Bye-bye dining room

We are officially over-run by toys, toys, and more toys. Don't get me wrong...I'm not complaining at all. I love that Baby has stuff to keep her busy...the busier she is, the more I can get done...kinda. If you have kids, you know what I mean! Anyways, I got fed up today with everything being in the living room. She has more than enough space for more stuff in her room, but she hardly ever spends any time in there playing, so 80% of it is downstairs instead. I decided that since we hardly ever sit at the "formal" dining room table, it would be best to just stow it away for a while and create another space for mom and baby stuff. I forgot to take a before pic, but here's an after...just imagine a big dining room table where all the toys are now...


While I'm sharing, here's our living room. It's hard to fit it all in one pic, but as you can see, there are play stations on the far right and far left, but they're contained. That's a good thing!


Raina finally learned the sign for "more" today. I've been trying to teach it to her for months now, off and on. Go figure that daddy re-introduces it to her last night, and she picks it up right away. Today she decided that she loves black and raspberries (I gave them to her a few weeks ago, but she wanted nothing to do with them then). Anyways, here's a video of her intently eating her berries and asking for "more." I'm so proud :)

Quick update on my battle against the bulge (ug...how lame)...I didn't get up before baby this morning to exercise because baby had me up at 4 a.m. and didn't get back to sleep until after 5. I'm afraid I've been munching on things I shouldn't have been, too. Sigh. Tomorrow's another day...hopefully a better one from that perspective. I don't care how messy the house is...I'm going to the gym tomorrow evening. I was supposed to go tonight, but it seriously looked like a bomb went off around here. It still does, but not in the living and dining rooms...I moved it to other rooms, of course!

I can't believe I'm doing this

Look...but don't look.

I'm officially certifiable, right?!? I know. But you know what it comes down to? Accountability. That's what I need. If I could afford Weight Watchers and those weekly meetings and weigh-ins, I'd totally be there, but I can't, so this is what I have decided to do instead: Weigh in every Monday and post the results here to you, my AccountabiliBuddies. I've put on almost 10 pounds this month. Seriously! I'm so freakin' good at putting on the pounds, it's disgusting (yet kind of impressive, too). Normally I'm not one for stepping on the scale frequently, but I need to see those numbers go down in the beginning in order to stay motivated during the first two (and hardest) weeks. So anyways, I started my eating plan today, and I start my exercise plan tomorrow. In fact, I'm going to try to wake up around 5:30 tomorrow morning and hop on the treadmill before baby wakes up. "Try" is definitely the key word there. I am sooooo not good at harnessing that kind of motivation before 11 a.m. However, it looks like I've committed myself to participating in Pittsburgh's relay marathon in May, so I kind of have no choice but to get my butt on the treadmill. Fun fun.

As for our Christmas, it went well. Santa thought we were pretty good this year. It looks like we got enough x-mas money that I'll be able to fly down to Florida and spend the weekend with the hubby while he's there for work...yet another motivating factor to stick to the new eating and exercise plan, that's fershur. Our "biggest" gift was a generator. Ha! I can't wait 'til our power goes out (I doubt we'll have to wait long) and we can fire that baby up and be the only ones on the street with power. Baby got all sorts of cool stuff...we had to leave her sand box behind since it wouldn't fit in the car, but it's not like it's sand box season anyways! One thing I have to brag about...I'm not one for shopping. In fact, I hate to shop, especially for myself...but I had a $50 gift card for Macy's so I was forced to go there a couple days after x-mas. Holy sales! I had no idea! I ended up getting a nice coat marked down from $169 to $42. If you know me well, you know I don't wear coats, and if I do, they're quite disgusting or ratty... but now I got me a nice one. I'm very pleased :)

Don't know why, but we didn't take many pics this x-mas, which I'm kind of regretting now, but oh well. Here's one, though, of me and the little one.


Anyways, hope everyone had a good one. The latest I'll be back is Monday, with yet another pic of my gross feet.

