Shealy Tales

Colors

2012-02-13T08:27:00.000-05:00

Gemma has been working hard learning her colors lately. Green is her strongest - she picked it up first, followed by red and yellow. Green is definitely her favorite color, and it's her go-to when she's not sure of a color. She leaves the final letter off a lot of her words right now and it's so cute because when you ask her to identify something green, she gets very excited and yells: "GREE!" Red is "rehhh" and yellow is "yeddow." We have been working with her a lot on identifying colors and she is doing great. She has a puzzle with 10 different colored fish on it (she has been able to match the fish correctly by color since Christmas but is just now learning the names of the colors) and yesterday she identified 7 of the 10 colors correctly on the first try. She knew green, red, yellow, white, black, pink, and purple but had a harder time with blue, brown, and orange. I am so proud of her for learning this already. It is so much fun when we are out somewhere and she sees a color she recognizes (usually "GREE!") and points it out excitedly to us. Next we need to start working hard on identifying shapes!

Gemma's Latest Weird Illness

2012-02-10T08:32:00.001-05:00

Around Thursday of last week, Gemma suddenly got hit with some sort of stomach bug. I went to get her Thursday morning only to discover that she had thrown up all over her crib. She did not vomit anymore but had awful diarrhea constantly for several days afterward. She finally seemed to be feeling much better when suddenly on Tuesday afternoon, Cy noticed that she had a rash on her neck and under her arms. Since she has broken out in hives from food allergies several times before, we assumed that this was more of the same, but we could not figure out anything different she might have eaten. The rash got worse throughout the evening, but we bathed her, put some hydrocortisone cream on the worst spots, gave her some ibuprofen for the discomfort and put her to bed thinking she would be looking much better in the morning.

When she woke up, though, she looked much worse. The rash was all over her stomach and back (it looked like one big blotch) and had spread to her face a bit - one of her eyes was almost swollen shut. We decided to take her in to the pediatrician. I had an OB appointment schedule for 9, and Nana was on her way to watch Gemma. I wanted to make sure Gemma was okay, so I called and canceled my appointment and then Nana ended up sort of caravaning with us as we went to the pediatrician and then afterward, in search of various medicines.

We were glad that we went ahead and took her in. Apparently this outbreak was not food-related, and was something different. The doctor said that she has erythema multiforme minor. It's basically a freak skin reaction that can be caused by an allergic reaction to a drug, or as a reaction to a virus. He thought it was caused by whatever GI thing she'd had the week before. There is a "major" form of this rash too that can be very serious, but he was sure that Gemma just has the minor version. He said there was not much we could do other than treat the itchiness/swelling of the rash with benadryl and hydrocortisone cream, and use Tylenol/ibuprofen to keep her fever under control, and wait for it to run its course. And then he told us that it could potentially take WEEKS to completely go away! Yikes! Poor little Gemma is miserable and we are miserable watching her swollen and itchy from head to toe - I really hope it does not take weeks to clear up.

We felt better after going to the doctor and starting her on some Benadryl and ibuprofen. However, the next morning when she got up (day 3), she looked even worse. Her face looked like this:

And her feet were so swollen that they had turned purple and she could barely walk without holding onto something. Throughout the day, the rash around her mouth kept getting worse and it was looking very streaky so I was starting to worry about infection. And her feet just kept swelling. So we decided to take her back in to the pediatrician just to be safe. They were able to squeeze us in at the very end of the day to see her regular doctor. He was not worried about her condition and did not want to put her on steroids because he wasn't convinced they would help. He did give us a bit more information though which was very helpful and reassuring. He said that bruising is very common with this and that she would probably have quite a bit of bruising because she was so swollen in places. Also, apparently the pattern of this rash is to start out as dots but then gradually grow more loopy. So what I thought was streaking was actually just the rash getting "loopy." And apparently it sort of migrates. So, she might have it on her chest and then a few hours later, that might be cleared up but it will show up on her face. Fun times.

Today is day 4, and Cy and I both felt like she was finally looking slightly better this morning:

Her face is still very red and blotchy but seems less swollen. Her feet and ankles are still purple but they too seem less swollen. Her hands are slightly less swollen. She still has splotches all over the rest of her body, but at this point, we are happy for whatever progress she is making toward getting better. And it's looking like another day of watching movies most of the day for us because all she wants to do is sit around and cry (and I don't blame her). Here's hoping that in a few more days she'll be feeling a bit more like herself.

Also, after just dealing with something fairly minor like this for even a few days, I feel so much sympathy for parents of chronically ill children (and of course, I feel for the kids too). I have a couple of friends with children who have very severe problems that require ongoing treatment and some really tough decisions to be made by the parents. We have been hurting for Gemma so much just watching her suffer through what is a relatively mild and (thankfully) temporary thing. I can't imagine going through what some other families are going through, and yet they are some of the strongest people I've met. This has made me thankful yet again that aside from allergies and being underweight, Gemma is overall very healthy. I am praying and hoping that her little brother will be born strong and healthy too.

Nautical Hobo Bag

2012-02-02T14:19:00.001-05:00

I saw this really cute nautical hobo bag on Forever 21's website.

Unfortunately I have made the mistake of ordering a bag from their site before and having it be just insanely HUGE. I like big bags (and I cannot lie) as much as the next person, but I'm talking I could have fit like three of Gemma in said bag. Also I love Forever 21's stuff but honestly it is extremely cheap (meaning the quality) so I decided not to pay $23 for a low quality bag when I could make it myself (and make it whatever size I wanted) for less than $10.

I hate using patterns so I found this great hobo bag tutorial online. I used the pattern and tutorial for the basic outline and instructions, then branched out on my own for the straps so that I could copy the idea of the Forever 21 bag. Here is what I ended up with:

I really like the size and style of the bag. I think overall it turned out pretty great especially since I was basically just piecing it together based on a picture I'd seen on the internet. The only thing I would change (and I may still redo it if I feel like it, but I am feeling pretty lazy these days, so I doubt it) is that I might make the red strap a bit longer and a bit narrower. And the best part? I think I paid about $6 total for the supplies and it took me maybe 2 hours to make.

I might get really crazy and try to make myself a matching pair of flat using this tutorial I came across on pinterest. Who knows? Could be awesome.

The Baby's Room is Painted! (finally)

2012-01-31T10:53:00.000-05:00

At long last, we (and by we I mean Cy) finally finished painting the baby's room. Part of the reason it took so long is because it used to be Gemma's room. Cy really wanted her to have the other room with the bigger closet, so he and his dad put in a chair rail in the [formerly purple] room, then painted it to look exactly like Gemma's old room. Once we got her all settled in her new room, Cy moved on to painting her old room mint green and tan for the new baby. The green is the same exact green we have in our living room and the tan is the same tan from our dining room but they happened to be a perfect match for the bedding stuff we had picked out for the baby so we went with it. (As you can see, although the room is painted, we still have a LOT left to do.)

The bedroom stuff I got of course did not come with a curtain for some reason so I am attempting to make one. I found a fabric I liked for the top but haven't found a good contrasting fabric for the bottom of the curtain yet. So right now the curtain is just a ruffle and a casing. I'm hoping to go to Hancock this weekend and see if I can find something to finish up the curtain. If not, I will probably just go with a solid green that matches the walls, or I am debating sacrificing one of the baby's sheets in the name of matching curtains. We will see how it turns out.

I'm hoping it will hang a bit more evenly once I get the rest of the curtain attached but I don't think it looks too bad, especially considering that I am just totally winging it. I sort of looked at the curtain in Gemma's room then went and got a piece of fabric, cut it up and sewed it and...yeah, that's pretty much it.

Baby Project #3: Boppy Cover #2

2012-01-27T06:46:00.000-05:00

I decided to buckle down and get some more sewing done for this baby. Yesterday I hit up Wal-Mart in search of fabric for a second Boppy cover. (I am not terribly pleased with the way the first one I made Velcros shut across the back - it is extremely hard to get the pillow itself in and out. Plus, it is always good to have an extra cover for when the first one gets thrown up on.)

Anyway, I ended up finding this super cute robot fabric. I debated about the striped fabric for the back since the main stripes were brown and the main color on the robot fabric was black (and my mom has ingrained in me for years that you can't mix brown and black), but I went with it anyway and I'm glad I did - I think it looks great.

I am much happier with how this cover turned out. I finished it way more quickly and with much less frustration than the first one I made (probably due in part to the learning curve). It is SO much easier to put on and off with the zipper across the top. And the piping on the first one was such a pain to do (having never done piping before), and even though it looked cute, I don't really miss it on this second one.

So without further ado, I give you Boppy cover #2 front view:

And Boppy cover #2 back view:

And BTW ("BTW--that means 'by the way'" - thank you, Damon Salvatore) Cy was really excited about the robots.

A Plethora of Goings-On

2012-01-25T07:34:00.001-05:00

Well I've arrived in the third trimester with this baby boy. We just passed 29 weeks yesterday and it is starting to feel real since it is getting so close now. Especially since we still have yet to do anything with his room, or look at a single piece of furniture, or car seat, etc. I am trying not to freak out because there is still time to get everything done (we are planning to do painting and furniture hunting this weekend) and Cy keeps reassuring me that if the baby is early and we are not ready, we do have everything in the house we need to take care of a baby - it just happens to be pink. But we can use any of it if we have to, until we are able to get something a little more gender appropriate. We *may* have decided on a name finally, too. I say "may" because it is actually the same name we had picked out a while back and then rejected when we found out that it was more popular of a name than we would like. In the meantime though, we've thrown out about a gazillion other names and I think we've decided just to go with what we originally picked, since it's pretty much the only name we both liked. And now that I've said all that, I'm not going to reveal what that name is: we are going to wait until the baby is born to tell anyone his name (it's bound to change again anyway).

Along with the third trimester came the dreaded glucose test. I failed the in-office test as expected. Since I was "borderline" with Gemma, I knew they were just going to end up making me do the diet and the finger pricks regardless of the outcome of the 3-hour blood draw. I didn't really want to sit through the 3-hour blood draw again (it's so unpleasant) especially since I knew how it would turn out, so I told my doctor (well, the midwife - my doctor is out on bed rest until her scheduled C-section on Feb. 3 - I lost my doctor to maternity leave when I was pregnant with Gemma too!) I would just go ahead and start the diet and finger pricks. I wasn't eating a lot of carbs to start with, and I cut back some more, but I think I'm probably still eating a bit more than what the doctor advised, and yet I'm struggling...because my sugars keep dropping too low. Yesterday they were 76, 74, 67, and then I finally got it up to 88 after dinner. After my post-lunch sugar of 67, I ended up feeling dizzy and awful most of yesterday due to low blood sugar (combined with the fact that I had exhausted myself doing home cleaning projects). I guess maybe I will try to add back in a bit more carbs today and see if that helps. I am not sure exactly what is going on or how to fix it but it does seem like I again tested as being diabetic in the office even though I'm more hypoglycemic than anything.

In other news, I've entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest again, this year with Lunatics and Lycanthropy. I wanted to enter the YA sci-fi novel I wrote this past year for NaNoWriMo, but I have a lot of work I want to do on it and didn't have enough time to get it quite where I wanted before showing it to an audience. I'm not taking the contest very seriously - I cobbled my entry together the day before the contest opened, but I figured it couldn't hurt to try. I'll find out around Feb. 23 if my pitch made it through the first round.

Anyway...that's what's been going on with me of late. Just juggling the tantrums of an almost two year old, getting ready for a new baby, and squeezing in a bit of writing here and there whenever I can. I'm trying to get as many house projects and as much writing done as I can before the baby boy arrives, because I know I won't have a second to spare after that!

Baby Project #2: Boppy Pillow Cover

2012-01-23T15:18:00.001-05:00

This seemed like it would be a fairly straightforward project at first, but of course it ended up being painful and frustrating, as I was forced to use a pattern. Patterns and I do not have a good relationship with one another. I find patterns...confusing. They BOTHER me. (I love how good it makes me feel when I screw something up when using a "Sewing for Dummies" pattern too - good times.) So this pillow cover will probably fall apart the first time I use or wash it, but it looks pretty cute:

Now that I've deciphered the pattern, I think I will make another one out of two contrasting fabrics. Thankfully the monkey flannel I used for the first one was like $1 a yard so if it falls apart my feelings won't be that hurt. And now that I've suffered through making one, I will use the pattern instructions for the second one more like guidelines than actual rules. I'm planning to ditch the piping and the Velcro for starters, and instead put a zipper across the top like a normal Boppy cover.

And just for the fun of it, I dropped about 3 movie/TV/pop culture references in the above post. Did either of my two readers catch them? ;)

Some Cute Videos of Gemma

2012-01-22T19:47:00.000-05:00

Gemma has been doing so much cute stuff lately and I have been trying to use my phone to capture it as much as possible. Of course, she seems to have a sixth sense that detects exactly when I am videotaping her and she then stops doing whatever it was that was so cute, or doesn't do it as enthusiastically. But after stalking her for quite a while, I was able to catch some of it.

For example, how she was helping her Daddy by drumming on the top of the paint cans while he was working in baby brother's room the other day (ignore my inane comments and just focus on the cuteness of the drumming):

Or how much she loves to clap, stomp, and shout "hooray" along with the song "If You're Happy and You Know It." (Of course in the best video footage I got, she refused to stomp, but I'll take what I can get.) She loves this song so much that sometimes after I put her down for a nap, I can hear her shouting "hooray" in her crib before she falls asleep.

Baby Project #1: Nursing Wrap

2012-01-13T14:41:00.001-05:00

Well this poor little guy may not have a name or a bedroom yet, but at least I'll be able to feed him in relative privacy when he decides to arrive.

I've been lazy all week and haven't felt like doing any sewing. Meanwhile, poor Cy has been slaving away painting chair rails and bedroom walls at night after Gemma goes to sleep. I decided it was time to give up my precious hours of reading while Gemma naps today to work on at least one sewing project for the baby. Using this tutorial I made a relatively easy and cute nursing wrap out of some blue and brown argyle fabric I snagged at Wal-Mart the other day. It's kind of bugging me the way it's gapping open at the top right now, but I didn't seriously sit down and try to use it or anything, so I think it will do the trick. And the one I already had was pink, which the little guy (more likely, his dad) probably wouldn't appreciate.

Anyway, here's how it turned out. Next project: Boppy cover.

Recent Sewing Projects

2012-01-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

I ended up sewing quite a few gifts for people for Christmas. I was a bit overwhelmed at the responsibility of making Christmas presents for people and also worried about getting them all done in time, but of course it turned out fine. And as far as I could tell, people seemed to like the things I made for them. I took some pictures so I could show off my gifts on here after everyone had received them. :)

For my sister-in-law Kelly, I made this car trash bag (her request):

For Lucy, the sweet little daughter of my college roomie, I made this corduroy skirt (I'm planning to make Gemma one for next year too - it's too cute!):

For my mom, a bed pocket and travel jewelry roll (both by request):

For my sister, a bed pocket (by request) - I tried to match the colors of her dorm room:

And for my sister's birthday, I made her a new case for her Kindle:

And then because I wanted a new Kindle case too, I made this one for me:

Now that Christmas is over, I will be hard at work sewing stuff for the arrival of the baby boy in April.

The 12+ Days of Christmas

2012-01-04T16:03:00.000-05:00

I titled this post as such because I really felt like our Christmas ended up spanning more than 12 days this year. I will try to keep the recap as brief as possible (but hey, I'm a writer by profession, so "brief" for me is relative).

On the 22nd, we left this beautiful, festive house behind...

...and drove up to my parents' house in Ellerbe, NC. That was the first half of our trip. We got smart this time though and invested in a DVD player for our car. I don't know why we didn't think of this before - Gemma was glued to the screen the whole time and didn't even seem to notice or care that we were in the car for about 20 hours over the course of about 5 days. (We are pretty sick of listening to Baby Mozart and Baby Beethoven by this point, but hey, it was better than listening to a crying 1 and a half year old.) The evening after we arrived in Ellerbe, my parents were nice enough to babysit Gemma so that Cy and I could go out on a double-date with Rachel and David. We had a delicious meal at Olive Garden and then very much enjoyed the new Sherlock Holmes movie. And then the next morning, it was back in the car for 4 more house until we arrived in Bedford, Virginia, at my grandparents' house. (Gemma also suddenly developed a horrible stomach bug while we traveling of course but I will not get into that.)

We spent Christmas Eve at my Uncle Jeff's house near Smith Mountain Lake. Uncle Jeff and Aunt Carolyn were super thoughtful and had rounded up tons of stuffed animals and musical toys for Gemma to play with. We ate the traditional Bradshaw Family Christmas Eve meal of ham and Marilee cheesy potatoes, then played some traditional Bradshaw Family Games (a "Wright Family Christmas" and our white elephant gift exchange), then exchanged some real presents. By the end of the evening, Gemma was exhausted. But she looked so cute in her little candy cane dress (I didn't make this one; my mom did):

We drove back to my grandparents' house and hurried to bed so Santa could come (I think Rachel was the most excited about this). The next morning, the living room was crammed with presents. Daddy helped Gemma open hers, and thought she was most excited about his M&M light saber (she learned to say the word "light" that day), she did pretty well opening presents and was very excited about her new slippers and her new pink Converse shoes.

