Stuff & Things

No patience to re-organize the pics! This is at a family restaurant and Evelyn ordered her own food with the waitress - chocolate milk and chicken dumpling soup!

Princess Ariel for "Trick or Treat" day!

Evelyn's Dora cake! I couldn't believe we had enough people that this cake was GONE after serving!

Baby Boy at 20 weeks.

WOW - unintended blogging sabbatical. I blame it on a) first trimester exhaustion/sickness b) keeping up with a 2-year-old c) facebook d) busyness/working e) feeling like there is too much to "catch up" on...

So, rather than filling in all the details from the last uhm...4 1/2 months, a few important details instead.

Our family is growing! Baby Boy is due April 5, 2010. We are having a home birth and are super excited about it! The pregnancy is going well so far and once again I am enjoying being pregnant. Goals before baby comes: potty train Evelyn (huge regression occurred with her but now she is getting back on track so to speak with plenty of bribery) and get Evelyn to sleep in her own bed (at least part of the time). Help/advice welcome! :-)

Evelyn turned two on August 29th. She is a great talker and singer! She says things like "I want a really good sandwich." And, "I really don't like that." "Hmmmm..." before she answers a question and many other adorable things that my pregnant brain can't recall! We are amazed by how many songs she knows! Every night before she falls asleep I have to sing "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid. She loves her mermaids! She knows the whole song too, although some of the words are a little hard to make out! But, "Jesus Loves Me," "Whole World in His Hands," and other kid standards are as clear as a bell. She is really into helping me cook lately, loves to play outside, "read" herself books, play with her new Discovery Toys marble toy, tell us about Dora episodes, and watch movies of herself on the computer. She is a great joy!

Punkerdoops Diapers is growing every week! I had a couple of slower months, but my selection is growing and new customers are continuing to come out of the woodwork. I feel good that I am spreading the cloth diapering and baby carrying love across our local area! Jason keeps making my store/shoppe room look better and better! He just turned the closet in the shoppe room into more display shelves and added a light. It looks great and allows for way more products to be displayed - thanks, Babe!

I have also neglected reading blogs...so I apologize that I don't know much of what is going on in my bloggy friends' lives!

I will try to be better at posting!!!

My Rainy Day Saturday Beer Sample Story

So, this is WAY funnier in person I am sure. But, here goes some of the highlights!

Saturday was a rainy day and we didn't have plans. My dear friend Meghan called to say she was in town! Woo hoo! Hadn't seen her in almost 2 years! We decided to meet her and her hubby at a local brewery for a tour.

Tour was fine, didn't hear much as I was running after the toddler. After the tour you get 2 tickets for sample beers. I never drink. Seriously, like never. I love to feel IN CONTROL of things, and drinking makes me feel out of control and anxious. And, I'd rather spend the calories on chocolate of some sort.

So, there is me drinking my tiny sample beer. It was good. Tasty. I liked it. My empty stomach however didn't. I immediately felt totally buzzed! I felt like I was even slurring my speech for crying out loud! Jason and our friends were totally laughing at me as no normal person gets buzzed off of like 5 ounces of beer!

Simultaneously Evelyn was chugging down two sample glasses of rootbeer and so she proceeded to run around on a sugar high only stopping to poop. I realized I had the diaper and wet bag with me, but only a half of a wipe and a restaurant wet-nap. Nice. Her um, blueberry habit has made poopy diapers really fun lately... So, I knew I was in for some fun. Imagine me, buzzed with 1/2 a wipe and a wet nap changing that diaper. It was fun. Luckily Meg escorted me to the bathroom and supplied me with wet paper towels. Poor Evelyn. I am sure she was wondering why I was giving her the slowest diaper change and why I giggled the whole time!

Famished and buzzed we headed to a Mexican restaurant to treat ourselves. I made quite the entrance wrestling with my broken umbrella (half of the fabric had come off the metal plus is had blown inside out and I couldn't collapse it). I got a few laughs from customers. I mowed down chips and Jason orders, guess what? ANOTHER rootbeer to share with Evelyn! She was literally jumping on the booth seat like a trampoline while I sat there wishing I had never drank my one sample beer. The food was horrid, but the memories are priceless.

Maybe you had to be there! :-)

The only pics that got downloaded to this computer...

The cousins. Evelyn was stuffing tons of popcorn in Sophia's mouth - it was hilarious because she just kept taking it!

My little goofball in the tub!

