I’m home ALLLL the time…and yes, I am grateful for the opportunity to be home with my baby. But it can be monotonous. And I hate monotony. So when Bryce is home, I want to party. He, however, wants to vegetate, and I guess I don’t really blame him. So I usually end up dancing with myself (Billy Idol, anyone?)

This weekend I convinced him to venture out with me. Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch is where we ended up. Penelope loved the animals. “Buuuh, Buuuh, Buuuh…” (I’m not sure what that means, but alright…)  is what she’d say everytime an animal would stick it’s head in our car window, and she’d flap her arms up and down. Bryce was also a huge fan.

The Emu was my favorite.

Last week, Penelope reached 8 months! In the last month she developed two front teeth, an attitude, learned to point, clap, stand, and crawl. Too much in one month! I want my little girl back.

Practicing her crawling last week.

                                  Lots of rain, and a rainbow!

                                  Playing dress-up in mommy’s hats.

                                    Strawberry-Brownie cupcakes.

                                 And plenty of naps.

I cannot believe how busy we’ve been this past month. So busy that I forgot to make a 7 month post for Penelope – shame on me!

So here it goes:

This girl loves her some spinach/peas/pears/broccoli/rutabaga (pretty much anything green). She has perfected sitting unassisted. She says ‘dada’, ‘papa’, and ‘woooah’. She has started saying ‘mama’ but only when she’s sad or crying. She is practicing her crawling — she gets on all fours and rocks back and forth, and although she’s not full-fledged crawling yet, she seems to make it across the room or wherever her little heart pleases. Oh, and she sprung a third tooth.

She likes being silly, showing off, fake coughing, and laughing. A few of her favorite things: peekaboo, other children & her dolly.

——————————————————–

Now, if you really know me well, then you know I have a teeny tiny obsession with camels. Yes, those “nasty”, spitting creatures with the hump.

Since I was a wee one, I have been collecting camels — stuffed ones, bronze ones, papier-mâché ones — basically anything I could get my hands on. My interest in the beanie baby fad peaked when I found out TY had in fact produced a rather cute camel. Don’t mind the fact that they only produced somewhere around 500 of them and starting bids on eBay were around $5000.  While I was pretty successful in roping my parents into this fad, they somehow weren’t convinced that a 12 year-old needed a $5000 stuffed toy. TY’s business started dwindling as the fad began to fade. In an effort to boost business, TY ingeniously came out with a collection of the rarities but in a larger size, including Humphrey the Camel. You better believe I jumped on that marketing ploy!

And since then, Humphrey has been a part of my little family of camels. Call me crazy, but I always dreamed that my child would take interest in camels and be able to include Humphrey in her playtime adventures. She just recently began showing interest in the ol’ Humps. And you better believe I had to get pictures of that for posterity’s sake!

…and one of P and daddy….for good measure.