We spent the afternoon at Uncle Jeff's again, where we enjoyed some stuffed pasta shells and salad and some more time with family.

Since we didn't know anything about any of the churches in the area (and the nursery situations), we didn't go to church on Christmas. We are planning to spend Christmas in Charleston next year (since we will have two small children) and hopefully we can focus more on the birth of Christ instead of just rushing around frantically like we did this year.

We headed back to Ellerbe the day after Christmas. We debated driving straight through to Charleston because we were ready to be home, but decided to give Gemma a break from the car. We should have just gone for it, because she refused to go to sleep that night (and this was not our first bad night during the trip), so we ended up just packing up the car around 9 pm and heading out. We got home at 1 am, climbed into our own, and those next 5-6 hours were the best sleep any of us had had in about 5 days.

A couple days later, Nana and Pops drove down and it was time for Christmas with the Shealys. (See what I mean about this 12+ days thing?) We had takeout from California Dreaming and opened presents at Wes and Kelly's house. My favorite part was giving Noah the giant Angry Bird we'd gotten him. He insisted that everyone call it a "fat" Angry Bird and he seemed very excited about it:

Nana and Pops gave Gemma and Liam each a Cozy Coupe car. It only had about a gazillion pieces, but we eventually got it put together and Gemma has enjoyed cruising around the house in it, ~~scratching up our hardwood floors~~.

While Nana and Pops were here, they stayed with Gemma and let us go see ANOTHER MOVIE! We couldn't believe it - we normally see about 1 or 2 movies a year, and here we were, seeing 2 in one week. Crazy! We went to see the new Mission Impossible movie. It was pretty fantastic. Then Nana and Pops went back home and we kicked off the new year with all of us getting sick with a head cold. Welcome to 2012.

Okay, so I wasn't exactly "brief," but a lot of this post was cute pictures of Gemma, so that's okay, right? And because she's so cute, here are just a couple more (I did a very chaotic photo shoot with her in her Christmas dress trying to get a good picture for all the grandparents):

Okay, I'm for real done now. So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Shealy family! We are so excited about 2012 because in just three more months we will get to meet our baby boy!

Best Reads of 2011

2012-01-03T09:11:00.000-05:00

I know I still need to post about Christmas, and I will, but that post will take longer, so for now: books!

Since I read between 100-200 books a year on average (although oddly enough, the number has been significantly lower the past two years since I've become a mom), I just picked a few of my favorites that I read in 2011. Most of them are of course YA fiction and out of the list below, three books really jumped out as my top three:

1. Across the Universe by Beth Revis (only 7 more days until book 2 releases - I am SO excited!) For me, this book pretty much had it all: space travel, dystopian society, teen romance. I LOVE this book.
2. Delirium by Lauren Oliver (sequel in February!)
3. Matched by Ally Condie (the sequel, Crossed was good too, but I still liked Matched better)

And in no particular order, these books were also very good:
The Girl in the Gatehouse by Julie Klassen
City of the Dead by T. L. Higley
The Orchid Affair by Lauren Willig
The Trylle Trilogy by Amanda Hocking
Her Royal Spyness (Lady Georgiana) series by Rhys Bowen
Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn
Dangerous to Know and A Crimson Warning by Tasha Alexander
The Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters - A Victorian-era female Egyptologist as the heroine? Yes please! I also love the subtle humor of these books.
Matched and Crossed by Ally Condie
Virtue by Amanda Hocking
The Girl Who Chased the Moon and the Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen
The House on Tradd Street, The Girl on Legare Street, and The Strangers on Montagu Street by Karen White (also On Folly Beach by Karen White)
Bloodlines by Richelle Mead - I am so glad that Richelle Mead decided to continue the world of Vampire Academy through this awesome spin-off series!
Wither by Lauren DeStefano
The Maze Runner by James Dashner
The Declaration, The Resistance, and The Legacy by Gemma Malley
The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
Enclave by Ann Aguirre

Worst/Most Disappointing Reads of 2011:
Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult - I think I am done with Jodi Picoult at this point - her books are more propaganda than plot these days
Beautiful Chaos by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl- this book wasn't bad, but it was just so weird and random that I was disappointed by it
The Scorpio Trials and The Death Cure by James Dashner - (see previous post on this)
The Returners by Gemma Malley - I loved her other books, but this really bored me. And the ending wasn't great.
Blood Red Road by Moira Young - I wrote a review of this that I still need to publish. This book got a lot of hype, but I just didn't love it. I liked the folksy feel of the first half but after that it just got kind of weird and I wasn't feeling it. Also I found the narrative style more distracting than anything.
The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian - I normally love Chris Bohjalian, and I was intrigued by the premise of this book so I kept reading, but the horrible ending completely ruined this book for me.
Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel - I'm not really a fan of zombies, but I read a sample of this book on my Kindle and thought it was really cool. Unfortunately, the first few chapters are the best - after that, the book just felt really slow and I had to struggle to finish it. I won't be reading the sequel.

And one more thought: I picked a fabulous book as my first read for the year. Just before we went on our road trip for Christmas, I sampled 5 books on my Kindle: When She Woke by Hillary Jordan, The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater, Dearly Departed by Lia Habel, Enclave by Ann Aguirre, and Divergent by Veronica Roth. Based on the samples, I chose the first 3 for my road trip. I wasn't that into the other two by the ends of the samples. I did eventually read the last 2 also, and ironically, they were the better books - they just got off to a slower start. Divergent had been my least favorite of the samples, but I had heard tons of good stuff about it, so I decided to give it a try. And I'm so glad I did. I could not put this book down. It was amazing. Although I'm pretty sure that by setting the bar so high on my first read of the year, most of the rest of my reads are going to be disappointing.

Hats

2011-12-15T08:33:00.001-05:00

Gemma has recently decided that she wants to wear a hat almost all the time. Unfortunately, her favorite hat is actually her swimsuit bottoms from this past summer:

She insists on wearing it on her head though, and she even insisted on wearing it when we went outside to play with some of the other kids on our street the other night. I was just a tad bit mortified when some of the neighbors were admiring her "hat" with its air-conditioning (leg holes). Yesterday while she was napping, I started wondering if she just loves hats in general right now or that particular "hat." So I scoured the internet for some tutorials on toddler hats to see what I could whip up from fabric I had lying around.

I ended up making her two hats and though she was reluctant to wear them at first, after I complimented her on how cute they looked, she has been wearing them pretty much nonstop although she seems to favor the green stretchy one over the pink fleece.

While looking for toddler hat tutorials, I saw a lot of instructions for converting an old ribbed shirt into a hat. I ended up deciding to sort of combine this tutorial with this one. I dug out an old tank top of mine that was too small and on which the hem had completely fallen out, and I cut a Gemma-head-sized rectangle. Then I quickly sewed it up into a hat. Since it was bright green, I decided to make it a bit more feminine (and less tank-top-looking) by [sloppily] stitching on a G I cut out of pink fleece. I think the end result turned out pretty cute (and she is no longer wearing her swimsuit bottoms on her head, so I'm counting it as a success):

Amidst my searching, I also stumbled across this tutorial on an easy fleece hat. Since I have a ton of hot pink fleece left over from the slippers I have yet to actually make for Gemma, I decided to give this one a try too. I like this one better than the green hat (though Gemma doesn't seem to share my opinion). It was super easy - it took me maybe 10-15 minutes to make, but I was really proud of it because I think it looks like a totally legit hat that you might buy in a store.

This was a really quick, fun project for me and it was great because I got to branch out into the world of stretch fabrics, fleece, and decorative stitching, none of which I'd really attempted before. And now I am going to hide Gemma's swimsuit bottoms in hopes that her new hats will fulfill all her current headwear needs. :)

Festive Kindle Case

2011-12-14T08:29:00.000-05:00

I have been sewing tons of stuff for other people lately as Christmas gifts. (I will post lots of pictures after Christmas so that I don't spoil any surprises!) I have the majority of my Christmas sewing done way sooner than I expected, so yesterday I decided to take a break from sewing other people presents and make myself a little something. I had just gotten a new case for my iPhone yesterday with a Christmas tree on it and I suddenly thought: It would be really cool if I had a festive Christmas case for my Kindle too. And then I realized that I could easily make myself one. I knew I had some scraps of a couple different kinds of Christmas fabric in the stash my mom had given me a few months back, so I rounded up a really cute red fabric with a pattern of Christmas cookies and candy all over it. Then I remembered that I had randomly bought a fat quarter of red and green striped fabric a while back for no reason either. I decided this would make cute lining for my case.

Then I started scouring the internet for a free tutorial on how to make a Kindle case. In case you are wondering, there are TONS of these available in a wide assortment of styles. I decided on this one and really liked it, although I was not thrilled with the instructions for how to finish the top edge of the inside pocket, so if I make another one I will have to figure out a better way to do it than the way suggested by the tutorial.

Anyway, I whipped it up in about 20 or 30 minutes yesterday while Gemma was glued to her new Baby Beethoven video. And except for the aforementioned top edge of the inside pocket, I was very pleased with how it turned out. (I might also cut the lining a bit smaller than the outer fabric if I made it again, as the lining tends to bunch up a bit inside.) It is so cute and very festive:

Another Whirlwind Weekend at the Lake

2011-12-13T18:32:00.003-05:00

We spent the past weekend at Cy's parents' house on Lake Murray again, this time to celebrate Christmas with the Smith and Conroy branches of the Shealy clan. It was a whirlwind trip - we drove up Saturday morning and arrived just in time for the festivities at lunch.

Pops helped Gemma scope out the Christmas tree

Liam and Gemma were pretty excited to see Hank

After lunch we exchanged some gifts - Gemma got a toddler band instrument set from Uncle Mike and Aunt Jean that she really seems to like.

Although it is debatable as to who likes it more: Gemma or her daddy. He taught himself the song "Soft Kitty" from the show Big Bang Theory and has been practicing constantly. He was quite proud of his accomplishment, as you can see:

Gemma also got a little baby doll in a stroller. She is pretty much obsessed with this little baby doll. She carries it around everywhere (she even insists on taking it to bed with her at night) and says "ba ba" constantly.

Uncle Mike and Aunt Jean also gave each of their nieces and nephews a painting by a local folk artist named Ernest Lee. Cy and I had never heard of Ernest Lee, but I was still pretty excited because our painting had a flamingo on it. (Not sure Cy was too thrilled but oh well.)

After the crowds left in the afternoon, we packed up the three little ones and headed out to Riverbanks Zoo to see the Christmas lights. It was a lot like the James Island County Park lights except you had to walk around so it was a lot more work and it was absolutely freezing. Poor little Gemma looked like the poor kid from A Christmas Story ("I can't put my arms down!") by the time we were through bundling her up:

Despite the hoards of people and the subzero temperatures, the lights at the zoo were very cool to see. Noah had a really good time--he kept freezing us with his magic wand and was doing all sorts of awesome dances to the Christmas music that was playing.

A YA Dystopian Novel of My Very Own!

2011-11-30T16:00:00.001-05:00

Today is the last day of November, which means the last day of another year of NaNoWriMo. Just in case anyone (meaning the one or two people who actually read this blog) needs a refresher, NaNoWriMo happens every year from Nov. 1-30, during which time aspiring novelists attempt to write an entire novel (well, more like a novella) of 50,000 words during a single month.

This was my sixth year participating in Nanowrimo, and I'm glad to announce that it was also my sixth year successfully completing a 50,000 word novel! I was pretty sure that this year was going to be the year I finally threw in the towel. I had been working far ahead of time on outlining a plot and creating character sketches this year, so I was ready to go. But maybe I was just a little bit too prepared - when I started writing on day 1, I was already bored with the plot and the characters I'd chosen. Not a good start. I decided that taking care of an 18 month old full time while being pregnant with a second baby might not be the best time to be undertaking a new novel. So I decided on day 1 to skip it this year.

But for some reason, I can never not do Nanowrimo. So I took a day off on day 2, but on day 3 I was back, and I decided to start all over, completely from scratch. I reset my word counter to 0, which was a bit intimidating, but then I managed to surprise myself by churning out 5,000 words that day, and I stayed ahead the whole rest of the way. I've been reading a ton of YA dystopian fiction lately, and I'd been jokingly saying that I needed to write a YA dystopian novel of my own. Well, no better time than the present, right?

So this year's novel ended up being very different from anything else I've written. I was able to combine my love of YA, my love of sci-fi, and my new-found love for dystopia into what turned out to be a really fun exercise in writing for me. Cy has been reading it as I've been writing and is almost done, so we'll see if my one reader thinks it's any good once he finishes.

And now for a spoiler. Or a synopsis, rather. I realize as I'm trying to condense my novel into a brief summary that it's the kind of plot that will appeal to only a very small niche of people. But it appealed to me, and I had more fun writing than I've had writing any of my Nano novels yet, I think. Anyway, without further ado, the novel is called Alter Nation, and it's set in a dystopian United States that is no longer the United States but instead, the Disjointed Territories of America (each territory ruled by a Moderator), the Union having been dissolved after a Second Civil War. The main character is a rising high school senior named Asher Aiken, and when the story opens, he's just stolen his dad's car and crashed it, paralyzing himself in the process. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) for him, his dad has booked him a trip to Alter Nation. Alter Nation is a privately funded research facility that spans the west coast of the Disjointed Territories. It is surrounded by a huge stone wall, behind which scientists have managed to harness alternate realities. They have the ability to pluck people from another reality and Switch them with someone in Asher's reality, swapping their consciousnesses so that someone like Asher can wake up as good as new in a healthy, whole version of his own body, and forget that his accident ever even happened. But the Switch doesn't turn out to be the perfect fix it's touted to be, and Asher of course meets a girl while he's waiting to be Switched, and then of course, he becomes aware of some sketchy practices happening behind closed doors at Alter Nation and ultimately has some tough moral decisions to make. Coming-of-age, identity, all the usual suspects as far as YA themes seem to pop up. That's basically the gist...if you're interested, you'll have to wait until I (hopefully) edit the novel and (hopefully) publish it to find out the rest! (I say hopefully because, if you will notice, I said that I have finished Nanowrimo 6 times. Out of the past 5 years, I have finished editing and self-published exactly 2 of those books!)

But like I said, I had a ton of fun writing it this year (despite my yearly bout of anger at the discrepancies between my word counter and the one on the Nanowrimo site) and I'm really glad I decided to go ahead and dive in. I'm also extremely relieved November is now over. I'm ready to take a break and read something that someone else has written instead of writing something myself!

Thanksgiving at Lake Murray

2011-11-27T09:38:00.001-05:00

After our trip to the ob/gyn on Wednesday morning, we swung back through West Ashley to pick up Gemma (she was having a blast playing with Noah and Liam at their house) and then we headed up to Cy's parents' brand new house on Lake Murray (near Lexington, SC) for Thanksgiving. The new house is gorgeous - it is full of windows and light and you can see the lake almost everywhere you look.

For example, here is the living room:

And this was by far Gemma's favorite spot in the house: the huge screened-in porch.

She got very upset any time we made her come back in, even when it was really cold out and her poor little nose was all red. She didn't care; all she wanted to do was play on the porch!

Anyway, we got there around lunchtime on Wednesday. We took a tour and then spent most of the day in the kitchen, preparing for the big Thanksgiving meal the next day. I made a pumpkin pie with homemade crust:

And hummus deviled eggs:

I had never made them before but they were super delicious! I also made corn spoonbread (which I neglected to take a picture of), and ended up making and helping out with quite a few other things on Thanksgiving Day. (There was a ton of food!)

This is the view we woke up to on Thanksgiving morning, a very nice start to our day:

Again, we spent most of the day in the kitchen getting ready. Then late that afternoon, Wes, Kelly, Noah, Liam, and Uncle Mike and Aunt Jean arrived. We enjoyed a very delicious Thanksgiving dinner together. Then, after dinner, chaos ensued, as is typical with three little ones. They had so much fun together the whole time we were there, and I was really impressed by how well they played together.

We also *attempted* to take some family photos on Thanksgiving (it didn't work out terribly well):

The day after Thanksgiving, we headed out early in the morning for a trip to the zoo. It was really nice - the weather felt great and the zoo was not very crowded. The kiddos seemed to enjoy it - Noah got to see a cool 3D dinosaur movie, and they all rode the carousel:

(Gemma actually didn't enjoy the carousel as much as it appears - I found out later that Cy was tickling her just so that she would be smiling for a picture!)

