The Mechinus Family

2012-02-03T17:45:00.000-06:00

Today, I am 31 weeks, 1 day along in this pregnancy. I was put on modified bed rest about 2 weeks ago. I was able to work from home and still go to the store (but I had to ride in a motorized cart!! haha.), so it really wasn't too bad. Then last week I was able to go into the office 4 hours at a time, which was great because I really enjoy the girls I work with. Not to mention that I work with 2 girls that are really good friends from college. I was so thankful to have avoided having to go to the hospital! Well, on Monday I went in for a doctor's appointment and was admitted to the hospital for 24 hours observation. My blood pressure has been high, which is an indicator of preeclampsia, which is what I had with Lyla and the reason that she was born so early. After the 24 hours of observation, I was able to come back home, but on strict bed rest. I go to the doctor twice a week, which is really the only time I get to leave the house. I have received a round of steroids, which helps the baby's lung develop, just incase he is born early, and that really makes me feel so much better.

Lyla was born right at 32 weeks, and I think this baby will come in the next few weeks. I'd really like to make it to week 34, but we will just have to wait and see! I am far enough along that the baby will be fine when he is born, just small. It would be nice if he didn't have to stay in the NICU, but the way things are going, it's a pretty big possibility that. Whenever he comes, we are just excited to meet our little boy!

These last few months a have pretty crazy. We bought our house, and then Bo had his accident, and as a result of the accident, his company had to let him go a few weeks ago. Things have been far from perfect, but we are happy and have lots of positive things to focus on. This may not be the best timing, but Bo's been wanting to find a new job for awhile, so this gives him the opportunity to look. Also, I'm not really supposed to move from the couch, so at least Bo is here to take care of me and Lyla. Bo's also been able to work on some projects for Lyla's room and the baby's room, and both of their rooms are almost done. This time is also giving Bo and I some down time to rest and just hang out with each other, which will be hard to come by when the new baby comes. Lyla is getting to spend lots of time with Bo and I can tell she is really enjoying all the attention she is getting from him. They are getting to play together and it's just really fun to watch. I'm also getting to spend some time with Lyla, just sitting on the couch watching tv or reading books in her room and I'm just soaking it up because I know soon, there will be another little person needing lots of my attention.

If you read all of this, sorry for my ramblings and maybe tomorrow I will write a post with pictures.

2012-01-17T15:46:00.000-06:00

Here's proof that Bo hasn't been letting his broken leg keep him from working on all the projects around the house. Of course Lyla has been quite the little helper, which makes things much easier on Bo, she's a good flashlight holder.

2012-01-08T15:52:00.002-06:00

We had a merry little Christmas here in Austin. It was really nice to just stay home and not have to be in the car. On the other hand, I felt a lot of responsibility to make sure everyone had a good time and that there was plenty of good food. Then I remembered that we had a lot going on in the weeks and days leading up to Christmas and that I was going to be lucky just to get all my shopping done. Then I remembered that no one was expecting me to "do it all". So I decided to make a good breakfast and that we would go out to eat for lunch. It was so nice to not have much to worry about on Christmas day! It was such a great day and Lyla had so much fun!

Lyla loved all the Christmas cookies and candies.

Christmas Eve Lyla was in charge of entertainment and passed out a puzzle to everyone.

Here's Lyla with her new kitchen! She loves to put everything in the washer.

Opening a "Where's Waldo" book.

My mom, Robin and Laura were here for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Her first Barbie, that she played with that day, and not really much more than that.

This is a "fly boat" from the show Wonder Pets, and Lyla just loves it!

Bo's parents and 2 of his sisters came over Christmas night. Bo's mom dressed up as Santa and it was hilarious.

Here's Lyla after her nap on Christmas Day, putting everything that will fit into the washer in her kitchen.

It was such a great day and I was so glad that Bo was able to leave the hospital in time to be home!

Bo's Broken Leg=Fork Lifts Suck

2012-01-07T16:09:00.000-06:00

I mentioned that Bo had an accident with a fork lift in our last post. He was right in the middle of taking out the tile from our kitchen and bathrooms so that he could finish putting in the new flooring in those areas. He went up to his work and had to use a fork lift that he's used a million times, went down a small ramp and just got going too fast. Apparently, this fork lift doesn't have breaks on it, which sounds crazy to me. Bo tried to keep the fork lift going to straight, but that didn't work and Bo had to jump off of it. When he jumped off, the fork lift fell on top of him, so he was pinned to the ground. His friends Randall was with him and he called ambulance and some construction workers were there working on his office. The workers got some sort of jack that lifted the fork lift off of him, which is good because he was laying in battery acid that was leaking out of the fork lift. The ambulance came and took him to the hospital.

I was at home while all this was happening, dying my hair and hanging out with Lyla. Bo called me, and all I could gather from his phone call was the he broke his leg and "f***** everything up". That's all he kept saying. I got Randall on the phone and told them to call me as soon as they knew what hospital the ambulance was taking Bo to. All in all it was about 2 hours before I got to see Bo or find out what was going on from the time he called me. They got him into surgery pretty quickly. His tibia and fibula were both broken, so they put a rod in his leg. He had a lot of swelling in his arm and his thigh and some burns from the battery acid, but we are so thankful that nothing else was broken! His bruises on his thigh and arm were literally black. Bo was in the hospital for 4 days, and I was able to stay with him the whole time, since my mom lives with us and my sisters are so close, they were able to take care of Lyla.

It was the worst thing ever to see Bo and it was pretty sobering to realize that it really could have been so, so much worse. We are so thankful that he never hit his head or lost consciousness. He has been at home since then and hasn't gone back to work yet, but hopefully he will be able to soon. Just now he was able to take his boot off and walk on his foot some. He is dealing with this really well and hasn't complained or seemed to feel sorry for himself one time. He is only worried about getting things done around the house and getting back to work, which are things that he is doing for our family.

Lyla is disappointed that Bo can't play "tackle" with her, but she seems to understand why. She clearly wants to be just like Bo because she says that her leg is broken allllllll the time.

Here's Bo with the doctor who did his surgery. Notice that Bo has Torchy's Tacos and was watching football on his laptop, so I guess he didn't have it that bad.

Here is Bo just working away. You can see the new floors here, kind of, I love them! Bo's putting a new vanity in Lyla and the baby's bathroom in this pic. Just a few more little things to do in this bathroom and it will be done. It already looks soooo much better than before.

Lyla is a great little helper and likes to hold the flash light for Bo.

Bo has some pictures of his leg, but I will spare you. He's disappointed that he didn't get better pictures of his bruises. I am just so glad to have Bo home and starting to get back to normal. Up next, a happier Christmas post!

2011, A Year in Review

2012-01-05T22:51:00.000-06:00

Since Meagan and Christie both did this, I thought I'd do it too! Here's what we've been up to in the past year.

January

Lyla's 2nd birthday came and we had a little party at our house.

February

I turned 25, and was not excited about it. We celebrate Valentine's Day. Bo did a few AMAZING paintings for some friends.

March

I went to Colorado City for Christie's gender reveal party. She had a boy and Knox is so very, very cute!

Bo and I went camping BY OURSELVES!!!

April

Bo turned 26, and he was older than me once again, thank goodness. We celebrated Easter and Lyla asked to hunt for eggs every morning after that for weeks.

May

June

We took a little vacation to Port Aransas. Lyla was scared of the water at first, but she eventually loved it!

July

July was spent enjoying Austin and cooling off in any bodies of water we could find.

August

Found out we were expecting baby #2, and I couldn't eat anything for what seemed like months. I took Lyla for frozen yogurt and it was one of the first things that didn't make me want to barf immediately after eating it, since realizing I was pregnant.

Bo's grandpa passed away, and Bo wrote a speech that he read at the service. It was the perfect mixture of humorous and sentimental stories and thoughts.

Lyla and Bo putting flags on Grandpa's grave.

Also in August, my mom moved to Austin for a new job and moved in with us. Live-in baby-sitter! Just kidding, I try not to take advantage that often. I also lost my job with Le Mystere, but found a new job, thanks to Abby and Meagan, just a few days later. Now I work for a great company with a wonderful group of women and get to basically hang out with friends all day.

September

We bought our first house! More pics to come. Someday.

October

I took my sisters to a George Strait concert for Robin's birthday and it was amazing!! It was actually a benefit concert for the Bastrop fire victims and the lineup included, George Strait, Randy Rogers, Asleep at the Wheel, Lyle Lovette, Willie Nelson, The Dixie Chicks, and others that my pregnant brain cannot recall right now.

Had our first Halloween in our new neighborhood.

Also in October, our house got broken into and a bunch of stuff was stolen. Then a week or so after that, our dryer and TV broke within a few days of each other. Also, some animal got in one of the walls of our master bedroom somehow and chose our house as it's final resting place. Attempts to find the carcass to rid our room of a super sick smell were no good. So Bo and I moved our mattress into the baby's room and camped out in there for OVER A MONTH until the smell went away. This sounds silly, but there really was nothing else to do, but wait for the smell to go away. In short October was "welcome to the neighborhood and home ownership" month.

November

Of course we celebrated Thanksgiving, which is always a fun time. The most exciting thing was that we found out we were having a BOY!

December

Bo hung our Christmas lights up outside as soon as Thanksgiving was over. They looked so good!! As for the rest of December...

Oh December. What a month. We started off with Bo getting to take off work for 3 weeks, due to lots of unused vacation time. Bo began taking up the sick carpet and tile in our house and putting in new flooring. In the middle of all that, Bo had an accident with a fork lift. He broke his leg pretty badly and had/has some bruises like nothing either of us have ever seen. He broke his tibia and fibula and had a rod put in his leg. He had to stay in the hospital for 4 days and has been recovering and resting ever since. I should say he rests when I give him a hard time, the rest of the time he is trying to fix things up around the house and you'd never know that he just had surgery.

Of course, December brought our first Christmas in our new house. Things were a little thrown together, because of Bo's accident and being in a new house and just not all the way settled yet. It was a great Christmas though! I stayed up late 2 nights putting together Lyla's kitchen and Bo and I were so excited for her to see it and open all her other presents. It was so much fun!

This year has been so busy and packed with lots of changes. Most all of them are good positive changes, but still take some getting used to. We are ready to see what 2012 brings!

It's a...

2011-12-20T18:02:00.000-06:00

BOY!!! Most people who read this blog already know this, but oh well! We are so excited and kind of couldn't believe it. Lyla is excited to meet her little brother and Bo and I can't wait either!

exciting changes!

