Feel the Love

For Valentine's Day Sarah and I made cinnamon rolls.  She loves to cook with her pretend food so you can imagine how excited she is to handle the real thing. She was hilarious while I rolled out the dough later that day.  She couldn't help herself snitching bites of raw dough. I'd get after her and she'd act sorry but then her hand would ever so slowly pinch off another piece.

Heading out to dinner for Valentine's Day.  It's a family day for us.  When we got home we surprised Sarah with some Valentine's candy and some dress-up shoes.

The cinnamon rolls turned out good but I shouldn't have copped out and used canned frosting.  Canned frosting knocks any baked good down a few notches.  Justin got me a 1.9 lb bag of Sour Patch kids that hilariously said it has 21 servings on it.  I could eat that in a day.  I'm not, but I could.  And he got me some cold medicine.  I couldn't have felt more loved.

Saturday we went to the Bean Museum.  It had been a year since we last went and Sarah loved running around then. This time she looked at the animals more but still ran around. That thing in her hand is a baby hat she thinks is a purse.

 Apparently one of the animals was yucky. No wait, that's her camera smile.

She's actually smiling!  I can't believe how grown up she seems lately.  Maybe it's her big-girl bed or that she learns like 10 new words every day but I feel like she's not a baby anymore.  She now puts herself to sleep for her nap (which is awesome) and is all-around wanting to be more independent. She is so dang happy and polite. I sang her a song before her nap today and she clapped and said, "Good job Mommy." She says please and thank you for everything and "I'm sorry" way more than is necessary. I could feel proud and think that I am doing such a good job teaching her manners but she's much nicer than me so this is all her. But I can't keep her from licking my face when I ask for a kiss. And she thinks it's a game to sit on my stomach really hard, laugh about it and say "I squishing the baby." Keeps me humble.

I've been making a quilt for the baby and she always wants to help.  So instead of pushing the back-stitch lever on my machine when I don't want her to, I let her do some embroidery.  She loves it! This kept her occupied for over an hour.  She poked herself a few times but kept on going and is a natural. 

 The finished piece.  Well I'm sure she'll want to add more tomorrow.

I like her.  She loves to sew and cook with me one minute and play cars and watch basketball with dad the next.

Believe it or not, this face was her response to my request to smile.



I've got 3 more months to go! My back is already killing me and I'm cursing our 2 flights of stairs.  I don't know why I feel so much more worn out this time around.  I have a feeling chasing a 2-year-old all day compared to having a desk job has something to do with it.

No pretty smile. Just cheese.

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know that I have a hard time getting a picture of Sarah without her scrunching up her entire face. This is how that struggle goes.

Vegas, Sarah, and More Sarah

Last weekend, Justin and I went to Las Vegas. For his birthday, I got him tickets to see Aaron Lewis of Staind perform at some casino I had never heard of.  The venue was small which made it all the more exciting to be sitting so close to the one and only Mr. Lewis. But for some reason the intimacy apparently gave license to all the other concert-goers to yell out requests, stupid comments and questions.  And as the concert went on, the drunker the others got and the louder and more inane the shout-outs became.  But other than that, Aaron rocked, he played a satisfying set and the buffet was delicious.  You can't go to Las Vegas and not eat at a buffet, right? Right????

I like this picture because Sarah is so cute and happy.

 And this one because she's so weird.

This is my second of many baby-related sewing projects.  It took me 2 trips to the fabric store to decide on some non-nerdy yet boy appropriate fabric.  Fabric designers need to come up with more boy patterns than trains and sports. Anyway, the project went smoothly until it came time to placing the straps on this crazy serpentine handle.  I'm not going to tell you how many times I pinned and re-pinned to get it just right.

Sarah loves helping out in the kitchen.  Here she is stirring the oj.  She gave up about half-way.  Can't say that I blame her.  I've gotten tired of stirring orange juice myself.

Apparently Sarah just loves sitting on the floor.  This is from last week and she ate her lunch there again today.

 Maybe she just doesn't like the table. This is where she wanted to eat on Saturday.

As of last I checked, Sarah is sleeping in her new big girl bed!  Or as she calls it, "gew bed."  We're slowly getting her new room set up in preparation for the baby taking over her current room.  So far we've got a twin bed and her nightstand and books in there and she couldn't be happier.  We thought she'd like having a real bed since she loves playing on ours but I had no idea she'd be as excited as she was.  We tried putting her there last night and she really wanted to stay but she was way over-tired and upset from being up too late that it didn't work out and she went back into her crib--which made her even more upset.  And then I tried putting her there for her nap today but she was too excited to calm down enough to sleep, so back to her crib again.  I think the novelty of it needs to wear off.  But tonight we read books then I turned off the light, sang songs and tucked her in.  She started to cry so I told her if she wanted to sleep in her big bed, she needed to stop crying.  I closed the door and haven't heard a peep.  Keep your fingers crossed she doesn't fall out. Her moose pillow on the floor should prevent any injury.