And of course we saw some animals (real, stone, stuffed, you name it). Gemma's favorite animal seemed to be the ostriches for some reason. I thought she was going to crawl through the fence to try to climb on one of them or something. Then, when we were ready to move on, she kept running back over to them - I finally had to pick her up and carry her off so we didn't get left behind.

Gemma saw this elephant in the gift shop and latched on to it. She has been dragging it everywhere ever since.

I was way too excited about this flamingo tree. Thank goodness I have a flamingo tree of my very own already.

We enjoyed our Thanksgiving lake/zoo trip very much. We headed back home yesterday morning, but before we left, I had a chance to walk out early that morning and snap a few photos of one last beautiful lake sunrise:

Baby Boy

2011-11-26T13:51:00.003-05:00

We kicked off our Thanksgiving trip by first making a stop at the ob/gyn Wednesday morning for our 20 week ultrasound. We were so excited to find out that we will be adding a little boy to the family sometime around April 10! (With Gemma, we weren't sure what we were looking for on the ultrasound, but this time around it was very obvious to us that it was a boy, before the technician even told us!) Everything looked fantastic on the ultrasound - the baby seems very healthy and doing great. Now we just have to buy a ton of blue stuff because everything we currently own is very pink!

Fun at Brittlebank Park

2011-11-22T07:33:00.000-05:00

The weather has been beautiful in Charleston the past few days, so yesterday afternoon Gemma and I accompanied Cy downtown while he got his haircut. We enjoyed a stroll up and down Broad Street, then when Cy was done, the three (well, four actually) of us headed over to Brittlebank Park. We had a really great time - Gemma enjoyed riding a dolphin and swinging on the swings (and staring at all the other kids).

Weekly Reading Roundup (Nov. 13-19)

2011-11-20T11:46:00.000-05:00

I decided this morning that I'm going to try to blog about books more. Usually, at the very end of the year, I'll do a blog post with a list of all my favorite reads from the past year. But I never do much in the way of actual reviews, or warn people to steer clear of all the bad books out there! So in the tradition of of a few favorite authors whose blogs I follow, I'm going to attempt to do a post each week about what I've read over the course of that week. A word of warning: if you're not a fan of YA lit, you probably don't even want to bother reading these posts, since that's mostly what I'm into these days. That disclaimer being said, here is my inaugural weekly reading roundup.

What I read this past week:

Crossed by Ally Condie -

This is the second in a trilogy that takes place in a dystopian America controlled by a government called the Society. The Society controls everything, including the person with whom you are Matched (the main premise for book 1). In this second installment, Cassia has rejected the strictures of Society and rejected her Match (sort of, she still waffles back and forth between her feelings for Ky and her feelings for Xander a little too much for my taste) and headed to the Outer Provinces in search of Ky, who has been sent away basically to die. This book is very different from the first one, mostly in tone and setting. The author is from Utah and she does an amazing job describing the canyons the characters travel through. The writing is beautiful and the story develops well, but I was a little disappointed with the ending. Spoiler alert: after spending the majority of the novel trying to find each other, Ky and Cassia are shipped off in different directions immediately upon their arrival once they finally reach the Resistance. That kind of bugged me, but what bugged me even more is that they both seemed totally okay with it. Having been right there with them on their journey, I wasn't really okay with it and thought they should have protested. I felt like the entire journey was rendered a little bit pointless. But that's my only real beef with the book. Overall, I really liked it. And since there's still a third installment to come, I'll try not to put too much stock in the ending of book 2 just yet.

Seizure by Kathy Reichs -

This is the second of a new YA series written by forensic anthropologist, murder mystery novelist, and producer/writer of Bones, Kathy Reichs. I really liked this book. I thought it was even better than the first in the series. This may be because the main plot centered around a search for a long-lost pirate treasure, buried somewhere near Charleston. I am a bit partial to all things pirate. But I truly thought she did a great job of setting up all the clues for the treasure hunt, and everything came together very cleverly and believably. The only thing I didn't like about this was that the dialogue between the teens seemed a bit contrived and kind of got on my nerves occasionally.

The Death Cure by James Dashner -

This is the final installment of the Maze Runner trilogy. This whole trilogy reminded me a lot of The Hunger Games. And like The Hunger Games, I was kind of bummed as the books got progressively less great. I loved the first book in this trilogy; I couldn't put it down. I was less into book 2 - it got really zombie apocalypse-esque which is just not my thing. I am only about halfway through book 3 and so far I'm struggling to even want to finish it. Right now I feel like it is just a ton of pointless action happening sporadically without much of a plot. Some of the main characters (ie, Teresa) have completely disappeared from the pages as well. I'm going to try to finish it but I'm not loving and don't anticipate that my opinion will change much. I strongly recommend book 1 but in my opinion, 2 and 3 aren't worth your time.

And now as I'm finishing this blog post, Cy just suggested that I should blog about watching Green Lantern last night. Speaking of things that aren't worth my time, suffice it to say that I thought Green Lantern was a horrible movie and I wish I could erase the memory of watching it from my brain because it was that bad.

Ready to Road Trip

2011-11-18T09:46:00.001-05:00

I've had the book One Yard Wonders checked out from the library for a couple of months now and I finally got around to making a few things out of it. This is an excellent book of simple sewing projects that are actually useful (I'm asking for my own copy for Christmas). Since we have a couple of road trips coming up for the holidays, I decided to tackle a few sewing projects this week that might be useful for road-tripping. Here is what I accomplished.

A pretty purple cover for my neck pillow in two contrasting fabrics:

This was not from the book; I made my own pattern. This was my second attempt at making a cover for my neck pillow - the first one I made was too small. This was also my first attempt at sewing a zipper which was rather painful. I think I ripped out more stitches than I actually sewed but I eventually finished it.

A trash bag for the car (this is from the book):

A bed pocket to hold my Kindle, books, etc. (also from book):

(My mom gave me a bunch of different colored camo fabric from her fabric stash recently. Hence the camo. Which means that most of the supplies for these projects were free! All I purchased was a zipper, a parachute buckle (for trash bag), pink bias tape for the bed pocket, and I made the neck pillow cover from two fat quarters I had purchased earlier for 97 cents each. So I made all of this for under $10!)

I'm all set for holiday road trips now!

Halloween and other things

2011-11-14T15:52:00.000-05:00

Wow I cannot believe it has been two whole months since I've blogged. That makes me kind of sad, but it's not without reason. There has been a lot going on. Mostly a lot of sickness...because we are expecting baby #2! I am currently 19 weeks (we will be doing our anatomy ultrasound next week and hopefully seeing a very healthy baby and if things go well, finding out the gender!) and I have been super sick pretty much the whole time, until about a week or so ago, when things have finally started to ease off. The baby is due April 10, which seems sooooooo far away right now. But enough about that - hopefully there will be a post with more good news about that next week.

For now, I at least wanted to post some belated Halloween photos of the cutest little cowgirl around:

We had a pretty low-key Halloween. Rachel came over after class and we picked up some pizzas and the traditional Brown family Halloween donuts. Then we passed out candy for a bit and chased Gemma around the yard since she was getting very excited but didn't really know what was going on. We had decided she was probably still too young for trick-or-treating this year. Then we turned off the light and followed the Shealy family tradition of going to bed early. (And that's not a Halloween-specific tradition; it's pretty much every day.)

An update on Gemma: she had her 18 month checkup last week and was doing well. She still weighed only 17 lbs., 5 oz. (1.66 percentile), her weight was the 18th(ish) percentile, and her head was a whopping 84th percentile, so maybe she will be very thin and also very smart! Go Gemma! ;) The pediatrician made the statement that he had never seen a child be in the negative on a growth chart. I told him to prepare himself to see this for the first time when we brought Gemma back in May for her 2 year checkup. As far as her food allergies, he said that around age 2 we will start trying milk products and eggs again and that she can try some nut-based things at that point too. And by that point things will be super crazy because Gemma will be a brand-new big sister!

In other news, Nanowrimo is in full swing. I started a very well prepared, carefully outlined, and thoughtfully plotted novel on Nov. 1. By Nov. 2, I was already bored with it (the pitfall of overplanning I guess) and didn't write anything. I decided that this might finally be the year I didn't finish. Then on Nov. 3, I dove back in with another, very sketchy plot that I'd just come up with (no planning involved whatsoever), but managed to churn out 5,000 words in one day. Right now, I'm on target with my word count, but the ideas are coming more slowly, and at about halfway through, I'm fast approaching that point where I plateau and it starts to feel like a chore. But I've never given up yet (this is my 6th year), so I think I will be able to power through.

Halloween Pillowcase Dresses

2011-09-13T14:53:00.000-04:00

I had seen a super cute tutorial for making Halloween pillowcase dresses and decided to make a couple for Gemma. I hit up Goodwill and scored a few pillowcases for $0.99 each (who has orange pillowcases anyway? Not being Clemson fans, we certainly didn't at our house!). I decided to tackle a pumpkin dress first. When I started the project, I didn't stop to consider that a full-sized pillowcase works pretty well on a 5 or 6 year old (and that's a normal sized kid, not a Shealy) so it would most likely be huge on Gemma. I ended up cutting off about half of the pillowcase so it is fine lengthwise, but is pretty baggy on the sides. The good news is that she will probably be able to wear it for a couple more years. Even though the pillowcase ended up not being ideal, the dress still looked really cute, and she looked so cute in it. She actually got very excited when I put it on her, and was running around the house smiling like crazy. (Her daddy had to hold her by the arms for me to snap a picture.)

I wanted to make a ghost dress as well, and decided to tweak the project a bit so that it would be a better fit for her than the pumpkin dress. I decided to combine this ghost dress tutorial with this fat quarter dress tutorial that I used for a dress I previously made. This worked so much better! I also wanted to spice it up and make it a little girlier than the pumpkin dress. So I picked out two matching quarters in a very pretty white fabric with a faint gray floral pattern. I wanted black ribbon with pink polka dots for the ties and the hem, but all I could find was this pink with black polka dots, which ended up looking really cute. I know I may be a bit biased, but she's pretty much the cutest ghost ever.

Latest Sewing Projects

2011-09-06T09:31:00.000-04:00

Even though I've been sick, I've still been sewing like a fiend. I am so glad I decided to learn how to sew, because I am now addicted to all things sewing-related.

I love making pillowcases because they are super easy to make, and so cute and fun. This past week, I made this Halloween pillowcase for Cy:

And this Halloween pillowcase for myself:

A few weeks ago, I made this purse out of the cute girly skull fabric I bought. The purse didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped, but now I know what to do differently next time to make it better.

But yesterday I completed the project that I am most proud of so far. Using two fat quarters that I got for about $1 each and a great free tutorial I found here, I made Gemma this super-cute pillowcase-style dress. I really liked the look of using contrasting fabric for the front and back. It was very easy, cheap, and looks so cute! I can't wait to make more!

Playing catch-up...yet again

2011-09-05T18:25:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, we moved my sister in for her freshman year at Charleston Southern University. There was a lot of craziness ensuing during move-in day, including a dude dressed up like a Sonic tater tot:

Despite such distractions, we eventually got Rachel all moved in. Even Gemma helped:

Gemma also showed her school spirit:

We are already really enjoying having Rachel nearby. We even got to break her in with a "hurricane party" her first weekend here. When CSU canceled Friday afternoon classes for Irene, Rachel came to our house and we bunkered down for a weekend filled with board games and TV.

And now for an update on Gemma. We took her for her 15 month checkup on September 1 (although she is almost 16 months) and she did great. She finally broke 17 pounds (!) - she was at 17 lbs. 5 oz., putting her in the whopping 3rd percentile for weight! (Again we were surprised she was still even on the chart.) She was 29 inches tall (10th percentile) and her head was in the 46th-ish percentile. She had to have 3 shots and cried very hard at first but did well the rest of the day. She had met all of the developmental milestones and is just doing more and more stuff every day. For example, stuff like this:

And since we have spent our Labor Day weekend with all three of us suffering from sore throats and our first Fall cold, there is nothing exciting to post about that.

Also, I took this kind of cool picture of a peacock

2011-08-14T12:38:00.000-04:00

It was lounging around in the slave cemetery at Middleton Place. I wish I could have gotten a picture of it with its tail spread, but it was still very vibrant and beautiful:

Downloading from brain...40% complete

2011-08-12T19:59:00.003-04:00

I've been very bad about keeping up with this blog lately (although I'm not sure if anyone even reads it anyway), so I'm going to dump a bunch of stuff from the past couple of weeks all into this one post (although I'm sure I'll only remember to cover about 40% of what's happened recently, hence the title).

Anyway...

In the past couple of weeks, it seems like Gemma has just all of a sudden grown up. She has gotten much taller, and is learning tons of new stuff every day. She has suddenly become interested in putting puzzles together (she can put the fish, turtle, and crab from her fish bowl puzzle all in the right spots), putting shapes into the right holes in her refrigerator, and she figured out that she could sit on her Disney princess toy and use her feet to ride around, so she does that all the time now:

She has also started saying "Hi," but ironically, she thinks she has to hold something up to her ear (like a phone) whenever she says it. She first started doing this with my phone and Cy's iPod after watching us talk on them. Now she will hold up stuffed animals, food, whatever she has, to her ear and say "Hi." Hopefully she will soon figure out that she can just say "hi" without using a "phone," but it is still super cute:

Gemma was officially 15 months old on August 7. And yesterday, August 11, she finally got serious about walking. Yesterday morning, she walked halfway across the living room on her own a few times but then last night, she made it all the way across the room once and after that, she was pretty much off and running.

She is such a little monkey too. She climbs in and on everything. For example, I was in the kitchen cooking dinner one night and looked over and she had climbed all the way up the stairs in about half a second:

Or yesterday, when she crawled under a bar stool and then stood up and trapped herself inside so that I had to figure out how to extract her carefully without whacking her in the head:

Or the way she frequently decides to stand on top of her Disney Princess toy instead of riding or pushing it:

But enough about Gemma. Two weeks ago, my family came to visit. Cy was able to get a Middleton Place pass from Blackbaud, so we went there one day. Rachel and I of course took every opportunity we could to goof around, as you can see in the pictures below.

We also did a lot of shopping to get my sister ready for college. I think Rachel is now as addicted to Forever 21 as I am. And she will be moving to Charleston next week!

On Friday of last week, my mother-in-law was in town babysitting my nephews so we took all three kids to the aquarium. It was shark week, which I was pretty excited about, until I realized that the only thing the aquarium did special for shark week was the giant inflatable shark above the entrance. Bummer. We did see some pelicans close up though, which was kind of cool I guess.

Friday was also mine and Cy's fifth wedding anniversary. We had big plans for the weekend but of course nothing went as planned. We headed over to Mt. Pleasant on Saturday and got lunch at Atlanta Bread Company. Then we finally went to see Harry Potter 7.2. We were so excited and were sitting there enjoying the movie when, right as Harry ran off to search for the lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw, the movie suddenly stopped. Bummer. We sat there for about 20 minutes and they did finally get it going again and we got to see the rest. It was sooo good. And we were soooo excited to see it finally:

Then we went to the Seaside Inn on Isle of Palms, where we had planned to spend the night. We had booked a king sized ocean view room. When we got there, they had messed up our reservation and put us in the wrong room and they wanted to put us in a room right beside the Wind Jammer where a really loud band was already playing. So we decided just to spend the night at home instead.

We had dinner at Fonduely Yours, and it was super delicious. Here we are in a very dark booth waiting for our food to cook.

Even though things didn't go as planned, we still really enjoyed our anniversary weekend. Until Sunday, when Cy got hit with some sort of stomach bug. I got hit by about Monday or Tuesday, and we both had it most of the week. It was extremely unpleasant, but we did enjoy lying on the couch watching a sci-fi TV marathon that included Falling Skies, Alphas, and Stargate Atlantis.

What else? A sewing update: while my mom was here, she showed me how to make pillowcases. They are really easy to make and so fun. I made myself two pillowcases - one with pink cheetah print high heels and one with cupcakes.

Then Cy really wanted one too so I made him a blue one with owls on it.

And by now this blog post is getting excessively long, so I'm going to quit, but I'm sure there is a lot of stuff I left out. But it's hard to find time to sit down and collect your thoughts when you are chasing a little one around all day long!

Baby Bieber Fever

2011-07-27T09:13:00.000-04:00

Since it's been pouring rain incessantly for about three days now, Gemma and I were going a little crazy cooped up inside the house and decided to hit up the mall for a bit yesterday. It was a short trip because Gemma was really cranky, but she did perk up when we suddenly spotted Justin Bieber!

Okay, so it wasn't really the Biebs; it was just a cardboard cutout of him. But we still had fun getting our pictures taken with him.

Gemma in particular seemed a little too excited to have her picture taken with him. I think she has caught the baby Bieber Fever!

A Side of Spam with Your Blog Post, Anyone?

