Drinking Games!

If you are looking for a fun Saturday night - take a shot every time my mom says "Pet the Doggy!" You'll be wasted in no time!

Pet the Doggy from Amanda Michelson on Vimeo.

My Momcation Thus Far

After having my brother/sister-in-laws (and their sweet pup Pepper) living with us for 3 weeks in December and then having my parents and brother (and his sweet pup Peyton) staying with us for ten days* only 2 days after the in-laws moved out, it's time for me to have a week of four extra hands and a little less responsibility!

I arrived in Arizona Thursday night after a fairly smooth plane ride out.  Olivia is so much antsier than she was a few months ago.  We went through an Elmo puppet, two squeak toys, some puffs, yogurt melts, 6 or 7 different songs, and a friendly passenger behind us all while clutching a Lypsyl tube. (We also managed to learn a new trick!)  We were greeted at the airport by my parents and I had chicken tetrazzini, overnight salad and green beans waiting for me when we got home.

 Olivia is starting to prefer feeding herself a lot more.

And by feeding herself, I mean making a huge mess.

This morning, my aunt and uncle came over and brought Olivia her own little laptop (which means there are now FOUR of them in this house) and visited with us for awhile.  Mom and I spent the afternoon taking Olivia shopping.  (I mean, duh, what else is there to do when you get three ladies together?!?!)

During our flight in, I taught Olivia how to eat like a baby bird!  I'm going to teach her how to give kisses this way!

 I don't think Nana's too upset about getting those kisses!

We also managed to get in a little dress-up time in preparation for the upcoming Super Bowl!

GO COLTS!

*I enjoyed every minute of them being there!

You Are What You Eat

So are you just considered FOOD if your life pretty much revolves around it? I don't know if this is how other women/moms/SAHMs are or if it's just me, but I seriously feel like almost every single thing I do is somehow connected to food - shopping for food, searching for new recipes, making food for us, making food for Olivia, feeding myself, feeding Olivia, nursing Olivia (YEAH, THAT'S FOOD!), hiding my 'nursers' from Olivia, cleaning up the dirty food dishes, putting them back away, sweeping the food up off the floor, changing a dirty diaper, wanting to eat desserts, trying to work off said desserts, hating my clothes (really my body) because I ate too much food, washing food stains out of those same clothes. Are you getting my point?

For two consecutive days last week, I pretty much spent the daytime hours making roasted veggie lasagna, 17 breakfast burritos, and 5 different types of food for Olivia to eat (and to freeze for future days). It IS surprising that I would still even want to be around food! But, man, I love it.

Avocado/banana, apple, apricot/banana/rice cereal in the awesome freezer

containers my mom got us for Christmas.

Orange/prune & apple/pear.

And, I really have to thank Marissa for her advice on making breakfast burritos for David.  They are truly a labor of love, but they are oh-so-worth-it!  When I can't make breakfasts for him, he can easily grab one of these from the freezer, nuke it for 2 minutes, and voila, instant breakfast goodness!  And, can I just say that he was skeptical about these burritos and now will sometimes choose these over a "fresh" breakfast?!

Because I knew you were missing my posts about eggs....

 Cooked hot sausage, 12 eggs + 2 cups of egg beaters, sauteed onions & bell peppers

 over a medium-hot stove*....

Add this mixture w/ some shredded mexi-cheese onto a burrito sized flour tortilla, fold, wrap in wax paper and then foil, and freeze for a delicious morning treat!

*Try not to be too jealous of my utensil holder that attaches to my pan!  My brother got it for us for Christmas.

Makin' it Work

Marriage is hard.  Raising a nine month old is hard too.  Making time for each other and for quality time as a family?  Yep, you guessed it, HARD.  Our days pretty much consist of Olivia and me doing our thing either here or out and about and David working in the office and then running necessary errands or working out at the gym or going to other appointments he can't get to during the day.  So, sometimes it's 6 or 7 at night before we are all home together.  And, by that time, I'm ready to hand Olivia over to him and have 15 to 20 minutes to do some things I can't get to while I need to keep a watchful eye on her.  So, we've had several nights where it seems like we are ships passing in the night, handing off Olivia to each other while we try and get things done.  Well, that's not getting us anywhere.  Not anywhere good, at least.

