This has never been done before, either.

Look! She's kissing her baaaaaby!!! Awwww! :-)


How sweet!!
(Don't be fooled, though. I must have just snapped the photo a little early, because this kiss and ALL her others are still of the open mouthed slobbery variety. And then her standard mode of op is to take whatever babydoll or teddy bear she just kissed and chunk it roughly to the ground. It's actually a bit disturbing. And it explains why I'm holding on to the doll in the picture below.)

Took those last weekend down in San Antonio, on a visit to Sean's grandma's house. His mom was down there, and we brought her back up with us for a night, so Josephine could be further spoiled by grandmotherly affection, and Sean and I could go on another date. (Yay dates! Which, by the way, I have a funny picture from the one we took in San Antonio-- I will post that next.)

She sure loved her Mama Jo time!!

the ever-morphing nursery

A year ago, with the mustardy brown walls...
Beginning to paint...
Before (and after) Josephine was born, we worked on painting her room, repairing and finishing the trim, installing a ceiling fan, blinds, shelves, curtains, etc. Also added paneling to the front facade of the box seats, which house my tools. I was mistakenly excited when it all was "finished." In the end, it seems like one of my constant house projects is her nursery. Simply attempting to keep Josephine's room safe for her developing abilities has taken a ridiculous amount of attention. And goodness knows the rest of the house isn't safe, so I at least have to stay on top of this one area.

I knew from the start that once she started crawling I'd have to overhaul the original set-up, which was kind of thrown together from pieces we already had, were given, or found secondhand. I've been trying to find a picture of the room mid-progress, but can't find a good example. (Unsurprisingly, all the photos in her room since she's been born have apparently been of her).

In short, though, we had to replace the original changing table (our spice rack) with another craigslist find, because I was worried she'd pull the light metal framed structure over on top of her. I had to make a heavy box (out of leftover living room paneling-- which was left over from Sean's parents' project) to house the diaper pail which she became disgustingly attracted to. I sewed seat cushions for the box seats with the intent of using them as barricades to keep her out of drawers during the day (dressers gifted from the lovely and AWESOME Beth). In the end, I had to rearrange everything to keep all drawers out of her reach, while hiding outlets with furniture, and in a matter of weeks she'd developed the ability to just pull down the barricades or barge through them.

Sigh.

My home remedy having failed, the pillows went back on the box seats, and we ordered an expandable gate that stretches from the back leg of the crib and attaches to the side of the changing table.
Open, it's totally out of the way:

Here it is closed off (far better than the cushions):

It's been really helpful to have a space where she can have free reign and not be able to get into any trouble. She loves reading her books now, and can entertain herself quite well in that little corralled space. As long as I'm not walking back and forth through the room, and she's not under any physical duress such as teething or illness, she'll be totally content for even up to an hour! Trouble is, to get things done, I usually have to walk through her room (not only does it hold most of my tools, her room connects the house to the garage [more tools and laundry room]). Since I can't easily access any of that while she's napping, I have to access it while she's awake, which means I usually wind up disturbing her solo play time and frustrating both of us! I have pie-in-the-sky dreams of creating another entry into the garage through a closed-in utility room, via the living room, but there is MUCH to get done on other projects before starting such a fresh, new, huge project like that.

But I digress. Back to the nursery. Here's the rocker that my parents refurbished for us! It's been around a while-- they used it with my siblings and I when we were babies. We love it! Lastly, here are two overview shots. It's a long narrow room because it used to be half of a two car garage; the previous owner closed in this half. So this is looking down into the room:
And this is the view from by the window, looking up towards the garage door and previously mentioned cabinets.
Okay, so there's one room's renovations documented! I still need to post the laundry room, master bedroom, and living room. And I still need to actually DO all the rest (two bathrooms, two bedrooms, kitchen and dining, foyer, landing, and staircase)! Yeah, my closed-in utility room might have to wait a while... ;-)

No child has ever done this before.

Josephine frequently plays while kneeling or sitting back on her heels. When I first noticed it a few weeks ago, I took a picture because something about the pose tickles me. (Kind of like how whenever your kid does ANYTHING new, something about it tickles you.)

book video

It's long, but I decided to post this video of Josephine just being Josephine, playing in her room. I uploaded it to youtube, because I've been having trouble with blogger, so click here to watch it.

aww, LOVE

Josephine was in hot demand this Valentine's Day. She received more cards and "Will you be my Valentine?" requests than I could keep track of. I'm happy to report that they all came from grandma-type figures, though. The day a boy gets involved is the day I buy a shotgun and Sean starts tweaking the family canon.On the other hand, I don't mind having a Valentine other than grandmas, so it was nice for Sean and I to leave Josephine with my parents and Janell and go to the ballet and dinner. It's usually one of those days like New Year's Eve for us-- why bother???? As Sean says, you can walk in to the same restaurant the very next day WITHOUT making reservations a month in advance and dealing with star-struck crowds. Plus, without a doubt, all the commercialism is disgusting.

