miss A took it upon herself to get a second helping of cereal. Take note of the Calvin and Hobbes face she's making as she's stuffing her face and the spoon that she attempted to use to scoop her mess off the floor and eat like a civilized person (OF COURSE).

Happy 102nd blog posting, all!!! Thanks for keeping up with All of us Ellwoods!

Say yes to the rocking chair

Recently Miss A and I have started watching the TLC show "Say Yes to the Dress!" together. If that's not the ultimate of girl bonding television programming I don't know what is!

The other night when we were watching a little of it, Miss A took it upon herself to relocate from her usual spot on the couch next to me to her rocking chair that Grammy and Grandpap got for her last year for Christmas. She's been slightly too little to use it easily or comfortably but she has just come off of a two week growth spurt and she's been getting a ton of rocking chair time in lately.

You will notice that it's sitting out in the middle of the living room and not in it's usual place by the large rocking chair (that is actually D's favorite). Miss A actually pulled it out to this position by herself and then set herself up with her favorite yellow blanket and bottle to watch the show.

She's definitely a little woman who knows what she wants and how to get it, wouldn't you say?

It doesn't get much better than this

To say I'm rarely in front of the camera would be a ridiculous understatement. What can I say? For as long as I can remember, I've just been more of a behind-the-scenes type. But for at least tonight, I changed it up though.

In my adventures of motherhood, I've ventured into the world of cooking. This is a huge deal for me as I've never been much of a cook. As a single lady, I was notorious for cooking random assortments of food and eating personal buffets of just side dishes. It wasn't until D came along that I learned that a proper meal was comprised of a protein, a starch or potato, and a vegetable. D is actually the primary cook in our home because he naturally makes a more well composed meal. I've made a point to try and learn more to be a little better domesticated though.

Of my childhood there are a handful of recipes/meals that were favorites to my brothers and me. One of them was stromboli. And because D and I are trying to stretch dollars as far as they will go and because stromboli is very delicious and filling, it was decided that now was finally the time to try my hand at it.

I've called my mother (Nana V) no less than three times in the past two days trying to make sure that I understood the recipe properly and got all the ingredients right. And because new endeavors always require me to hold someone's hand to get me through, Miss A got to be the lucky little love to help it all come together.

It's nights like these with Miss A that I know I will always cherish the most...

Miss A was very timid at first but reluctantly touched the dough toward the end. After a could of rounds of kneading she decided to just watch me and snitch from the lunch meat and cheese piles that I had put aside for the fillings. :) Having her just keep me company was more than enough for me!

I put Miss A right into a bath and then into pajamas not long after we finished the strombolis and she wasn't able to make it to see them be baked and then sliced for sampling but I think we did a pretty decent job with them.

The best part of them? Well... they were filled with so much more than just yummy fillings and really it's the TLC that made them as delicious as they are.

The mini-est Minnie mouse this side of the Mason-Dixon

I'm not gonna lie. Despite the fact that Miss A might seem like a most perfectly pleasant and cooperative little lady most of the time, she's really not always like that.

I tried to dress her up a couple of hours before she needed to be dressed so that she could 1) get used to the outfit and 2) I could ensure getting some decent pictures of her while there was decent lighting. At first she was OK with the whole idea and then it just took a downward spiral that I can attribute only to fact that she was almost on the verge of missing her afternoon nap.

Poor sweet girl!!! Not to worry. She managed to catch a little nap on the way down to my parents' house and she was well rested and in a much better mood once we got there. And then by the time it was time to go and show off her outfit? She was peachy-keen, jellybean!

Miss A was OK between houses but once we got up to the front doors, she got very shy since she didn't know/couldn't remember the people that well. We managed to visit all of three neighbors before the towel was officially thrown in. We spent the rest of the evening with my parents and a few neighbors sitting at the beginning of their long driveway saying hi to all who came through. Part way through, Miss A was changed into her piggy pajamas and piggy mask (you may remember it from previous appearances on the blog) and she was much more tolerable of that outfit but we didn't bother with pictures of that.

In any case, we had a lovely evening and the whole time I just kept thinking about how we needed to scheme for future years' activities to happen above the Mason-Dixon in a certain "Burgh" that we all know and love.

(D was thrilled with the idea and perhaps next year we will be able to pull it off!)

Note on the outfit: The hat was crocheted by me without a pattern and ended up being slightly small at the crown which is why I think Miss A was not thrilled to keep it on. The outfit was from Carter's in an 18-mos size and was a gift from Aunt H, Uncle D, and Cousin V at Miss A's 1st birthday a few months ago. Miss A happens to LOVE Disney's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and the moment the outfit was opened at the party, I knew that Miss A was going to have to dress up like Minnie Mouse if even for no reason at all. Sadly, she's still too young to make the connect between her own outfit and that of Minnie's on the show.