We started our first garden! Memorial day we went to a local nursery and bought some starter plants and seeds to grow our own vegetables. In retrospect, for the money we invested we could have bought an awful lot of veggies from the farmer's market. But, those don't come with all the fun and memories, right?!? Jason built the planter box in the back and it has: tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers, onions, radishes, carrots, lettuce, and cilantro. I didn't calculate correctly and we bought WAY too many plants. So, I planted more peppers (we have peppers of every variety coming out of our ears :-), tomatoes, and the italian parsley up front. We'll have to post pictures - things are growing well! Of course it is the most fun to see the things we planted as seeds sprouting!!! I am probably most excited about the raspberry bush we planted in the front. I hope it survives the crummy soil up there... Notice the gloves! I don't like dirty fingernails! :-)

At the nursery telling us that the flowers are "pur-pul." Oh, and she is sporting her first ponytail!

Evelyn is totally into it! She was FILTHY by the end of the day!

Stuff and Things

A little of what we've been up to - Out of order...too lazy and too late to care! :-) Trinity and Summer at the end of their tap dance last weekend. I love to see them get better every year. Great job, girls! Autumn did some great lyrical too, but the camera was out of memory. Go figure!

Auntie Hannah and a very tired Evelyn after Hannah's recital. Two recitals down, one to go. I love dance recital season! Hannah's legs on pointe - holy moley - she is gorgeous!

Evelyn got mama's love of the stage. She couldn't get enough of being up there during intermission!

Evelyn's new hero and obsession - DORA! She saw it once on TV and was enamoured. She knows all the characters already and it is so sweet when she says "D-d-d-da-Dora." Melts me every time! I have almost bought her a backpack twice now but resisted the temptation. Our free cable upgrade disappeared this week so no more Dora on tv. Good thing Family Video and the library will keep us busy for a while with new episodes on DVD. She gets one movie a day. She would watch at least 5 if we let her!!! I was happy to find a little Dora figurine set at a garage sale for $2.50 - score! It is a little pool and greenhouse and she loves them! This pic is at the Mall of America. We took an impromptu trip there last Saturday as it was so cold and windy that I chose not to participate in an outdoor kid's fair for the business. We were on the border and figured why not make a date out of it. If Evelyn wasn't quite so tired it would have been even more fun.

Evelyn's other current interest - stairs. This ramp at the 2nd dance recital led to a set of them. She has "stair detection" and can sense them whenever we walk into a new place. She gives me a mild heart attack every time she approaches them as with everything these days, stairs are in her "self" category. She's going a little unconventional on me and instead of "me" she tells me all day "SELF! SELF!"

Summer and Trinity dancin' it up!

Evelyn is into wearing these boots now. She is still a shoe fanatic. My shoes are still her favorites followed by a close second of her dress shoes that are a size too big (for "tapping") and these boots now. I think the boots tie in with the Dora obsession.

First toenail painting! So adorable!!! She picked pink - just like in the book "Pinkalicious." You should hear her say "Pinkalicious" - it is so precious!

Chillin' before Auntie Hannah's recital. Some big girls were sitting on this ledge so of course she had to too!

Evelyn's first set of wheels. She told me she was driving to the park today when I asked her where she was going.

Let's see, what else? I want to post Easter pics still but I am not on the computer that they are on. We got a laptop!!! Wow, I had no idea how cool it would be to have one! I look forward to doing Punkerdoops Diapers transactions through my website so that I won't have to hand write tickets anymore and take out the inventory from the online store. Just need to do a few more "tweaks" to the cart system to handle the in-store purchases.

We'll leave it at that for now!

Earth Day

Auntie Sarah came for two visits in the last couple of weeks. We had a ton of fun with her! It was fun to hang out on a "non-holiday" and just do some life together. Thanks for coming, Sarah! She posted a video of one of the visits on her blog. But, here are some of the pics she took while she was here the first time on Earth Day.

Yep, Evelyn is working on her computer skills already!

I was stuck in a tent all day talking about diapers. :-)

She must have felt the Earth Day "love" in the air! No one told her to do this I hear!!!

We're Still Alive

I am going to just keep it short rather than try to post 2+ months of happenings into one post!

I have kind of run out of steam it seems! My business, Punkerdoops Diapers, is flourishing. This is a great thing for the business, but kind of puts a damper on "other" things. The little computer time I do get, I end up doing all "work." I keep telling myself that once I get my website totally where I want it and I have all of the products and inventory I want, that things will be less busy. But, I am guessing that business will just keep getting more and more of my time... Just what have I gotten myself into!?! It is nice to have something to put my brain power into - the business has reawakened my brain I think! I also enjoy meeting all sorts of new moms and encouraging them to not only cloth diaper, but also breastfeed, babywear, and attachment parent. I try to shine the love of the Lord too and sure hope that people see something "different" in me.