But here's my bottom line: a date is a date, and if that falls on Valentine's Day, it is STILL A DATE. And chocolate is chocolate and champagne is champagne, and if a restaurant wants to give you little freebies of both because it's Valentine's Day, I think I might just like the whole V-Day spirit, after all! It is sad we only celebrate love as a corporation community once a year. But look at it this way: we're still celebrating love.
And it's a date!!!!
Involving CHOCOLATE!!!

Josephine with a few of her Valentines:

i like it, i like it, i like it

People don't come up to me and ask me questions.

But if they were to do such a thing, and then if they happened to ask, "Jenny! Please!! Do you have a second to tell us why do you love Texas so much??? Oh, please, DO tell us!!!" ... well, then, I would respond (without the slightest hesitation), "Because you can see the whole sky. Thank you for asking."

Not a clever answer-- a corny one-- I know. But I really, REALLY like how big the sky is in Texas. It is hands down my favorite part, and hands down the thing I miss the most when we're other places-- even places where my scenic sky is blocked by stunning mountains, voluptuous trees, flowing waterfalls, swooping toucans, line-dancing wallabies, pirouetting unicorns... (okay, I'm kidding about the toucans and wallabies. never actually seen them.)

For instance, this is not an unusual road trip. I took these from the car window on my little digital pocket camera, and did nothing but crop, which means the only thing impressive is the scenery itself.



And that is WAY better than unicorns.

True to my Texan roots, I'm afraid I do a serious amount of bursting with pride over this place.

(I debated overloading this post with deeper strands of the rationale behind my uninterview response... ideas about the heavens, the Lord, spaces far more infinite than my own tiny world, unmarred, ever morphing, yet truly integral and consistent beauty, et al, but I'll trust that pictures are worth a thousand words and not distract with my own).

From this past week...

You know you've reached new levels of endearment towards your child when, in the brightest of all flaw-revealing daylight, you can look at a pathetically crabby, phlegm-hacking, double-nostril-snot-dripping, St. Bernard-slobber-slinging, chapped-cheek child and feel nothing but pure compassion.

I think I REALLY felt like a Mommy this last week. More than ever. (In a good way, believe it or not, and I'm not entirely sure why... Maybe because she's never been an especially cuddly child, not even during her other two colds, but because she's felt SO cruddy lately, she has been. There's something sweet about your kid wanting you to hold her just for comfort-- not for milk, not for entertainment, not for hair/face grabbing, etc. Just because Mommy makes it feel better.)

One of her calmer, passed out moments:

We did go to the pediatrician after she developed a fever five days into the cold and her breathing was seeming increasingly rapid and shallow. I was worried all the juicy coughs were developing into more than that in her lungs. But she checked out as infection-free, and Dr. Boes said that as their temperature climbs, their breathing becomes more rapid. No need to worry unless they're REALLY straining to catch a breath. (AND THEN REALLY WORRY!) (I'm afraid I kind of hate these extremes, but even my baby health reference books seem to frame it the same way).

She did have some clear fluid in her left ear, which we're hoping won't turn into an infection, but Dr. Boes wrote out a prescription for antibiotics anyway. She says as long as I am armed with a prescription in my purse, then an ear infection won't develop and I won't end up needing it. ;-)

Thankfully, Josephine seems to be improving. I, on the other hand, grew worse at the end of the week, and am now in the throws of the same nasty cold (except I get to take grown-up medicine which makes it much less disgusting-- thank goodness!). Sean seems to be holding out pretty well, and hopefully that will continue, as he has some business travel coming up shortly.

From end of January...

Every child has that list of things they have to go through... chickenpox, braces, repeatedly crashing to the kitchen floor as you learn to hop on a pogo stick, etc.

Well, Josephine can go ahead and cross "black eye" off her list. I'd say this counts. Check out that shiner. It went from an odd streak of purple to a neat grey block the next day. Of course, if you think that's bad, you should see the inanimate object she pummeled! [...with her eyebrow]
Another "first" was her inaugural play-in-the-dirt the weekend before. She's spent plenty of time outdoors, but we usually keep her on a blanket. Last time, though, she was simply too interested in helping Daddy weed the garden.

It was an overwhelming task, however. (Still is). The weeds have pretty well mutated and I believe are on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons. As Josephine tired, she gave Daddy an earful about exactly HOW many weeds there are in the garden. That's a tough chore for a 9 month old!Of course, when that didn't work, she came crawling to me for sympathy:
Instead she got a bath and a nap, because I'd decided she'd pulled and eaten enough green onion "weeds" to last her a while.

Two dirty feet:
You can see a little more of this action on one of Sean's blogs...