What's with the tongue?

This is how she looks a lot lately. It makes me smile. She even sometimes eats with her tongue sticking out.

Don't her eyes look beautiful in this picture? She was sick for a few days, she just had a little cold, but it made her eyes watery, and this picture turned out great.

Allie in the bath

I love how she looks up and smiles at nothing in particular, then bats her eyes.

P.S. If you haven't yet, make your choice on the poll, time's runnin' out. Looks like Lace is in the lead.

Today's adventure

There I was, minding my own business, sitting on the couch for a little break from cleaning my house. Then I heard a noise in the kitchen. I figured it was Tyler, although I thought he was at the computer.

Then he coughed. And he actually was at the computer.

Then I heard noises again in the kitchen.

Then I got creeped out, because it sounded like someone was in there . . . but they were making an aweful lot of noise for having just snuck in my back door . . . . I went to investigate. And nearly went into cardiac arrest as something black flew through the air at me.

This poor little guy was frantic, trying to find it's way out, flying around the lights like a moth, perching on the top of the bathroom door, and on Jared's pull-up bars. I was completely baffled about how he had gotten in the house. Yes, it's unusually warm for winter, but not warm enough to keep windows and doors open. I tried to get pictures but he was so scared he wouldn't hold still very long. We opened the doors and he flew right out, never to be seen again.

I looked at all the windows and doors, trying to solve the mystery, but they were all shut tight. Besides, they all have screens. Then it came to me; the dryer vent. I pulled out the dryer, and found that the hose was off the dryer a little bit, just enough to let a tiny creature through. (I also found a missing library book back there. Yay!) This is not the first time we've had bird/dryer vent incidents. Not even the second. In one of our apartments the duct going to the outside was so clogged I had the dryer venting into our house. It would fog up the windows, get lint on stuff, and make our sugar chunk together. Finally they cleaned it out and found a bird's nest and a dead bird in there. Nasty! Then when we moved here the dryer wouldn't vent again, and I insisted they clean it out, told them there was a nest in it. They told me I was crazy, they were actually quite rude and annoying, and I had quite the triumphant feeling when they found a nest in there after all. I asked the landlord today to put a screen over it. I'd actually prefer it if the birds stayed out of my house.

Good Big Brother

I never imagined my boys would be so enamored with Allie. Everyone told me that they would be, that their kids were when the baby came along, and I always thought, well that's your perfect kids, you do not know what odd children I live with. But happily I was wrong. Every day they are eager to hold her and play with her and tickle her and laugh at her, and not give her one moment of peace sometimes. And this kid Joey. On Saturday morning I woke up at 9:00, and went into Allie's room thinking it strange that she was still sleeping, since she almost always wakes up at 7:00. And she wasn't in bed. I wasn't alarmed, because I knew she was downstairs with her big brother, because this has happened before. I went down, and there she is sitting beside him on the couch with a collection of toys around her, happily playing while he played the Wii. And there was an empty bottle too. He'd gotten her up and made her a bottle and fed her and gave her toys and stuff to make her happy, all while I slept in on a Saturday morning. What a great kid. What a great big brother.

I need your opinion

When Allie was in the NICU they gave us little gifts every Monday. We got a soft little fleece blanket, some corn nuts and Dad's rootbeer for fathers day, and a red and white burp cloth with some bluberry hand sanitizer for the 4th of July. They are given by a volunteer support group called NICU Common Bonds, and it helps make it a little bit easier to get through that difficult time of having your baby in the hospital. I really appreciated the little gifts. They were so thoughtful. Now I want to give back, so I decided to make little ties for the baby boys, and headbands for the baby girls. But I can't decide what kind of headband people would like for their little girl, so I need your opinion. There are many, many options, so for this poll, ignore the flowers and bows and only look at the headband itself. All the headbands will be soft and comfortable, so just choose which one you think is the cutest.

Wide Skinny (it will be pink) Lace Medium width Pink elastic The next poll will be to decide what kind of embellishment will go with it. Everyone vote, even if you're a blog stalker, or someone who just stumbled upon this website. Every opinion counts. And feel free to leave comments or suggestions. I'm definitely open to those.

Thumb Sucker

She discovered her thumb awhile back, which I am thrilled about! No, I'm not worried about what we'll do when she's five. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, don't spoil the pleasure of the moment with those needless worries, silly people. :)
For one thing, she can soothe herself better, which means she goes to sleep easier, with less crying. For another, it's just really cute. Isn't it? It's getting harder to capture such moments in pictures because . . . What was that cool clicking sound??

That looks like a fun toy!

Camera lens cap tastes goodAnd so does the strap.

Playing with toes

It may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but I'm happy to see her playing with her feet. I worked hard to get her to do it, because she was so stiff and always wanted to stretch out and keep her legs straight. It's good for her physical development. Now she looks like other babies. I think it's cute when babies play with their feet.

She's no exception!

She can roll over sometimes, she's just not really interested in it. And she's getting really close to sitting on her own, which I'm glad about because it seems like she should be doing that by now.