2011-07-26T17:48:00.000-04:00

Anyone else having spammy links suddenly show up in their blog posts? Links that you definitely did not put in, and apparently cannot remove? For the record, I am certainly NOT advocating any of the ridiculous celebrity fad diets my post below is now linked to suddenly. I truly hope this is just a fluke or some sort of hacking that Blogger will soon correct, otherwise they will be seeing the end of my posting days on their site!

Weekend in Review

2011-07-25T10:17:00.002-04:00

We had an exceptionally fun weekend this past weekend. It started off great on Friday night with a spontaneous date night. Nana was in town watching Noah and Liam for a few days, and she and Wes offered to watch Gemma Friday night so Cy and I could go out to eat. I don't think we've had an opportunity to go out alone since our babysitter (Nana) moved a couple months ago. (We have an overnight getaway planned for our 5th anniversary in a couple of weeks that we are very excited about.) We went to Outback and had a really great time getting to chat and actually focus on each other without having to give Gemma our full attention the whole time. Then we stopped by Barnes and Noble to pick up a couple of their delicious Cheesecake Factory-made desserts to take home.

On Saturday, we had more deliciousness in the form of Bojangles breakfast and homemade pizza for lunch (Greek pizza with spinach, feta, red pepper, and black olives on my half; pepperoni on Cy's half)...did I mention that I really need to get back on the wagon with my low-carb diet this week? We took an early morning trip to the pool to play with Gemma, and enjoyed having the entire pool to ourselves. Nana picked up Chick-Fil-A for her and the boys and they came over around lunch time to play for a bit. Gemma and Liam and Cy all had a fabulous time tackling each other in the living room. We continued our Harry Potter movie marathon with Goblet of Fire, Order of the Phoenix, and part of Half-Blood Prince. We ate some delicious fresh watermelon that was given to us:

Cy enjoyed playing Halo in his official new XBox pants (a surprise gift from me):

On Sunday, we were running late but still managed to make it to church. And wow, I was glad that we did. The sermon was definitely one I needed to hear. The title was "Women We Should Esteem" and the scripture was from 1 Timothy 5:3-10. Buster talked about the things that our culture tells us we should esteem in women: expensive fashion, and looking young, thin, and beautiful, etc. and how wrong this is. He then outlined 7 things that the passage showed we should esteem in women:
1 - Women who put their hope in God
2 - Women who have been faithful to their husbands - and he talked about how this didn't just mean morally, but that it also meant respecting and building up your husband
3 - Women who bring up children in the Lord - and not just their own children
4 - Women who show hospitality
5 - Women who wash the feet of the saints or bless other believers through service
6 - Women who help those in trouble or relieve the afflicted
7 - Women who devote themselves to doing all kinds of good deeds
This sermon spoke to me because (as I've written about before) my biggest personal struggle is with obsessing over my weight, and hating and refusing to accept my body and the way I look. I have tried all sorts of diets and forms of exercise but I am at a point where it is extremely difficult for me to lose weight. And I hate myself for it. But this is not a new problem for me - at my smallest, I wore a size 2 or a size 0, and even then, I hated myself and thought I needed to lose weight. It is something I have struggled with for years, and I just can't seem to keep my head on straight about it, and if I am not careful, I let my constant obsession with it completely overtake my life. Buster's words on Sunday and the words straight from Scripture were a reality check for me (once again) that I am spending way too much time focusing on something completely superficial and that is pulling me farther and farther away from Christ. Some days, worrying over my weight is literally all I can think about. And I don't want to be that person. I want to be the type of woman Buster described in his sermon. I want to be expending my energy ministering to others instead of being completely wrapped up in myself the way I have been lately. And I'm not saying that just by boldly declaring this, I'll never fall back into my old patterns again. It's something I have to take day by day, minute by minute even. But hopefully I can keep this sermon in the front of my mind and fall back on its reassurances when I am tempted to indulge in my self-centered ways.

Anyway...I didn't intend for this blog post to turn into a sermon of its own, but that was a very important part of our weekend and it was on my heart to share.

On a lighter note, we took a fun trip downtown on Sunday afternoon to check out the fairly new Forever21 store that opened in the old Saks Fifth Avenue building. I really really liked this store, but found it a bit overwhelming because there were SOOOOO many things to look at in there! I ended up getting a dress and two shirts after about an hour of just roaming around with a glazed look on my face. This may be my new go-to store now though. They have such cute, trendy clothes and so inexpensive! I paid around $50 for the dress and 2 shirts:

We finished up our downtown trip with a quick stop at Robot Candy Co., where I scored some strawberry puff candy that I loved as a kid but haven't seen anywhere in ages.

Our family loves our weekends together, but it really makes Monday that much more of a bummer when Cy has to go back to work and I have to start on the week's chores!

Sew, a needle pulling thread

2011-07-25T09:39:00.000-04:00

I randomly decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to learn how to sew. Actually, that I wanted to teach myself how to sew. My house is populated by people who will always need everything hemmed due to their shortness, and I didn't even know how to sew a button back on, let alone hem a pair of pants. So I borrowed a sewing machine from my mother-in-law, went to Wal-Mart and got a couple yards of fabric off the $1.50/yd. clearance table, and got some sort of skirt pattern that claimed it was an easy, learn-to-sew pattern (this turned out to be a lie).

Things started off well - from years of experience watching/helping my mom sew stuff (she is an extremely talented seamstress), I knew a few basics and was able to get the fabric cut. Then after much time puzzling over the user manual for the sewing machine (who writes these things, anyway?) I got the machine threaded. I started by sewing the side seams of the skirt. That was easy and went surprisingly well.

Then it was time to do the separate piece elastic waistband. (Remember how I said the pattern people lied about the level of difficulty?) The way the instructions suggested I complete this task made absolutely no sense to me so I ended up calling my mom and we hashed out a few ideas and then came up with a method of our own which worked way better.

Then it was time for the hem. Well, since I had followed the instructions and pulled the elastic waist in and saved the hem for last, there was too much excess material at the bottom of the skirt and so the material kept bunching up and pulling. Grr. I called my mom again and we brainstormed a few more ideas. We settled on one, and I began sewing again. I was about halfway through the hem thinking that things were going really well again when I noticed that my bobbin had completely run out of thread and I was not actually stitching the hem but instead just poking a line of holes into the fabric. Grr. Then of course, I could not for the life of me get the stupid sewing machine threaded correctly again. I still don't know what the deal is but eventually I got it sort of working and just finished up the hem not really caring at this point what it looked like.

In the end, I finished the skirt, though it is too big and the stitching is not great so I doubt I will probably wear it but the point was sewing practice and not cutting-edge fashion anyway:

I have gotten several other very cute fabrics and am planning to try a bag next (with a Sewing For Dummies pattern this time - hopefully that will be easier than whatever nonsensical pattern I used for that skirt!):

If I ever feel brave enough, I'd love to make something cute for Gemma out of the pink cowgirl fabric and this green owl fabric:

4th of July and other stuff

2011-07-08T09:02:00.000-04:00

We spent (part of) the long Independence Day weekend with Cy's family on Lake Murray. Gemma hasn't been sleeping well away from home lately, so we made it a short trip: we drove up Saturday morning during Gemma's morning nap time, then drove back Sunday afternoon during Gemma's afternoon nap time. Even though it was a quick trip, we had a lot of fun.

We were able to take a tour of the new house (we hadn't seen it since they were laying the foundation) and finally get a feel for the layout. It is going to be a really nice house!

We of course enjoyed splashing around in the lake some, and had a highly entertaining dinner at a nearby place called Spinner's. I say highly entertaining because there was an extremely sketchy local band named Cash Money belting out old favorites such as "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" in a truly awful falsetto. Also Gemma was removing all my French fries from my basket one at a time and dropping them in my purse (I found a petrified French fry buried at the bottom of my purse a day or two later):

After dinner, we had some cookie cake and presents for Cy. He was serenaded with "Happy Birthday" several times during the weekend. On Saturday night, we dragged some chairs to the new house to try to watch the fireworks. We ended up not being able to see at all through the trees, so gave up pretty fast and went to bed. Gemma had fun playing with Noah and Liam while we were there too.

We spent the actual 4th of July (Cy's birthday) just taking it easy at home. After years of having his birthday on the 4th, Cy pretty much hates all 4th-related activities (such as fireworks), so we generally try to avoid them. He said that the relaxing day at home was perfect and just what he wanted. Gemma got all decked out in a cute patriotic halter dress for the special day (I finally got an iPhone and I am addicted to Instagram!):

In other news, Gemma was officially 14 months old as of yesterday and wow is she growing up fast. She is learning tons of new stuff every day. For example, I haven't been feeling well (as an aside: I left my bottle of allergy pills on the table at Spinner's after giving them to Gemma to play with during dinner and have now developed a gross cold/sinus thing) so instead of kissing Gemma when she went down for her nap, I blew her a kiss instead. Without hesitation, she put her own little hand to her mouth and blew me a kiss back! It was so sweet! She has also gotten very good at finding your nose if you ask her to. She still is not walking but I know that it will happen when she is ready.

I took this growth picture of her last night right after she finished her bath (hence the crazy hair). Apparently the bath got her really wound up, so I had to snap this picture very quickly in between her rocking in the chair and throwing her giraffe on the floor. Good times.

If I were a Pretty Little Liar...

2011-07-01T08:51:00.000-04:00

...I would totally be wearing this necklace:

or this pin:

among other absolutely gorgeous fashionable things. I would LOVE to have either of these but I am a few months too late and a lot of dollars short.

Style Watch: Peacock Accessories

2011-06-29T19:28:00.000-04:00

I have been seeing peacock-inspired accessories everywhere of late and I'm pretty excited about it. I've always been a fan of stuff with peacocks on it, so now I'm able to pull out some of my old stuff and still look trendy. Like this bag I got somewhere (maybe Target?) a few years back:

Or this bracelet I found at Handpicked a year or two ago:

And of course, the peacock trend is an opportunity for me to snag a few new accessories. Like this necklace I got at Handpicked just a few weeks ago:

Or these fantastic earrings my sister bought for me on one of our recent shopping sprees:

And I actually have one or two more peacocky things, but I can't wear them all at once! I've also been seeing a lot of owl stuff which is cute too. And can I just say that I would love to own every piece of jewelry from the show Pretty Little Liars? I'm not always a fan of their outfits, but their jewelry is just fabulous!

Gemma was 13 months old...

2011-06-20T12:33:00.000-04:00

a couple weeks ago...but I was slack and didn't bother taking a picture or doing any sort of write-up. Today I decided not to let the entire month go by without taking a "growth" photo so I got her giraffe out and she got into the spirit of things by waving my debit card at the camera. (I had been cleaning out my wallet and found an old expired debit card; I don't usually let her just play with my credit cards.) I thought a picture of her waving my card around pretty much summed up life in our house these days:

If you look closely in the picture, you can see two of her brand-new top teeth. We have had a rough few weeks as Gemma decided to pop out not one, not two, or even three, but four top teeth all at once. And it seems like she is working on some more. She got her first two together right at 6 months and hadn't gotten any more since; now it looks as if she's going to get an entire mouthful all at once. Needless to say, the nights at our house have been less than pleasant of late. Gemma began sleeping through the night pretty quickly after she was born, and when she did wake up, she would simply eat and then go right back to sleep (usually she would fall asleep while eating). She has always been a great sleeper, but off and on for the past couple of weeks, she has been waking up and staying awake and crying for hours at a time. We honestly have never had to deal with this before so it has been kind of difficult. It seems like everyone else with kids her age is finally getting them to the point where they consistently sleep through the night; ours has done that all along and now she is keeping us up at night. We are really hoping it is just teeth and that soon things will be back to normal.

She is not walking on her own at all yet, but her favorite thing to do is walk all around the house with one of us holding her arms. She likes to walk from one person to another, and if you let go, she will take about one step on her own and then just launch herself into the arms of the person waiting to catch her. Hopefully she will soon be confident enough to try taking a few steps on her own.

She is also still very small, but seems to be healthy. She is still wearing a mixture of 9 month and 12 month clothes, but she eats everything in sight pretty much all day long, so I am not too worried about her.

And she is way too smart for her own (and my own) good. The other day she figured out how to open my phone (and it is fairly difficult to open) and started calling my mom and then my mother-in-law. Coincidence that she sneakily dialed both grandmas? She is starting to get the hang of putting the right shapes in the right holes on her toys, and if you say anything with the word "berry" in it, she will blow a big raspberry at you!

Higher than Heaven...the Class of 2011

2011-06-14T09:37:00.000-04:00

Or at least, that's what the valedictorian of Richmond Senior High school said as she wrapped up her speech. (She also challenged the graduates: Why reach for the stars, when you can be one? Pretty thought-provoking stuff, huh?)

Cy took this past Friday off and we loaded up the car and drove to Ellerbe for my sister's high school graduation. Graduation was Friday at 8 pm at the high school stadium, and boy was it hot and crowded in those bleachers. Since the ceremony didn't even start until 8 pm, Cy stayed at the house with Gemma while I attended the ceremony with my parents. My uncle, aunt, and two cousins drove in from Virginia just in time to see Rachel get her diploma. And like I said, it was hot and crowded. My parents and I left the house around 7 thinking we would have plenty of time to get a seat. Not so much. Fortunately, my parents seem to know everyone in the whole town (not too hard in a town that small), so my mom was able to score us some seats. Then we sat on the bleachers under a blazing hot setting sun and dripped sweat as we watched the graduates circle the track and take their seats on the field. At the beginning of the ceremony, they recognized the National Honor Society graduates and Rachel was the first name to be called. Then we watched her get her diploma. We were very proud of her.

After graduation was over, we were starving so we decided to hit up the Sonic Drive-In. We were in two cars, and right after my parents drove off, Rachel and I were lucky enough to witness a crime: a hit-and-run involving a truck and a fluorescent light. Two guys driving a big truck apparently didn't realize that their truck did not fit under the drive-thru, so they came blasting through scraping the ceiling and demolished one of the fluorescent lights. When they realized they were destroying the Sonic Drive-Thru, they slowly backed up, rear-ended another sign, backed into the oncoming traffic, and took off. It was pretty much the slowest, lamest getaway ever. Then all the employees came running out yelling and calling the cops, and we decided to leave since it was already like 11:00 and we didn't really want to stay at Sonic all night and be questioned by the cops. Fun times.

Since we were already exhausted, Gemma decided to wake up at 2:30 am and want to play. I tried to put her in bed with us hoping just to get her calmed down and back to sleep but this just convinced her it was playtime - she started smacking me in the face and laughing. Not fun.

The next day, I helped my mom and sister get ready for a graduation party. We decorated the church fellowship hall with decorations in green and gold, the Richmond Raider colors. It was a nice party with some family and friends.

That night, Gemma decided to just scream nonstop for an hour or two as we were going to bed. She has been getting some more teeth and apparently just really hates her pack and play (don't blame her too much) and was refusing to sleep. So at 11:00 that night, we loaded her up and drove to Wal-Mart (which was super scary at that hour), then doped her up with some infant ibuprofen and some night-time Orajel and finally got some sleep. The next morning, Cy and Gemma ended up staying home from church so Gemma could get a good nap. The graduates were honored again during the church service, and afterward, there was a covered dish dinner for them as well. Then after that, we loaded up and headed back to Charleston. We brought the recent high school graduate with us for the week - she is enjoying some relaxing in Charleston before she starts her summer volunteer work at the hospital next week. And on Friday, she gets to register for classes at CSU. We are so proud of her, and we are very excited to have her near us at CSU for the next four years!

Memorial Day and other stuff

2011-06-08T09:49:00.000-04:00

As you can see, I'm a little bit behind on my posting. Such is life with a one-year-old. However, I did want to do a quick recap of our fun Memorial Day weekend. On Saturday morning, we drove up to Cy's parents' house on Lake Murray. Wes, Kelly, Noah, and Liam were also there. We stayed through Sunday afternoon (wanted Monday to rest a bit before getting back to the grind of the week) and had tons of fun swimming in the lake and hanging out with family. Gemma had fun pushing her cousin Noah around out on the porch (we were pretty impressed at her strength):

On Monday, I requested a picnic in our backyard for Memorial Day/my birthday. My birthday was Tuesday the 31st and it ended up being sort of like Hanukkah because there was never one "official" celebration, but instead, we spread out the partying over at least eight days. Cy had given me one of my presents (a skin for my Kindle) the week before my birthday, then we had cake and presents on Saturday at the lake, then a picnic on Monday, then presents on Tuesday (my actual birthday), then a belated present from my parents which showed up on Thursday, followed by a "birthday" lunch at Olive Garden on the Saturday after my birthday. I was totally okay with celebrating my birthday every day for a week and a half, by the way.