2011-10-13T17:27:00.000-05:00

clearly, it's been a really long time since we have written anything. too long. would it make it any less unacceptable if i said we had two very exciting things that happened in the last few months? ones that have take lots our of time and energy, causing this blog to be ignored? idk.

first, we are expecting baby mechinus #2 in early April! right now i am about 15 weeks along. we are really excited! lyla knows that a baby is coming, but i'm not totally sure she understand 100%. i have felt okay, but pretty nauseous, and of course really tired. we are anxious to find out if this little one is a boy or girl! we are so excited and can't wait to see lyla have a new little playmate!

this blog was started as a way to keep our families and friends updated about lyla's progress while she was in the nicu. we had no idea how popular blogs were, especially family blogs. we are prayerful that this time around we will have healthy updates for everyone!

the second exciting thing that has happened is that we bought our first house! it's in south austin and we love it. we have had a few unpleasant things happen in the first week that we have been here, but we are staying positive. this house needs just the right amount of fixing up that we were looking for. there are lots of little projects and a few big ones to do, but it's totally livable and comfortable until we can get to those. the first big thing we will do, will be putting in new floors! this house has a perfect layout for us and so much more space than we are used to!

we are so excited about these new changes, and i'm excited to finally be able to talk about them on the blog!

blog swap

2011-07-21T19:06:00.000-05:00

i have seen meredith host blog swaps before and i have always wanted to do it, i just always forgot to sign up in time (big surprise). i signed up for latest one just in time! i was paired with abby and i was so excited. abby and i went to college together, were in KJK together, and now we both live in austin. we met for lunch to swap our gifts instead of shipping them. we had to put together a package that included the following: something orange, something funny, something that you love, something sweet, and something that cost $1.

here's what i got abby:
something orange: peach nail polish
something funny: some underwear that is actually great to wear under almost anything, but it's totally hideous
something that i love: almay eye make up remover and say yes to carrots body cream
something sweet: sugar blossom candle
something that cost $1: grey and teal leopard socks
i didn't take a pic, but she has one on her blog, bc i know everyone is super curious.

here's what abby got me:
something orange: OPI's monsooner or later nail polish
something funny: tissues that say "i laughed until i cried" on them and a squirrel cookie cutter (yea KJK)
something sweet: Godiva chocolates with carmel in the middle
something that costs $1: clorox wipes
something that she loves: one of those reusable cups with a straw and the new beyonce cd

i love everything! i might have already eat all the chocolates while driving around listening to the beyonce cd. the reusable cup is perfect bc i just broke the one that i had, and everyone with a kid knows that there can never be enough clorox wipes in one house! i always love a new nail color and this is one that i don't have yet. and the tissues will come in handy when watching, "surprise homecoming" or whatever that tlc show is called about soldiers coming home and surprising their families. i also can't wait to make cookies with lyla and use the cookie cutter, i plan on making her like KJK related things from a young age so that if she goes to ACU one day, she will pick Kojies and think that it was her own idea.

love you abby!

workout buddy

2011-07-06T17:00:00.001-05:00

i have been doing jillian michael's 30 day shred, which is an at home work out. i highly recommend it and it's a really great workout. i usually try to do it when lyla is napping, but it doesn't always work out that way. so whenever lyla sees me doing it, she wants to workout with me. it's hilarious, she will get on the ground and do crunches and push ups with me, and she loves to lifts these little weights and says, "I'm working out!".

2011-07-05T20:09:00.000-05:00

lyla will be 2 and a half in a few days. she is getting so big and just talks all the time. here are some things that she has been up to

-she loves toy story and especailly buzz. when picking out a nightlight at the store she picked a buzz night light, over the princess night light and the butterfly night light.

-when you ask her to do something she doesn't really want to do, like eat one more bite of peas before she can have more fish sticks, she will say, "okay, fine" in this really sad, slow voice.

-she likes to play on her drum and wrote her first song the other day. it goes, "yogurt, yogurt, yogurt, cereal, cereal". she does love yogurt and cereal, i just didn't realize how much.

-she also likes to pretend that bo is a dragon and makes him "get her". sometimes she is the dragon and she growls and tickles us.

-another thing lyla likes to pretend is that she is the "bad guy" or the "good guy". mostly she likes to be the bad guy. wonder what that means.

lyla is a little sick right now so i just had to give her a breathing treatment, and she did so good! she just wore the little mask and watched dora and didn't even whine about it. this is one of my first glances of how some things get easier as she gets older. we used to have to pin her down to do a breathing treatment, which wasn't something i could do alone. so if bo wasn't home, i would just put her in her crib and point the mask at her, which wasn't very effective. i am just so proud of her! of course, i know other things will get harder, but for now i am going to enjoy this one thing being easier. then we made cookies and she had a little snack before bedtime.

beach trip

2011-06-21T14:09:00.000-05:00

a couple of weeks ago, we took lyla to port aransas for some much needed beach time. my mom and bo's parents also came with us. bo's parents also brought lyla's cousin, madison, which was great fun for lyla. it was so nice to get away for awhile! the beach wasn't very crowded and we hardly saw anyone else at the pool the whole time we were there! lyla loved playing in the sand, but was mostly afraid of the ocean. she didn't like when the waves would come up at all. she did seem to get a little more used to it by the end of the trip.

just some pics

2011-05-20T09:22:00.000-05:00

kelley got married!

2011-05-03T10:29:00.000-05:00

my good friend kelley got married last weekend. bo stayed home with lyla, and i stayed with hayley. it was nice to have a mini vaca and some alone time. haha. it was such a fun wedding, and kelley's dress was one of my favorites out of all the weddings i've been to! kelley and i grew up together, and it was so fun and special to see her start this new part of her life. it's always so great to get together with friends from home and it makes me wish we all lived a little closer to each other! i really have the best friends and we all have so much fun together.

derric, hayley, nelda

me and hayley. love you!

hayley and nelda

meagan is getting married next!

i didn't get a good picture of kelley's dress, but it was beautiful!

lovelovelove

so thankful for good friends!

everyone had a great time, obvi.

sprinkler

2011-04-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

bo's aunt jan got lyla this cute little sprinkler for her birthday and i've been so excited for lyla to play in it. i've turned it on the past 2 days in a row and she is scared of it, which is pretty funny. she seemed less scared today, so hopefully soon she will be playing in it. i'm sure once she realizes that it will cool her off, she will love it.

the offending sprinkler

here is what she thought about me picking her up and putting her right next to it.

happy again

easter

2011-04-26T11:04:00.000-05:00

easter was fun this year because lyla actually knew what was going on. she had so much fun hunting for eggs. we have been re-hiding them all over the house and she loves to "find eggs!". bo and lyla made confetti eggs. i had never heard of these things and bo could not believe it. lyla had fun cracking them open on everyone's head. we got lyla some puzzles and a little shelf for all her puzzles. she loves puzzles and is so good at them! we had my mom and sisters, and bo's parents and his sister, sammie all over for lunch. it was fun to have everyone over.

NICU reunion

2011-04-25T11:02:00.000-05:00

last weekend we went to the NICU reunion for the neonatal unit lyla was in after she was born. we had never been before, so we really didn't know what to expect. for some reason, we never got our invitation, but we were so glad when we got it this year. there were way more people there than we had expected, and we didn't see one doctor or nurse that we knew, but we did have lots of fun. lyla got to ride a train, get her face painted and play some games. when lyla was in the NICU, a set of quints were born a few days after her. the mom was in the room next to me and the babies were in the bay next to lyla. anyway, tlc is doing a show about them, and i had hoped that they would be at the reunion and that the tlc cameras would be there. of course if tlc saw lyla and how cute she is, they would decide that she needed her own show as well. no such luck.

2011-04-19T10:27:00.000-05:00

it has been a ridiculous amount of time since our last post. not much has changed since we last wrote, but lyla is talking more and more every day. this morning she said, "bye bye momma, i'm gonna go drive." oh geez. her favorite shows are dora, wonder pets, and more recently strawberry shortcake. we really don't let her watch that much t.v. and i have to tell her "no" to it all the time. but she LOVES dora. i bought her some dora pj's, and she is obsessed. i can hardly get them off of her in the morning.

and please excuses the way this blog looks. i need to make another background for it in photoshop, but do you know how long that takes? hours. someday, i will do it and then i will never change it again.

we took lyla to the zoo and she made best friends with this little goat. she kept trying to ride him.

bo took lyla to pick flowers by this empty field across the street from our house. she loved it!

relaxing on the porch.

sweet girl.

on their way to pick flowers.

here she is picking flowers. now all she wants to do is go "pick new flowers!". it's so cute!

birthdays

2011-03-01T20:44:00.000-06:00

lyla got tubes in her ears yesterday, and she did just fine. we think that her speech and cognition have already improved! bo just called on the phone and she had a little conversation with him! it was so cute she told him that she wanted him to come home. usually she just smiles when we try to get her on the phone with someone, i think it was because she couldn't hear very well since there was so much fluid in her ears.

lyla and i both had birthdays recently. lyla got lots of tea sets and kitchen type things. she loves to serve tea and to make everyone "cheers" with the little cups. she got some other great toys that are really keeping her entertained. she love to watch "kittys", or the aristocats and finding nemo. bo gave me a new camera and some money to go shopping with, both wonderful gifts! bo and i have also had some fun dates recently and have eaten some great food. if you live in austin or ever come to austin, you have to go to quality seafood. it's amazing!

we are coming up on the really busy season for bo's job. it stinks, but oh well. i am starting to work an extra day each week, but just for a few months. my job is busier this time of year as well with lots of spring events. so lyla will be going to her babysitter three days a week instead of two. we don't really like that, but we will see how it goes. lyla is really happy there, and we really love the lady who watches her, AND it's only for 2 or 3 months and then she will go back to two days a week. so i guess i should just get over it!

here are some pictures from the new camera! i still need to figure out some of the settings, and learn how to edit them better

this girl loves fish sticks

dance, dance, dance!

lyla whips her hair

2011-02-08T16:18:00.000-06:00

lyla loves to dance. she will ask us multiple times a day to "dance" or for a "song". she loves it! most recently, lyla has learned to whip her hair. check it: go here to see a video of lyla dancing.

2011-02-03T12:11:00.000-06:00

bath time with daddy.

today, lyla wanted to wear her socks as gloves.

of course, she needed to wear her new gloves to serve afternoon tea!

SUNNY day

2011-02-01T17:30:00.000-06:00

the picture below was taken just a few days ago when it was lovely outside. now it's freezing cold outside. most of you reading this probably have snow outside your door and are trapped in your homes. i wish that it would snow or even ice here in austin, so that i had a reason to stay inside. see it's freezing here, but the sun is out. so it's miserable to even walk out to your car, but there really is no justifying staying inside, wearing pjs all day and drinking hot chocolate and watching movies. especially when it's a tuesday, and that's when lyla goes to day care and i go to work. maybe it will snow later in the week for us.

anyway, not much new is going on around here. we are starting to see the signs of the craziness that is bo's job creep up. he is getting pretty busy and lyla and i are trying to stay busy as well. being at home all day with a toddler, knowing that no one else will walk through the door til well after she is in bed, gets old really fast.

my dear, dear friend christie is expecting her first baby! they won't find out the sex for another month or so, but i cannot wait! i am just so excited for her and i know that her and koby will be great parents! i can't wait to find out if it's a boy or girl so that i can start making things for the baby!

lyla is getting funnier every day. last night she said, "daddy watch this!" and then twisted her arm around in the air like she was stirring a big bowl of something; she thought this was hilarious and we did too.

i'm attempting to get better at taking pictures with bo's canon rebel, so lyla has been my model the past few days. there are so many things to learn if you want to get away from using the manual setting on your camera! so get ready for sub par photos of lyla; mostly pictures of her back because i can't get her to stand still and look at me to more than .5 seconds!

this was about a year ago when i took lyla to pennsylvania and d.c.. i must have been insane to take a 14 month old all that way by myself. i'm sure someone warned me of this, and i'm sure i didn't listen.