Merry Christmas, blah blah blah

There. That's about as festive as I get this year. I did my duty...and yes, it felt like a duty this time around...of putting up a tree. It's not our usual big fake tree. Instead, my friend Michele was kind enough to downsize me to her little fake tree while she upgraded to a big fake one. It's cute and Baby loves it. She crawls towards it at breakneck speed while signing "light" the whole time. Super cute :) She loves Christmas lights. I also decorated our fireplace mantle and put up some lights in the living room, but that's about it. No fake snow on the windows (which I know Chris is thrilled about...he can't stand that stuff. Actually, he says he can't stand cleaning it off the windows, yet I'm the one who always cleans it off so I have no idea what he's talking about.)...no wreaths (um, I guess that doesn't count 'cause we've never had one)...no garland or tinsel (gasp!)...you get the picture. I figured this might be my last year in a long time that I can get away with not decorating. I dunno...at what age do kids get into Christmas?

Anyways, we'll be traveling to Erie tomorrow to visit Chris' family for several days. I'm hoping for a nice relaxing trip...maybe a nap while relatives babysit...mmmm, that'd be nice...even to just have someone else entertain the baby while I sit back and do nothing would be FANTASTIC!

Enough with the holiday cheer. I'm just not feeling it. It doesn't help that I can't fit into anything. Even my sweats are tight. Seriously, that's just sad. I can't wait until the holidays are over and I can stop using that as an excuse. It looks like I may have a new motivation...Chris is being sent to Florida for a week in March for work and we're discussing dropping baby off somewhere so I can come down for a couple days, too. Florida...sun...beach...bathing suit...insert scream of terror here. Blah blah blah.

I feel like I'm a downer, so I'm gonna cut this short. I'm sure I'll be in a better mood once I return from our holiday travels (and away from Aunt Flo). On that TMI note, have a good one, everyone!

Playing catch-up

It's been too long. I need to get back into the swing of this blogging thing. It'd probably be best for me to promise to do so AFTER the holidays, though! I can't believe there's less than 3 weeks before Christmas. Ug. Don't even ask me what we're doing. We don't know yet. Double ug.

Anyways, the past couple weeks have been relatively uneventful. I would have to say that we have our baby back. She's still on soy, and I think we're just going to keep her on it. She's only supposed to get at most 20-some ounces of milk a day anyways. The only downside to the soy milk, though, is the poop. We had gotten used to the baby version of solid adult poop...but with soy, we're dealing once again with super soft (and extra spreadable) soy poop. Triple ug! Some good news, though...we're making headway on sippy cup training! In case you didn't know, Baby had no interest in holding her own bottle or cup, but check this out...

For some reason, she enjoys holding the milk in her mouth and showing it to us, resulting in most of it spilling out of her mouth. Here she is with the bottle (seriously, she didn't do this before today!):

Also, she's going through this tongue phase...it's always out. The girls at the gym daycare call her "The Tongue Baby."

Other happenings...we had the power go out last week. I cannot deal with power outages. I need my electricity, even when I'm not using it. Baby ended up waking up 'cause her white noise machine stopped, so the whole family played on the bed with Dad's blackberry while we waited for the power to come back. The outage only lasted a little more than an hour. A very long hour. Here's a pic of that:

On Saturday, we traveled to West Virginia to visit some friends from our old sangha. They cooked us a fantastic lunch and I got a knitting lesson. Yes, I'm trying my hand at knitting. I can't seriously commit to it just yet...I really have to buckle down on my coursework once Chris is done with his class this week...but once I'm done with that, I really want to work on knitting. I haven't been able to afford x-mas gifts for anyone these past couple years, and if I know how to knit, at least I'll be able to make everyone something that they'll probably never use. :) These past couple nights, I've been trying to get proficient with just the knit stitch, but I keep messing up. Once I can go several rows without messing up, then I'll move on to purl. Here's a sample of my educational mistakes:

So I think that makes you caught up. I don't have much going on this week either. Maybe a play date...some grocery shopping...hopefully x-mas decorating...

I'm seriously craving chocolate....

A quickie

I originally had grand plans of a grand blog post this evening, but the power went out. If you know me well, you know that when the power shuts down, I shut down.

Anyways, real quick...Raina was an absolute joy today! I sincerely enjoyed her company. It's been quite a while since I've been able to say that and really mean it. Chris and I still aren't sure what was wrong with her, but we think the switch to soy may have something to do with her improvement. Even if it doesn't, we won't be switching back just in case!

Here's a short clip of her this evening romping on the couch before going to bed...bad lighting, I know...sorry!