So, we are trying to do some more things that are focused on our family, even if it's 20 minutes of uninterrupted playing time with Olivia and her beloved grocery cart.  This last weekend we had a fabulous time celebrating Olivia's 9 month birthday with a trip to Chuck E. Cheese on Friday night and an awesome hike (go ahead and pick your chin up off the floor, yes, I hiked) at Rattlesnake Canyon in Santa Barbara.  Olivia LOVED the Chuck E. Cheese - all of the bright lights and the little kids running around.  She wasn't as big a fan of the hiking, although she did really enjoy it -- she just got fussy when she was tired and didn't fall asleep as easily as she does on our normal walks.

Here are a few pictures from our weekend.  (I used my point and shoot so they aren't as sharp as with my Canon.)

How cute is this?  Look at the difference in their hands!

Don't go getting any ideas, Olivia!

Probably her most favorite ride of the night.

Ready for the hike - definitely a little harder with 18 pounds of goodness on my front.

The family - with a little Pepper in the mix.

Right before Papa lost her cupcake barrette - no worries, I ordered a few more! ;)

Our hiking guides.  They did so well.

Womb Time

Olivia turned 9 months on Sunday which means she's been out of the womb as long as she was in it. We had a fabulous weekend, celebrating a little, and just being a family. Before I blog about that, here are a few recent pictures.

Happy Birthday, Baby.

I don't know how I could love you more.  But, I have a feeling I will.

Be Glad I'm Not Posting the Smell

About a month ago, my friend Julie posted this on facebook about her son Davis who is Olivia's age:

It's like hog tying a baby calf to get my son's diaper changed lately... any suggestions

To which I cheekily responded with, Olivia is doing the same thing. She just wants to flip over and crawl right off the table. I just talk to her rationally and explain that I need to change her diaper and she totally listens. Davis doesn't? And then I seriously told her that we sing a little song while I change her diaper (John Mayer's version of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin", if you must know) and she is usually content for a few seconds while I quickly change her diaper.

Well, folks, that was a month ago. Right now, it would take John Mayer, Tom Petty, and the New York City Philharmonic to distract her long enough for me to just get the diaper on. It may take an IMAX viewing of Avatar to get the onesie snapped and her pants on.

Obviously, I'm going somewhere with this, right? Yeah. This afternoon, Olivia's bottom starts stinking and so I throw her up on the changing table and pull her pants off. I give her her toy of choice - a bottle of her vitamins - and get to work as quickly as possible. I had no sooner gotten the stinky diaper off of her bottom until she twisted her abs and legs that I was holding with my left hand and flipped over. Poop started falling off of her butt, her left foot and right shin went directly into the poopy diaper and poop started raining from the sky. No Joke. It was all I could do to pull the onesie off of her and stand her up. I proceeded to rationally and calmly tell her that Olivia Cole Michelson, This is not Okay! To which she promptly replied with a piddle on the changer. And then she did a little jig. NO JOKE.

At that point, I pretty much knew the only way the poop was coming off was by force of major water power and so I rushed us into our bathroom. I sat her poop-covered self onto our floor and stripped my clothes off as quickly as I could. (I know that visual is ten times worse than the one where poop rained from the sky, so my apologies.) Seriously, as soon as my clothes were off all I could see was a trail of poop on the tile where she had been crawling and Olivia saw gold in that minefield. She went for the biggest pile she could find and swiped her hand in it. A half second longer and it would have been in her mouth, but my calm rational call scream of her name distracted her enough for me to pick her up and get her in the shower.

The poop washed away and it was my turn to get clean. I couldn't just stick her cold, wet body out on the wasteland, so I had to shower and cleanse myself while holding her. Not the easiest thing to do when she is wet and slippery and using my nipple like it's a dial on her toy radio. But, we made it.

And, I've even got some pictures to prove it.

YUCK!  And, that something came out of where the sun DON'T shine!

And, you're welcome. Because I considered leaving the diaper open.

But, how can I be mad at this beautiful little creature?!