Anyway, the most "official" celebration was our backyard picnic on Memorial Day. We went to Wal-Mart early Monday morning and bought a "gazebo" (more like a tent) to provide some shade for our completely-devoid-of-trees-backyard.

I had wanted a cookie cake but had to settle for this rather ghettofabulous graduation sugar cookie cake (it tasted okay though):

Cy wanted brownies so I made a batch using one of my birthday presents, an all-edges brownie pan:

We set up Gemma's water table and fed her some hot dog and partied outside for hours. It was so much fun!

In other news, we took Gemma to the doctor yesterday for a weight check since she was underweight at her 12 month checkup. Her weight was pretty much exactly the same as last month (16 pounds, 4 ounces). Fortunately, she had not lost any weight. We talked with the doctor a bit and he didn't seem overly concerned, since she eats extremely well (all day long and everything in sight pretty much) and is otherwise healthy. I think she is just doomed to be like her dad (I was always underweight as a child too - wish I still had that problem!), but it would make me feel better if she would at least start gaining some weight. So prayers that she would gain weight and grow and stay healthy would be much appreciated!

We have a big weekend coming up this weekend - we are heading up to Ellerbe for my sister's high school graduation. Hopefully I will follow up with another blog post detailing the events in a more timely manner than this blog post!

These are a few of our favorite things

2011-05-27T08:33:00.000-04:00

Some of Gemma's favorite things right now include:

1. Her water table. We play with this almost every afternoon and both of us are pretty much drenched by the time we finish.

2. Her Disney Princess Ride-On Toy. It is great for riding, walking, or just sitting apparently.

3. Her interactive keyboard that Uncle Wes, Aunt Kelly, Noah and Liam gave her for Christmas. I finally got around to putting this together the other day and she has really been enjoying it. It interacts with the TV, and she was quick to figure out that if she pressed the animals on the keyboard, the corresponding animal would come out and dance on the screen. She's pretty smart. She also likes to use the keyboard as a walker sometimes, which doesn't always work out so well.

4. She also got a pool float with a canopy for her birthday and has really been enjoying splashing around at the neighborhood pool but I do not have any photos of this yet.

And some of my favorite things right now:

1. Tea. I don't drink coffee, but I love tea hot or cold and I love all sorts of flavors. Groupon recently had an online deal for Tea District, which I purchased and then ordered 2 bags of loose leaf tea (strawberry white tea and fruity chocolate rooibos red tea) and a canister of organic pineapple white tea pyramids. They are all delicious. I was so inspired by my purchase that I decided to allocate myself a shelf just for my tea so that I could have better access to all the many flavors:

2. Flamingos. Okay, so this is not so much a "right now" favorite as it is a lifetime addiction, but I included it because I wanted to show off some of the cool flamingo stuff I got while in Myrtle Beach:

3. The Big Bang Theory. Not the actually theory, with which I heartily disagree, but the TV show, which is incredibly hilarious. I had heard about it and wanted something new to watch so I got the first disc of season 1 from Netflix. I think the show is so funny to me because you could substitute "computer programmer" for "physicist" and still have essentially the same show. While it's a funny show, I think it's probably 100 times funnier if you are a nerd or know someone who is a nerd. For example, we were watching an episode where the guys try to put together an entertainment center for Penny and they end up ignoring the instructions and hatching some really elaborate plan involving infrared repeaters, fans, and cooling systems. This was particularly funny to me because our entertainment center actually has infrared repeaters and a fan...

4. Kindle. I love my Kindle and whenever I use it, it makes me never want to read an actual, physical book ever again. And it is even more awesome now that I got this cool skin for it (an early birthday present from Cy):

Some of my favorite books to read on my Kindle? The Lady Julia Grey mystery series by Deanna Raybourn and the Lady Emily mysteries by Tasha Alexander.

5. Jalapeno poppers. Random, I know, but I had some from Sonic a few weeks ago and now I am addicted. Fortunately for me, TGI Fridays makes jalapeno poppers that you can purchase in the frozen food section at Wal-Mart! So now I can have them anytime I want! I am not sure this is a good thing...

Anyway...I know this post was kind of random, but those are a few of our favorite things right now!

New Porch Cushions

2011-05-20T08:18:00.000-04:00

I am pretty excited about the new cushions we just got for our wicker porch furniture. We have had the porch furniture for about 3 years, and the cushions had turned very gray and nasty-looking in that time. Although there are cushions galore available at a lot of stores this time of year, it was actually fairly difficult to find some designed to fit our specific furniture. Finally, we found these at Lowe's:

I like them, and it is nice to be able to sit out on the porch again on clean cushions!

Tarragon Mustard Chicken Salad

2011-05-18T11:29:00.000-04:00

I was bored and decided to experiment with a new type of chicken salad for lunch this week. I love chicken salad and already have several good recipes, but I also like to experiment with cooking (I rarely, if ever, actually use recipes) so I thought I would try making chicken salad with a mustard-based dressing and see how it turned out. Here is the recipe I came up with, and I personally thought it was pretty delicious:

For the dressing:
1/4 c. spicy brown mustard
1/2 c. low-fat or fat-free sour cream
1 tbsp. tarragon
1 tbsp. dill weed
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. salt

I cooked 2 large chicken breasts and shredded them, then mixed them with the above dressing (I had also put some white vinegar in it, which I wasn't crazy about, so I will probably skip that next time). I also added 1/4 cup sea salted almonds and some diced avocado just before I ate it. It was yummy!

Lunatics and Lycanthropy is now for sale

2011-05-18T08:41:00.000-04:00

A Kindle version of my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel, Lunatics and Lycanthropy, is now available for download on Amazon.com for $2.99. Lunatics and Lycanthropy is similar to Norfanger Plantation in that it is also a teen paranormal romance that borrows the plot of a Jane Austen novel, in this instance, Pride and Prejudice. From the back of the book:

Like Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, Savannah Benton struggles with the pressures of a hypochondriac mother, a disinterested father, and four very silly sisters, not to mention the unsolicited affections of the rude and arrogant Darcy Fitz. But in this modern, young adult adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel, the female protagonist has one more difficulty to face: the possibility that werewolves might be real, and for all she knows, wearing the faces of those she considers her friends.

Set in a rural Georgia town, Lunatics and Lycanthropy is a hilarious spoof of the teen paranormal romance genre that has recently become so wildly popular. It will keep you laughing, but it will also keep you guessing. With twists and turns throughout and an unreliable and increasingly suspicious narrator, the mystery of who might or might not be a werewolf lingers until the very last page.

You can find the Kindle version here.

I am also working on getting a paperback copy up for sale as well. I receive my proof copy in the mail yesterday, and was not satisfied with the current result. Some of the pages I wanted to be right-facing were left-facing, etc., so I will be ordering another proof and starting the process over again. It's frustrating, but such is the world of self-publishing. Hopefully I can have it up for sale by the end of the month.

Food Allergy Update

2011-05-17T07:32:00.000-04:00

We got a call from the pediatrician's office last night with the results of Gemma's allergy testing. She tested positive for a mild milk allergy and a mild egg allergy. Our doctor is out of town, so we won't be getting into the details a whole lot until we see him again in 3 weeks for Gemma's weight check. In the meantime, we are supposed to begin transitioning her from formula to soy milk. I am hoping that this goes much better than when we tried to transition her from breast milk to soy formula. She hated the soy formula so much that she would make herself throw up whenever we tried to give her any of it. Also, despite months of trying, she still has not gotten the hang of using a sippy cup - all she wants to do is chew on it. So I am not anticipating a smooth transition from the bottle either.

Due to her food allergies, we are supposed to avoid foods with milk and eggs in them for the time being. Hopefully she will eventually grow out of these allergies, but in the meantime, her food options are pretty limited. It is amazing how much stuff has eggs and milk in it - basically everything but straight up fruit, veggies, and meat. Also I know that cheese, yogurt, and eggs are generally good foods for babies this age, but those are off-limits to Gemma. I guess I could try to hunt down some soy-based cheese and yogurt, but I am sure I will have to branch out and do my grocery shopping somewhere other than Wal-Mart then! Also, she really needs to grow some more teeth! She got her bottom two teeth around 6 months of age and has gotten no more teeth since. We are still just feeding her purees primarily, since she can't really chew.

But anyway...at least we know for sure now about her allergies and can work around them. And we were actually relieved that her allergies weren't more extensive - she had also broken out in hives after some turkey and a fruit mixture, but nothing else showed up on the test. So we are thankful for that, but would definitely appreciate prayers that we can get this girl transitioned from the bottle to a cup, from formula to soy milk, that she will one day outgrow her allergies, and that she will grow some more teeth so she can eat more food! :)

Gemma's One Year Photo Shoot

2011-05-16T07:49:00.000-04:00

After debating whether or not to take Gemma to a portrait studio for some one-year photos, or hire a photographer, we decided just to attempt a DIY photo shoot. Cy said that he likes the pictures that I take better than most of what he has seen professional photographers do, so I agreed to take the pictures if he would be my assistant and help keep Gemma situated, smiling, and keep her from crawling off. This weekend, we finally had the time to go do it. I suggested Old St. Andrews Parish Church as a location - they have really beautiful landscaping, a pond, a bridge, and benches. I wish we had been able to get out there while the azaleas and daffodils were still blooming, but maybe it was good that they were not, as the subject of the photo shoot was Gemma, and I would definitely have gotten distracted by all of the pretty flowers (I did end up taking a few pictures of some water lilies).

Anyway, the photo shoot seemed to go well. She was fairly cooperative with being dressed up and posed early in the morning, and out of about 100 shots, we got 10 really good ones, which seemed like a decent success rate with a one-year old subject. :)

There were also some funny "outtake" photos too (which were actually Cy's favorite):

So the photo part of the shoot was a success. However, we might as well have spent the $$ on a professional since the photo shoot necessitated a trip to urgent care for me. Right before we were about to head home, a bug bit me right beside my eye. I brushed it off and didn't think much about it, but not long after we got home, Cy pointed out that it was swelling a bit. All of a sudden, my eye was swollen completely shut. I started knocking back tons of Benadryl and icing my eye, and while it eventually quit getting worse, it did not start getting better. When I woke up Sunday morning (about 5 rounds of Benadryl and 24 hours later) there was still no improvement, so we went to the nearest Doctor's Care where they fixed me up with a nice cortisone injection in my hip. A few hours later, the swelling finally started going down. As of this morning, my eye is still fairly swollen but is much better. I guess it will just take a few days for it to get all the way back to normal. Lucky me. But in the end, it was totally worth it, because we were very pleased with how the pictures turned out. Now I just need to do any touching up and then make the difficult decision of which prints to order!

Then...and Now...

2011-05-11T13:10:00.000-04:00

Gemma just born a little over a year ago:

And 1-year-old Gemma this morning:

A Kind of Traumatic 12 Month Checkup

2011-05-11T07:36:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was Gemma's 12 month checkup. It ended up being a pretty traumatic morning unfortunately. First they weighed her and got her stats:

Height: 28 1/4 - 25th percentile (we were pleasantly surprised by this)
HC: 18 - 75th percentile (explains why I'm having to put her in some 12 month clothes even though her body is super small)
Weight: 16 pounds, 5 ounces...no longer on the chart

The doctor immediately began expressing a bit of concern for her weight. She had actually lost a few ounces since her 10 month checkup. However, she had a huge growth spurt lengthwise, she is moving around a bunch, and has just recovered from a respiratory virus during which she didn't eat very much. Also she is just going to be tiny her whole life. She is half Shealy (I would argue she is about 95% Shealy) after all. So the doctor wasn't too concerned given all of these factors, but wants us to bring her back in next month for a weight check.

As far as her development, she is not standing alone or walking yet, but she cruises very well. I imagine her low weight will probably play a part in when she is really able to walk. She isn't really talking yet - the only word she says is "Dada" and she pretty much says it all of the time, even when you ask her to say Mama. But her comprehension is extremely good. For example, if you say, "Gemma, can you wave?" she will wave and if you say "Gemma, can you clap?" she will start clapping.

And now for the trauma...after discussing her transition from formula to milk and other foods, the doctor decided it would probably be best if she had allergy testing before we proceeded. This required a blood draw. So after we got her hemoglobin test (finger prick) and 3 immunization shots, we then took the poor little girl to a lab to have her blood drawn. She did okay at first but then the nurse screwed up and didn't draw enough blood so we had to hold her down and draw more. By then Gemma was very aware of what was about to happen and completely freaked out like I've never seen her before. Since Cy does not do well with needles, I was the one having to hold Gemma down. By the time we were finished, I was crying almost as hard as she was. It was absolutely terrible. She had gotten so worked up that she was twitching and shivering for about 20 minutes afterwards. I could have punched the nurse. If you are going to do something like that to a baby who doesn't understand what is going on, you really need to make sure you get enough in one draw. It is ridiculous to expect a one-year old to sit through that twice. Although in the end I think I was more traumatized than she was. She took a nap when we got home and was her usual, cheerful self for the rest of the day. I was pretty bummed out for the rest of the day. I knew it was for a reason, but I felt like such a horrible mom subjecting her to that, when I am supposed to protect her.

Anyway...in the end, they got what they needed and we should have the results in a week. The doctor's office is going to call us with the results and we will have a consultation over the phone about a feeding plan for Gemma that will work with her allergies. Did I mention that her eating is also limited by the fact that as of yet she still has only 2 teeth? Ah, well. Every day with a kiddo is an adventure, that's for sure.

Mother's Day

2011-05-10T15:50:00.000-04:00

Even though I was technically already a mom last Mother's Day, this was really my first year celebrating this special day. Last year on Mother's Day, we brought sweet little Gemma home from the hospital. This year, Cy and Gemma took me out for a delicious lunch at Olive Garden (my request) and we roamed around Barnes and Noble for a bit. My gift was a white wooden porch swing, which both Gemma and I will enjoy. Unfortunately there were some technical difficulties installing the swing, but I will post pictures when it is up! Despite the technical difficulties, I still had a great day!

Gemma's First Birthday

2011-05-09T11:39:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday, my sweet baby girl turned 1 year old. It is incredibly hard to believe that it has been an entire year - I can't even really remember what life was like without Gemma. But I'm not the type to get all weepy and nostalgic and sentimental (not that there's anything wrong with that), so I'm just going to move on and describe the big party.

We had been so excited about this little girl's birthday for such a long time that we had ordered decorations well in advance. We had a hard time choosing from all the cute themes available (except the pink John Deere stuff; that was easy enough to rule out) but eventually decided to go with the "lil cupcake" theme:

We even found an "I'm the Birthday Girl" shirt with a cupcake on it for Gemma to wear:

We decided to keep the party small with just close family, so we invited Grandpa and Grandma, Aunt Rachel, Nana and Pops, Uncle Wes and Aunt Kelly, and Noah and Liam. Everyone (okay, almost everyone) was a good sport and wore the super cool party hats. Gemma and Liam totally looked like little garden gnomes in their hats:

We ate pizza and then, since it was a cupcake themed party, we of course had dessert from Cupcake. Except Gemma, who had a special milk and egg free cupcake that I made her because of her food allergies. She was pretty indifferent towards the cupcake:

After cupcakes, we opened presents. Gemma pretty much crawled around and ignored this part of the party. She was more concerned with keeping an eye on Liam.

But everyone was extremely generous and Gemma got tons of very nice gifts, including this Disney Princess ride-on toy which both Gemma and Liam absolutely adored:

We are so thankful for our precious little girl and it is such a blessing to watch her grow. She has such a sweet little personality and is a little bit too smart sometimes. She enjoyed her special day very much, and we were so glad to be able to share her special day with family.

Myrtle Beach Trip

2011-05-05T15:21:00.000-04:00

After we finished up our Easter festivities in Ellerbe, we headed out to spend a few days at Myrtle Beach. We stayed right on the beach at the Landmark Resort, a pretty nice hotel with 2 lazy rivers, tons of swimming pools, and its own miniature golf course. We arrived Sunday night just in time for dinner at IHOP (where I tried their Nutella crepes for the first time - they were AMAZING!) followed by an evening walk on the beach.

Monday was Mom/Grandma's birthday. We spent most of the day enjoying things at the hotel. We took Gemma to the beach (her first time) and in the lazy river. She absolutely LOVED both! (In fact, she started crying when we picked her up to leave the beach.) The lazy river was probably her favorite part of the trip though. She absolutely went crazy kicking her legs and slapping at the water with her hands every time.

We let Mom/Grandma pick our dinner location and she chose the Melting Pot. We stuffed ourselves with cheese fondue, salad, meat, and then super delicious chocolate fondue for dessert.

