Happy Thanksgiving!

I realize we're a day late, but no one was reading blogs yesterday anyway, right? We had a great early Thanksgiving dinner at our house with friends before Chris headed to work and then Pumpkin and I stopped by cousins Brad and Linda's for seconds. Pumpkin can't wait until next year when she can eat some turkey! Hope you all had a wonderful day!

Baby's big week

In the span of about a week, Pumpkin had her first Halloween, laughed for the first time and rolled over for the first time!

Here she is trying on her costume. What a cute elephant!

Trick-or-Treating at momma's office Halloween party.

My office party was on the Thursday before Halloween. Two days later, Pumpkin laughed - really laughed - for the first time. We were sitting on the porch swing in the backyard and Scoop started running all over the place and she was just cracking up. It was great. On Halloween Monday, there was more trick-or-treating, but only to two houses - our friends Chris and Carlie down the street and cousins Brad and Linda who recently moved into our 'hood. Then, on Wednesday Lila started rolling over! She first did it at daycare, but rolled again as soon as we got home. Check out video here. What a week!

Nursery additions

I never really wanted a theme for the baby's room, and I'm glad we didn't do one because I can now add things at random without worrying about whether or not they match the theme. Recently we added a couple "new" things that I think are fun ....

First, we took one of each color of paper lantern from our shower (after leaving them hanging over the back porch all summer) and hung them over the window. Pumpkin likes to look at them from her crib.


The next one was a little more work. I had seen on a blog one time an idea of buying used children's books and tearing out and framing some of the pages as decoration. I was going to go shopping at Goodwill for books, but then I remembered this favorite poem from when I was a kid.

I found the book used on Amazon for about $5. I then realized the poem was on three pages, so instead of tearing it out, I made color copies. (Which is nice, actually, because now the book is still intact.)


I bought frames on sale for $5 each at Michael's, and had mats cut in the color I wanted for about $10.


The entire project cost about $30 and I think it looks really cute, plus it has a personal touch. I like to read the poem to Pumpkin and show her the pictures.

Happy Halloween!

Three months!

Pumpkin turned three months on Saturday! She is smiling (and drooling) all the time. She grabs at her toys. She rolled onto her side, once. She's starting to notice things more, like Scoop and the other babies at daycare, and recognizing our voices and turning when she hears us talk. She loves to be sung to. She likes Moon River and Close to You a lot, but sometimes her mama's song selections are quite the random mix of Patsy Cline, Janis Joplin, Elvis, Motown, show tunes, Britney Spears, Vanilla Ice and theme songs from '80s sitcoms. She doesn't quite laugh yet, but she'll smile and coo at the same time which seems like a laugh, and sometimes she times it so that you wonder if she understands what you just said. She loves the patio swing and I think we might have to move it inside for the winter. She goes to sleep facing east, and she wakes up facing south from wiggling so much. She is basically the best thing ever. It's so amazing watching her learn so much every day.

Tailgating

Last weekend was the rivalry UNR-UNLV game and so we thought it would be fun to go hang out with our friends and take Pumpkin tailgating. We didn't stay for the game, which probably would have been a little too much for the little one, but the cannon did stay blue!

Here's Pumpkin all dressed and ready to root for the Pack!

Pumpkin and Momma

It was nice to see our friends Vickie and Kyle who have been living in Maryland and New Zealand, respectively, for the last two years. Kyle just returned stateside with a job in Colorado.

The girls

The fam

Seven

Seven years ago this weekend I moved to Yuma, Ariz., to start my first job as a reporter. Best decision I ever made.