2011-02-01T12:33:00.000-06:00

crazy kid

2011-01-21T09:26:00.000-06:00

click here to see a video of how lyla decided to spend her evening last night.

it's been a long time...or has it?

2011-01-13T15:54:00.000-06:00

It has been a very long time since I wrote anything on here. It has actually been over a year, not since last October have I written anything. Seeing as how this blog kind of serves as a journal for Lyla’s life or our family's activities (same thing) I think now would be a good time to write my recap of the past year since Lyla’s birthday is today. Can’t say too much has happened though not sure what I will write about. It certainly wouldn’t make an impressive list but I will try.

First Christmas

New home

First birthday

Oh this isn’t very interesting let’s try it with pictures...

Pretty amazing transformation that has taken place over the past two years and physically it is easy to see. I’ll try to paint a picture for you of the other transformations that we have had to deal with the past year. I’ll bet $10 that Marie cries the day we decide to get rid of that laundry basket…if we ever decide to get rid of that laundry basket.

The object of our amusement

This was Lyla last Halloween. I guess we still had a decent amount of energy then because we set the bar pretty high by making this owl costume by hand. Of course we claimed that it would be a tradition.... did we follow through?

She loved collecting candy but really she was just doing the dirty work.
We ate all the candy ourselves, and frequently I
found myself uttering words I hadn't said in 15yrs
"That lady just gave us candy corn. Who the heck wants candy corn? What a rip off!"

A resounding “NO.” We planned to, and then we planned to, and planned to. and talked and planned, and procrastinated, and then caved. To be fair, Marie tried to get the ball rolling, but nothing easy came to mind. And the overwhelming feeling that no matter what we did, it wouldn’t compare to last year's masterpiece, finally gave way one day when Marie took Lyla to a store and Lyla saw this Elmo costume. She had grown a recent obsession with Elmo and it just seemed too easy to be true so we went with convenience and luckily we didn’t see any other Elmos on the block that night. The regret of not making a costume this year was doubled however immediately upon stepping away from the cash register after buying this cheaply made non-refundable $50 cookie monster suit.

The idea was to complement Lyla's Sesame Street character of choice with the one I loved and dressed as when I was that age, but somehow the $50 knockoff blue abomination of itchy hell doesn't compare to a blue sweater blue face paint and an imagination. I fought through extreme regret and adult humiliation and wore at least the head like a mark upon Cain’s head as remembrance to never buy a costume from a chain store on Halloween Eve.

I don't know what people are talking about when they
say me and lyla look a like.

Back then we took Lyla to Zilker tree and had a great time. Lyla was just getting her sea legs and so we carried her around the whole time, in fact I doubt her feet touched the ground as evidence here.

I think she might have given a slight glance to the thousands of lights above her but we shoved her in the air and angled the camera to make her seem like she cared and told ourselves that next year she would probably love it.

already to cool to walk with her parents

One year later we set out towards Zilker expecting to "wow" and "pwitty" the socks off of Lyla. But once we got there she could care less. Her feet only touched the ground once every half second as she ran through the crowds of people with us chasing her. Lyla was oblivious to the tree and cared more about running in circles around the feet of people who were shoving their babies in the air and begging them to smile while they took pictures.

guilty and frequent offender of trying to force my kid to enjoy something

We let Lyla run ragged for an hour and after I had thoroughly exhausted myself from trying to take pictures by diving in front of Lyla as she whizzed by screaming I scraped myself off the ground and we said under our breath, "Maybe next year she will notice the darn tree."

"Slow down and smell the darn CHRISTMAS LIGHTS!"

Marie took this photo one day in our back yard, and even though Lyla looks content in this picture she is not. At this age she hated being outside on the ground. Remember the cold pool picture?

People must have thought we didn’t know what we were doing, and they were right

At the time I guess she was so little and the world was so big I wanted to show her every bit of it but she wasn't quite ready.

Slowly though she started to enjoy trips to the green belt and dipping her toes in the water. I still held her hand for her comfort though…in case she needed help, or so I thought.

cant keep'em from getting wet forever

A year later she is bigger but still small to me; and the world, even though it is the same size, is not big enough for her and getting too big for me. Now I realize that I was starting to hold her hand for my own comfort because now she loves being "ows-i" (outside). I am convinced she would be a little dirt face tree child if she could have her way. And now the one time father that was forcing his daughter in to pools and begging his baby to play in the sand is cautiously trailing and constantly grasping at air as she carelessly runs down steep hills, climbs rock walls, swings sticks in the air and throws rocks in the water.

Well she seems to be a right hander. There is more money
being a lefty, but we will go pro regardless.

What worries me the most is the fear that this obsession would stop, and the day will come that you have to pry computers out of her hands or peel her eyes off of a TV screen. I have found myself going outside more often now because of her and I hope she never stops wanting to be "ows-i" (outside.)

I have never had such a love/hate relationship with anything in my life like I have with FOOD right now. One time I overheard someone saying that they had a tall strong lumbering boy and that he didn’t feed his kid any sweets till he was a teenager. If there is any correlation, Lyla will turn in to a midget sometime soon. Ironically, I think we had fed her a chocolate cake or something for the first time that morning.

You can see the innocence vanishing

You see I think I miss the days of baby food. Sure it cost money, but it all looked the same and smelled the same and maybe it even taste the same. Then one day you get the cute idea to put a Twinkie in front of your kid and see how she reacts when she eats it. Having a first kid is sometimes like playing god in the Garden of Eden. Placing that morsel of sugary sweetness in front of your kid is like Eve biting the forbidden fruit. “WHO ARE WE TO PLAY GOD?!!!!”

At least the brain freeze would be tiny

I am supposed to make fun of this? I want to do that myself!!

Is what you will be screaming in your head after you watch your child devour a cookie for the first time and watch the innocence drift away as she washes it down with a sippy cup of milk and then looks at your with those black soulful eyes and demands with a word you never even heard before, "cookie, cooKIE! COOKIE!!! COOKIE!!" "God forgive me for what I have done," you will whisper under your breath as she begins to foam at the mouth.

See the evil in those eyes

I might be exaggerating in parts but the overall idea is true, i swear you could try to teach your kid to say "pea" for 3 months but the second she takes a bite of a Crème brûlée she will repeat it back to you in perfect pronunciation.

Here is the real tragedy of the whole thing. If you had never given you kid a bite of that sweet, then when your kid is getting older and starts to become a very picky eater, you can take this tiny solace in the fact that you know that at least you didn’t cave and feed your kid sweets. But for those of you who give your kid sweets, someday your kid will become a picky eater too and you will watch them refuse plate after plate of food. And you will be doing endless Paula Dean impersonation taking bites of corn and acting like it gave you super power, "Oh wow, oh my gosh, you have to try this, I think eating this corn just gave me a vision of two kittens kissing. You have got to try this, Lyla!" No matter how hard you try she won’t eat it; and you will be left with the horrible feeling that it is all your fault because of that fateful day when she was 9 months old and you let her lick the icing spoon. It’s a modern day horror story. It does make for cute pictures though, so enjoy...

I like to start training early. She has 30 more to go in 2 minuets

I like to think that it is more than Austin doing this to us, but we are starting to become strangely aware of what we feed her and ourselves. We avoid high fructose corn syrup, and we now eat hormone free chicken and milk. We like that Austin is proactive and convenient for our growing list of health foods, but it is a pain to always have to chase the dirty hipsters away from the trashcans in the morning.

I got the opportunity to be the minister at the wedding of two of my best high school friends this summer. I got ordained by Universal Life Church Monastery online to make sure it was legit. I thought about receiving the religious title of wizard also, but it was an extra $10. The wedding was great, and Lyla was the flower girl. Marie made this dress for her, and Lyla did a decent job of getting the flowers on the ground especially when she threw the basket.

When your kid is too young to know better or to put up a fight, you can put them in anything. Case in point, check out the puppy above. Does it look comfortable? NO Does it look like it allows a respectable range of motion? NO. Did this parent with a smile and a camera care? NO. I just stuffed the little pudgy arms into this costume and clicked away. She didn’t have a choice.

She will appreciate this some day

But the older she gets, she starts to recognize that glimmer in her parents eyes that they get right before they try to force something on her. Now look at this picture below.

Looks like she is posing nice and cute in that hat right? Wrong. Notice Marie’s right hand is actually pinning Lyla’s hand down so we can snap this picture a half second before she throws the hat down and yells NO! (A tactic every parent is sure to learn when their kid starts receiving copious amounts of accessories.)

A year later and this one is a win for the parents. These days we have figured out how to get Lyla to wear a hat. See it is all about communication. All it took was for Lyla to learn a couple of words and then trust us with informing us about something she loves… like being "owside" (outside.) Then we simply bribe, extort, and threaten with that information to get her to do what we want by saying, "If you ever want to see the outside that you love so much, you are going to have to wear this hat." Well…. now she wears her hat, and if you do it enough she draws a strong connection to wearing a hat and being outside so she begs to wear it. It is quite similar to Stockholm syndrome. We are really quite good parents and hope this works through high school.

You have to threaten her favorite stuffed animals with a knife
if you want to get her to wear a hat and glasses

I accomplished one great feat last year that Jody Garner would have been proud of. I GREW A MAN BEARD. It was an interesting and itchy process and apparently my Scottish heritage takes roots in the bottom half of my face, because I grew a very red beard. I would have been happy to keep it and dye it and name it and comb it 50 times every night, but Marie had put up with kissing wiskers for long enough, and she made me promise to shave it before we went on our vacation.

If you’re gonna take the time to grow a beard, you better get to enjoy shaving it too. I started trimming it before our vacation, and shaved it into as many subtle varieties each day for a week till it was gone.

When my beard was gone we knew it was time to go. So we headed south and dropped Lyla off with her grandparents so we could have a kid free vacation at the beach.

We had a great time and got to act like kids again for the first time since... well.... since the 6 days earlier when I shaved my face in funny ways. We ate at restaurants, shopped at beach stores, had a fire on the beach, flew kites and ate crunchy sandy hot dogs on the beach as we fought off seagulls with our free hand. I think we only talked about Lyla about 40 times a day. Marie might have cried about missing Lyla once or twice, and we had a romantic conversation about Lyla's new habit of putting fingers in both of her nostrils at the same time over wine.

Lyla has no regard for the safety of others. Case in point as she smashes my nose, kneed my neck and kicked me in the head trying to get out of the tunnel.