It was super dark in the restaurant, reminding Rachel and me of the movie When in Rome. Rachel posed as Lance from When in Rome (asking "Does anyone have the time?"):

Unfortunately, the weather was pretty gross for the rest of our trip. On Tuesday we were able to hang out in the lazy river for a bit, but when we attempted to find the hotel's miniature golf course, we narrowly escaped being drenched by a sudden, epic thunderstorm. Tuesday night was fun, though, as Dad/Grandpa, Rachel, Cy, and I went to Medieval Times. At Medieval Times, we feasted on chicken, ribs, tomato bisque, potatoes, garlic bread, and apple pastries and drank from fancy goblets as we watched knights jousting and cheered on our knight, the red knight (who totally won, by the way). I was a little unsure at first when we walked in and were greeted by a strong smell of horse, but it ended up being really fun.

Wednesday was basically a shopping day. While Gemma and Cy napped, my parents, sister, and I hit up the stores at Broadway at the Beach. I finally got the fudge I had been craving. But the best part was...there was an entire store devoted to flamingos! I had to really restrain myself to keep from buying one of everything in the store. In the end, I limited myself to a t-shirt, a stained glass thingy, an old-fashioned looking sign, and a mosaic flamingo figurine. I was very impressed with my self-control. (Although I informed Cy the other day that I want to make a day trip to Myrtle Beach sometime before Christmas specifically to go back to that store and purchase flamingo Christmas ornaments.)

Cy and Gemma met us for lunch at Fuddrucker's and then we all went to Ripley's Aquarium. It was fun but crowded. By the time we got done, we were all exhausted and our plans of going to a Japanese steakhouse fell through, so we ordered some pizzas instead (this ended up being a minor fiasco of its own, but I won't get into that).

Thursday was our last day so we hurried downstairs for one last trip to the lazy river. (The mean pool lady wouldn't let us in at first but it turned out okay.) Then we packed up and headed out. We were going to stop at Mount Atlanticus for some miniature golf on the way out, but when we pulled into the parking lot, poor little Gemma was passed out asleep so we ended up just going on home. She slept the entire way.

Did I mention that my laptop broke, our credit card number was stolen, and Cy and Gemma caught a respiratory virus while on our trip? Ah, well. Such is life when we go on vacation. But other than that, our trip was sooooo much fun!

Easter 2011

2011-05-03T09:28:00.001-04:00

We spent Easter with my family this year. We drove up to Ellerbe on Saturday (the day before Easter) and spent the rest of the day doing typical Easter activities like dyeing eggs, ordering chicken strips from Dixie Burger, and watching old episodes of Psych. If we had had a contest, Rachel would have won for her awesome pink flamingo egg:

Easter itself was pretty action-packed. We were up and at FBC at 7 am for the sunrise service. After the service, we had breakfast at the church. Then we headed back to the house to shower and get ready for church. Gemma looked so sweet all dressed up in her Easter finery.

Rachel and I both wore hats and channeled Kate Middleton:

After church, my parents and I enjoyed chicken salad croissants and strawberry shortcake while Rachel and Cy ate burgers and brownies. Gemma ate puffs and some sort of purple berry puree. Not long after that, we loaded up our cars and headed to Myrtle Beach!

Did I mention that we scored some sweet Easter baskets that looked like sock monkey heads? It was kind of Temple-of-Doom-esque, but with candy instead of brains:

11 Months Old

2011-04-08T14:15:00.000-04:00

Gemma was officially 11 months old yesterday. We really can't believe it has been that long - it has gone by so fast. Hard to believe that we are already planning her birthday party and that 1 year will be the next milestone!

Zoo Thousand Eleven

2011-03-29T09:39:00.000-04:00

This past weekend, Cy took Friday off and we headed up to Columbia to spend a few hours at Riverbanks Zoo. We had scored some discounted zoo tickets via Groupon a few weeks earlier. It ended up being a really great day for the zoo. We arrived just after lunchtime and all the school crowds were leaving, so it wasn't very crowded. The weather was nice too - right around 70 degrees. Gemma seemed a bit disinterested at first, until we saw some monkeys swinging around and yelling loudly. Gemma enjoyed watching them swing and started yelling right back at them as loudly as she could. She seemed to like the penguins a lot too.

I enjoyed the chance to exercise my newly learned photography skills and use some of my new photography equipment to shoot some great pictures:

After we finished at the zoo, we headed to the lake house for the rest of the weekend. It ended up storming and pouring rain most of the time but we enjoyed just having some time off to relax. Before the storms hit, we managed to squeeze in a quick boat trip. It was my first time on a boat since the ill-fated cruise (and probably my last time - I didn't do so well) and Gemma's first time (she did much better than I did).

Last Week in Review

2011-03-22T15:31:00.002-04:00

I have several days' worth of blog material saved up, so instead of writing a bunch of individual posts, I'm just going to drop a bunch of knowledge all at once.

First things first: nobody got to pinch Gemma on St. Patty's Day because she was very festively decked out. (I too was wearing green; however, that did not deter her from pinching, biting, attacking me, etc.)

Second, we have a new addition at our house: a swing set! Even though Gemma's not quite at the optimal age for maximum swing set enjoyment just yet, when we saw this toddler swing set with (free!) infant swing on sale at Toys R Us, we decided to go ahead and invest in our child's future. She seems to like it so far. I am loving it - it lets me get outside for a little bit each day.

Meanwhile, as Cy and Pops were putting the swing set together, I was taking an all-day continuing education class on digital photography at Trident Tech with my friend Renonna. It was a pretty good class - I definitely learned a lot of things about my camera that I had found a bit overwhelming and confusing before. After the class I read through some tutorials on Canon's website and ordered a few accessories for my camera. Now if I can just find the time to actually go take some pictures...

This was my favorite picture that I took while doing "homework" for my class at lunchtime:

And finally, in other news, the list of quarterfinalists for the Amazon Breakthrough Award Contest was released today...and Norfanger Plantation was on it! I was so convinced I wouldn't make it any further in the contest that I had actually forgotten that the list was even coming out today, and only found out because I received an automated email update. At this point there are 500 quarterfinalists (250 general fiction & 250 YA) remaining, which will be whittled down to only 100 (50 & 50) on April 26. The good news is that someone from Publishers Weekly will actually be reading my entire manuscript as part of the next phase of the contest, so I will at least get some professional feedback on my novel if nothing else (and I am definitely not expecting to make it any further!).

9 Month Checkup...finally

2011-03-15T15:12:00.001-04:00

We finally made it in for Gemma's 9 month checkup today. (Now that she is 10 months + 8 days old.) She was doing well over all - still on the growth charts (surprisingly) albeit just barely, but is growing at about the same rate she has been all along. I'm looking at the paper now that they gave us with her stats and they must have written them down wrong or I'm really not understanding, because what I'm seeing is this: Height - 108, HC - 24, and Weight - 16 lbs., 8 oz. I know the weight is correct (she will be in a rear-facing car seat forever!) but I can't seem to make those other two come out to legitimate stats for Gemma (maybe the 24 is actually her length? She is pretty small!). Oh well. They did say that she is around the 5th percentile for weight, the 7th percentile for length, and the 25th percentile for her head size.

We talked to the pediatrician about some feeding concerns while we were there. Gemma's next appointment is a few days after birthday and we will discuss a plan for her milk-wise then (since she has had a milk protein allergy in the past). We also discussed what to do as far as giving her meat. She has only tried meat once - a jar of turkey that caused her to break out in hives. We were unsure if it was the turkey itself or the preservatives that caused the breakout, so he wants us to try some homemade pureed chicken (doesn't that sound delicious?) and see how that goes. If that causes a reaction as well, we will probably have to have some allergy testing done to determine the extent of her allergies. I really hope it does not come to that - I have had allergy testing done on myself and know how unpleasant it is. I cannot imagine administering that type of testing to a young baby who cannot understand what is going on. So I will be whipping up some super yummy chicken puree this week and hoping for the best.

Other than her food allergies, she seems to be doing great. Can't believe that her first birthday is getting so close already!

First Trip to the Park

2011-03-13T16:07:00.000-04:00

We decided to take advantage of the nice weather this afternoon and take a long walk to the park at Bees Ferry Landing. We've been to the gym and tennis courts at Bees Ferry Landing, but hadn't really scoped out the playground yet. It's a little over a mile from our house, so we enjoyed a nice walk there and back. The playground itself was very nice. Gemma enjoyed her first time on a swing set and a ride (on my lap) on some sort of springy thing. She mostly enjoyed watching all the other kids playing - she was giggling quite a bit at some of their antics. I'm glad to know now that such a nice playground is so close by - I have a feeling we'll be heading that way a lot this summer!

10 Months Old Today!

2011-03-07T09:26:00.000-05:00

Gemma is 10 months old today! I can't believe how close we are getting to her first birthday - crazy! Still haven't made it to the doctor for her 9 month checkup...we are supposed to go next week, so I will post her most up-to-date stats then. Right now, she is still in 9 month clothes (12 month clothes are HUGE on her) so I will be surprised if she is even still on the growth charts at all. (Her head might be, but that's about it!)

She is turning into such a little person these days. She has gotten much more comfortable with pulling up the past week and now is standing up constantly, and she has started cruising a little bit. Won't be long before she is running around all over the place and I am losing my mind chasing her!

Super Cute Pigtails!

2011-03-04T13:58:00.001-05:00

Gemma's hair was extra crazy today (she got a bath last night and her hairbrush had mysteriously disappeared due to her chucking it under the couch so she went to bed with it wet and crazy) so I thought I would see if it was long enough for pigtails. It's not really, only the part on top is, but it still looked pretty cute!

I think she actually looks like me in this picture (for once - I've started calling her "mini-Cy" because she's SO much like her dad!), but maybe it's just wishful thinking:

It's pretty impressive to be copping this much 'tude while sporting such cute pigtails, but G's definitely got a handle on it:

On to the next round

2011-02-24T15:37:00.007-05:00

Out of 10,000 entries, a list of the top 2,000 pitches moving on to the next round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award was released today, and...my name was on it! I was so excited! And shocked - I honestly believed I wouldn't even make it through the first round of the contest. I had decided last minute to go ahead and enter, and managed to pull all the materials together hours before the submission period opened. One of the requirements was to submit a "pitch" for my novel, and the first round selections were based solely on this pitch. I had no idea how to write a pitch, had never done it before, and had only a couple of hours to do it. Here is the pitch I wrote, and it must have been decent, since it made the cut (not bad for my first try):

Like the heroine of Jane Austen's novel Northanger Abbey, seventeen-year-old Kate Blackmoor has read too many creepy novels. Vampire novels, to be exact. When she moves to the coast to live with her aunt and uncle for the summer, she starts seeing vampires everywhere she looks. Or at least she thinks she does.

But then she meets Hadden Tradd, a guy so hopelessly perfect that Kate is convinced he could never be interested in someone as plain and ordinary as herself. But is Hadden really who he says he is? He lives on the fringe of the little coastal community, in the shadowy and secluded Northanger Plantation, the antebellum plantation home hidden deep inside a thick grove of trees, away from any prying eyes. Hadden's only companions are his sister and his father, a retired military colonel who is more of a dictator than a father. And there is something strange about the siblings themselves, a weird dynamic in which the two are inseparable, painfully shy, and reliant on each other for confirmation each time one of them speaks.

When Kate is forced to spend the night at Northanger Plantation, she learns that Hadden's mother died under mysterious circumstances, and the sinister Colonel Tradd arouses her suspicions. Is it possible that he was responsible for his wife's death?

As Kate pieces together clues and formulates theory after theory to explain the mysteries of Northanger Plantation, will her friendship with Hadden blossom into something more, or will her obsession with vampires ultimately jeopardize their relationship?

With twists and turns along the way to keep the reader guessing, Norfanger Plantation is a comical look at the current teen vampire craze, but it also explores questions about identity, insecurity, and relationships, themes particularly resonant among young adult readers.

Anyway, I am super excited! I honestly do not think I will make it through to the next round, but we will see. The next round will be based on the excerpt (first 2-3) chapters of my novel and will narrow the contestants down to the top 500. This will be announced March 22.

(And I may or may not have looked at the list several times over the course of the day today out of disbelief, just checking to make sure my name was really there. Actually, when I first looked, I was scrolling so fast I saw a bunch of names starting with "Sch..." and thought I hadn't made it until it registered that my name would actually be a bit further down the list. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that my name actually was on the list!)
Also, I have no idea why the spacing is being stupid on this post, but I can't seem to fix it. Oh well.

These Are a Few of Gemma's Favorite Things:

2011-02-24T08:48:00.000-05:00

(in addition to riding in the laundry basket)

Helping "fold" the laundry:

Removing all the contents of her diaper bag and slinging her diapers around/mopping the floor with her diapers:

Licking/looking at her reflection in the oven/dish washer:

Slapping the side of the trash can:

Eating the blinds on the sliding glass door:

When We Say We're Not Doing Anything Special for Valentine's Day...

2011-02-24T08:36:00.000-05:00

...we're probably lying. Okay, not intentionally. We talked about whether or not we wanted to do anything for Valentine's Day and decided not to, since we both kind of think it's a lame, made-up holiday (invented by Chaucer, but I won't get into my lit crit explanation of that). Since we decided not to do anything, we of course ended up having a very special Valentine's Day.

I decided that in lieu of going out to eat, I would surprise Cy with a *fancy* (fancy for us) homemade dinner that he really likes. I broke out the fine china to set the table, and cooked a meal of smothered steak (cube steak cooked in gravy made from golden mushroom soup), noodles, green beans, and peanut butter pie for dessert. We are not really drinkers, so we had some sparkling grape juice.

Meanwhile, Cy's idea of not doing anything special consisted of him surprising me with a chocolate strawberry cupcake from Cupcake and a beautiful pink-and-green bracelet from Handpicked that he made himself! He said to me: "I literally hand-picked this bracelet for you."

Gemma got a present too: I had seen these cute Valentine sock monkeys at Wal-Mart and scooped them up weeks earlier. Cy let her pick which one she wanted, and I got the other one. Gemma picked the red one and proceeded to eat it.

We enjoyed our "nothing special" evening very much!

Why I'm Never Spending Money on Toys for Gemma Again...

2011-02-23T19:39:00.000-05:00

Because it's a total waste of my $$$ when we have far more entertaining things already in the house. Like shoelaces. Or socks. Or our own feet. Or, laundry baskets:

I've been sick this week and Cy has been at home helping out with Gemma. Today he was feeling really brave and decided to tackle some laundry. At one point, he had a load of dirty laundry and Gemma both to carry to the other part of the house, so he plopped her right down on top of the laundry and carted her off in the laundry basket. A little bit later, he came back by with a basket full of clean folded laundry, sans Gemma. "No Gemma this time?" I asked. "Nope," he said. "She needs a bath and this is clean laundry, so I didn't want her to stink it up." Apparently our daughter is only allowed to ride along with the dirty laundry.

A bit later, I was feeling well enough to venture out to the living room for some family time. The empty laundry basket was in the middle of the living room floor and Gemma kept trying to figure out how to get in it. So I set her inside and proceeded to drag her around the living room in it. I couldn't tell if she liked it or not, so I stopped and lifted her out and set her on the floor. Well, apparently she was totally enjoying her laundry basket ride and I just didn't realize it, because as soon as I took her out, she started crying!

And this is why I'm no longer going to waste money on purchasing toys for my child.

9 Months Old

2011-02-09T07:19:00.000-05:00

Gemma turned 9 months old yesterday! Hard to believe she has now been out of me as long as she was inside of me!

Unfortunately we had to reschedule her 9 month checkup and the earliest they could get her in was March 15 so it will be a 10 month checkup instead. However, she seems to be doing great. She is crawling like crazy, pulling up, is starting to grasp object permanence. She can wave and likes to play games with other people involving mimicking the sounds and movements they make. She is doing great with self-feeding - 9 out of 10 pieces make it into her mouth and actually get eaten these days. She has not really grasped the concept of the sippy cup yet and mostly just throws it around and chews on it (sometimes she even chews on the wrong end), so that is something to work on further.

I hate that we will not have a record of her stats at precisely 9 months, but such is life. I guess I will roll with it and just be excited about her 10 month stats instead. The only thing I really wish we could have talked to the pediatrician about is feeding. I would really like to have a specific answer on what Gemma should be eating, how much of it, and how often. (Anyone with a 9 month old, please feel free to share with me what your child is eating, how much, and how often!) I'm sure what I am currently doing with her is fine - I'm just being that uptight, first-time mom who worries about doing everything exactly right. I'm sure I'll get over that (I already have to some extent)!

Anyway...I think we love sweet little Gemma more and more every day. She is SUCH a good baby - she sleeps a minimum of 16 hours per 24 hour period (not exaggerating - it's often more), pretty much never cries, eats well, hasn't ever really been sick, and she is so happy all the time and has such a sweet little personality. She is also very observant and intelligent and will stare at something until she figures it out. She is so good in fact, that it makes us afraid to have another one, because who could possibly measure up when Gemma has set the bar so high? ;)

Mr. Darcy's Time Machine

2011-01-31T15:06:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend, I finished writing a scene for the Bad Austen writing contest. My scene is a sci-fi parody of Pride and Prejudice called "Mr. Darcy's Time Machine." It is posted on the Bad Austen website, so if you want to read it, you can check it out here. Also, if you haven't (and would like to), please vote for my scene! :)

A Matter of Perspective

2011-01-24T09:07:00.000-05:00

Genesis 45: 4-7 - “Then Joseph said to his brothers, 'Come close to me.' When they had done so, he said, 'I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.”