Our Canis lupus familiari

Before Miss A, the baby of the household was our sweet shepherd, Magnus. Who knows what kind of "crazy dog people" we might have become if God hadn't given us Miss A to fuss over all the time. I would probably be trying to dress him up in costumes and clothes and maybe even coordinating his collars and leashes to match our outfits! Perhaps we would be the type of folks who wore clothing of our dog's likeness and hung out with other people who were "shepherd people" too!!

Anyway, once Miss A arrived, Magnus has kind of taken a backseat to her. I mean, we still love him and fuss over him but it's hard for him to be the center of attention when you've got Miss A doing cool things like spontaneous dancing (see the last posting for video of this).

As it turns out, Miss A has decided that Magnus is one of her best buddies. She LOVES to cuddle up to him, pet him, follow him around, and talk to him. Within the last few weeks she even learned how to say his name instead of just referring to him as "dog."

Miss A definitely can't get enough of him sometimes! He (obviously) loves her but usually just tolerates her way of loving him in return. :)

Dancin' queen

Is there anything quite like when someone just breaks out an busts a move with no care in the world? If you ask Miss A, she thinks you should ALWAYS dance like no one is watching...

Life with a toddler

The one thing that people told us before we had Miss A was that she would change everything for us. Life would be completely different with her. Nothing would ever be the same! Now that Miss A is here and definitely the center of our lives, we can agree that this is the absolute truth. The thing that nobody ever told us though is that the changes that Miss A has made in our life also changes constantly and almost daily at that! Confusing? Yes! Try living it like we are! These days there is no telling what Miss A will do.

A couple of weeks ago, household management was so much easier for us. We could divide our time between looking after Miss A, while she was in the living room, and cooking dinner in the kitchen. Nowadays? You pretty much can't leave Miss A anywhere unattended. And if you look away from her for even a second? She literally disappears and we have to go and find her! AND(!) at times it's so far from easy to do so.

Last week D was home all by himself with Miss A. While he was doing something, she skittered away and D almost couldn't find her. He looked everywhere for her and she was literally gone. You want to know how she was discovered? Well, because he heard her giggling to herself. And the giggling was coming from under the bed in our room!!!! That's right. Miss A has already learned the game of hide-and-seek!

Thankfully, she's already abandoned impromptu games of hide-and-seek since (I suppose) her toddler-sized attention span is bored with it already. Her new thing is expanding her vocabulary. Everyday there's not just a new word but at least half a dozen new words! Granted, she's still learning the meanings of things and is just echoing things most of the time but still - she's quickly moving away from just babbling for the sake of babbling.

Here is a list of some of the things that she has said and/or repeated and definitely knows so far:

1. Mama
2. Papa
3. Bow - our cat
4. Dog
5. Puppy
6. PopPop
7. Nana
8. No
9. Book
10. Amen
11. Yeah
12. Wow
13. Yay
14. Baby
15. Cooperate
16. Sit down
17. Mickey Mouse
18. Hello
19. Hi
20. Hug
21. Bye-bye/Bye
22. Nigh-night
23. Car
24. Juice
25. More

And though this seems like quite a list already, I know that it's not exhaustive and doesn't include the things that she knows/says for sure or the things that she will definitely say today, tomorrow, and the rest of the week.

Another thing that she is doing is understanding more of what we are saying to her. Last evening I gave her a three-step direction to go someplace and get something and then return to me. She took the directions and did them - without hesitation or obvious misunderstanding or confusion! It was truly amazing! And though she is still doing silly and crazy things like playing in the dog's food and water bowls and trying to put various things in her mouth, she's openly expressing her own curiosities with one word questioning or body language. Things like, "Where's Papa?" or "I don't know" are illustrated with both hands and arms out or even a little bit of a shrug to punctuate things.

Miss A keeps D and I on our toes these days not just because we're trying to keep track of her mess making and trouble finding but more because we cannot wait to see what she's going to do or say next. Miss A is absolutely amazing. And being parents is so much more than what everyone ever said it would be because of it.

Her father's daughter, for sure

One of my favorite things in the world is when you can look at people and tell where they picked up certain traits or characteristics. Things like, "She has her dad's smile!" or, "He laughs just like his mother," are things that are just priceless to me.

When it comes to Miss A, there's no mistaking that she's the product of both D and me together. When she was first born she looked EXACTLY like D when he was a newborn baby. The resemblance was so exact that you could actually hold of pictures of them side-by-side and they looked like twins! It was truly amazing. As time has passed though, she's really moved more in the direction of me. People have commented and said that she really does look like a miniature version of me and at times when I am holding her and actually looking in a mirror with her, I can't dispute their claims.

Still, she very much does maintain a resemblance to D. She's got his hair for sure and a little bit of his nose but the thing that she has even more of him - that seems to trump everything that she has of me sometimes - is that she has his facial expressions. D, as many of you all who have never met him before, is... let's just say... a man of "many faces." In other words he can be an incredible goofball sometimes in how silly he can get and how many characters he does imitations of!