Jason and I also admit that with joining facebook and the popularity of it, we have tended to check that out versus blogs...

But, I want to get back on the blog bandwagon and even start a Punkerdoops Diapers blog, too! One of the many, many things on the to-do list.

My lack of blogging also enduces guilt as it was kind of my way of documenting Evelyn and what she is up to! Kind of my baby book as you will!

Evelyn lately:

• Singing: she does very well with singing. Her favorite is to scrunch up her nose and close her eyes and sing loudly "Ah-WAYYYYYYY!!!!" I am not sure what song that it, but it sure is cute! She also likes to chime in on lots of songs like "Jesus Loves Me" and "Twinkle, Twinkle."
  
• Talking A TON!: She is talking in a lot of short sentences and especially likes to announce what she does - "I sit." "I dance." "I jump!" It is awesome and amazing to see her blossom! My mom watched her the other day while I went to a conference and she said that she could understand almost everything she said - nice that it is not just me and Jason that can understand her!
  
• Jumping: Evelyn loves to jump with 2 feet off the ground. On the bed. In the grass. On the carpet. While she holds our hands. On hopscotch sqaures. In the baby Johnny Jump Up even!


• Bubbles: We must blow them at least 4 times per day. She insists on holding the bubble wand now too. Messy. At least it us just bubbles!


• The alphabet: About 2 months ago it started with her repeating each letter after I said it. Then, it was her saying the next letter after I said one. Now, it is her saying almost the whole thing without prompts. She can also tell you almost every letter when you show her one. Jason is convinced it is all of the Wheel of Fortune she watched as a baby. :-)


• Repetition: We do everything a billion times. Ring around the rosie. Songs. Finger plays. Puzzles. Practice makes perfect, right? We also talk about the same stories over and over. Our trip to see lambs and chicks is sure a favorite.


• Dancing: Especially "tapping." She has dress shoes that have a little heel that are too big that she wears around the house and "taps" with on the floor. A.D.O.R.A.B.L.E.


• Climbing: She loves to be outside (I am learning to like being out there more too) and loves to climb up the playset in the back (It is at least 6 feet up - gives me a heart attack) and go down the slide. Another thing that is repeated over and over.


• Going potty: She goes pretty consistently in the morning and after nap. I need to discipline myself to get her trained all the way before she is no longer "eager to please" and lured by pee pee treats (aka marshmallows and jelly beans).
  
• Being just so darn cute: I didn't know she could get cuter, but she does with age!

Well, I think I will head to bed! I will try to post more often so that it is not so overwhelming!

Oh, and as I bet many of your curious minds want to know, I am not pregnant yet. I know you all are wondering. I know I always wonder as soon as my friends' kids turn one. The wondering begins. We'll announce it. I promise. Hopefully soon! :-)

I realize that I also need to a)take more pictures b)download the millions that must be on the camera c)it is still hard to get decent pics of my busy toddler!

Randomosity and a Talking Toddler

Hammin it up! I need to take more pictures..pretty dismal selection from the past two weeks!

It finally warmed up enough to let Evelyn play in the snow. She liked it a lot. She doesn't have snow boots and I can't get myself to cough up $15 for a pair to wear a few times. She got really dirty and I had a hard time with it but kept telling myself that everything is washable!

I have been CRAZY BUSY with Punkerdoops Diapers. A really great thing for the business, a not so great thing for blogging! I need to catch up on 2 weeks of all of my dear blogging friends' blogs!

Punkerdoops received an awesome article in the local paper - a feature story in the Lifestyles section. It brought in a lot of customers and I am truly, truly thankful. If only I could get free advertising like that every week! :-) I have a few other marketing things coming up and I am hoping that word of mouth about how great cloth diapering is starts to get around in the community!

Evelyn is talking like crazy but is also in some weird funk where she cannot settle down to get to sleep at night and whines and says "NO" a lot... She is more determined than ever to get her way, but unfortunately Jason and I only understand about 27% of the words that come out of her mouth. The rest is in Evelyn-ish...far from English. She did manage to repeat "Gosh" over and over just like Daddy after he exclaimed it tonight in frustration. Our little repeater! Another favorite word is "strawberry" which sounds a lot like "strawberry" now - a few days ago we thought she had an imaginary friend named "Debby" that she talked a lot about while in her highchair. It all makes sense now.

Evelyn prefers to mostly eat various forms of "dips" lately instead of any real food. This consists of a lot of ranch and sour cream with some spatterings of ketchup, mustard, honey, and even Louisiana hot sauce. We found she eats best and the most when we go to Sam's Club for Sunday afternoon samples. She won't eat at home, but she'll chow down there. Her favorites are rotissere chicken and Cup-o-Noodles. Nice...

