Trying out the trike

Grammy and Gramps got Julie a tricycle for Christmas this year. I was a little sad, because I figured we wouldn't really be able to break it out until March. We've had several warm(ish) days this week -- now that it's March -- but I was pleasantly proven wrong when we were able to go out on New Year's Eve of all days to take it for a test ride. The temperature got up to almost fifty degrees that day, so Daddy assembled the trike, and Julie and I headed out while Daddy worked in the garage.

At first, Julie wasn't quite sure what to make of the trike. With several rides under her belt by now, she still won't actually use the pedals. She tiptoes herself along just fine. It's pretty cute. She loves her "hat" that goes with it, and doesn't fight having it put on at all.

I love the stuck-out tongue. You can totally tell she's concentrating hard.



Exploring the features.

"Look, Mom, I rang the bell!"

It wasn't raining, so I'm not really sure what she's doing in this photo, but I absolutely love it.





Love these next two -- pretty cute!







"Bye, Mom! I'll be home in time for dinner!"



"What??"

It was starting to sprinkle a little by this point.

Once it became clear that the rain was about to break through the cloud barrier, I tried to get her to head back inside. No dice. I ended up carrying her over my shoulder (fireman style -- I do that a lot lately), the bike in one hand, and my camera bouncing across my back, slung over my shoulder. I'm sure I was quite the spectacle as I crossed the sidewalk in front of three houses, trying to get back to my own garage, and not a moment too soon, either, because the rain let loose less than two minutes after we got inside.

Fifth anniversary

Ben and I celebrated our fifth anniversary in December. We didn't make any plans to do anything, but we still had fun. We made pudding and fingerpainted with it. Julie loved it. I'm actually not sure, though, if she or Ben had more fun.

First, we had to show her how it's done:


She caught on pretty quickly.


All our colors, minus the chocolate. The purple wasn't very pretty. It was vanilla pudding (the yellow isn't dyed at all), and by day 2, the purple was a pretty nasty brain gray.


After awhile, Julie just started dragging her fingers from one bowl to another, and the colors got all blended up. She loved it, though.






Detail from my masterpiece:


The finished product:


Happy anniversary, babe!

So pitiful

Julie has been in need of a few new stories lately, so we've pulled out some of my old Strawberry Shortcake books. They're still a little advanced to hold her interest for long, but she likes them for the most part. She doesn't get to read them by herself, because they're "Mama's special books," and she has to be very soft with them.

This morning, she and I were reading about Raspberry Tart's surprise birthday party. Raspberry was very sad because she thought everyone had forgotten her special day.



Julie was quite pathetic in her sympathy. It was pretty cute. She even whimpered.







(She did that hand thing all on her own -- no prompting. I mimicked Raspberry, and then Julie mimicked me, but I didn't try to get her to do it. It was darn cute. She did it again so I could take the pictures, but this is all her.)

In the last 36 hours

Sucky things that have happened:

• Julie flooded the toilet and bathroom
• Julie destroyed my chapstick -- the second in less than a week
• Another bedtime that didn't finish until after 10:30pm
• Woke up at 2:00am to Julie coughing in my face every five seconds
• Forgot to take dinner (that I promised) to a friend who just had a baby
• Julie destroyed my lipstick, which I replaced about three months ago, after she destroyed the previous one
• Julie dragged the lipstick all over the dining room floor and table
• Julie unwrapped and ate every stick but one of the gum in my purse
• Got lipstick all over the whisk that was in my purse from a YW activity
• Unrolled a ton of dental floss from the pack in my purse
• Found DVDs randomly stuffed into the five-disc changer
• Julie wasted a spare tampon in my purse by opening it and pushing it out through the applicator
• Was super hungry at 11:00pm (not pregnant) and ate taquitos -- not great for metabolism
• Julie pulled the block of Parmesan cheese out of the fridge this morning (which was locked, by the way), and started shredding it using my microplane -- I've been using fresh Parmesan a lot lately, and this was actually a little cute and funny, except that she left the cheese out, and it started to get a little hard on the outside
• I've had semi-intense lower-left quadrant abdominal pain for a day and a half
• Julie dumped out her bubble bath, my travel sized shower gel (in a discontinued fragrance that I really like), and squeezed out a bunch of anti-bacterial hand lotion, all over the inside of the linen closet

Not sucky things that have happened:

• I went to a fun YW Mutual activity, made even more fun by the fact that I didn't have to do anything for it
• I watched an episode of Chuck last night after giving up on bedtime and sending Ben up instead
• Melting snow
• Julie snuggling with her Daddy on the couch when he got home
• Julie falling asleep for a nap on the floor next to my chair as I type this...with a DVD on her face
  

Obviously, I'm pretty stressed out right now. The bad things outweigh the good from the last day or so. And I'm trying really hard to think of good things. This is also Ben's most stressful time of year at work, so when he gets home, he's completely wiped out and in much need of winding down. Unfortunately, by the time he gets home tonight (after at 5:00pm conference call), I'll be really ready for some quiet time, but he's got a thing tonight already, too. I have a feeling it's not going to be a happy bedtime.