Here is visual evidence to support my claim. The other day, Miss A put her lunch in her hair and though she looks a little mad about it, she was actually laughing hysterically...

And then there was her the other day when she was toddling about the house. Her new thing - which is actually an old thing if you can recall the "squinchy face" from long ago - is making this face when she gets really really excited. I would love to get this on video but unfortunately my video taking ability is limited as I need a better video camera where you can see much better detail of her facial expression and here when she snorts while she makes this face...

Oh sweet little Miss A! Such a joy and a hoot and a half to have around!

Somebody stop me - PLEASE!!!

Look, I'm not one to be all trying' to toot my own horn about most stuff but TOOT-TOOT!!! And thankyouverymuch!!!

And now to address the FAQs...

• No - I did not use a pattern.
• No - I do not plan on trying to figure out what the pattern is so I can sell it.
• No - I will not be selling this one and I have still not opened up an Etsy store yet.
• No - This is not for Miss A.
• Yes - I do realize that spots would make this more Giraffe-like.
• Yes - The mane (specifically) did take a long time to do but doing it during a Rachel Zoe marathon made it that much more bearable. So, in the words of Rachel herself - It was Bah-NAN-Nas!
• No - I do not know how much time I actually devoted to this one. But it is worth noting that my forearms ache from all of the stitching and crocheting and this is definitely the one of the 22 finished objects that I've made that I'm most proud of.
• No - I have not cross-posted this on StuffSheMakes as that has become a now-completely-abandoned blog that I'm not sure what I will do with in the meanwhile.

And now for the backstory to answer all of the questions not addressed above!

My new job came along with a wonderful opportunity and responsibility for youth ministry. Every week I get to meet with a group of 12 young ladies (9th-11th graders) and mentor them. During our mentoring time, we get to step beyond the normal classroom/student-teacher relationship and really "bond" (for lack of better verbage) with one another. We discuss hard hitting issues as well as share our journeys of faith and challenges of living a seriously focused Christian lifestyle. It's really been an amazing experience for me as a mentor and I absolutely love the girls that I've been assigned to mentor.

When I first got to meet my girls, I had them answer some getting-to-know-you questions so that I could better understand who they were as individuals. One of the bits of info that they offered up was identifying their favorite color and favorite animal. Early on I decided to use this information to do what I know best (creating and crocheting) to make each of them a special memento for them to remember this year's mentoring experience. Including this giraffe, I've done a Jack Russell terrier (from a pattern - and I was only just satisfied with the finished product) with a satin dog collar. I've got 10 more animals to do through to the end of the year and by the end of the year every girl will have received a uniquely created animal (that also features their favorite color in some way) as close to their birthday as possible.

And that's it! This giraffe was intended to be much more cartoony in design and "feel" but it ended up taking on a much more realistic quality than I originally intended. I think it was because after spending so much time looking at real pictures of baby giraffes, I couldn't not end up in that direction anyway. Also, I almost "frogged" this part way through when the body and legs just wouldn't work out together and I had to go (almost completely) back to the proverbially drawing board to figure out how to fix it. Thankfully(!) my WONDERFUL husband, D, helped me to figure out what could be done to make it work and looking at the final result? I've finally impressed myself enough to not be able to NOT toot my own horn!

Only problem now? I've raised the bar on myself significantly! Who knows where this whole endeavor will end up by the end of the year when I'm done!

So fierce!

Four postings in a row? And all in one day???!!! Well, GrammyE (and coworkers!) will at least appreciate such an overload!

Probably a month ago Miss A and I were in Target picking up a "few things." On our way to the checkout lanes we passed through the shoe section to maybe pick up a reasonably priced pair of extra sneakers and/or "Baby Uggs." We ended up with neither but we did find some cool house shoes AKA slippers!! Yay for Hello Kitty!!! Why Hello Kitty? Because - if you didn't know - there is an unwritten rule that all Asian girls must have a significant part of their wardrobe be of the Hello Kitty brand. These little slippers are the second official representation of Hello Kitty now - the first is a really snazzy fleece jacket!



It's taken Miss A a little bit of time to master the skill of walking in them because it's probably a little bit like walking with pillows strapped to the bottoms of your feet but she's a pro now! I put them on her a little more than 20 minutes ago and since then she's done no less than 20 laps around the house at full speed!!! She is hilarious. She is absolutely hilarious! Don't you love how the first picture makes her look a little like a baby godzilla with fuzzy slippers on?

BIG thrills for the pint-sized

To be fair, I think Miss A is a little less than pint-sized and would be more accurately described as "fun-sized" but whatever. The point is that no matter her size, it has been officially confirmed that she is a seeker of BIG thrills!

Internet, we have described the joy of SLIDING! On your marks, get set, GOOOOOO!!!






Can you guess what Miss A's next big plaything will be??? Goodness gracious it's a good thing that we are finally in a house with a yard!!! Now it's just a matter of us showing some restraint with how big her own personal plaything will end up being!