If It Wasn't Painful, It Wouldn't Be Worth It

This afternoon, I spent about 50 minutes on the phone with my (wonderful) mother helping her figure out how to transfer pictures from her iPhoto to a USB (or a UBS as my mom called it a few times) device.  According to her, the pictures were all over the place - ranging from her desktop to some unknown G drive somewhere, tucked far away in the depths of the Mac.  We finally got it sorted out and the 100 or so pictures she wanted to print were safely stored on the USB device AND she even figured out how to delete some old school files off of it as well.  (Each time she deleted one, I heard a "YaY! IT'S GONE" which totally reminded me of the "Terget" lady from Saturday Night Live).

Anyway, after that was all resolved, I taught her how to email me pictures from her iPhoto and was immediately rewarded with about 20 pictures from Christmas and NYE that I didn't have on my camera.

So, for your viewing pleasure*, here are a few more pictures I wish I had been able to post in my "Christmas in Pictures" post last week!

I'm so glad my mom had this on her camera - the only pictures I have of Michele's visit are ones I KNOW she wouldn't want me to put up here.

And, can I just say that right now she is ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY in LOVE with her Papa!?  Like, doesn't want a thing to do with me when he is around.

NERDS!  WINGS NIGHT! NANA & POPPY!

And, look Mom, here are three more resources you can call!

Based on how they are dressed, I bet you can guess that they spent their NYE differently!

The sibs.  Next up, teaching Mom how to crop.  Or how to pick new places to pose for pictures.

Check out our pantry and our fridge!

Were we going to the same place?  Maybe David was just getting ready to do some push-ups with the Gold's Gym push-up handles stored on the fireplace hearth. And me?  Well, I was ready to be a Fly Girl.

**You didn't even have to work for them......

To Have and To Hold

Some babies have pacifiers or blankies or lovies that they just HAVE to have grasped in their little hands at all times. Wouldn't that be so cute if Olivia was like that? My friend Amy sent her an adorable little lamb lovie when she was born (because she knows how I like all my accoutrements to match) and Olivia sleeps with that at night and during naps. But, when she's outside her crib...there is ONE thing that she pretty much always has to have in her hands. It's not a lovie. It's not a blanket. It's not a pacifier. No, it's not even a little stuffed animal. Check out her obsession in the following pictures - and I PROMISE you, I didn't pose her in any of them.

Okay, so the Lypsyl chapstick is her true love, but Magnum's collar is a close second!

Gotta have it when she plays.

She even keeps ahold of it when she crawls.

She's discovering that it's not so easy to crawl with BOTH of them in her hands.

"I'll loan it to you...but only for a second!"

I love this one because you can see her TWO little teefers.

I guess if it isn't Magnum's dog collar it might as well be his leash.

Here she is teaching her new penguin friend about the joys of Lypsyl.

And, because her hair is starting to get a little unruly (as you can see in some of those pictures), here is a picture of her with one of her new barrettes. My friend Amy sent her a couple of them on Wednesday - the kitty cat in the first picture - and yep, we've already ordered four more! (And, yeah, Amy sends some pretty cool gifts!)

*And before anybody gets their panties in a bunch, David glued the cap onto the Lypsyl container so it can't come off in her mouth and we make sure we are watching her when she has it.

Christmas in Pictures

Too tired to blog, so imagine you were with us on Christmas through these pictures! If you actually were, we LOVED having you. If you weren't, we totally missed you, but you were with us in spirit.

I wrapped this one up special for Nana!

Just half of Santa's sleigh!

One of the best gifts ever!  'Twas the Night Before Christmas, narrated by Nana and Poppy!

Probably David's most favorite gift from Peter and Irma!

This kid LOVES going shopping in her new little shopping cart!

Starting traditions already - Olivia's first present from us is her ornament and Christmas pjs.

Stockings for our children.

I told you - she LOVES that shopping cart!

One of three dog calendars I made this year.  Peyton is such a cute subject!

Olivia loves this toy too - she loves to turn the plastic pages.

This is probably one of my all time favorite pictures EVER.  Olivia went walking almost every day with her Poppy and couldn't have been happier.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday.  I should resume normal blogging sometime soon when I recover from all the fun!