I am literally an obstacle to her and I will only get worse when she turns 16

She will frequently risk your life for her enjoyment, like asking you to hold a drum next to your face so she can practice flailing drumsticks at it 100 mph. We are trying to slowly teach her the difference between things that are ok to throw and things that are not, but when you get hit in the crotch by a scoot along plastic doggie it quickly become more important than the alphabet. I think deep down inside, she takes comfort in hurting people. If you even can get her to sit in your lap, you will slowly become aware of a slightly annoying shooting pain in your arm; and when you look down, you'll see half your arm hair gone and Lyla’s little fingers rhythmically pinching and pulling at your arm hair. Gentleness is not a virtue she was born with, or at least the bruise in the back of my head shaped like size 3 sneaker would suggest so.

You can aspire to and imagine teaching your kid that there is nothing to fear in life. Whether it is some subconscious thing that they learn to be afraid of by watching you, like bugs (Marie), or because you thought it would be funny- like a gorilla mask (grandma), they are going to develop fears. Sometimes it is frustrating, like not being able to vacuum because every time you try, Lyla sees the gateway to hell open. Sometimes it is confusing, like trying to get her on a ride you know she has enjoyed in the past, but developed some kind of irrational fear of. I am here to tell you though that there is another kind of scared that is AWESOME.

It is the kind of scared that happened one day when we were watching football. The Cowboys scored a touchdown, and it being such a rare occasion caused everybody to erupt in a volcano of cheers. Well this scared the whiskers off of Lyla, who had been quietly playing near the TV and she shot to her feet and ran crying right to me so fast you wouldn’t have had time to blink. She dove into my chest and buried her body in my arms crying and holding tight, it was the BEST thing she has ever done toward me since saying "dada." I am not lying when I say that I make sure to cheer extra loud when she is not paying attention and I will probably buy a blare horn soon. So what that she is developing a slight twitch and her eyes have started crossing uncontrollably, Dada needs to feel appreciated. I know it is only so rewarding because she isn’t in actual danger and some day if she is it won’t be so cute, but for now I can’t think of any other reason kids exist, except my amusement.

She taught herself how to do this on her own.
Another sign she is a little kid.

Our day at the pumpkin patch was great and we got some good pictures out of it too.

For some reason this is Lyla's go to picture pose. She squats down and says “Cheese.”

No idea where she got this but it is great form for a baseball catcher

tell me that doesn’t look fun

Once a year a carnival comes to Austin and we of course this seamed like perfect kid time killer (the time you need to kill with your kid exhausting them before they go to bed).

Looks like a death trap. i dont trust it.

She loved it, even though she hardly got to do anything. You never realize how fast and dangerous a merry go round is till your baby is begging to go on it. PASS!!

I had reservations about the merry go round, but Lyla was willing to ride the SLING SHOT ride without my permission. Luckily she wasn’t tall enough to ride. PASS. I played with the idea of us riding the Ferris wheel, but not at 4 bucks a person. PASS.

We could take pictures in front of it for free through so I thought that was a better option.

If your parents aren’t going to let you ride the rides there is always one thing you can do. DANCE IN THE STREET!!!!

One thing that was on my mind and my nose from the minute we walked in the doors was a funnel cake. I wasn’t inclined to share with Lyla, but she would not be denied. She also tried to steal every piece that was headed to my mouth too.

for $5 you better enjoy it

Well the time was running out, and Lyla was going to be turning into a pumpkin soon so we needed to spend the rest of the tokens we had bought. We decided to play a game where you could win a gold fish, but we didn’t expect to get anything because all those carnie games are rigged right?

Well lucky or unlucky, you be the judge, because we walked away with three darn gold fish on us and I could hardly believe it. Lyla seemed mighty pleased, and so we couldn’t refuse.

I would have gladly sacrificed that fish to get the perfect shot
but in the end this one came out pretty good too.

If the fish thought they were happy to be going to a home, they hardly made it out of the front gate. I tried to get a picture of Lyla holding her fish up with the carnival in the back ground, but after Lyla dropped the bag on the ground about five times, Marie finally convinced me that Lyla wasn't going to do it, and I would kill the fish if I kept trying.

we didn’t win a bowl for them so these vases where going to have to do

Lyla tried to kiss the fish good night

After barely making it out of the carnival alive you would have thought they would have died by the next day. But those darn fish are still alive. Well, at least two of them are. I had too much wine one night and accidental dropped one down the drain. Marie convinced me not to turn on the garbage disposal so maybe the little guy made it out to sea, or that is what we told Lyla.

Christmas was great this year, and it is exciting that Lyla is only going to get better at it. A year ago she had no idea what she was doing or why everybody was getting so excited. She cared more about the wrapping paper than the actual gifts.

Glad you like lights so much, maybe next year you can hang them

This year was a little better. Now she still doesn't understand the anticipation, but she absolutely loves getting the presents. Only a year or two away from full on Christmas kid freak out mode and I can’t wait. I fully intend to enjoy these next few years as much as possible, because I know just down the road is the time when they start getting jaded and disappointed that they didn't get what they wanted or that their friends got better stuff than them. I probably won’t be able to prevent her from being too cool for Santa Claus, but I still have time to teach her to be grateful for what she has. I know we are grateful for our little miracle.

Am I happy that she is growing up? Honestly my answer is. MAYBE?

I am glad that she is growing, we can communicate more, we can share interests (like cookies) and that she can tell us when something is wrong. What I don’t like is forgetting. Forgetting how small she was, how she used to scrunch her nose up, how she used to make a devil’s roar, how she used to crawl under the coffee table, how she used to cry with colic unless you held her on your arm standing up (yes I miss the bad memories too), how she would lay still in her bath as you poured water on her tummy, how she would blow raspberries on your leg, how we would swaddle her before bed and how she would crawl under our feet all over the house.

Sample of little dirt face tree child

I know who she gets that bed head from

Some things got to give though and she is gonna grow up. All I can do is try to be the best guide on the roller coaster of her life. Since she is turning 2 today I'll prepare myself for a new year of memories and maybe in a year I will make sure to write something down so that I never forget what my little 2 year old girl felt like, and did and said. I am writing this for amusement, but I am also writing it for me so that I can look back and remember what I thought. I am also writing this for Lyla so she can read it someday and know how much we love her and how much fun we had growing up together.

ok you can stop growing right now

Don't be fooled, she doesn't know how to use it yet.
She does know that you’re supposed to
bring something to do while you’re on it though.

Daddies little girl forever

cold wednesday

2011-01-12T11:27:00.000-06:00

these were all taken with my phone, so the quality isn't great. it's getting harder and harder to take a picture of lyla with her actually looking at the camera. it's too cold here to do anything but stay inside, so we are still in our pj's! lyla has been really good this morning and has actually played in her room on her own (with the door shut, which i think is hilarious), so i have been able to get some things done upstairs. a couple of weeks ago, i was complaining that it was too warm in austin, and that i wanted it to be cold, like winter is supposed to be. after 2 days of freezing weather, i'm kind of over it. the fireplace has gotten a lot of use, which we've enjoyed but; we are ready for it to be warm so that we can go to parks, and actually leave the house. not to mention all the stores have their spring lines out, and i want to buy most everything i see!

this is lyla's DOLL bed, i can't keep her out of it.

early morning diaper run.

this is my good friend noel's baby, brooke. she is soooo cute and sweet!!

i can't get over how big lyla looks in this picture.

scarf thing i made. i totally stole this idea from lullaby lubbock. i made one and now i can't stop making them!

story time with daddy.

little christmas trees that i made. i want to keep them out all year long! i put them away until next year though.

lyla loves to wear hats, headbands and bows. i know many mothers would kill for their daughters to want to wear bows, so i know i'm lucky!

photo booth

2011-01-11T09:41:00.000-06:00

lyla loves photo booth. it's something that we do when she gets fussy and it seems to put her in a better mood. here are some of our pictures.

twins!

she does not like some of the effects.

2011-01-10T15:41:00.000-06:00

this blog needs a makeover, really, really badly. but it takes forever to do, so that's on the back burner for now.

the weather here is sick today. it's cold and misty and i think it's put lyla in a bit of a "mood". all she wants to do is watch t.v., so today i just may let her watch as much as she wants.

lyla will be 2 on thrusday!! i can't believe it! she is getting so big and getting to be so much fun. she talks more and can ask for what she wants. she loves, elmo, dora, and "hat" more recently (cat and the hat). she loves playing with her babies and putting them to "night night". she has a little people play house that she loves. she is really starting to enjoy playing in her room, we have bought some things to help organize all the toys and i think it has made it easier for her to play. she has some play food that she likes to play with too. she thinks she wants you to read books to her, but only wants to sit still for about 2 pages worth of any book. she loves to go to the park and thinks she is just as big as the other kids there.

bo and i made the decision to take lyla out of the "big" daycare she was in and put her in an in-home daycare. she has only gone for one week, and she only goes 2 days a week, but so far we love it! even though the other daycare had a water park, lots of different playgrounds inside and outside, a movie theater and many more really great sounding things, it was just not for lyla. she cried every time we dropped her off and was getting bit. both times that i have dropped her off at the new place, she hasn't cried at all! there are only 4 other kids there and i think it's just more calm. i feel so much better leaving her at the new place!

we had a great christmas and enjoyed bo being off work for 3 whole weeks! it's nice to have more of a routine now, but i would love to have bo home every day.

here's lyla before we ran errands this morning.

christmas morning.

helping dad open his presents.

opening her own presents.

2010-12-10T08:56:00.000-06:00

here's lyla after eating spaghetti, in her favorite pose

this is one of lyla's favorite new toys. it's like a magnetic paper doll. her cousin emma gave it to her and she loves to dress it up!

lyla loves to play with her dolls and put them to "night-night"

lyla and i wore matching outfits! i made her this dress out of a t-shirt just like the one i'm wearing. she already loves wearing KJK stuff!

this is lyla before her christmas open house at her day care. she wouldn't look at the camera for anything.

lyla was kissing her daddy in this picture!

then she hugged it! she was missing bo because he was out of town for work.

finally, she looked at the camera!

i took her to look at christmas lights before we went to the open house and she loved it!

she kept saying, "pretty" and "wow".

and here's the desk i wrote about awhile back. it's been finished for months, i just hadn't gotten a picture of it. i still need to find some pulls for the drawers, but i can't find anything that i like.

a day in the life of lyla mechinus

2010-11-17T09:14:00.000-06:00

lately, lyla's days go like this:
breakfast
cartoons (dora or elmo)
play time
craft time (usually just coloring)
lunch
nap
more play time inside or outside
then daddy comes home

i try to get some cleaning/chores done during all of this. we are also working on using the potty. it's a slow process, but that's fine with me.

here are some pics from my phone over the past few months. the quality isn't great, but you can see what our super interesting lives are like day to day.

lyla is throwing a fit in this pic.

any time she comes into our room, she finds my rain boots and puts them on

on day i was doing something and i noticed that it was very quite, i looked for lyla and couldn't find her...

she has climbed into this cabinet. i have no idea how she did it.

here's a fall wreath i made. i need to make one for christmas too. it was super easy and i love it!

lunch time.

bath in the kitchen sink.

funny girl

she climbed into the dry while i was doing laundry one day

we had to take this pic of her modeling the elmo costume and send it to bo to make sure he liked it too.

i can't get a picture of her actually looking at the camera with my phone.

here she was all snuggled in to watch saturday morning cartoons.

this morning she was chewing on her big toe. i haven't ever seen her do this before, it was hilarious.

amazing husband and cookie monsters!

