Pictures 'N Stuff

This is Holly in Portland.

Her serious look.

And her pretty smile.

Little smirkiness.

Before haircut...

...after haircut. The keys were meant as a distraction. I think daddy did a pretty good job.

Holly can take off her shoes. Velcro isn't much of a challenge though.

The basics of gaming. Holly will be a gamer too, it's inevitable.

Soooo...we all had dentist appointments last week. I wanted to make sure I stayed on top of all Holly's teeth. Holly just wanted to explore all the examination areas. Holly has 14 teeth now with her upper canines cutting through. She's walking like crazy, 'the pitter-patter of feet' is a highly accurate phrase. We're teaching her to hold our hands when we're walking outside of the house, just so she doesn't run off somewhere. But she's stubborn and likes to steer where we go, eventually we have to pick her up because she refuses to turn direction. It's funny how she can pick up quirks of mine when she hasn't even seen me do it. Last night Holly bit daddy on the shoulder...hard...there were teeth marks. Yeah, I did that when I was a little kid, I don't remember doing it though. There are many stories about that, it usually happened when I was excited and since Holly did it right when David got home and picked her up, I think she was just excited to see her daddy. It's probably going to take a couple years for her to grow out of that one, I apologize to everyone in advance.

Little Speed Walker

We're finally better, so I'm trying to get back to my workouts again and pick up on the yard work. Holly is picking up the pace on her walking, it's like fast little stomps all over the house. She'll be running soon. Holly is saying more real words now too, although it's hard to get her to do it on command. I have taught her that when I catch her picking up something she shouldn't or putting something in her mouth that I hold my hand out to her and say 'thank you' she puts whatever it is in my hand and says 'thank you'. It's much easier than prying open her jaws and digging it out in the teethie danger zone. We went to the Bite of Seattle this weekend. Besides Holly puking to and from it was a disappointment. Not because of high prices for food (which most people complain about) but because it was chaos. Bumbershoot has much more people in attendance and somehow has much more room to move around on the pathways. Perhaps it's not in the budget to plan for crowd control. The cover bands were fun though and Holly enjoyed playing in the grass and eating ice cream (which she later threw up). Holly gets carsick really easy, I did too as a kid. I still have it, it's just not as severe as it used to be. You can be a really good driver but as soon as you tap that brake it's all over. That's probably why Holly doesn't do it on the freeway but on side streets. Stop signs and lights are the enemy.

Hanging in there...

We're still sick...that's because we don't have colds we have upper respiratory infections so cold medicine is ineffective. Holly's fever wasn't too bad, mine got up to 101.5 at the time when it was 95 outside so that was lovely. We are feeling better but not back to our old selves just yet. We felt well enough to go to the milk carton derby at Green Lake on Saturday. I've never seen it before and it was pretty fun ... and it was free so that's a plus. The movie "Up" was a common theme throughout the milk carton rafts. We'll just need to remember Holly's swimsuit next time we go to Green Lake because she would have liked to play in the wading pool with all the other kids. But we did bust out her pool later in the day and she had fun splashing around with her toys. Holiday can say "Holiday" pretty good now and "Kitty", "Fish", and my personal favorite "Uh-oh". "I love you" is in progress and I believe I heard her first real attempt at "Mama". Of course "Hi" and "Dada" are no-brainers for her. Holly can go up and down stairs pretty good now. She goes up all on her own (with mama or daddy watching) and goes down holding someone's hand. She likes to hold our hands and walk around the house and the yard. But she's climbing all over the place so we're looking at the house with new babyproofing eyes.

4th of July

Well we all survived the road trip to Kettle Falls to see my family for the 4th of July. It was good to see everyone. Holly still wasn't feeling too well on the 3rd...she gave us the stinkeye for the last half of the ride there. Wouldn't smile for nobody, then she threw up 5 minutes away from our hotel. We almost made it. On the 4th itself though Holly felt much better and became her smiley self again and let people hold her and played in the yard. She didn't last till the fireworks, maybe next year. We came back home the morning of the 5th and Holly woke up coughing with a stuffed up nose. But it didn't seem nearly as bad as the teething stuff. Then last night I started coming down with the same cold. David's starting to feel it now too. As far as colds go I've had worse, but this one is sucking the life out of me, I have no energy. Holly seems to be faring better with it than I am. She's also trying to talk more like repeating when we say "Holiday" or "I love you". She's also improving in the walking department, it looks like it will be soon.

The Teething Blues ... Again

Yesterday Holly totally nuke puked all over David and she had a fever. She still is throwing up with a fever. The right side of her face was swollen so that definitely means teething to me. Today it's not so swollen. She doesn't want to eat much and is not digging the pedialyte. She even threw up the apple juice. So I'm trying to get as much water in her as possible.