Circus and Showers

That Uncle G, he is a piece of work. A sales rep that comes to his office gave him 5 tickets to the circus for Friday night. He is one smooth talkin' devil. On the way he said, "y'all don't get too excited, the tickets aren't that great." Well. Well. Uncle G apparently can't read the diagram on the BJCC website very well because our seats?? Were great. I mean like 15 rows from the floor great. 

Reese was so excited to see the "ephants"  and the monkeys. (Turns out, they don't have monkeys at this circus. Saturday we asked her if she liked the circus, "dere no monkeys." Of all the exciting things at the circus, all she talked about was the lack of monkeys.)

 The human cannon

 I don't know what this was called, but dude on the top right almost fell to his death while trying to jump rope. I was glad to see that act come to an end.

 P.S. It was also my first trip to the circus. I know. I know. I have led a sheltered life.
P.P.S. Did you know they serve alcohol at the circus? I don't know why, but that disturbed me a little. Or a lot. I mean, there were mommas all over the place toting babies around while drinkin' em' a brewski. Which is absolutely none of my business, but come on. At the circus? With the fam? Classy.

Saturday night we went to Kelli's baby shower at LaRae's house. There are 3 buns in the oven in this picture. All three are girls. That will make 8 little girls for our group. I don't think we are capable of having boys;)

The kids had a great time, of course. Reese felt the need to tattle about every single thing. Earlier Saturday she came running to me whining and said, "daddy pank me." Then she ran back to him and said, "I told mommy you pank me." 

Ringling Brothers doesn't hold a candle to the circus that went on during this baby shower.

MeeMaw made the dress, and I monogrammed Charli Jean's initials on it.

As we speak, the little monster and all her babies are taking a nap. So is her daddy. This is the happiest Sunday at our house in...ummm....3+ months. 

About that spend the night party....

So after I posted last night about the spend the night party going on at MeeMaw's, we went straight to bed. By 9:30 I was soundly sleeping on my side of the bed with no Reese E Cup kicking me in the side. It was lovely.

Around 11:30 I shot straight up in the bed, listened, and heard it. Again. And again. I jumped on top of Adam, frantically telling him somebody was beating on our door. He jumped up and slowly cracked open the bedroom door as if the person was in the living room instead on the back porch. 

Well, while Barney Fife fumbled around in the bedroom getting out his pistol (his new Christmas pistol that he finally got some bullets for/ the same pistol the Three Little Bears daddy had) I tiptoed to the back door to look through the blinds. 

There are 2 things I don't like to happen in the middle of the night. They are as follows...

1. I don't like the phone to ring in the middle of the night because it is rarely good news. 

2. I don't like for our back door to be loudly knocked on in the middle of the night. For, again, it is rarely good news. 

I told Barney to put away his pistol because I could see our sweet little baby's New Balance tennis shoes through the blinds. 

When bedtime came she cried to come home, so MeeMaw brought her. 

When I started putting on her PJs we had the following conversation:

Me: Whatcha been doin?

Reese: Cwying. (crying)

I laughed so hard because what I wanted to know was if she had been playing, watching movies etc. 

When we laid down, one arm immediately went around my neck while the other one was busy playing in my hair. Adam and I were laughing about how MeeMaw made a strategic error in not calling before she came, and how Adam's heart was beating so fast he thought he might have a heart attack. He went on to compare it to when he was in the fire department at Auburn and they would get called out in the middle of the night, and how a study was done one time about how fire fighters had a higher risk of heart attacks due to their heart rate speeding up quickly etc. etc. 

Me: From now on, Barney, while you get your one bullet in the gun I'll be taking care of the situation. 

Adam: Elena, one minute I was running through a field of daisy's and then all of the sudden you are jumping on top of me, waking me up. It took me a minute, okay. 

Reese: Hush. Shhhhh. Go to sweep. 

We laughed really hard because our 2 year old had to quiet us down, and then we all went back to sleep. 

Random Sunday post

For the first time in 2 years and 4 months I have spent the afternoon sitting in my favorite chair, gas logs glowing, while reading a book. How did I manage such a luxury you ask? It's called having a MeeMaw and PeePaw who invited all the grandkiddies to spend the night. Angels sang when we dropped her off this afternoon to the eagerly awaiting arms of her favorite cuz, Jolie. I rushed home, cooked myself my favorite sinful dinner of Pizza Nachos  (except I used fat free half and half instead of heavy cream because, people, I have not been going to the gym for the last 3 weeks for nothing), took a steaming hot bath, and am currently curled up under my favorite fuzzy blanket. It. Is. A. Beautiful. Thing. 

Since I have some time on my hands I wanted to post a few random things. For quite some time I have wanted to have the blog printed to a book since it holds all the important facts of my baby's life. I went to the  Blog2Print website only to discover it was going to cost me 2.5 paychecks to actually accomplish the task. So I opted to have it sent to me in PDF format (which cost $7.95 per book) and then I would have it printed and bound. Well.... I created one book from my very first blog post through Reese's first birthday. That turned out to be 300 some odd pages. The second book is from her 1st birthday through her 2nd birthday. I had both books printed at Office Max. When they showed me the options to have it bound, their sample book had laminated pages and I knew that in order to ensure the pages last I would need to do that. So I started with the second book, used one of those little personal laminators, and spent the better part of 2 weeks laminating all the pages. Here is the the book of her second year...

 Needless to say I will not be laminating the first book with 300 plus pages. I will come off my wallet and buy it. You live and you learn. And I learned that it is worth every penny to leave the book making to the book making people. I will gladly pay them from now on.

Since it was so pretty today, we went for an afternoon stroll.


 

We ended up at Cheaha where Reese played on the playground. She is a sucker for a slide and swing.

 She pretended to talk to Uncle G.

