Playing hookie

Don't tell, but today I played hookie for the afternoon. This week I was summoned to Jury Duty and my group number got called in this morning so I went through the whole process of jury selection and I ended up not getting chosen. I was done by 11:30 a.m. and while I should have gone in to work for a half a day, I decided to take advantage of my paid jury duty leave and spend the afternoon with my two favorite people. :) As Iwas getting home Anna was waking up from her nap so I fed her and then the three of us went out to a lunch of pizza and salad. The company was great and the food was scrumptious! Dane is now at football practice and Anna and I spent a couple of hours horsing around at house and playing together. She is now down for her afternoon nap. She is such a riot! I attached a video of her and I just think she is so funny...they way she's so wobbly when crawling, how she gets so excited to see me and wants to just crawl all over me. I love that girl to pieces! I don't know if anyone else will get a kick out of the video like I did, but I thought I'd share anyways. :)



Jury duty was an interesting process. I'm actually a little bummed that I didn't get selected...I would have like to experience the whole day. I ended up being in District Court instead of Superior Court, so these cases weren't as "big". The guy on trial in this case was someone who got pulled over last year for suspected driving under the influence. He was pleading "not guilty". I'll admit that it probably would have been a tough one for me to be impartial about...I have a hard time showing any leniency for drunk driving. There were about 23 jurors sitting in the room and the judge asked us all some questions first and then both attorneys had their turn. The state was being represented by a younger gal who seemed like she was just getting started in her career. Then the defense attorney was a complete prick. He was straight out of a movie where he makes everyone feel intimidated and like they have to second guess what they're saying. He was an older guy that has probably been doing this for years and more than likely eats poor, young budding attorneys for lunch. I felt bad for the young girl. Anyway, I guess I'll never know how it turns out because I didn't get chosen as one of the six jurors. Oh well...it gives me a nice afternoon off when it's in the low-mid 80's out today! Whoo hoo!



Well, I'm going to try to upload this darn video and then take a nap while my bear is napping...my poor, tired eyes are feeling very droopy all of the sudden and this couch is feeling oh so snuggly. :)

p.s. There's been about two hours that have lapsed since I wrote this and published it, just to clear up any time indiscrepancies. :)

Happy Mama!

Anna had such a great day at daycare today and it is such a relief for me! Finally, we're getting this thing figured out. Here's some background:

Not that Anna has been having "bad" days at daycare, but she's been struggling with a few things which in turn has been making it kind of hard on Kathy and Brittany (the providers). For one, she has really been struggling with taking a bottle from Kathy...like she won't drink any. She pushes it away before it can even get to her mouth. This is at a time when she should be pretty hungry and I know would eat a lot if I were there nursing her. She's been pretty good about eating solids there, so at least something is getting her belly. Secondly, anytime Kathy or Brittany leave Anna's sight she would cry...cry until she could see them again. This made it difficult for them to get anything done for hte other babies. They have a great room which is the kitchen and family room that open to each other, so if Kathy went around the counter the kitchen and Anna couldn't see her, she would throw a fit. Not too much fun for them! For the most part though, Anna is very happy and plays well with the toys and other kids.

Well the last two days we have gotten GREAT reports. Today she ate a whole bottle from Kathy, and a few hours later ate a WHOLE container of sweet potatoes!! She went down for both naps the last two days without making a peep (usually she fusses for about five minutes and then falls asleep)! And she took a big stinky poop over there today and I didn't have to change the diaper! :) The biggest accomplishment was that she didn't freak out when they left the room...this is huge! I'm really hoping that this isn't just a fluke and she really is feeling more comfortable in her surroundings there and is settling in.

I'm really glad these last two weeks are behind us because they have been LONG. Dane has had a catering job Tues. thru Fri. the last two weeks and on those days he's had to drop Anna off at 10:30 and I pick her up at 5:00...so they've been long days for her to be there. Next week it will get back to normal of dropping her off around 1:00 and I'll pick her up still at 5:00. We are just so happy that she's does so great over there the past couple of days. Progress!

I had such a good evening tonight with Anna. Dane was at a different catering job tonight (he's been a busy boy!) so Anna and I got in some quality mommy/daughter time. Nothing special, but we just played upstairs on our bed rolling around and laughing and playing peek-a-boo and thinking it was the best thing in the world. They we came downstairs and played with some toys and mama's furry slippers which she thought was hilarious. I kept stomping them around her and then acted like they were coming to tickle her...this was apparently some of my best stuff because she was laughing like I've never heard before! It actually brought tears to my eyes because it was so sweet and I just became overwhelmed with love for my perfect daughter. I needed that time with her and was sad to see her bed time roll around. We read several books and had some boob and fell asleep in about 2.4 seconds. What a glorious night we had...it warmed my heart. :)

Recent happenings

I've got to admit that I know I'm not being as good as I would have hoped at keeping new posts on here, but frankly, I'm just wiped every night. Just the thought of every keystroke makes me need a nap. Why am I so tired you might be asking yourself? Maybe part of it has to do with the fact that my daughter thinks I'm a buffet at night and I don't have the heart to tell her no. Okay, that's not entirely true. She really isn't that bad...but she is still waking up twice. We had it down to once, but now it looks like she is starting to cut her two upper front teeth and if you have had a teething baby before, that's all that needs to be said about that. The poor girl is probably in a lot of pain and of course I want to do what I can to help her feel better and get back to sleep. And that means boob. It's taking a toll on me so one of these days we need to get back to only waking up once for a snack.