Talk about seeing the glass half full—Joseph was clearly an optimist. I was really struck by Joseph's words to his brothers as I read this passage. At this point, Joseph had been through so much. His own brothers were so jealous of him that they wanted to kill him. Instead, they sold him into slavery. He was then falsely accused of adultery and imprisoned. In this same situation, I'm pretty sure I would be moping around whining about all the bad things that had happened to me. And I'm certain I would find it extremely difficult to forgive my siblings for causing all of my troubles!

But Joseph chose not to view his situation this way. For him, his sufferings were merely a matter of perspective. Joseph to chose to focus on the bigger picture rather than waste his time lamenting all the ways everyone around him had done him wrong. And not only did he forgive his brothers unconditionally, but he went one step further and urged them to forgive themselves for what they had done to him.

Despite everything he went through, Joseph was able to see the hand of God in his plight. He was aware that nothing could happen to him unless God allowed it to happen, and that God had a clear purpose, even when Joseph could not see it. Joseph trusted God so much that he claimed God was the one who sent him to Egypt (rather than his brothers), so that he could use Joseph to save many lives, including the lives of his family—the same family that had wanted him killed!

I also love the way the story of the famine parallels what Joseph went through. Joseph went through several bad years of famine in his life, only for God to deliver him into a great time of reaping. Joseph trusted God in his years of personal famine, and God rewarded him greatly for his faith.

A Plethora of Writing Contests

2011-01-24T07:58:00.003-05:00

Reposting this from my writing blog:

So out of nowhere, I've suddenly become embroiled in not one, but three writing contests. I had wanted to enter Secession Island in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest this year, but it is still nowhere near finished, so I decided to skip the contest yet again this year. Then, over the weekend, I decided that if I couldn't enter Secession Island, I might as well at least enter something else I've written. I don't really have any hopes of one of my other novels winning the contest (or even making it through the first round), but figured, what have I got to lose? Initially, I planned to do a quick edit of Lunatics and Lycanthropy and submit that, since I've gotten no feedback on it yet. When I didn't get around to looking at it until yesterday afternoon, I realized that wasn't going to happen. Which left me with old faithful: Norfanger Plantation. I am SO SO sick of this book by now, but I took one more quick look at it, did some reformatting, and selected an excerpt. Then I had to come up with a "pitch." I wasn't really sure what to do with this, but after some help from a friend and fellow writer, I concocted something that was based loosely on the book description I'd already written up for Amazon. (Actually, when I got done, I thought the pitch sounded pretty good - I only wish the novel itself were as well-written!) The entry period opened at 12 am this morning. Since they will close the competition after they receive 5,000 entries per category (or Feb. 6, whichever comes first), I was unsure whether I needed to submit it right at midnight or whether I actually had two weeks to submit. I decided not to risk it and set the alarm for 12 am. There were of course technical difficulties with my submission - ie, the formatting getting all messed up on my excerpt and me having to go through and read through the whole thing, manually fixing the formatting until 12:45 am. Good times. But in the end, I got everything turned in. I honestly believe I will not even make it through the first round. This is a fun novel, but it's not my greatest writing by a long stretch. I don't really see it being something Penguin publishers are interested in, but either way, I think it will be a good thing for me to get the experience.

Also this past weekend, I submitted a brand-new short-short entitled "Unipolar," that I wrote specifically for round six of NPR's Three-Minute Fiction contest. Another writer friend had given me the head's up on this one. The only guidelines for this entry were that it had to be a fictional story under 600 words and include one character telling a joke and one character crying. Writing within such a strict word limit was a huge challenge for me. I tend to be super wordy - for example, Secession Island is already probably well over 300 pages with no end in sight. I decided this would be a good exercise for me though, and managed to churn something out and turn it in. It ended up being a pretty dark and uncharacteristic type story for me, but I felt very good about the writing, so we will see.

And the third and final competition I've got my eye on is taking submissions until the beginning of March. Which will give me a bit of a breather (thank goodness), although I've already started working on my submission. The contest is called Bad Austen, and the task is to write an 800-word parody of a scene, language, or character from the works of Jane Austen. I really think they made this contest just for me. I was kind of bummed about the word limit, since I have two entire novels that would qualify otherwise, but I've already come up with an idea for something new and I'm having tons of fun with it.

It's been exhausting trying to get these submissions ready last-minute, so I'm going to try to do better about keeping my eye out for more writing contests and preparing for them well in advance. It's been really good for me to get back into writing, and to have some very specific direction in my writing.

Sporting a new church dress

2011-01-24T07:39:00.000-05:00

Doesn't she look pretty?

And...she is crawling all over the place! That's right, folks - watch out, because Gemma's on the move!

iPod Nano

2011-01-19T08:35:00.001-05:00

I am super excited to be the proud new owner of a latest gen. 16GB iPod nano. In pink, of course. Lest you think that I now own 5 iPods, here is the deal. I have a big, old-school 60 GB iPod classic that houses all my music. It is great to take on trips, and just to have one place that contains all my music. But I rarely use this iPod - it's just too big to lug around. I had an old iPod mini (also pink) that I received as a present when I graduated from college. It's super outdated and I never use it anymore either, but I couldn't sell it because it was engraved on the back. I have an iPod touch that I got for free when I purchased my MacBook Air. Never really use this either, because I'm too lazy to keep it charged. Since none of these is ideal for running, I have been using Cy's older-model iPod nano along with a Nike+ kit to track my running.

All of that to say...I decided it was time to consolidate. While in the Apple Store several times the week of Christmas having my broken laptop repaired (a whole different story), I had some time to browse and pretty much fell in love with the new iPod nanos. They are small, sleek...and they are totally awesome! They come with built-in FM radio and a built-in pedometer. Perfect for running!

So in the end, I was able to get one...and at a discount! Turns out Apple has a recycling program for old computers and iPods - if you bring an old iPod into the store to recycle, you can get 10% off the purchase of a new one. So I traded in my old pink iPod mini and left with a brand new pink iPod nano. I am putting the iPod touch up for sale (if anyone reading this is interested, let me know!). And now that I have a Nano to use for running, Cy's Nano will most likely be sold too. So really, I was helping us out by getting rid of several iPods, right?

Either way, I am really enjoying the new iPod!

A New Shelf and a Smiley Girl

2011-01-17T07:26:00.006-05:00

I was strolling through Target a couple weeks ago and spotted this super cute stackable cube organizer. Gemma already had a plain white bookshelf in her room, but I just HAD to have this cute pink shelf for her room instead. We put it together yesterday and moved the white bookshelf upstairs (I'm always in need of more shelf space for books!). I LOVE the new shelf - it matches Gemma's room perfectly and it looks awesome!

Also, just wanted to post a recent picture of Gemma's sweet little smile. She is such a happy girl!

Being a Living Sacrifice

2011-01-16T06:32:00.003-05:00

Romans 12:1 - “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

I read about sacrifice in My Utmost for His Highest several days ago, and I've been ruminating on different ideas about sacrifice ever since then. I decided to write up my conclusions to focus them better for myself. Since I was writing them up anyway, why not post them on the blog? These are just a few thoughts I had on sacrifice, a sort of combination of my paraphrasing of Oswald Chambers as well as a few insights I received from reading the about Abraham's intended sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis.

Sacrifice simply for the sake of sacrifice is pointless. God never demands that we sacrifice just to sacrifice. Our sacrifices need to have a purpose; they need to be useful to God. It took me a while to grasp fully what Chambers was getting at in this entry (and the above is my paraphrase of what he wrote), but I found myself thinking about Lent, and this really worked as a good illustration for me to understand this concept. Fasting or abstinence from something during Lent was designed to prepare the believer to focus more deeply on the death and resurrection of Christ, to clear out worldly distractions and leave only Christ. But it has become a meaningless ritual for a lot of people. A lot of people give something up at Lent simply because it's a custom. And a lot of people choose to give up something that they won't even really miss. Such a sacrifice is pointless. It is neither holy nor acceptable, and it is useless to God.

Being a living sacrifice means sacrificing our lives to God's purpose. Our talents, our skills, our assets, our plans. Being a living sacrifice means giving up these things not so that we can never use them again at all, but so that God can use them in a way different from the selfish way in which we would use them, so that He can use them to accomplish His divine purpose.

God requires unquestioning obedience from us. And this in itself is a type of sacrifice.

Genesis 22:9-12 - “When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, the son he had waited for for so many long years. And Abraham was not only willing, he never even questioned God. To follow God with such unquestioning obedience, Abraham had to sacrifice all of his own personal thoughts, feelings, questions, and plans. And in spirit, he did sacrifice his own son, for the willingness and intention were there.

But then God stayed Abraham's hand, allowing Isaac to live. Because God had plans to work through Isaac to establish His people. He needed Isaac alive to complete His work, needed Isaac to be a living sacrifice.

A Prayer of Confession

2011-01-15T13:58:00.004-05:00

This morning while cleaning out some stuff in my bedroom, I found this prayer of confession that I had clipped from a bulletin quite a while back. It's a very good prayer, so I typed it up so that I wouldn't lose it and I could have it on hand to refer to in the future. I wanted to share it here:

O my Savior, help me
I am slow to learn, prone to forget and weak to climb.
I am in the foothills when I should be on the heights.
I am pained by my graceless heart,
my prayerless days,
my poverty of love,
my sloth in the heavenly race,
my sullied conscience,
my wasted hours,
my unspent opportunities.
I am blind while the light shines around me:
take the scales from my eyes,
grind to dust my heart of unbelief.
Make it my highest joy to study you,
meditate on you,
gaze on you,
sit, like Mary, at your feet,
lean, like John, on your breast,
appeal, like Peter, to your love,
count, like Paul, all things as loss for Jesus' sake.
I believe, help my unbelief.

One More Great Read

2011-01-12T14:56:00.003-05:00

I can't believe I forgot to put this one on my list: Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder. It's a YA sci-fi novel, and it's sooooo good. This is one of the few books this year that I plowed through cover to cover and couldn't put down. I'm even trying to get Cy to read it because I think he would like it too. Anyway...this definitely should have made my list - I highly recommend this book. There is a sequel, titled Outside In, coming out in the next few months. I can't wait - the ending of Inside Out was a real cliff-hanger!

Imperial Flagship

2011-01-10T08:05:00.013-05:00

Over the weekend, I finally finished building the LEGO Pirates Imperial Flagship that I received for Christmas. It was a pretty epic undertaking, with over 1600 pieces.

The imperial flagship is ginormous. When I brought out my Brickbeard's Bounty pirate ship and placed it alongside the imperial flagship, it quickly became clear that the imperial flagship would destroy Brickbeard's Bounty in a battle. Instantly.

On the back of the imperial flagship, the top level comes off to reveal the galley and allows easy access to the cannons (which actually shoot).

Hidden away in the captain's cabin in the front of the ship is a super sweet pipe organ. It's very Davy Jones.

I really enjoyed building this giant awesome ship. Now LEGO just needs to make more pirate things because I've already built all of the ones they currently have.

8 Months Old!

2011-01-07T08:34:00.009-05:00

Gemma is officially 8 months old today! She is doing great. It seems like her cute, sweet little personality develops more every day. We are really enjoying watching her grow and getting to meet this sweet little person who is developing.

She is almost crawling - not quite there yet. She gets up on all fours and teeters then falls back onto her tummy. She can actually crawl backwards - she is quite good at that, so hopefully she will get the hang of the forward movement soon. (I am dreading having to chase her around and keep her from getting into stuff, but I can tell that she wants to get moving so badly and I hate watching her get frustrated when she can't!)

She is getting so big too! Whenever I look at older pictures of her, I am amazed at how small she used to be. And, as usual...can't wait to see what the next month will bring!

No Resolutions, Just Christ

2011-01-07T08:08:00.025-05:00

In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes that "All our vows and resolutions end in denial because we have no power to carry them out." This really spoke to me as I'm beginning a new year. I've never been a fan of New Year's resolutions, simply because they seem designed to be broken. This year, I decided to set a few "goals" for myself, but now, after reading Chambers, I've realized I've only set myself up to fail, since my goals were based on me, and what I can accomplish. Well, I can accomplish nothing.

One of the goals I made for myself was to lose some weight and get in better shape. My weight is something I have really struggled with for the past few years. I have a very hard time forming a true perspective of what my body should look like, especially now, after having had a baby. I have come to realize that in college I was too thin and not healthy, but I am still struggling to determine and accept what might be a good weight for me. I also struggle because it seems like no matter how much I work out, or how hard I try, I just can't seem to shed any pounds. This is especially hard when I witness others around me who seem to stay thin effortlessly. I have to fight for every ounce.

Anyway, all of that just to say that I've been missing the point with my goals. Even the weight one. As long as I am eating healthy, getting plenty of exercise, and taking care of my body, then I shouldn't worry about anything else. Focusing so much on my weight is focusing far too much on me. Also, I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and God has created me to be the body type that I am. And when I am focusing so much on one mere aspect of myself, I am obviously not focusing my attention on Christ.

In the same entry, Chambers also writes: "No matter what changes God has wrought in you, never rely upon them, build only on a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Spirit He gives." Even if I were to lose a bunch of weight, and have a perfect body, would I really be in a better place? I would be priding myself on what I'd accomplished, and definitely placing far too much emphasis on myself.

No, my focus needs to be not on what I can do to improve myself, but what Christ can do through me, if only I'll quit being so self-centered and let Him. So I'll keep my 2011 "goals" in the back of my mind, because they will help keep me structured and can only help me to improve, but I don't want them to be my main focus this year. Instead, I want to build this year on the Person of Christ, and on His Spirit. And if I happen to slim down, great - it will be an added bonus. But my true source of joy should not come from seeing a self-centered goal completed, like a finished manuscript of the novel I've been working on for the past 3-4 years, or the numbers on the scale dropping. No, my true source of joy should be in Christ. So that is my resolution for this year: To Build on the Person of Christ. And if I acknowledge up-front that I have no power to carry this out, and will have to rely on Christ to work in and through me, paradoxically, the goal can be achieved.

Gemma's First Christmas, Part 3: Christmas with the Browns

2011-01-07T07:36:00.016-05:00

My family had been planning to come down on Dec. 26 after church, but then, over the weekend, we learned that they were expecting up to 8 inches of snow! Sure enough, they woke up Sunday morning and were snowed in with about 5 inches. It was still snowing, and not expected to get above freezing all day. They had to cancel church, but were still just stuck in Ellerbe because of the roads. They called and said they would be down on Monday, as soon as the roads were clear enough.

Then...it started snowing here! It wasn't cold enough to stick, but it snowed pretty heavily all day long. I took Gemma out to look at the snow, but she just stared at it. She wasn't sure what to think.And then, around 1 pm, I got a call from my mom telling me to put the soup on, because they were on the way. They ended up taking a slightly longer route that used more mainstream roads, but they made it here safely. And then it was like Christmas all over again! There were tons of presents for Gemma of course. Her favorite was the Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Kitchen, something that wasn't on her list that my mom had decided last-minute to get.

And of course, as usual with the Brown family, there were about as many gag gifts as there were real presents. Such as the oh-so-attractive 3D glasses and Rachel and I with our twin bump-its! We had so much fun!

Gemma's First Christmas, Part 2: Christmas Day

2011-01-06T07:06:00.011-05:00

So of course, Gemma decided that Christmas morning would be the perfect day to sleep in. I thought that once you had a kid, you didn't have to come up with an excuse for being up early on Christmas morning anymore, that the kiddo was supposed to be up first, waking everyone up? Not the case. We were both awake and Gemma just kept snoozing away. Finally she woke up and we got to open presents!!!

The present-opening went better than expected. Gemma was actually way more aware of what was going on and way more into it than we thought she would be. Each time something new appeared from the wrapping paper, she would reach for it and play with it until something new came along. Her favorite present by far that morning was the toy laptop she received from her friend Lucy.Cy and I got lots of great presents as well. In fact, we ended up getting each other the same present - a universal remote for the XBox 360. We both thought we were very clever surprising the other with the remote, since it was on neither of our Christmas lists.

Around lunchtime, we headed over to Frank and Andrea's for some roast and more presents. Gemma got some more super fun toys, and modeled a Christmas bow for us.

Cy and I both scored some Legos and a few other nice things. When I opened my Lego Imperial Flagship, Noah exclaimed: "Wow! I want that for Christmas!" But he seemed pretty content with his fun new set of interactive talking dinosaurs and his new digital camera. By the time we finished opening presents, poor little Gemma was absolutely exhausted, so we drove back home so she could get a nice long nap. It was a really great day - Gemma seemed to enjoy her very first Christmas.

