Smug much?

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because there's a lot going on. Ha, listen to me - complaining about how busy I am even before the Holidays start. I'll be eating my words (and a whole lot of turkey) a week from now!

Things have been really fun around our house, since Isaac has started to:

- Crawl. He's still pretty slow, but gets around really well. It's fun to sit across the room and watch him crawl his way over to me.

- "Talk." He says "mama," although I'm fairly certain he has no idea what it means. It mostly happens when he's frustrated, so maybe he is trying to communicate something.

- Pull up to standing. I'm amazed at how good he is at this! I would have a picture, but the only time we've taken a photo of him pulling up, he was buck naked pulling up on the bathtub, to see the water running into it. I'm sure 15-year-old Isaac will appreciate my not posting a naked picture on public Internet domain.

It is really strange and unusual to feel so incredibly proud of my little man for achieving these things. They are of course totally normal baby developments. It would be an issue if he was not starting to do these things. But I have this complete sense of pride and joy when I see him do them, or demonstrate them for other people, or when I tell people what he's up to and learning. I'm sure this is just the beginning (wait until he WALKS and TALKS and BECOMES THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES), but I'm very smug about my super strong, genius baby.

From the Totally Unrelated Items category, here's a good post on parenthood: http://alphamom.com/your-life/postpartum/a-dozen-or-so-somewhat-shocking-revelations-about-motherhood/

I did #13 yesterday. Gross.

Fall Family Fun

1. Reeeelaaaaaaxed on Friday night.

2. Moscow Farmer's Market with a friend on Saturday morning. It's definitely "late Fall" now, because it was COLD and RAINY and the wares for sale have started to dwindle. Mostly gourds, apples, root veggies, and potatoes. But even the rain couldn't damper the fun and enthusiasm I feel about going to the market on Saturday mornings. This time we got to go with my friend Kathy.


3. Back home for a nap and some chores.


4. Idaho Vandal Football at the Kibbie Dome. They trounced New Mexico State and Isaac made it all the way to the 4th quarter before "losing it."


5. Jeremy gets home from working the game and I take off for Craft Night with the girls. I stayed out until 11:00 - which is scandalously late for me!


6. Church on Sunday morning - a huge blessing hearing about a mission trip to Ghana.


7. Back home for a nap and some laundry.


8. Coffee date with a girlfriend at Starbucks.


9. Went with above girlfriend to see the Eugene Ballet's performance of Cinderella. It was very good, but we had some distracting 4-year-old girls directly in front of us who could NOT sit for more than 10 minutes at a time. Ah well. They were pretty cute, decked out in princess Halloween costumes!


I'm loving this Fall so far.

I heart fall

It's been a long time since I posted here. But I'm at peace with that, because my five readers know that I'm busy. But I really enjoy documenting our little life, so here are some bullets about what's been going on with us lately:

* Isaac is so fun. Exhausting, stretching, character growing hard work, but SO FUN. Here is a fabulous post on motherhood written by These Little Moments. I think she sums up life with a little baby really well.

* Isaac wakes us up every day with a chorus of grunting and moaning combined with babbling. We always say "there's that gremlin again." This morning he was in his crib chatting to his stuffed gray kitty.

* Early fall has been glorious here on the Palouse. So pretty, with cool mornings, and warm, sunny afternoons. The leaves in our front yard are falling like crazy, just like every year, but the sweet neighbor girl raked them up yesterday for a nominal fee. She's very industrious.

* Jeremy got a new phone - an HTC Evo, and I'm quite jealous. (drama-queen warning) Also he's still trying to figure it out so I don't really talk to him anymore.

* Isaac has begun army-crawling. (see how I'm breaking up the baby talk with other things? I'm so well-rounded. ha.)

* The new job is good. My favorite thing about it is that at 4:30 every day, I just forget about it completely until 8:00 the next morning.

* Isaac had his first fever (brought on by teething, along with a nasty diaper rash. Thank you, Internet, for helping me stay calm and explaining symptoms) of 101.6, which only lasted a couple hours. Poor thing, but he seems to be all better now. I did enjoy the extra snuggling while it lasted!

* The Phillies are down 3-2 in the NLCS, which makes for extra-tense evenings in our house. :)

A Little Man

Today I found myself thinking - "Man, I sure wish my friends would update their blogs more often. I want to know what's going on with them." And then I realized how hypocritical that was, since I haven't posted in two weeks. Ah well.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll be posting more later, but I've started my new job (it's challenging and a really good fit for me), Isaac has started daycare (had a rough first week but is doing much better now) and life is chugging right along. Being a stay-at-home mom is tough, but so is being a working mom! Confirmed: motherhood in general is tough.

That being said, Isaac is an absolute doll. He has turned out to be a picky eater, but he's reluctantly eating pureed veggies, banana, avocado, sweet potato, and even a bite of cornbread. He's also very close to sitting up on his own, and can get on his hands and knees, and rock back and forth, like he'syearning to crawl. He absolutely adores Reggie, and laughs his head off when someone who wasn't paying attention to him looks at him real fast and smiles (including the dog).

Here is a video of Isaac sitting up and playing with blocks, like a bona-fide little boy. The video (which I'm sure will be excruciatingly boring to anyone who's not related to Isaac), is also starring Reggie the Rogue Beagle.

Feeling Domestic

Last week I had a day where I was feeling very domestic, so I was motivated to make couch pillow covers and cinnamon-swirl bread in one day. The result was some nice new pillows but I am now totally burnt out on being domestic, for at least a month. :)

So, first, the cinnamon bread. I wanted to make this recipe, and I did, but of course it didn't turn out as well as it did on the Pioneer Woman's website. It was yummy, and we made french toast with it the next day (yum). But it took a total of about SIX hours to make. I'm sorry, but no matter how good it was, I don't think I'll spend six hours on it again. Ah well.

I also decided that my couch pillows were in need of some attention since I have a (very sweet, cuddly, loving) Rogue Beagle who drools on them constantly. Gross, right? I even took a picture of the drool-covered maroon pillow to post on here, but decided it was too gross for public consumption. So I deleted it. You can thank me later.

I wanted some pillows that coordinated with the room's color scheme, had a pattern, and a light color. So off I went to the Joann Fabrics home decor section. I found this pattern and loved it, and bought 2.5 yards, which turned out to be exactly the right amount to cover four pillows. (How often does that happen??) I decided to make the covers removable, so I can take them off and wash them when they get covered in drool, instead of raking out the dough for a whole new set of couch pillows every 4-6 months. So I bought three buttons for each pillow. About four hours of sewing and stitching on buttons later, this is the result. I love them!

It's safe to say that Reggie likes them too.

Abundant Harvest

This year we planted 21 tomato plants. And when I say "we," I mean Jeremy, because all I did was to go crazy and buy too many tomato plants. Our garden is only about 5 ft by 15 ft, so the plants are inevitably planted too close together. Because of that, our soil has been stripped of its nutrients, so while we have tons of tomatoes growing and ripening, only about half of them are edible. The others are either rotten or have white sponge-like texture just inside the skin. Anyway, I LOVE homegrown tomatoes, so I am quite excited about this:

Beagle as Body Pillow

Since I renamed this blog after our Rogue Beagle, I figured I should take a break from all the baby pictures and feature Reggie for once.

A perfect Sunday afternoon - everybody napping except Jeremy (who doesn't believe in naps).