In other Anna news, this was her third day at her new daycare. We ended up being able to get in to an in-home daycare that our friends Alex and Lexa use for their 15 week old baby girl Leah. I really like the woman that runs it (she also has her daughter there who's about our age, and she has a sweet little one year old boy) and so far it's been going pretty good. I've gotten a call from her each day while I was at work and she was just looking for tips on getting her down for naps and questions about her schedule and things like that. I certainly don't mind the calls and it's just going to take a while for them to get to know Anna and vice versa. Anna is playing really good while she's there, but isn't sleeping really well there so far. I'm sure she'll feel more comfortable in the weeks to come. Most of the time, she will only be there from 1:00-5:00, but this week and next week, Tues. though Fri., she is there from 10:00-5:00 because Dane has a catering job all those days. Those longer days are a little bit tougher on her and she's a little more fussy, but not bad. We are sure happy to see her and get her home to play for a bit. And she is always super happy to see us too...today was the first day that she turned around and saw me and crawled right up to me and put her hands up on my legs....melt my heart! She is getting around pretty good now! :) Oh, by the way...little miss Anna turned 9 months old today! Where is the time going?

Our life is continuing to stay crazy busy between my job (which is still going really great) Dane's catering which is really busy this month, and his football. We are actually getting our first date night in a LONG time on Sunday. Anna is going to go to Nana and Papa's house for a few hours and we are going to go out to dinner and then bowling! I'm really exciting to finally get quality time with my hunny!

Here are some pictures of our beautiful Anna girl!

Looking so sweet and kissable as usual!

Beautiful with her blue bow...notice the football, too! :)

I'm so strong! I can pull myself up and get into everything now!!

Enjoying some nakey time after her bath...she LOVES being naked!

A nice butt crack shot for you all

We have a crawler!!

Anna started crawling yesterday!! She actually did it for the first time while our friend Courtney was watching her, but she was a good girl and did it for mommy and daddy when we got home...how adorable is she?! I am so excited that I finally figured out how to load the video from our camera...hopefully it actually works. She's not crawling all the time yet, but if we tempt her with something that she really wants (usually paper) then she'll show us her skills.

She has also learned how to sit up from a laying position. This might not sound too exciting, but it's really cute to watch her struggle up and then she looks so proud of herself! Our girl is growing up so fast! This weekend we are going to be busy baby proofing our house with outlet covers, baby gate shopping and all that other fun stuff. Good job Bear...mommy and daddy are so proud of you!

We're back...again

We finally get our laptop charged and ready to go with a new power cord and then our internet has not been working since last weekend! Grr...how frustrating!! The Comcast guy was at our house on Wednesday for about three hours and I think he ended up having to run brand new cables from the street (or wherever it comes from). Anyways, we have a fully charged computer and brand new internet, so we're all set.

Where to even start with an update on the past week? I just finished my second week at my new job and I'm still really liking it. There is A LOT of variety within my position, so I'm never bored doing the same thing over and over but that also means that I am completely overwhelmed trying to learn new processes and proceedures. I'm loving the people I work with and settling in very quickly with everyone.

We're still looking for a daycare for Anna during the afternoons and it's a little discouraging. We went to visit an in-home daycare yesterday and I think we're going to keep looking. The lady was probably in her 60's (or just a very weathered 50) and looked like she had been hugging trees her whole life. I doubt she was wearing a bra and if anybody in this world should be wearing one, it would be her. Not that there's anything wrong with an enormous chest, but when they're down to your knees, something needs to be done. My biggest concern is that where ever we leave Anna, I want her to be interacted with and not forgotten about in a corner. I asked this lady "so do you get down and play with the kids?" She looked at me for a minute and said "um, sometimes". Yeah right. I'm sure she sits at her computer all day looking up her geneology (what she was doing when we got there) or braiding hemp bracelets (just seems like somethign she would do). I don't know, the whole experience bums me out. I just want to tuck her in my pocket and carry her around with me all day. Do you think anyone would notice an Anna in my pocket?

My mom helped us out this week and watched Anna for us on Wednesday. She drove up Tuesday after work and had Wednesday off which worked out great. Anna was a doll for her and they had a great day together. My mom being the sweet woman that she is made a yummy dinner for us before she left and did some little things around the house that shows how thoughtful she is. Thank you Mom! Tomorrow we are heading over to Dane's parent's house to get some family time in. They just got back in town today from spending the whole summer in Alaska! Dane and Anna stopped by thier house today for a quick hello, but tomorrow we'll go over and spend some quality time catching up.

As we speak Dane is coaching thier first football game of the season...very exciting! They're "suppose to" beat this team tonight, so we'll see how it turns out. I still can't believe that football season is among us. Sigh. Sundays with my husband are going to be few and far between for the next four months.

Well hopefully I will be able to keep our blog more up to date now that everything is up and running again. I'll get some pictures posted over the weekend...our Anna bear seems to be getting cuter by the day!