Another blog-worthy laughable moment was last week when we decided to be all spontaneous and leave the house ON A WEEKNIGHT. Yep, we never go anywhere on weeknights. Anyhow, we wanted a popcorn maker where it is a metal pan that has a turn crank handle that moves around the seeds. We heard that they sold them at a local store called "Farm and Fleet." Well, we had a gift card for $25 to a store called "Fleet Farm" where the closest store is a 30 minute drive away. (I am not making this up. The stores have different names but are like exactly the same store minus the name. Apparently it is due to some brothers fighting as they started a chain of stores!) So, rather than getting our stuff from a store 15 minutes away, we drove to the location that would take our gift card. We got up to pay and found out that the gift card was only for 38 cents. We must have used the rest of it a long time ago and had forgotten about it... So, we drove a half an hour to spend a 38 cent gift card. It was a nice memory though. Evelyn loves to run around in stores and she liked sitting on the big lawn mowers. Oh, and to top it off, we got gas at the attached gas station to the store before we did our shopping and when we checked out we were given a 4 cents off per gallon coupon! :-)

So, there you go, some randomosity and Evelyn cute-ness!

Target Redeems Themselves

This story over at Adventures in Babywearing totally redeems Target's horrible return policy. I know that I have complained about them, but taking back USED PREGNANCY TESTS shows that they are indeed worthy of my patronage! Steph is a great writer and has adorable kiddos - another great post from her!

Pretender

I was just doing dishes and Evelyn came up and grabbed the drawstrings on my lounge pants. She was happy and seemed to be dancing to the music from the kitchen radio while holding onto the strings. I looked down to get a better glimpse and saw she had the ends of each draw string in her ears and was singing and dancing. My girl was pretending she had an iPod! She knows what an iPod is from her daddy and her auntie who let her listen to their iPods. Proud mama to a good pretender!

Randomosity

Whoops, I haven't blogged for 3 weeks! Jason did the last post with the videos - some goodies for the grandmas! So, here I am, full of randomosity to throw your way!

I have been keeping nice and busy with a myriad of things; thus, I have neglected both blogging and reading blogs. I have been attempting over the weekend to catch up on y'all's archives, but I have been naughty and have not commented to anyone! Sorry - still love all of you! Part of it was that Jason has the Google account and he changed the password and I didn't feel like looking for it...so, I didn't log in and didn't comment!

A random assortment of information that is either swirling in my head or something we've done lately that I want to share!:

-I could cry at how big Evelyn is getting! What a joy it is to watch her grow and learn! She is working on shaking her head correctly to "yes" and "no" this weekend and she has mastered pretty much every body part including cheeks, knees, and elbows (which apparently my little brother didn't know his elbows until preschool...hmmm :-) I was looking at pictures on our computer and she just looks SO big in them. My baby is growing up too fast!

-Jason painted the living room while I was in MN. It turned out great and I am so appreciative for the hard work that he put in every night while we were gone. I have been working on finding curtains for the past two weeks and finally settled on some. The bonus is that they were on clearance! Woo hoo! I intended on getting these to kind of throw a funky twist in the room, but they were sold out because they had gone on clearance too. I think it is odd that online they are still full price. Oh well, the swirls of polka dots are felt-y and give a nice texture and some modern appeal (and can I say it again - clearance). After I have pictures printed for two frames and hang them, the room will be officially done and maybe we'll even post some pics!

-Speaking of curtains and painting, I found some curtains on clearance for our room too. I have always wanted silver curtains for our room to go with the silver hardware on our furniture and the shades on our lamps. I found some silver-ish gray ones that will work. I know I have complained about Target, but 50% clearances make up for their horrid return policy! :-) We hung them this weekend and I must say, curtains really make a room and complete it. We are going to paint at least two of the walls a rich orange color. Can't wait! Next weekend Jason is painting the entry way a mocha color and our room is up after that. Painting each room just makes the house "ours" even more. I love that feeling.

-I just got a good laugh going through our pics - without realizing it, I wore the same shirt every time I had my picture taken in November and December! Thanksgiving, Advent reading at church followed by an attempt to take a family picture, and Christmas. It is kind of hilarious as you go through the pic archives. I must really like that shirt! I have found myself with a closet full of work attire that is collecting dust, a bunch of zip-up sweatshirts and fleeces for everyday, and about 3 shirts that I wear to get more dressed up. That will just have to do for now! Good thing I was with different people at all three of those occasions, right? :-)

-I am really cold right now. The utility company estimated our bill WAY too low last month. So, we should've known something was up and budgeted accordingly, but instead are stuck with a bill 4 times the amount of last month because they read our meter finally and realized they undercharged us. Jason turned the heat down to 65 starting at 10:30 now instead of 12:30 a.m. Late night blogging and emailing will be cold events! I am not sure if I can feel my feet anymore...hopefully my fingers won't freeze to the keyboard. My hands, toes, and nose are always cold already.