2010-09-30T20:10:00.000-05:00

we have been needing a desk to put upstairs so that we have a space for paying bills, and for me to do a little work from home. bo found this desk for me and i love it! it can act as a desk and a dressing table. i love a project and have painted most of the furniture we currently have. this piece will go perfectly in our room with a little fixing up. i'm so glad bo found this for me, he knows me well! i'll post pictures of it when i'm finished.

and so as not to disappoint the grandparents, here is a recent picture of lyla and her aunt laura:

two cookie monsters caught eating cookies on the couch!

Lyla Goes to ACU

2010-09-27T11:25:00.000-05:00

last week lyla and i went to abilene for freshman follies to see robin. here are some pics from our trip!

the trip started out well, lyla was actually happy in the car pretty much the whole way there!

she put this headband on all by herself!

when we got on campus, lyla's first order of business was to check her mail.

next, she wanted to check out all the new construction.

then of course, she had to check out all the upcoming events on campus.

this is lyla's "i didn't do anything wrong face".

waiting for chapel to start.

in chapel.

hickory street.

the trip home was more like this. not so happy. oh well!

cupcakes!

2010-09-01T20:01:00.000-05:00

lyla and i made cupcakes today. she loved it! i made her a little apron and she looked so cute! below are a few pictures, and HERE are some more.

back to school

2010-08-24T21:00:00.000-05:00

okay, so lyla doesn't really go to school. she goes to day care twice a week, and she's been going for a couple of months now. BUT she did move up to a new classroom. so i decided that she need some new "back to school" clothes. since she is tiny her clothes are cheap, so now lyla has a new back to school wardrobe for the cost of a new shirt for me. i had her model all her new clothes and we had a back to school fashion show, just like my sisters and i did when we were little. excuse the crazy hair, the bow did not last long. i picked her up early from day care because i was worried that she wouldn't like her new class. when i walked in the room she waved at me and just went on playing with her little friends. i was glad that she wasn't too eager for me to pick her up, i'm thinking that meant she didn't hate her new class. after we left day care, i took her for a slush at sonic happy hour. she was in heaven! she loved that slush and thought she was a big girl, getting to keep it in the sonic cup.

recent happenings.

2010-07-28T13:51:00.000-05:00

we have been having so much fun with lyla lately. she is playing with more of a purpose, instead of just throwing things around, she actually plays with her dolls, balls, and tea set they way they are meant to be played with.

today i took lyla to the jumpy gym. this place is so so great! they have big bounce houses, slides and obstacle courses all set up indoors. they also have tons of toys, dress-up clothes, things to ride and smaller bounce houses for kids lyla's age. the best part about all of this is that it's all in one huge open room and there are couches and chairs set up for parents. so you can sit on a couch and just let your child play and run all over the place, while being able to see them at all times. i was excited for lyla to play and have fun and i wasn't too tired or anything, so i mostly played with lyla. i can for sure see myself bring us back here on those days that i'm wiped out and just sitting and letting her play on her own. lyla was mostly afraid of all the bounce houses, but she did go down the huge slide with me a few times. she loved the play kitchens they had set up. at one point lyla put some hot dogs in the microwave and she turned around for 2 seconds and some little boy ran up and grab the hot dogs out of the microwave and ran off with them! it was hilarious. lyla looked at me with this face that said, "there's a boy for you...".

she had fun and almost fell asleep while eating fish sticks when we got home. it's nasty and rainy outside here, so it was good to be able to get out of the house.

lyla is still enjoying day care and seems to be well adjusted to it. we might be buy her a potty tonight so that we can being teaching her how to use it. i have thoroughly researched many different potties, shown them to bo, gotten his opinion, and still can't make a decision. there are so many different ones! i have decided against the ones that sing and play music, because i think it's too much of a distraction. we know that we need one that has rubber on the bottom so that it doesn't slide around, something i never would have thought about until i read it somewhere. i'll stop now because the list goes on and on and no one really wants to read about potties for toddlers anyway.

here are some pictures from the jumpy gym and just around the house.

this is the face lyla has been making when she knows her picture is being taken and she's asked to smile.

another picture of lyla on our couch that is falling apart, that we love too much to part with.

sweet girl.

lyla was not happy in this picture, but i had to get a photo of her pig tales with the bows!

here she is at the jumpy gym.

just may have to get her one of these for christmas!

funfunfun.

for some reason, she loved sitting in this and being pushed around in it.

2010-07-25T17:21:00.000-05:00

today was randall and zoe's wedding. bo knew randall and zoe in high school and we all moved to austin around the same time. bo preformed the ceremony, after becoming an ordained minister online. bo did such a good job! the ceremony was sweet, funny, and short; what all wedding ceremonies should be. lyla was the flower girl and also did a great job! she just slung her little basket all over the place and flowers fell out, it was hilarious! there are some pictures up on facebook and you can look at them by clicking HERE.

big girl!

2010-07-16T18:05:00.000-05:00

today, we got lyla a front-facing car seat. laura and i took her to sonic for her first ride in her new seat and she loved it! she was singing and laughing and looking all around. i think she will be much happier in this new seat. she will finally be able to feel the air conditioner!

lyla enjoyed her first dr. pepper (jk, it was a water).

in love with her new car seat!

happyhappyhappy.

2010-07-14T14:09:00.000-05:00

we have been busybusybusy. went to bridgeport for the 4th, left lyla there, i went to the beach for christie's bachelorette party, then we went to albany for christie's wedding and picked up lyla somwhere in there.

lyla's 18 month check up went well. she is growing on her own normal curve, but she is still tiny! she is not even in the 1st percentile for weight! as long as she is healthy, we think it's cute that she's so tiny. she runs around and gets into everything, just like other kids her age. here are some pictures from our busy past 2 weeks.

lyla rode her first horse.

russ, jake, and bo accidentally wore matching shirts.

4th of july in bridgeport

me and caroline were bridesmaids together in christie's wedding

lyla was excited to see christie and koby get married.

to look at more recent pictures, click HERE.

2010-06-28T11:12:00.000-05:00

lyla and i are just having a normal day at home today. she slept about an hour later than she has been lately, which was so nice! i was able to get my day started without having to deal with dirty diapers, messy breakfast and sesame street just yet. after lyla had eaten breakfast, we went to the park. we only lasted about 40 minutes because it was so hot.

lyla is really into these "beds" i made for her dolls lately. it's just a shoe box with a blanket in it, but she seems to love it. she puts her dolls or stuffed animals in it and then takes them out and talks to them, gives them hugs and kisses, and then puts them back in again. she is also into accessories. she will bring us shoes, hats, sunglasses, and things she thinks are bracelets and wants us to put them on her. it's hilarious. she also likes to dance to music she hears on the computer or t.v.. when she plays in her room, she'll turn on her lullabies and turn up the volume and dance around. so funny!

she is just getting so big! she talks all day, but still only has a few words that she says. she is definitely learning more words almost everyday though. she seems to be testing our limits to see what she can get away with on a daily basis also. it's funny at times, and not so funny at other times. she seems to like her daycare okay, but comes home so exhausted on the tuesdays and thursdays she goes. it does bother me that she can't tell us if she likes it or not, but she doesn't cry too much when we drop her off.

she has her 18 month check-up later today. it's about 2 more weeks until she is 18 months, but i can't believe it! i've been saying that at 18 months we will starting potty training her, that has seemed so far away, and now it's almost here! we'll just get her a potty and let her sit on it and see what she thinks. i'm not going to push it, changing diapers is not that bad. most of the time anyway. she is still in her rear-facing car seat, because she's not quite big enough for the forward facing ones yet. maybe she will weigh enough at the doctor today. i hope so because she gets so hot sitting in that rear-facing seat.

after her appointment today, i'll post some pictures and what her height and weight is.

2010-05-24T19:17:00.000-05:00

it's about time for our monthly blog post. i know there are at least 3 people that look at this blog everyday, hoping to see new pictures of sweet lyla. we just get so very busy! lyla just spent 4 night with her mechinus grandparents while bo and i went on a little vacation. it was very nice to get away and just hang out on the beach. we had so much fun and it went by way too fast. we did miss lyla though!! 4 nights was just too long to not see our sweet little baby (who, by the way, is not much of a baby anymore!). i may or may not have cried when we drove away from bo's parents house without lyla. like i said, bo and i had a great time. we flew kites, read books, went to a movie, went out to eat, had a fire on the beach, built sandcastles, and tried to sleep past 8:30. i think we are programed to not ever be able to sleep in again after having lyla.

lyla is growing more and more everyday. she still is not big enough to fit in the front facing carseat. she needs to be 20 lbs. to ride in one and she is about 18 lbs. right now. she babbles all the time and says a few words. she says "uh-oh", "thank-you", "elvis" (bo's parent's dog), "mamma", "daaaaa", and is starting to say "hey". today is the first day that she has said "mamma" pretty consistently. she also gives hugs and kisses and it is so sweet!!!

we are looking forward to this summer. i have a best friends getting married in july, and we are ready to float the river and go swimming everyday that we can. my littlest sister robin is graduating on friday, so lyla and i will make the trip up to bridgeport (bo has to work) for that this week. once we get back, we will get lyla a pool for the backyard so that we can stay outside for longer that 15 minutes and not be drenched in sweat.

here are some pictures from our vacation. i'll try to post newer pictures of lyla soon!

p.a. and d.c.

2010-04-09T13:45:00.000-05:00

our trip was so much fun! we are very glad to be home though. lyla was great on the plane rides, but was not her usual happy self for most of the trip. oh well! bo's birthday is this weekend, so i have lots to do today. click here to see my album of pictures from our trip!

2010-03-27T15:04:00.000-05:00

aren't lyla's pigtales so cute?! i love them. bo and i took her outside the other day and i tried to get her to play in the mud, but she was not interested.

i put lyla down for her nap today and i could hear that she was just playing in her crib and not going to sleep. she wasn't crying though, so i just left her in there figuring that she would eventually go to sleep. after about 20 minutes, i heard a sound like something fell upstairs. lyla started fussing a little bit, but i thought she was just startled by whatever it was. i went upstairs to see what the noise was and on my way upstairs, i heard the same sound but much louder and then lyla started crying really loudly. i walked into her room and she had gotten out of her crib!! i guess the first noise i heard was the side of her crib coming down and the second one was her falling out of it! i pulled the side rail of her crib back up and pushed down on it to see what would happen, and it came right down without very much pressure or stepping on the release. i moved the crib so that the side that wouldn't stay up is against the wall, and the other side is facing out. i think it should be fine now.

lyla was fine, just upset. she is quite the acrobat though. she likes to pull up on drawers and just hang there with her feet pulled up off the ground. i only let her do this when i'm watching her, of course! today she is loving the couch and the twin bed in her room that is low to the ground. she likes to pull herself up onto them and then lower herself off, feet first. i think it's hilarious.

lyla and i are going on a trip to see laura. we will fly to pittsburgh on wednesday, on thursday we will drive with laura to see caroline in d.c.. we will stay there for a couple of days and then go back to pa for a few more days. say a prayer for me and lyla on the plane!! she is never very fussy, so i'm not too worried, but it's still kind of stressful to think about all the stuff that i will have to pack and take with us. car seat, stroller and play pen! not to mention a suitcase. it should be interesting.

