Trip to Georgia

We finally made the trek to Georgia to see the family.  I pretty much never want to go on an airplane with my two children ever again :)  But the way back they behaved much much better. Lesson to be learned is that my children will not nap on a plane so make sure they are well rested and happy when you arrive. It also helped that by the time we got to the gate it was time to board for the flight back so no trying to entertain the tiny people in an airport for two hours. Part of that was thanks to the wholly incompetent ticketing agents for American Airlines at Hartsfield. We spent 30 minutes trying to get boarding passes!  Luckily I have TSA Precheck and walked right through security or we would have missed our flight.

Airport Fun

On the Plane

We had a really great visit, I think the girls had a lot of fun.

They even highjacked my iPad at one point for which they get to be publicly embarrassed on my blog :)

I can't say I enjoyed traveling across the country with my two crazy girls, but I'm looking forward to doing it again next year.

Business Trips with Baby

About once a month Gabby and I head to Kansas for work.  We went last week. Traveling with a one year old is quite challenging but she isn't quite ready to be away from mommy overnight.  I had a few good meetings and she made a few friends at daycare.  Here are a couple of photos from our adventure.

She stayed awake the entire flight and fell asleep as we landed

Hotel rooms are fun

Dinner with our friend Michelle

She left daycare a little early and hung out in my cube,
here she is making her escape

Gabriella's Birthday

I haven't written a post in a year! Seriously, as much time as I spend on Facebook you would think I could blog more than once a year.  Should I shut this down??????

So last week was my baby's first birthday!  Of course the day of her birthday she spiked a fever and was crabby and wouldn't eat or sleep for an entire week. I took her to the doctor Thursday before inviting 15 people to my house to see if she had anything discernible which of course she did not. The grandparents arrived Friday and the party guests Saturday so we will see if anyone else takes ill.  After endless hours deliberating what time to have a baby party where the baby would actually be awake and happy, I chose wrong so she was sleepy and went down for a nap halfway into her party.  Of course she is teething and constipated, so just a joy to be around and I haven't slept in 3 weeks (I think, I have no real ability to track time these days, it's all one long blur), but we ate cake and she received presents which she could not stay awake long enough to open and I drank mimosa's until mid-afternoon, then we all went to the mall where my children acted like crack-addicts needing a fix while I attempted to shovel pasta in my mouth, good times all around!  Here are some photos for your viewing pleasure:

Super sleepy party goer

Perked up enough to try the cake

Opened gifts after nap and all guests had left

She preferred the tissue paper over the presents

But big sister opened all the gifts for her

Gran played while Tom Tom napped

Life continues after this exciting milestone as a series of sleepless nights and blurry days of dance classes and diaper changes punctuated by endless hours of legal work. I will try to remember to blog about it just in case anyone is actually out there reading.

Spring Update

Wow, I appear to be terrible at blogging since the last post is Halloween!  There is a lot going on these days.  Bella's little sister is scheduled for delivery on July 20 (we'll see if she agrees or not).  Her kidney measurements were off for a while so I've been  having to go for monthly ultrasounds, but Tuesday they said everything was perfectly normal.  They also said she has chubby cheeks and a head full of hair (guess that explains my 24/7 heartburn).  I'm 29 weeks and she was estimated to be 3 lb 11 oz so that's a pretty big baby so far.

Bella's growing too, she seems really tall to me lately, she can turn the tv on without her step stool and can open doors.   She has her first dance recital tomorrow and starts preschool on August 20th. I just wish she would learn to sleep through the night someday soon.

Bella at Easter

Halloween

I'm crazy far behind on blogging!  Sorry about that.  I will start with Halloween. It was rather anti-climatic this year.  I bought a ton of candy because we always have so many trick or treaters but this year we had maybe 10, it's December and I'm still eating tootsie rolls.  We were not planning on taking Bella trick or treating and that's good because she refused to wear her costume.  We were just going to have her answer the door in her costume and hand out candy.  She did fine when we tried it on before Halloween, wore it all over the house but the night of she wanted no part of it, so we let her wear her Halloween pants and t shirt that Gran and Tom Tom got her (the pants are actually from last year, guess that's a benefit of having a kid that doesn't grow much).  We let her have a few pieces of candy and she freaked, she LOVED it, and then got a crazy sugar high.  When the children came to the door she would scream "NOOO, my candy, mine, mine."  For a few days she demanded candy all the time but luckily that's worn off.  I gave her a tootsie roll last night and she threw it across the room, now all she wants is "nanas" - that's bananas if you don't speak toddler.

Bella's Birthday

We postponed Bella's second birthday celebration until we returned to Dallas.  Chris's parents came for the weekend, that morning we went to the Arboretum and then after nap time we had cake and presents.  Bella still refused to eat the cake so we had cake while she opened her presents.  She received lots of great stuff, an alphabet toy and really cute clothes from Gran and TomTom and a baby doll with stroller, a play tent, a couple of books and a puzzle from her mommy and daddy.  She seemed to enjoy everything.  She also received gifts before her birthday from family in Georgia, the dress she is wearing was from Aunt Anna and her cousins Matthew and Madison, and then yesterday she received an art easel in the mail from her cousins Ella and Caroline, she really racked up this year!  

She seems so grown up to me these days, she talks all the time, saying things like "I don't like it" if you're doing something she doesn't want to do or chasing you around tickling you saying "I got you."  She is eating grown up foods with her fork and spoon and drinking out of an open cup and she's out of diapers, it's shocking how fast the last two years have went.  

Getting Ready to Move -- again

We have been in Kansas for almost 6 months now. It's been hard being apart from Chris and the pups and trying to work full time and take care of Bella in this icky apartment. I will be happy to go home but am also anxious about trying to work at home with Bella when I'm not in Kansas and then leaving her for five days at a time to come back to work in the office. But we'll see how it goes, it will be good bonding time for her and Chris. Hopefully somebody will buy or rent our house quickly so we can move on and all be together.

Bella has recently started talking more. It's very exciting. Tonight she dropped a small cup of water out of the bathtub and yelled "oh no I dropped." I think that is her first real sentence so I was very excited. She says all sorts of things now, dog, car, truck, bird, rock, color, blanket, juice, I got you, thank you. It's very cute and helpful! One night she was having a fit to go out on the front porch late at night and I kept saying that she couldn't, that it was too late and she just kept crying and finally she said "ball." Her ball was on the front porch, she didn't want to go outside after dark, she simply wanted her ball inside. If she hadn't of used the word then I wouldn't have known to go get her ball and she would have kept crying.

She is turning 2 on Sunday! Crazy how time flies. We went to her 2 year check up yesterday and she weighed 24.6 lbs and was 33 inches tall so she has finally gained a little bit of weight. They are changing her reflux medicine again so hopefully she will stop puking so much. If this doesn't work she will have to have some tests run over at the hospital. Otherwise she seems to be perfectly healthy and developing on track.