-Punkerdoops Diapers is getting some awesome free promotion in a week! I contacted the local paper again a couple of weeks ago and this time they were takers for a story on cloth diapering! A reporter and photographer were out last week for a good hour interviewing me and getting some great shots. The story is going to be the cover of the Lifestyles section in next Sunday's paper. I am thrilled and hope this will be the start of a bunch of new business! I also wrote an article on Modern Cloth Diapering 101 that will be in another local publication and a local woman's paper/magazine is doing a story on me/Punkerdoops in their April "green" issue. I am so thrilled that the word is going to get out there! Thanks again to all of you for your support and prayers as I try to get this business going!

-Tax time...I am trying to decide what to do about taxes this year. I did my own Excel spreadsheet accounting thing for Punkerdoops this year and so I sure hope it will work for filing taxes. Between starting a business where expenses grossly outweighed revenues, selling a house and buying another, and Jason commuting for 5 months (which I hear is a tax deduction...), I am not sure how to go about taxes. We can't afford an accountant and I am trying to decide if going with a tax prep service like H&R is any better than what I have been doing the last several years at taxact.com. Any feedback? I am kind of avoiding this but know I need to make decisions soon. I also should look into QuickBooks too probably. Just another expense I don't want to incur.

-We bought a potty chair today! I am not getting it out for another month or so. Myself and several of my sisters were potty-trained around 18 months and Evelyn will be 17 months in a few days. I plan to take the next month to research the whole thing a bit before we jump into things. I know I need to be home all week the week I do it and that's about it as far as my knowledge goes!

I think I will leave you with that! Happy Monday, all!

Yep, she already can walk in heels!

One of my favorite recent pics!

Look at those curls! She is eating frozen peas - cutting tooth #8!

We play a lot of dress-up! Jason thinks she looks like a gnome in her cone princess hat.

I find she is in pj's when I take a lot of photos...anywho, notice the shoes again! My little girlie girl!

Evelyn is our little dancer!

Since Evelyn has a mommy who loves dance as well as 2 grandmas who teach it...it only makes sense that she starts learning at such a young age!

We bought Evelyn a new toy and she loves it! Hopefully this doesn't mean she'll want a real one eventually...(Sorry for the poor video quality)

To Evelyn's Grandmother's House We Go

Opening a gift at Gma and Gpa B's house Christmas morning. She loved her cousins!

Family pic after the Christmas Eve service. None of them turned out. Evelyn looks like she is about to fall asleep!

Before we saw Santa the week before Christmas. Evelyn was not a fan of his!

About the best pic I have of her lately...she is so hard to photograph as she is constantly on the go!

Evelyn and I are leaving for the week to stay at my mom and step-dad's house while they are in Aruba. I will be helping my next eldest sister (I am the oldest of 8 kids if you didn't know) cook, clean, shuttle to school, dance, scouts, etc, and generally keep the peace in the house. This task is overwhelming and even though there are two of us, we have some big shoes to fill. I am kind of an orderly gal who likes her peace and quiet and hour of TV at night...needless to say, I will be thrust out of my comfortable home environment.

But, I will try to check in on y'all through the week.

On another note, we are all feeling quite well - praise the Lord! I really do think it was all of your prayers for health that finally did it! And, all of the lounging that we did over the past week helped too I am sure! I am second-guessing my diagnosis of Thrush for Evelyn. I am still treating both of us with acidopholus, but I think that she maybe just has a nasty buildup of milk on her tongue. She had some cheddar Chex mix the other day and the patch of white at the back of her tongue turned orange...that, combined with the fact that no new spots have appeared, leads me to believe that we might just have some gross old milk on our hands. Nice, huh? She will not let me brush it either that little stinker!

I wish that we had a plethora of great photos to share from Christmas. I will leave you with just a few. We shared our Christmas Eve and Day with Jason's family. We then celebrated last Sunday with a day trip to my mom's house. Both were very nice time and Evelyn was blessed with an abundance of new toys. When I upload more pictures off of our camera I can share a few. My dad and step-mom gave us our gifts at Thanksgiving and we opened them at home as my step-mom and sister were dancing in the Outback Bowl and were not around! They had a nice time!

Enough of the rambling - I am off to bed! Take care, all!