2010-03-17T16:24:00.000-05:00

today is was so nice outside, just perfect! lyla and i played in the backyard for awhile today. she played in the dirt and we layed in the hammock. we played with rolly-pollies and took some pictures. lyla was not so sure about walking around bare foot at first but she eventually got used to it. the first picture of lyla on the top left cracks me up. i feel like there is a picture of me when i was that age, making the same face. tomorrow morning lyla and i are off to houston for the rodeo. bo is working all the time right now for south by southwest, but it will be over soon, thank goodness!

lyla is walking!

2010-03-02T19:08:00.000-06:00

today, lyla walked all the way across the kitchen! now she is walking all over the place! to watch a video of her walking on youtube, click here.

13 month update

2010-03-01T16:35:00.000-06:00

since our last real post a lot has happened! lyla is now 1! she is 13 months old and learning more every day. she is taking about 3 small steps on her own, but i know she will be all over the place soon! still no decipherable words, but lots and lots of babbling. lyla likes to play peek-a-boo with her blankets, mandarin oranges, and her parents! lyla does not like getting dropped off at the gym nursery, the vacuum, or being told "no". she weighs about 17 pounds, which puts her in the 1st percentile for weight. she can still wear some of her 3 month old stuff! she is small, but totally healthy. today was her first day of pre-school. she will go twice a week on mondays and wednesdays so that mommy can go to work. it's only for 5 hours, but that is the prefect amount of time for me to work. she really liked it today and made a bluebonnet with her finger prints. she came home wearing a sweater that isn't her's under her jacket, so i guess she has already started sharing clothes with friends!

here's lyla wearing a little acu outfit that was mine when i was her age. this picture is really for benay. she knows why.

lyla's 2 favorite foods are fish sticks (sick) and mandrin oranges. she also really loves animal crackers.

i took lyla to the children's museum and she loved it! she was quite enthralled with these little frogs. she put her mouth on everything, which is probably why she's a little sick, but oh well!

bo and i took lyla to this park that's really close to our house. bo is on the other side of that red thing and this is the look that lyla gave him!

we were embarrassing her in front of all the other kids, so she just crawled away.

we are still here....

2010-02-15T12:43:00.000-06:00

we haven't forgotten about our blog! we just moved into a new place about a month ago. every time i sit down to write something on here or post some pictures, i feel like there are a million other things to do that need my time much more urgently than this blog does. like the mounds of laundry and the mess that is our master bedroom and lyla's room. i like writing on here, and keeping a record of our lives, so we will be posting more regularly soon. we will post some pictures of the new house soon and of course some of lyla! just give me a couple of days to find the hard drive with all our pics on it!

lyla's almost 1!

2010-01-11T12:26:00.000-06:00

i am in the process of redesigning our blog right now, so that's why it looks a little weird. we have been so busy the past month and things are finally back to our old routine. that won't last for long though, because we are about to move, which is really exciting. we are staying in austin, just moving to a bigger place that's not an apartment! we went to bridgeport for christmas to my parents house and that was really fun. it snowed a lot, so lyla's first christmas was white! grandma margaret and grandpa joe kept lyla for new year's so bo and i got to hang out with our friends. caroline came in for a couple of days and for new year's and we had so much fun! i can't wait until caroline moves back to texas! jake also came in for new year's and we all had such a great time! we went to the iron cactus for dinner new year's eve and then toluster pearl for the rest of the night. luster pearl is such a fun and chill place, if you live in austin and have not been there, you have to check it out!

lyla's birthday is in two days! january 13th. we canNOT believe that she is about to be one! her first year has flown by so fast. we are having her party at our new place, but not til the 23rd. i'm so excited for it!

Happy 1st Birthday Lyla!!!

What have you been up to this past month?? Let's see...

-you feed yourself most of your meals. you like anything we give you! especially pasta that is messy. we have started ordering you kids meals when we go out to eat and you always get a grilled cheese and veggies or fruit.

-you take your baths in the big tub, no more duck tub for you! you still love your baths and would probably be content to play in the tub all day if we let you!

-you are standing up on your own so much now! you like to clap for yourself when you stand. we think you will be walking soon!

-you have started to sleep late, which is very nice! although it is hard to figure out your nap schedule when you sleep until 9:30

-you are going to bed around 7 after your bath. you seem to get tired by then, but if you seem to not be tired, then we let you stay up til 7:30 or so.

-you babble all the time and it's so cute!

- you wear mostly size 6 months, some 9 months and a few 12 month size things

-are have 4 teeth and 4 more coming in right now, which is making you a little fussy, i think

-you are such a happy and content baby and will play on the floor with your toys for hours

-i think you like your parents. you get really excited whenever one of us comes in the room and you get upset when one of us leaves

we can't wait to see what the next year brings and we are so blessed to have you as our little girl!

isn't this the most beautiful baby you have ever seen?!

she like opening presents

it's snowing here, but you can't really tell. 3 hours later the ground was covered!

i gave lyla some whipped cream to play with in the tub and she thought it was hilarious!

she loves ravioli!

2009-12-07T08:46:00.000-06:00

things have been pretty busy around here. we went to dallas for thanksgiving and we are looking for a new place to move into. took lyla to a new pediatrician because her old one moved away. the new doctor is great. she has lyla on 3 breathing treatments a day to try and get rid of this cough lyla has had for over a month. here are some pictures and a video of lyla and her newest tricks. we think she is going to be walking really soon!

yo baby and 10 months

2009-11-20T12:03:00.000-06:00

so lyla is 10 months old, but i haven't done a post where i tell what she is up to this month, so here it is. she is still crawling all over the place and pulling up on everything in sight! she has started to walk along the couches, while still holding on with one hand. we have seen her stand up by herself for like 3 seconds a couple of times. we know she will be walking soon. she has started to make more sounds that sound like words. the other night she said something that sounded very much like momma, it was really funny. she is still growling up a storm (which is what she is doing at this very moment). she has started to eat some finger foods, but not much. i have kind of back off of that for a little while. i'm not going to push it until she is ready. she has had two ear infections this month and two colds. she is also getting two new top teeth. she still wears some 3 month old size clothing, but she is mostly in 6 month size stuff. she weighs about 16 pounds. she is in the 5th percentile for weight and height. if you don't know what that means, it means that 95% of babies her age are bigger than she is.

as lyla gets older i can see how much fun the next couple of years are going to be. it's so fun to show her new things and watch her explore things she hasn't seen before. i'm really excited for christmas and to see lyla open her presents and for her to wear cute little christmas dresses!

lyla usually eats about 3 or 4 oz of baby food for each meal. i found something recently that she apparently loves, called yobaby. it's yogurt with both a fruit and vegetable puree on the bottom. like pears and green beans. i know it sounds sick, but she loves it. it's a 6 oz container and both times i have given it to her, she eats the whole thing!

2009-11-18T10:36:00.000-06:00

i probably shouldn't promise to do anything in a certain amount of time on this blog. lyla has been sick with an ear infection and a cold and teething. then she stayed with her mechinus grandparents for two nights. that and my procrastination are the reason for the delay in posting the 10 month old pictures. i usually take pictures of her on the exact day that she turns another month old, but this time, it just did not work out. anyway, here are some pictures of lyla that were taken today. it's getting harder and harder to take pictures of her because she doesn't want to sit still.

almost to fast to be caught on film

10 months old

2009-11-13T19:25:00.001-06:00

lyla is 10 months old today. it's hard to believe that in 2 months, she will be 1 year old! i'm not sure if i like it. today she stood up by herself! it was only for about .5 seconds, but i think we will have a walker on our hands in a couple of months. we will post some 10 month old pictures tomorrow.

still teething......

2009-11-11T21:58:00.001-06:00

lyla has been out of sorts since this afternoon. pretty much no naps all day and really fussy. those top two teeth have broken through the skin and must be really hurting her. it's sad. they are still bleeding some and she is just a little bit pitiful. i put a wet washcloth in the freezer for her and then let her chew on it. that seemed to help her a lot. she's asleep for now, so we will see how long that lasts. hopefully for awhile!

tuesday update.

2009-11-10T23:57:00.000-06:00

lyla has been feeling a little better today. we had a pretty productive day. i cleaned, did laundry, did some work stuff and sold some things of lyla's on craig's list. she has some things that she has out grown already, like the vibrating bouncy seat and there are a few things that we had that lyla just never liked. it was nice to get rid of that stuff and have some extra space in her room.

lyla and i met courtney for dinner and it was fabulous. it was so good to catch up because i hadn't seen her in a couple of weeks.

i am really liking my job and am looking forward to going into the stores again this weekend. i am still looking for a mother's day out program for lyla, but they are all full. we are on the waiting list at a few places so we will see. lyla's aunt sammie will be watching her some, which is going to be such an amazing help!

lyla is still the sweetest little girl ever! she is looking more and more like a little girl and less and less like a baby every day! she is in a bit of a "needy" phase, but we don't really mind. She will cry when you put her down or when you walk out of the room and she can't see you. She still plays well by herself in the living room while i am doing things around the apartment, so that is great.

lyla and i have bible study in the morning. i really like it when we go, but it is such an effort to get there. to pack all of lyla's things up and get us both dressed and then sit in morning traffic, it's just not fun. then tomorrow night we have class, which i don't think we will be going to. bo's schedule is crazy this week so he won't be able to go. it's tough to pack lyla up, sit in traffic, ect. twice in one day, especially when you are doing it by yourself!

i will try to get some pictures up tomorrow of little lyla. i'm glad that i've blogging pretty much everyday, because even if no one ever reads this, it's like a little scrapbook for lyla.

teething troubles

2009-11-09T18:20:00.000-06:00

lyla is cutting two top teeth right now, which is not fun for her. her little gums are bleeding and it's sad. hopefully these two will come in quickly. this week is pretty busy for us. bo is working a lot and he pretty much won't see lyla for 3 days. he'll leave for work before she wakes up and get home after she has gone to bed. the good part of this is that bo has a 3 day weekend. i think bo and i are going to go camping one night this weekend and lyla will stay with her grandma margaret and grandpa joe. sorry, i don't have anything too exciting today!

