Library book sale: part deux

All of these books (35 to be exact) cost us a grand, whopping total of.................$12.50

Does it get any better than that?

The next sale is in December. I'm there!

Top Ten

Top ten reasons you know you're a mom:

1. You get really excited when you see a blimp, doggie, or garbage truck.

2. You catch yourself humming the tune to Elmo's World.

3. Naptime has taken on an almost Christmas-like quality of anticipation.

4. Froot Loops now seem like a reasonably healthy snack for your kid (hey, they're fortified!)

5. You have wipes handy at ALL times.

6. You can carry a bajillion things in your arms at once, and have totally mastered the two-milk-gallons-in-one-hand maneuver when you're bringing in groceries.

7. When your husband asks how your day went, the first thing that comes to mind is "Livia had FOUR messy diapers today!"

8. You stop and smell the roses. All of them.

9. You have taken thousands of pictures in the past year, but you're only in about 6 of them.

10. You now know every nursery rhyme. ever. written.

A not so typical friday morning

1. 6:30 a.m. (a full hour too early) Chase nudges me and says, "Livia's crying." What? I can't even hear her over the fan, and am fully prepared to just ignore the whole situation (I'm not terribly nice when I'm sleepy) and go back to sleep. But Chase keeps nudging me, so I finally get up, grab her some milk out of the fridge and cuddle up with Livvy in a chair so she can quench her usual thirst and go back to sleep. "C'mon Livvy," I mutter, as she's holding the sippy cup straw in her mouth but not sucking at all, "Drink your milk so I can go back to bed." Now she's fighting to get out of my lap. Knowing this will wake her up even more, but being too tired to fight back, I let her get down. She walks right over to her dresser and starts insistently pointing to her Very Hungry Caterpillar book. Oh great, I think to myself, that's what this whole thing is about. She saw her favorite book from her crib! And so I read it to her. Twice. When she started going for round three I decided I was done and put her back in her crib and went back to bed.
She was crying of course, but since I knew there wasn't anything actually wrong, I was content to let the fan drown her out and go back to sleep. Like I said, I'm not the kindest soul when I'm tired. Chase, however, couldn't sleep, so he got up with her, read the book to her a few times (his plan to just let her flip through the pages in her crib didn't go over so well) and then gave up, too. She never did go back to sleep. But I sure did! (thanks, chase, for staying up with her)

2. Later in the morning I'm now officially awake and getting ready. Suddenly I hear a crash from our bedroom. What?! I peek in Livia's bedroom where I could've sworn she was, and sure enough, she was still sitting on the ground reading books. So what in the world happened? I go into our bedroom and Chase looks at me sheepishly as he replaces a picture frame on top of the bookcase. "What happened?" I demanded, totally confused as to how he could have accidentally knocked over a frame in a remote, high corner of the room.
"I was doing a handstand," he finally admitted.
What?! Since when is Chase a gymnast?! He saw my incredulous look and started to explain, "I just got the urge to do one! And guess what? I think it's the best one I've ever done...until I fell and hit the bookcase. I held it for so long..."

Oh , yes. We're off to a great start today, folks!

And I will be hiding The Very Hungry Caterpillar tonight!

July

July's been a busy month for us, and as I haven't had a chance to blog in awhile I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed with everything I wanted to write about! So I decided to simplify and not worry about including everything. There will, however, be several pictures, which for some reason aren't uploading well and look super pixel-y right now.

1. Fitt family reunion! This is for my Grandpa, all his brothers, and all their descendents.

Our side of the family all wore matching red t-shirts.

Even Livvy had a little mini t-shirt

It was a lot of fun to visit with everyone, but this next picture is an unfortunately accurate depiction of the trip.

(She really did have fun...but she had to be told NO an awful lot, and being out of her routine and all made for a tired baby--and mommy.)

This next picture I love. Here's Livia thorougly enjoying her great-uncle David.

Playing with her Great-Grandma. My Grandpa Fitt is there in the back, with the camera.

Some highlights of the reunion include old family videos (the really old kind, with no sound), 3 live snakes being brought into the area by some distant cousins of mine, one blissful nap under a tree taken by Livia, and a rattlesnake that was caught, killed, cooked, and subsequently eaten by almost everyone there--including myself! Yes folks, I ate a wild rattlesnake. Not bad...but not all that great either.

