Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Leavin' on a Jet Plane

My middle sister, Leaving It All Out There, left for East Asia yesterday. She is going to be there for 2 years before she comes back to visit. I can't imagine what it must be like to leave for a country in which you have to watch every word you say/type and duct tape book covers and rip out all the title pages in order to take them into the country. But this is the life she has been called to live and I can't admire her more for leading this life.
We've known for years this day would be coming but as much as I'd wished that would make it easier it did not. I'm really going to miss her and family events aren't going to be the same without her.

The thing that breaks my heart the most about her being gone is that she will not get to watch Sydney grow up. I hate that Sydney will be almost 3 before she sees her aunt again! I guess this just means that I will have to be super diligent in keeping pictures and updates posted, so that should be good for the blog! :)


Sydney & Aunt Katie


We love you, Katie!!


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Thursday, May 28, 2009

Growing and Growing

Well, she still doesn't quite fit into her 6 month clothes but our little girl is getting so big. She has her first two teeth. Her two bottom teeth came in about 2 weeks ago. I have yet to be able to catch a picture while she is showing them. She had been pushing herself into a crawling position for about 2 weeks and then this past Saturday, while at some friends, she crawled for the first time. It was a shinny watch that finally got her to move forward. Now we tempt her with cell phones and my wedding ring, two things I'm sure she needed no help figuring out that she liked, though. :)

We went to the Arboretum last week. Here are a few of the pictures Aunt Katie and Karrie got while we were there. Thanks ladies!








Sydney received her first package in the mail today; it was wrapped up so cute! We let her play with it for a minute and then we started to open it and gave it to her to see if she would finish it. I wasn't really that hopeful, she just ripped of the piece that we had started for her and started chewing on it. She received a cross stiched monogram. It's so cute with little flowers and butterflies surrounding it. Thank you, Aunt Cindy!! We were about to have lunch, hence the lack of clothing.



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Monday, May 4, 2009

Half a Year

My little girl is half a year old today and I can't believe it!! Part of me feels like I just met her yesterday but another part of me feels like we've been at this for years. We've come upon and surpassed so many milestones it seems impossible to be able to do that much in six months.

She discovered her feet about a week and a half ago.

She started using a sippie cup. Not quite the right direction but she's starting to catch on.

She sits up now. Not well enough, mind you that I feel comfortable leaving her out of arms reach without a pillow but she's doing pretty well.
"I was just delegated mommy's least favorite chore, I think this might be fun"
She has no clue we're about to head to the Dr where she is going to get shots!

Daddy felt like 6 months was plenty old enough for the first cell phone.

We love you Sydney Ann and have been so blessed to have you in our lives!! We thank God everyday that He gave you to us!

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Friday, April 24, 2009

Perfectionism

Speaking of perfectionistic tendencies the spacing on the previous post is driving me crazy!!!! I've edited it 7 times and it still looks miserable!!!!

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So Much Stuff

There have been several things over the past few weeks that have made me think I should sit down and blog but I've just been so busy. Of course now I don't remember most of them. But, if this turns into a marathon post I'm sorry.
Typically while I'm working in the kitchen on dinner, cleaning up, etc Sydney will play in her exersauser in the family room. This allows me to keep an eye on her while still accomplishing the task at hand. She will usually last about 30 minutes before she's tired of playing by herself and requires some interaction. This is when I move her to the bumbo and set her on the kitchen cabinet where she can "help" me out. There is a spot on the cabinet where the bumbo can sit and she can't reach anything, well that used to be the case anyway. I was on the other side of the kitchen when I here glass clang. I look over to see her reaching for my antique sandwich glass cookie jar. The cookie jar has a ball on the top of the lid and Sydney got her little hand around that and picked it up right off if the cookie jar. As soon as I heard the clang and saw what was about to happen I lunged for it but I just couldn't make it. The lid hit the cabinet and then fell to the floor. Needless to say tile and antique glass to not mix very well. I cleaned up the glass and for my own curiosity I weighed all the broken pieces on my food scale. That lid was 2.7 lbs!!!!!! I had no clue that a 5 month old, whom I had no clue could even reach that far, would be able to pick up 2.7 lbs of anything.

I assured her, not that she even knew what had happened, that this was her first but would undoubtedly not be her last broken accident. Not that it was even her fault; I just didn't even realize how long her arms were actually getting. Obviously the bumbo has been moved. It now resides on the island on which I have removed everything.

Wow look at that frog!!

Sydney 5 months

Easter


Several months ago I decided that I should learn how to sew. I always see simple little things that I think would be so easy to do and wish that I could but can't because I have no clue how to sew. Well my mother, who is one of the most talented seamstresses ever (seriously you should see some of the things she's done for me) told me she'd teach me. I picked out a pattern and material about a month ago and finally this past week made it to my moms for my first lesson.

For anyone who doesn't know I have some perfectionistic tendencies. Let me tell you that when I painted the stripes on the wall in Sydney's room it took about 4 times longer than it should have due to this trait of mine, and no one would have ever known the difference but I would. All that to say sewing is going to be a character building experience. Every 15 stitches I had the nearly uncontrollable urge to stop, take them all out and start over because they didn't make a perfectly straight line. Then there was the half circle neck line, oh my word!!! No, I did not rip all of the stitches out but I did have to call my mom to the sewing machine SEVERAL times to "fix" it so it would be straight, curved or whatever it needed to do. She informed me several times that day it did not need to be perfect, and rarely was even when she sews. Oh, I don't know what I was thinking but I am determined to stick with it! Here's a picture of what I have so far. Don't be too impressed, my mom is an EXCELLENT teacher and was a huge help!

Sydney is not a fan of sitting. She would much rather be laying on the floor, I think simply because she can roll if she's laying down and therefore can go after whatever it is she wants. A little over a week ago we started using the boppy as a prop and she is doing much better but she's still not a huge fan. She does not, however, dislike sitting as much as she dislikes the bouncy seat.



Yes, her face is stained orange. No, I don't feed my child too many carrots but every time I do feed them to her that orangey color lingers for about 12 hours. Maybe one of these days she'll swallow most of them and won't be orange for a day.

I just love that precious little face!


My mom has a picture of me in this pose when I was about 4 months old. I'll have to swipe it from her and scan it. I love this picture because she looks more like me than she ever has. My little girl may resemble me a little bit after all. Not that I mind that she looks like her daddy but I feel like I should get a little bit of the credit. I am the one that carried her for 8 months and spent 7 weeks in the hospital, after all!!


This was Sydneys first trip to Freebirds. Technically her second but she slept through the first trip so I'm not going to count it. This was an Aggie tradition for us. There aren't quite as many foil characters on the wall here in Arlington but it's still just as satisfying!


Dancin' on the table with aunt Karrie, she's already teaching her bad habits! I didn't get a picture but the patrons of Freebirds had to listen to aunt Karrie blow raspberries on Sydneys tummy for a few minutes. Oh well, I've had to endure MUCH more obnoxious escapades from strangers children in restaurants, I figure it's my turn. At least we kept ours at our own table!!



Sydney kissed her first boy the other day but I don't have the pictures yet so that post will just have to wait. Shhh, don't tell Jeremy I don't want to lose a friend!

Enough already, seriously!!!
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