2009-11-08T11:54:00.000-06:00

busy day

2009-11-06T15:23:00.000-06:00

whenever i type an email to one of my friends, or anything on facebook, i never use capital letters. i don't like using them. so i'm not going to use them on this blog anymore.

anyway, lyla and i have had a pretty busy day. we met our friend lindsey for lunch at halcyon, which was delish. i hadn't seen lindsey in a long time and it was really good to see her again! hopefully we will get to hang out more. then we went to costco and got some things for lyla. if you have a costco membership and haven't been in awhile, you should go. they have a bunch of things that i am wanting to get lyla for christmas for really good prices. then we had to stop by walgreen's and the library, which was CLOSED. sooo annoying. i have something on hold there that i have been waiting for for forever. then we came home and lyla is passed out.

we are looking for a new place to move when our lease is up here, which is in january. we will probably move in december though. anyway, we looked at a place yesterday that we really liked, but the only problem is that the living room has tile floors. do any of y'all that have babies have tile floors? how does this work? i just keep having visions of lyla hitting her head on a tile floor and it makes me super nervous. she pulls up on a lot of things here and sometimes she falls and hits her head, but it's carpet and most of the time she doesn't even cry. i guess we would just have to watch her more closely? or put a rug down and get one of those fences to put around it and only let her play there? i can't figure it out.

i finally found a job! it is the perfect job. it is part-time and i get to pick my own hours, so some of the time i can just go when bo is home. i'm going to put lyla in a mother's day out program so that i have two days each week when i can consistently go in to work. the best part is that lyla will not be in daycare! she will just be at a church nursery playing with other babies for a couple of hours twice a week.

if you live in austin

2009-11-05T10:34:00.001-06:00

or have ever lived in austin and know of any good mother's day out programs, let me know! i found a part time job and need something for lyla just two days a week. it's harder than i thought to find something and i need to find something soon!

lyla's ready to shop

2009-11-05T07:39:00.000-06:00

Lyla and I went grocery shopping on Tuesday to get her a bunch of baby food and some finger foods. I was busy picking out which kinds of baby food to get and I look up at Lyla and she had put my purse on her shoulder. I thought it was really funny! Here is a picture that I took with my phone.

2009-11-03T08:51:00.000-06:00

November is National Blog month or something like that, so we are going to try and get in the habit of posting something on here everyday. Today, I will write a little update about Lyla.

At her 9 month check up Lyla weighed about 15 lbs., which puts her in the 5th percentile for her age. She is also in the 5th percentile for height. If you don't know what that means, it means that 95% of all other babies her age are bigger than she is! I think it kind of funny because she seems so big to us. She is completely health, just little.

She has started eating some solid food. She loves puffs, those little cereal things that dissolve in their mouths, and these things called Mum-Mums. She doesn't really like feeding herself other foods. I think the texture feels weird to her. She will kind of eat what we put in front of her but I usually just end up feeding it to her. She is eating mostly, cooked carrots, cheese, bananas, peas.

Her sleeping habits got a little weird there for a few weeks, but today she woke up when she usually does, so hopefully she is getting back on her old schedule. She is crawling everywhere and getting into everything.

We can't wait to spend Thanksgiving and especially Christmas with Lyla! She is getting older and it's a little sad, but there are also so many fun and sweet things that come from that! This past weekend Lyla woke up at 6 and would not go back to sleep. So I got her up and put her in bed with us. She snuggled right next to me and fell back asleep. It was so sweet! She usually doesn't do that and just wants to play, but I think she understood that it was not time to get up yet!

Halloween 2009!!

2009-11-02T18:46:00.000-06:00

So Lyla was an owl for Halloween. She was beyond cute! Bo and I made her costume and it was so much fun. We will probably make her costume again next year. We also bought her a white tiger outfit to wear for fun. We spent Halloween weekend in Lewisville with Bo's family and my parents and Robin came on Saturday night. It was a really great weekend and it was nice to get out of town for a little bit. Enjoy all the pictures! If you are friends with me on facebook, I'm posting lots more pictures on there!

2009-10-29T10:54:00.000-05:00

Caroline Joy over at Caroline Joy Photography is having a little contest. I usually don't enter these things that people do, but the winner of hers gets a gift card to Anthropologie and I'm obsessed with that place.

So to enter you have to post a picture of you doing your favorite Autumn activity on your blog. I have two. The first one is carving pumpkins, which Bo and I did last year, but haven't had time to do this year. So the first picture is one of us and our pumpkins about a year ago. And the second will, I'll post about later because Lyla is wanting her lunch right now.

Notes from Lyla and Marie

2009-10-08T20:46:00.000-05:00

A note from Lyla: Listen y'all. This evening was a little rough for me. I was tired and in a bad mood and I just felt like letting everyone know it. It's probably because Wednesday's around here really cramp my style. My Mamma puts me in the nursery at church TWICE on Wednesdays. She goes to hang out with other moms in the morning and Mamma and Daddy go to church at night. They leave me in the nursery with a million other babies and I only like two of them. I can't sleep in that place because all the other kids are crying little babies and it's FREEZING. And I have to wait for my baby food until my Mamma can come and feed it to me. I just need some Baby Einstein and some beauty sleep, like NOW.

Lyla is crawling everywhere and pulling up on everything. She keeps crawling into things, like the table or the couch and she is getting bruises on her forehead. There is one in this picture, but you can't see it too well. Right now she has two on her forehead and one under her eye. We watch her of course and don't let her crawl to places that aren't safe. There just doesn't seem to be a way around her bumping her little head. Today she hit herself under the eye with one of her toys and now she has a mark from it. I guess this is just a phase.

We have friends coming to stay with us this weekend, but Bo has to work the whole time. Boo. Bo and I are making Lyla's Halloween costume and it is going to be so cute! I found one that I liked buy they weren't making it this year, and the one from this year that was the same animal was just not as cute. I'm keeping it a surprise until Halloween so look for pictures then!

Well, as Lyla told everyone, she has had a rough afternoon; and it is turing out to be a rough night. She went to bed like she normally does, but now she is awake for the second time since I put her down, so I guess I better go get her! (Here's a secret: I don't really mind it when she wakes up in the night, as long as it isn't after 12 or 1, because she is usually sleepy and sweet. She usually just wants to be held!)

why did i ever let you grow up?

2009-09-25T16:20:00.000-05:00

Well it has been along time since I have taken the time to post. Not that there has been a lack of material, of course. Not being a journal-keeping-type-of-person this blog will have to serve as the record of my memories of Lyla as a child. I once heard someone say that "I wish I could remembered the last time I was able to pick my kid up and carry them," because like many things in life they seem to be taken for granted till all of a sudden they are a jumble of vague memories.

this is when we went to Deep Eddies, a spring fed pool in Austin

She did not like the cold water

So, what is the best way to recount the past 9 months from my point of view? Well maybe the best way would be to act like Lyla's drool, and let it all spill out of my mouth and all over the floor and shirt and eventually the computer, then maybe on any of you if you come visit. One of the things about raising a kid that I have realized is the back and forth pull of wanting her to advance and then regretting her new found way of twisting it into a problem. Case in point: when Lyla came home from the hospital all she wanted to do was sleep, sleep, sleep. She wanted to sleep more than eat, and laying her down on your chest instantly put her into a catatonic state, heck even a noisy restaurant would do the trick. While that lead to some very sweet moments, it wasn’t inducive to two eager parents who wanted to play and hear and FEED their baby. So I guess after she caught up with her beauty sleep, two months later when she began to be more active and make more noise, we were elated. Playing, smiling at each other, making new noises and taking in bigger and bigger bottles. Everything was good…Now I will just lay you down for a minute to do the dishes…, "Whaaaaaaaaaaaa." That is what it became. Not that we weren’t happy to have our baby growing but after wishing for so long for her to be awake more, we suddenly found ourselves thinking, "Holy crap, why don’t you just sleep for a minute." Well, she got past her colic phase and began to become a little more independent, so of course we began wishing for something new. "All you do is lay there on your back. I wish you could roll over." Bad idea…or good idea, but bad consequences.

playing at the springs out side the Palmer

The first week that she started rolling over it sent me and Marie flying over chairs and tables to get to the video camera, only to turn it on seconds after the feat had been accomplished, and then hold the camera in her face begging her to do it again, ultimately disappointed. Finally she started to figure it out, with increasing speed and consistency. Soon there after we realized the days of laying her on the couch or the changing table or any surface unattended for any minuscule amount of time was over. The score is 2-2, meaning Marie and I have both been responsible for two drops apiece, and even though mine came on the same day. Marie did drop a picture frame on her head once so I would place myself in the lead of course. Lyla is fine, I think (math skills pending,) but we learned our lesson and catch ourselves saying under our breath, "Why don’t you just lay still every once and while."

Playing on her mat

Well rolling over wasn’t enough. "Come here, come here." We started wanting her to start moving. As of a couple of weeks ago, Lyla can now pick a direction and go there. The only problem is that she is going where we don’t want her to go and she is doing it constantly. So far her destinations include four stops: crawling to bounce seat 7% of the time, crawling to parents 10% of the time, crawling under coffee table and frequently hitting head 30% of the time, crawling over to DVDs and pulling them all out 100% of the time (I think the math adds up but I was dropped as a baby.) Now every 500th time we have to get up and go pull her away from something we end up saying under our breath, "Why don’t you just stay on your play mat?"

Now we are working on talking, constantly yelling "DADADADADADAD, MAMAMAMAMAMA , LALALALALA." Soon enough she will learn to talk and begin to embarrass us in quiet places or some how find a way to turn our simple wish into a weapon of mass destruction. We love seeing her grow and that is why we keep asking for more, but we are also realizing that we are losing little things along the way. That is tough, and really it is the move from total dependence to independence that we don’t like, or at least have to learn to deal with. I can imagine the story from here on out, for me and most parents:

"I can’t wait till you can walk and run and play"
SOON AFTER:
"Why don’t you stay and play with me?"

"Go make friends."
SOON AFTER:
"You want to spend the night over there? Wouldn’t you rather hang out with us and watch a movie?"

"I can’t wait till you can drive yourself"
SOON AFTER:
"Where are you going? Sure you don’t want me to drive you?"

"You need to get a job"
SOON AFTER:
"You’re not home as much."

"It’s time you grew up"
SOON AFTER:
"A date? With who? It better be Jesus, because I know this must be a joke."

"College is the next step"
SOON AFTER:
"You sure you don’t want to go to a local university?"

"Well you need to get your own place and start paying you student loans. You’re an adult now; start being independent"
SOON AFTER:
"You found a job there? You got your own place? You found some one? You don’t need my help? Why did I ever want you to learn to roll over?"

Sure it won’t be as dramatic as all that; it will seem to happen so slow that I won’t even notice, until I look back and realize that she is carrying a load of laundry in the same basket she once slept in. Then I will probably run into my man cave (future man cave that is) and cry a Dad tear. It might seem like I am being a bit pessimistic, but I refuse to go blindly into the night, this is just my attempt to remind myself to cherish every moment.

Well enough of that, there are tons of positive things that come from Lyla getting older too. She has new tendencies, expressions, characteristics and abilities. When Lyla was born she only smiled when she farted, and it made us proud parents regardless. Now nine months later, Lyla has seen enough of her parents’ wide-eyed, empty-brained, desperate-glued-on- perma-smiles to realize when we were close to pulling out the tape to get her to mimic us. So now she smiles, all the time smiles and she knows to smile when we smile. It is our only form of communication and our favorite; I smile, she smiles, I smile more; I say, "DADADADADAD," she knows to smile (desperately trying to win the DADA vs. MAMA war.) I walk around the car to get her out of her car seat we smile at each other through the window. I just have to remember later when she smiles to get money out of me or get something her way, that I brought this on myself.