We walked out to Bald Rock. She ran. And ran. And ran. 

I love this picture...

 because the look on her face says she know what's coming next....

She insisted on wearing her Tinker Bell pajama top. 

I had to beg her to go out in the snow Thursday afternoon. She kept saying, "it cold!"

I think I forgot to mention this, but back in November Adam changed jobs. I know what you're thinking. He changed jobs, again?? Yes. Yes, he did. He went to work for Lincare as sales rep back in October of 2011. In June he was promoted to manager, and he really liked the job. In late October his friend Wesley called and told him that Kronospan (the company his dad is the CFO for) was looking for a sales rep and that he should apply. Kronospan is a company in Eastabogo that manufactures MDF/HDF panels which is the stuff that laminate flooring and a lot of furniture are made from. Anyway, he applied (mainly because  his heart goes pitter patter when he gets to deal with construction type things) and got the job. So to get to his office he gets on I20 for a few miles. Friday morning he was sitting still in traffic on I20 because somebody had a wreck. While he was sitting there an 18 wheeler, who didn't see the stopped traffic, hit him. Thankfully, no A-master was injured. Sadly, we got the report later on Friday that the car is probably going to be totaled since it will cost more to fix it than the car is worth. Did y'all see the Duck Dynasty episode where they called Si's truck the "gray ghost?" Well, after 5 years and 177,000 miles we are now calling the Acura a "gray ghost." All I know is that I treated it way nicer during my 4 years of driving it. 

I, of course, saw this idea on Pinterest- where all craft ideas are born. Adam's hand is in black, mine in white, and Reese's in pink. Her hand didn't show up as well as I would have liked, but with a 2 year old you take what you can. 

Speaking of our 2 year old. Having her tonsils removed has changed her little life. She can breath so much better, sleep so much better, and she has a much better appetite than before. After the surgery we let her sleep with us because we had to give her medicine every few hours, and because I wanted to be able to keep an eye on her since she had been put to sleep and blah blah blah. Anyway, she has been in our bed since then. Two nights this week we have tried to let her cry it out and go back to our bed....but to no avail. She cried for almost an hour, and at 11:00 PM I gave in and went and got her. During that hour she had not so much as squatted down and thought about going to sleep. She had gotten up on the rail several times trying to escape. I have no idea what we are going to do. Possibly go ahead and put her into a "big girl" bed and see how that goes. We do know for sure that we have officially missed the window of "cry it out" opportunity. Any suggestions as to how we get her back in her bed would be appreciated.

Christmas Finale

I know what you're thinking. It's January 17th- quit with the Christmas pictures already. This is my last post about Christmas, I assure you.

As we speak it is snowing outside, so I've got my doubts our sophisticated internet will hold up for me to actually post this. 

This picture didn't make the cut on my last post, but this was when Big Daddy Santa called her. We laughed so hard because, y'all, Santa  has a slight speech impediment that he is still in denial about.

Christmas night we went to D.D. and Big Daddy's. Reese had just woke up from a 2 hour nap. When she sleeps she sweats profusely, so her hair is wet in the pictures.

Please look at my girl. She is all like, "chhhheeeesssseeee. Can I open my presents now?"

She pretended to be an elf and passed out the gifts. 

And my favorite picture. Right behind Jolie on Reese's list of favorite people you will find her Uncle G. This is why...

Santa Came!

And he was good to the girl.

 Christmas Eve I tried to explain to her that Fiona would be going back to the North Pole with Santa, but she was not very accepting of that idea. As soon as she saw the toys she said, "where Fiona?" We changed the subject and prayed it didn't come back up.

She was this excited. 

She added a baby doll to her Christmas list on Christmas Eve Eve. Good thing Santa already had a baby doll in mind for her. The baby he brought has a paci and, yep, she put it her mouth several times. And she kissed all over that baby.

This will forever be known as the Christmas I gave her Daddy a pistol with no bullets. Apparently there was a communication barrier between myself and Uncle G. I told him I was getting a pistol for Adam. He said (and I quote), "I'll get bullets." I even have the text to prove it. But then, oh, but then. Christmas day came and nooooooo bullets. He was like a kid with a new toy, but no batteries. It was sad.

(Side story. The night before she had her tonsils taken out we were trying to get her to go to sleep, so I was telling her the story of the three bears. I don't know the story exactly so I make things up such as, "three little bears had been shopping at Target and when they came home somebody had been eating their soup and sleeping in their beds....." Well, because I am easily entertained I always start laughing. Because, y'all. There is something funny to me about the 3 little bears going to Target. Plus I know Adam is rolling his eyes wondering how he got such a sophisticated,  mature wife. Anyway, Adam rudely interrupted my beautifully told story by saying, "yeah but it's okay because the daddy bear has a Rugar 40 with 12 bullets in the clip and 1 in the chamber." Reese looked at Adam and said, "momma waughin" (laughing). Yes, baby. Momma almost wet the bed she was laughing so hard.)

She finished off the cookies Santa couldn't manage to eat.

Big Daddy, D.D., Uncle G, MeeMaw and PeePaw all came over for breakfast. I cooked a Pinterest breakfast casserole and store bought cinnamon rolls and biscuits. You can just call me Suzy homemaker;) Just kidding. The casserole was terrible. Mainly because the top of it was burned and the middle was still runny. But the cinnamon rolls? Oh, they were to die for.

Santa left her "wing set" inside. It took all 4 of these grown men to hang the swing. Good thing her daddy and Uncle G had already built the wooden part a month earlier. Notice her little hands in the picture. She is demonstrating how they need to do it;)

Then we went inside and rested until it was time to go to Nanny's for lunch.

And we put my tripod to use and tried for a family photo. This is the best I could get. I'm just glad she is looking at the camera.