2. Two days after I got back from my trip, my little brother and sister came to stay with me for a week! Livia was in absolute heaven, and was so excited when she woke up each morning and they were still here! I always think it must be strange as a baby: to often wake up in new places, to never really know where you are, where you're going, why you're in a car for 6+ hours, and whether or not a person is going to be there for any length of time. I guess that's why so many have separation anxiety: their parents are the only real thing they can count on!

Anyway, we had a great time together, going to parks, the zoo, and swimming. Here's Livia enjoying her first frosty from Wendy's. Once she got one sip of it, she seriously would not let go of the straw until she had finished every last drop!

Here's Emily and David at a park near our home.

We went to a cute little zoo and children's museum that they all really enjoyed

We don't have tons of room in our apartment, so they got to sleep on an air mattress in our living room.

Wait, what's that you say? There are THREE people in that bed?? Yup. Chase got to enjoy some good reading time with his brother and sister-in-law.

We had so much fun with Emily and David, and hope they'll come visit us again sometime in the future! Livia sure misses having people in the house who have as much energy as she does.

3. I had a birthday, shout hooray! My main present was going to a Coldplay concert with Chase, which was a lot of fun. We planned on going out to dinner on my actual birthday with Emily and David, but as we walked up to the restaurant three different fire engines and several ambulances came screaming past us. Seriously? Our restaurant was on fire! We watched for awhile as they put out the fire, and though there wasn't any serious damage, we decided not to wait until they started seating people again, and got dinner at a little soup and sandwich place across the street. Not quite what I had hoped for, but it was still fun to be with family. My mom's so sweet though: when she heard what had happened she sent me a gift card to the restaurant so that Chase and I can go back sometime and try again.

Here are a few more pictures from my Utah trip:

The Oquirrh mountain temple. We went through the open house, and it was simply gorgeous!

Austin helping Livia strum his guitar.

Just loungin'

Livia and my sister Laura

Well, that about covers it! Sometime soon I'll have to post a video of Livia "singing" songs. She can make the hand motions to three different songs, and though she's a little camera shy and hasn't yet done them all for the video camera, I'm going to keep trying. It is so cute!

An ode to the King

When Michael Jackson died we (like practically everyone else) listened to some of his songs, and it turns out Livia's a fan! So despite the laundry on the couch and the shaky camera, I couldn't NOT post this.

P.S. I don't have any good pictures from the 4th of July, but trust me, she loved it. Even though it was way past her bedtime she didn't cry once, and was positively enchanted by the fireworks, murmuring "wow" periodically as they went off.

Livvy lately

Bathing Beauty:


First time swimming with Daddy (somehow he's never around when we go. Or he's feeling too wimpy to get in. I don't know) Mountain climber

An attempt at sun protection that never made it out of the apartment

Like Mommy:

I guess Daddy is not the only person she copies--here she is with my shoes and keys.

And now with a "purse" and keys. I also caught her grabbing the dustpan and trying to sweep the floor (like I do every time after she eats). Getting into mischief.

I guess every kid has to unroll the toilet paper at least once, right?

I let her hold a pen while I was grocery shopping, and looked down a moment later to discover that we have a budding artist on our hands.

Good times.

Eat, Livvy, EAT!

So Livia hasn't been wanting to eat much lately. I think it's a combination of teething and finally being weaned, but regardless...it has been a huge battle getting her to eat anything. And so I've been trying to come up with new things. She's always loved straws, so I stuck a straw in her yogurt and voila! Suddenly that yogurt she'd been refusing to even take a bite of all day long tasted awesome and she ate the entire thing within a couple of minutes. Encouraged, I made her a smoothie for breakfast, popped a straw in it, and she loved it! Hooray! Hopefully more successes will follow, and she'll be back to her normal, hungry self.

This, ironically enough, is a picture of the last time she let me feed her yogurt with a spoon. Yes, that means she got that messy when I was feeding her.

And with summer in full swing, we let Livia eat a popsicle. Slightly baffled at first, she did polish the whole thing off, and was upset when we took away the popsicle stick.

Oh, the joys of feeding a toddler! (And the many accompanying baths)