The sounds she makes. I wish I could tell you they seem to be closely resembling speech patterns but they don’t. I can type exactly what she does though so let’s give it a shot. First turn the lights off in the room. OK, now make it totally quiet. Now think of the deepest darkest demonic thoughts you can and read this out loud, "Greerrrrrererererererererererereerererererererererere." There, that is what our cute baby does, all the time. We call it a growl but it is more like a mix between the sound a zombie and chainsaw would make, with a touch of diesel truck. It is pretty funny, and little kids that hear it in the middle of church service seem to agree. Where it came from and when it will go is still unknown. One very peculiar coincidence though is that during the pregnancy and after, I played a zombie video game fairly frequently, and the sound is strangely similar. I am going to give it a few more months to change or else I will sue the video game company (or praise them… haven't decided yet).

She cut two little teeth on the bottom of her mouth, like a reverse Bug’s Bunny. They are funny and pretty sharp too. Before they popped out, she was chewing on every thing, and she is still biting on everything. She will bite your finger or latch on to your arm and start gnawing on it, which combined with the growling, makes for a funny scene.

The list of things that are fun to do with or to Lyla are growing.

Smiling, fun
Having her crawl to you, fun
Watching her play in bath, fun
Tickling her, SUPER FUN

History lesson: I come from a long line of ticklers, well "tickling torturers" to be more specific. My mother pinned me down as a child and tortured me with tickling and other various tactics like making me pronounce the different bones she was tickling such as, "Clavicle!!!!" "No, you have to say it right" "Clavicle!!!!!!" Yes, it was a very tough childhood. Well long gone are the days that I could be pinned, and for years I have been able to stand on the top of the hill and could metaphorically and physically tickle the crap out of anyone in my way. I have long awaited the day when I could unleash the fury of a tickle tortured childhood on one of my own. I had kept my skills in tact by taking down Marie from time to time, but with my new child here there would be no mercy. I was set back however by Lyla's seeming lack of nerve endings. For months upon months I relentlessly blew on her stomach for hours at a time with out the slightest squirm, squeal, or reaction… just a stone cold face staring at the ceiling not amused and totally unaffected. Knee bite? Nothing. Clavicle? Nothing. I even tried new things. Scratchy beard on feet? Nothing. At this point I felt completely emasculated; I began to think this was some form of Greek tragedy playing out. Father and tyrant bent on revenging his childhood upended by a defenseless infant child born not able to feel. I had given up all hope.

One day I came home from work; and as I fake paid attention to Marie recount her day, I hear something break through the barrier of mumbling in my ear, "Oh, and I tickled Lyla today and she kind of laughed." Eureka, let the experiments begin. Clavicle? Modest reaction. Knee bite? Squirm and gasp. Scratchy beard on feet? Scream and squirm. Blow on belly? Eh, not much. Bite ribs? Scream, squirm, squeal, and a tiny belly laugh JACKPOT. She still doesn't quite laugh, it is more like air escaping from a balloon, but I am positive with more work I will get there.

Well, there is plenty more to say and to see, but I am not going to write it any more. You will just have to come and see her for yourself. She is growing up fast. We have taken out the extra car seat padding to make more room and lots of other little adjustments like that. One day, out of the blue, she was too big for her bath tub: legs hanging over the side and everything. Sometimes when I get her ready for bed, I will be twisting her this way and that to get her into a nightgown. Snapping this here, folding that there, tucking this in here and when I snap the last button, I will hold her up with a mission accomplished banner behind my head, only to see her legs sticking strait out and her knees up in her chin because she doesn't fit in her clothes anymore. It’s all ok though, I am glad she is healthy. We have our first string of big holidays coming up: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and Lyla's birthday so I am sure to be all over Texas the next few months. So stay in touch- Coming to a changing table near you!

P.S. She pooped on my leg the other day in public.

I also have serious debates with myself about what kind of parent I am becoming because Lyla now has a twitter: @Lylakitten . Befriend her if you dare. I foresee baby iphones in the future.

Thank Goodness for Cooler Weather

2009-09-25T14:56:00.000-05:00

Lyla and I have been outside most of this afternoon, hanging out on our balcony. One of the reasons that Bo and I chose this apartment was because of the balcony. Fist of all it is a HUGE space (compared to most other apartments we have seen). Secondly, the view is great. There is a big green field with lots of trees that our apartment over looks, so it really doesn't feel like we live in an apartment at all. Also, the pool is off to the side of our apartment and you can hear the waterfall from the pool when you sit out on our balcony. All of these things make for a really relaxing time. I took Lyla's playpen out there while I sorted and started on our huge pile of laundry. Lyla really seemed to enjoy being outside, and it is such a nice day!

This weekend, Bo doesn't work at all, which is great! I'm hoping to go shopping for Lyla's halloween costume, buy some ribbon to make her some hair bows, and maybe get some jeans for myself. Also, if this nice weather keeps up probably go some a walk or two around the lake. Bo is writing a post right now and it is huge, so check back for it later today!

Thursday

2009-09-03T09:36:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting the pictures. I had a job interview on Wednesday, so Tuesday night I was preparing for that. Lyla is getting so big! She is cutting her first two teeth and is eating baby food, twice a day now. She is sleeping through the night and takes two naps a day. She growls alllllllll the time. It's hilarious.

Tuesday.

2009-09-01T12:45:00.000-05:00

Lyla and I are about to go antique shopping with our good friend Courtney. We have been wanting to do this for awhile and I'm excited! It's cloudy here today, so that means that it's still cool outside, and I am still loving it. Lyla is teething, and it's so cute! She hasn't been too fussy with it, so hopeful that will last. Pictures to be posted tonight! Hope everyone has a great day!

Monday

2009-08-31T11:41:00.000-05:00

Today in Austin, it finally is not a million degrees outside. Who knows how long this will last, but I'm going to enjoy it will it does! I'm working on a big post with lots of pictures and lots of information and updates on our family and little Lyla. We have lots of errands to run, so this will be a busy day for us. Pictures to come soon!

2009-07-22T09:34:00.000-05:00

Bo got back from New Orleans on Saturday and we are so glad that he is finally home! Lyla was so excited to see her Daddy, that she waved at him! So cute. Yesterday Lyla had her 6 month check up and she is doing great. She weighs a little over 13 lbs, which means she is almost 5 times bigger than she was when she was born.

I feed Lyla some rice cereal today and she is starting to like it more than she did at first. She still spits it out everywhere though. Here are some "before and after" pictures from breakfast this morning.

2009-07-15T21:57:00.000-05:00

I (Marie) am currently looking for a job! If anyone who reads this knows of anything that is available in the Austin area, please let me know! This is definitely not the best time to be looking for a job, but oh well.

Lyla is smiling more everyday! She is so cute I can hardly stand it! She has still been doing well with her naps, so that is great for her and me. I took her out to the pool today and it was so hot that the water didn't even feel that cool. I have lived in Texas all of my life, but every summer I am still amazed at how hot it gets.

Bo sent me flowers yesterday, which was really sweet! He has been gone for a week and won't be back til Saturday so we really miss him a lot. I know he misses us too! Meagan is still staying with me and Lyla, which is great. It's great because I'm not alone and deprived of conversation with an adult all day and because I am a big chicken. I cannot stand to stay alone at night. I mean, I can do it if I have to, but it's hard. I just get scared, which I know is really dumb. So thanks again Meagan and hurry home Bo!

Our friends from college, Chris and Elena, who are from Austin and live here now are going to have a baby boy in September and we cannot wait! They are going to be such great parents and it will be so fun for Lyla to have a little playmate. Chris and Bo are always making jokes about Lyla and Sam (their baby boy) dating. It is hilarious. We were over at their house the other night and Chris said that Lyla could sleep in Sam's crib and Bo said that Lyla would "never sleep in Sam's bed". Lyla has since slept in little Sam's crib, but with no Sam in it and with Mom in the same room. It has been really nice to be able to go and hang out at someone else's house, but still have somewhere to put Lyla down for a nap or something.

Tomorrow I will begin doing the whole "consignment" thing. Lyla already has a lot of clothes that are too small for her so I'm taking them to a consignment store. Lyla was in the newborn size for so long that she has a lot of outfits in that size. A few of them even still have the tags on them because they had fallen in the back of the closet and I didn't see them until I cleaned out the closet. That's what I get for not getting her closet organized sooner!

Hope everyone is having a good night/day/morning or whatever it is when you read this!

Family Update, FINALLY!

2009-07-14T10:51:00.000-05:00

Ugh...Bo has been out of town for awhile for work and won't be back until Saturday! That is the main reason I haven't posted on here, because I have been so busy taking care of Lyla by myself. Both of us miss Bo and can't wait for him to get back!

Lyla was 6 months old yesterday! I can hardly believe that she has been here for half a year already. She is still in 3 month old size clothing, but she is growing every day. Her 6 month check up is next week, and Bo and I are so excited to see how she is doing. We know she is doing really well, but it will be nice to hear what her doctor has to say. I don't want to jinx this, but I think Lyla has started to finally nap during the days! She has taken 2 hour naps the past two days in a row and is taking another one right now.

Since Bo has been gone Meagan, my old roommate from college has been staying with Lyla and I. She is living in Round Rock and it has been so nice to have her here and not be alone in the apartment all day. We have been working on some things to take with us to Canton in August. Canton is a town in Texas, and they have a big fair like thing (I don't know what to call it) where people sell things that they make, every first weekend of each month. Meagan and I have a booth there, and we are so excited about it! We are making aprons, curtains, coasters, baby bibs, napkin rings, a chandelier thing, and some chalkboard/picture frame things. I will post a link to pictures of everything when we are finished.

This is "Team Lyla". Mike and Chris did a half-triathlon this past Sunday and their name was Team Lyla. It was fun to watch them, and I have no idea how they swam, biked and ran all that way, and in such heat!

Lyla is wearing one of my favorite outfits for her in this picture. She is so sweet!

Too much playtime, passed out in the pack n' play.

Silly baby.

Beautiful Baby!

Cousin time for Lyla.

4th of July fireworks.

"Hi Aunt Robin, please come see me soooooon!"-Lyla

Aunt Laura took Lyla on her first shopping spree.

We read a little bit of this book almost everyday, even though Lyla doesn't understand it yet.

Meagan and I took Lyla to the beach to stay with my Mom, Robin and Robin's friend Hannah. It was nice to get a way for a little bit! Bo had to work, which we were really sad about. We missed him!

Lyla was so cute in her little sun hat from Christie!

"Happy Father's Day Daddy! Here's a huge picture frame for your office so you can think of me all day!"-Lyla

In honor of Father's Day, Lyla played a football game with Daddy.

And here is a treat for those of you who read all of this long post, a funny little video of Lyla. She was going crazy kicking her feet, and I thought it was hilarious (maybe because I am her mom). It's really only funny at the beginning, and Bo will probably mock me for turning the camera sideways towards the end.