Gemma's First Christmas, Part 1: Christmas Eve

2011-01-05T11:58:00.011-05:00

Christmas Eve this year was hosted at our house. The rest of the Shealys plus Kelly's mom and sister all came over for the festivities. Andrea made chili and I made corn spoonbread and wassail. For dessert, we had peanut butter pie plus an assortment of Christmas cookies. We tried to take some pictures of the three cousins together, but Gemma and Liam didn't want to cooperate. Gemma picked a fight with Liam by grabbing his face. When she wouldn't stop, we had to separate them. But then Liam decided it was time to retaliate and pretty much tried to tackle Gemma. After that, we really had to separate them.

After dinner, Cy read the story of Christ's birth from Matthew and Luke. Then we gathered around the piano and sang some Christmas tunes. Noah in particular enjoyed the singing.

Then it was time to open stockings. We each got a ton of great stuff. Gemma scored some socks, a bib, and her favorite: a bottle of formula. After everyone left, it was a toss-up whether Gemma or Daddy would be the first one to fall asleep so Santa could come.

Best Reads of 2010

2011-01-03T08:33:00.018-05:00

I have been sick with the plague for the past week, which is why there has not yet been a blog post about Gemma's first Christmas. I am working up to it. In the meantime, here is a quick and fun (at least, fun for me) post: my annual list of the best books I read in the previous year. So here they are, in no particular order:

1. The Flavia de Luce mysteries by Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie; The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag)

2. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Infinitely better than the Twilight books. I was not a fan of the sequel, however.

3. The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. It's been years since she published The Historian (which was fantastic), but The Swan Thieves was worth the wait.

4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. There was so much hype about this book that I put off reading it because I thought I would only be disappointed. I was not.

5. The Hunger Games & Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (read these twice actually). I was wary of this one too since people were comparing it to Lord of the Flies. It is nothing like Lord of the Flies. Mostly because it is fantastic and Lord of the Flies is terrible. Mockingjay (the third volume of the trilogy) was horrible.

6. Graceling by Kristin Cashore.

7. Nefertiti, The Heretic Queen, and Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran.

8. Sarah's Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. Another book that was seriously hyped, yet managed to live up to its reputation.

9. The City and the City by China Mieville. I was really not into this book when I first started reading it. It took me a while to get interested, but then I couldn't put it down. After I was finished, I thought about it a lot and developed a growing appreciation for its subtle brilliance. Then I *attempted* to read his new book, Kraken (because I loved The City and the City, and being a little bit obsessed with Pirates of the Caribbean, I was pretty pumped about a kraken, but it was so bad I couldn't even get through 75 pages! It was totally bizarre and I had no idea what was going on!)

10. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. This is a really odd book, and had some inappropriate scenes that I wasn't crazy about, yet it was very well-written and weirdly fascinating.

11. River God by Wilbur Smith - Historical fiction set in ancient Egypt = good times.

12. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson - I wasn't a huge fan of book 2 of the trilogy, but I liked the way the trilogy ended with this one.

13. Faithful Place by Tana French - not as good as her previous two, but still thoroughly enjoyable.

14. The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End by Ken Follett - Wow is really all I can say about this. The word epic is so overused these days, but if anything deserves to be described as epic, this is it. Also enjoyed watching the mini-series this year as well.

15. Juliet by Anne Fortier - an interesting new spin on the well-known (and overdone) Shakespeare tale.

16. Deja Dead by Kathy Reichs - I randomly started watching Bones on Netflix earlier this year and then decided to try Deja Dead since I had never read anything by Kathy Reichs. I was hooked. I ended up reading everything she's written.

17. Cold Magic by Kate Elliott - An obscure but enjoyable book. Probably only interesting to serious fantasy/sci-fi fans.

18. The Host by Stephenie Meyer - I finally got around to reading this. It was nothing like what I expected, but I enjoyed it very much. I thought it was much better than Twilight, actually.

19. The Distant Hours by Kate Morton - LOVE, LOVE, LOVE KATE MORTON! And her books just keep getting better!!!

20. The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld. I had downloaded the first book in this series onto my Kindle ages ago and for some reason, had never bothered to read it. I kept hearing about his new series (Leviathan, Behemoth), and checked Leviathan out from the library. It was decent, and while waiting for the library to get a copy of Behemoth for me, I decided to read Uglies. I was instantly hooked. I plowed through Uglies and downloaded Pretties. Then I plowed through Pretties and downloaded Specials. I wasn't so sure about Extras, since it featured a different character than the original trilogy. But I went ahead and read it too...and it ended up being my favorite of all of them!

21. A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels by Libba Bray - I promise my interest in these books has nothing to do with the fact that the main character's name is Gemma! (Although that might make me a bit impartial to said character.) I downloaded the first of this trilogy ages ago at the same time I downloaded Uglies. After Uglies turned out to be so good, I decided to give the Gemma Doyle Trilogy a try also. Not as good as Uglies, but still really good. YA fantasy set in Victorian England, told from the point of view of a girl named Gemma. Um, this book was clearly just screaming my name! I haven't read the third installment yet, but it is next up on my reading list.

And, just for fun, some books that were so awful I couldn't even finish reading them:

1. The aforementioned Kraken by China Mieville

2. The Vampire Diaries: The Return: Shadow Souls by L. J. Smith - love the show, love the original books. No idea what she was thinking when she wrote this.

3. The Naming by Alison Croggon. I was pretty excited about this - it's a fantasy, quest-type YA read. But it was soooooo boring I literally kept falling asleep while reading it and couldn't even make myself finish it.

4. The Passage by Justin Cronin. Okay, I actually did finish this one, but only because I made myself. This book had a ton of hype, and when I started reading it, I was actually very interested. The first couple hundred pages are really good, and it's a unique vampire story (which is hard to do with the vampire craze going on). But the book really should have ended there, and not 500+ pages later after which point I was thoroughly confused and no longer interested at all.

5. Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. After reading his two medieval epics, I was pretty excited about his new Century trilogy. Oh my gosh. I was so bored. I read a little over half, then skimmed to the end. I will not be reading book two. I was glad I got this from the library and didn't waste my money.

6. Three Seconds by Roslund & Hellstrom - I got an ARC and was pretty excited, since it was being compared to Stieg Larsson. It was nothing like Larsson. It seemed like the English translation was done very poorly, so that may have been part of the problem. Either way, very confusing and not worth my time.

And a P. S. - I am already reading a fantastic new book by Julie Klassen (LOVE HER!), The Girl in the Gatehouse, that just came out on January 1. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through, but I can already tell it will be making my 2011 list!

Smells...Er, Looks...Like Christmas Spirit

2010-12-16T11:24:00.019-05:00

Once again this year, we have gone all-out decorating our house for Christmas. We have multiple Christmas trees inside, and we have the columns and the overhang of our front porch decorated, along with the Christmas yard flamingo. This year was especially nice, as we held the annual Shealy family shindig at our house, so we actually got to share all of our decorations.

Inside the house we have:

The "family" Christmas tree:

Blue/white/silver Christmas tree:

Small M&M Christmas tree:

And, just for me, a tree with pink lights decorated solely with flamingo ornaments:

A Lego Christmas village:

And of course, our stockings are hung by the chimney with care:

7 Months Old

2010-12-08T14:18:00.006-05:00

So Gemma was officially 7 months old yesterday...which I realized last night as I was lying in bed not falling asleep. Pretty much, I rarely even know what the date is these days, so I missed it. :( But I tried to make up for it by taking an official "7 month photo" with Gemma and her giraffe this morning.

She is getting so big! (For her, that is. She is still pretty tiny. She has moved on to wearing some 6-9 month clothes now, but they are all still too long and kind of baggy.) She has 2 teeth now and it seems like she might be working on a top tooth. She is learning new stuff all the time and is just getting more and more fun every day. She has recently started waving (sort of), can sit up really well, and is pushing up really high when on her tummy and trying so hard to get moving! She loves to sit and read (and eat) books. She is doing great with solid foods - I made a big batch of pureed fruits and vegetables a few weeks ago and she consistently eats apples, pears, peaches, sweet potatoes, carrots, and green beans. Right now, she is constantly in awe of the many Christmas trees and decorations that have recently appeared in our house. This morning, she was mesmerized as she got to observe her first fire in the fireplace. She is fascinated by anything new, and extremely observant.

She is so funny, and so sweet. She is more amazing than we had dreamed possible, and as usual, we are looking forward to what the next month will bring!

5 Years of NaNoWriMo Completed Successfully!

2010-11-30T09:24:00.000-05:00

This year was my 5th year in a row successfully completing NaNoWriMo - yay! 50,000 + words accomplished in the space of 1 month. And this year came with its own set of challenges. I had to get adjusted to writing on a very weird schedule this year. I couldn't just write whenever an idea popped into my head - I had to save it for whenever Gemma was napping. And when she was napping, even if the creative juices weren't flowing, I knew I had to get to work anyway, because time was short! Another difficulty came when my granny passed away and I had to spend most of a week traveling to and from Kansas City for the funeral. I fell behind while I was out in the Midwest, as I knew I would, but managed to catch up and actually get ahead some when I got back. I was glad I got ahead, because just a couple of days after I got back, we were on the road again, heading up to Bedford, Virginia for Thanksgiving. At which point I fell slightly behind again.

But after all of that, I managed to finish up yesterday - with approximately a day and a half to spare! I'm not sure I've ever finished before Nov. 30 before, so that was a new milestone for me. And, like last year, I was somehow able to wrap up the plot at the end of my 50,000 words too, so I have a completed story as well! Now I am going to try to do some fast (but careful) editing in hopes that I can maybe have printed copies of my newest novel, Lunatics and Lycanthropy, to give as Christmas gifts!!!

Gemma's First Thanksgiving (and other things)

2010-11-30T06:56:00.012-05:00

I'm finally getting around to writing another blog post. Things have been a bit crazy here of late. The week before Thanksgiving, my Granny (my dad's mom) passed away. Because the funeral was going to be in Kansas City, we had a hard time figuring out what to do. We really wanted all three of us to be able to go, but we didn't want to take Gemma on a plane, and we didn't really have time to do the incredibly long car ride to get there. So, in the end, I flew out with my parents and sister and Cy and Gemma stayed home. It was a very hard decision. It was the first time Cy and I had spent a night apart since we got married, and it was definitely my first time away from little Gemma. I was so worried that she wouldn't even remember me when I got back, but fortunately that was not the case! She was so excited to see me! It was a quick and difficult trip to Kansas City and back, but I am glad that I went. My Granny had been through some very awful suffering in the last few weeks of her life, and I was glad that she was finally at peace, and glad that I was able to go to her funeral. While there, I was very touched to see that she had pictures of me, Cy, and Gemma on display in her house. I do regret that she did not get to meet sweet little Gemma in person.

After traveling in cars and planes and sitting in airports the whole week before Thanksgiving, I wasn't feeling terribly excited about getting back in the car and driving 8 hours each way to visit my mom's parents in Bedford, Virginia. But I definitely wanted them to be able to meet Gemma, so we piled in the car and headed on up. We split the trip in half by spending the night at my parents' house each way before finishing up the trip.

Even though I am still exhausted from so much traveling, I am so glad that we made the trip. Gemma did fantastic with all the time in the car, and with meeting so many new people and letting them hold her. She is such a sweetie, and I am so thankful that she is so laid back. My grandparents were absolutely thrilled to meet her! I practically had to pry her away from my Grandma a few times because she enjoyed holding her so much!

While in Virginia, we also got to see two of my uncles and aunts, and my three boy cousins. We had Thanksgiving dinner at my uncle Jeff's house, and it was a huge feast! There were even three different kinds of meat - turkey, duck, and capon. Everything was delicious. We enjoyed the food, but mostly we enjoyed getting to see family that we hadn't seen in a couple of years.

Before we left, we got to take a "four-generation photo" with my Grandma, my mom, me, and Gemma. It was a very sweet moment.

Though we had a really good time seeing anyone, we were so incredibly relieved to be home. We are looking forward to not having to travel again for a very long time, hopefully! We are enjoying being back at home and are focusing most of our efforts now on getting the house ready for Christmas!

Six Months Old!

2010-11-08T10:22:00.009-05:00

Gemma officially turned 6 months old yesterday, and went for her 6 month checkup this morning. She is doing great - a lot of things have happened for her just in the past week. She has suddenly gotten the hang of eating solids and is just scarfing down everything we give her. She seems to take after her dad - she seems to particularly love her green beans! In the past week, she has also gotten much closer to being able to sit on her own. As of yesterday, she could do it for about 30 seconds to 1 minute before she sort of toppled over. Also yesterday, her first tooth finally broke the surface! She has been working on it for a while and had a kind of rough week, and though you can't really see her tooth too much yet, it is definitely there now!

This morning, we took Gemma for her 6 month checkup. Cy and I both made guesses on how much she would weigh: he picked 13.6; I picked 13.10. She was 13.13 (10th percentile), which was good. . .she almost made 14 pounds, but not quite! She was 24.5 inches long (10th percentile), and her head was 16.2 (25th percentile). Surprisingly, she was still on the growth charts! Then she had to get her shots. . .she cried pretty hard, but just for a few minutes. Still, I hated it for her. :( I am looking forward to her 9 month checkup - I was promised she would not have to have any shots! Anyway. . .the point is that she is doing great, for which we are very thankful. Time is just going by so fast - I can't believe how grown up my little girl is getting already! :)

Gemma's First Halloween

2010-11-01T07:34:00.010-04:00

Yesterday we celebrated Gemma's first Halloween. Being only six months old, she of course really had no idea what was going on, but Cy and I had fun. We finally got around to carving our pumpkins. Cy carved a creepy scarecrow on his, mine was a pumpkin in disguise, and Cy carved a cute little cat on Gemma's baby-sized pumpkin. (We like to say that Gemma is like a little cat because she likes to use our couch as a scratching post. Also, she likes to lick stuff like a cat.)

When it was time for trick-or-treating, we suited Gemma up in her strawberry costume and headed out to the porch. She was very sweet and cooperative and didn't seem to mind the costume at all, even the hat. And she looked soooooooo cute!!! All the moms of trick-or-treaters kept running up to see Gemma and just exclaiming over how cute she looked.

In the past couple of years, we have always bought way too much candy and had very few trick-or-treaters. I think it is because we live so far back in the neighborhood that not too many people bother walking back to where our house is. This year, someone across the street had tons of friends visiting from other neighborhoods, so we ran out of candy in about 20 minutes as I had only bought 1 bag this time. Oh well. We still had fun seeing a few kiddos in costumes (none as cute as Gemma of course).

So yes, Gemma's first Halloween was more for us than for her, but hey, she looked cute and we had a good time. Can't wait until next year when she is more aware - how much fun will that be?!

Pumpkin Patch

2010-10-30T14:18:00.017-04:00

I just realized that I forgot to post pictures of our trip to the pumpkin patch last weekend. I post tons of pictures to Facebook and then often forget to put them up here as well. We had big plans for last Saturday that included taking Gemma to a pumpkin patch and then a date night for us. Things ended up not going quite as planned since Gemma ended up on a weird nap schedule on Saturday, but on Sunday afternoon we made it out of the house in search of pumpkins.

Gemma was hilarious at the pumpkin patch. There was so much to look at, and she was completely overwhelmed. She has been extremely observant pretty much since the day she was born, and she spent most of the time at the pumpkin patch whipping her head back and forth taking everything in.

We picked out a daddy-sized pumpkin, a mama-sized pumpkin, and a little baby pumpkin for baby Gemma.

Gemma was dressed like a pumpkin and totally blended in with her surroundings.

Before we left, Gemma got to sit on a super cool horse made of hay that was pulling a wagon full of pumpkins.

It was so much fun watching her taking in this new experience! She is more and more fun every day!

And on a happier note. . .some recent pictures of my supercute child!

2010-10-29T12:36:00.004-04:00

In the Same Boat (Literally)

2010-10-29T12:06:00.004-04:00

An update on my dizziness/vertigo/boat-rocking-sensation issues: This past Monday (Oct. 25) I went for a follow-up with an ENT at MUSC. It was. . .interesting, to say the least. The doctor was a bit weird, for one thing. For example, he went off on this really long rant about how he's stocking up on incandescent light bulbs and we should too, because before you know it, they're all going to be gone! And then what will we do! Stuff like that. Anyway. . . after sitting in a germ-infested waiting room for forever freaking out because I couldn't find my hand sanitizer, I finally got in to see the doctor. He came in and made me do some weird things, like marching in place with my eyes closed (during which I veered sharply to the left), having my head whipped around in different directions while lying flat on a table, and having a tuning fork vibrated against my head (?). And yeah, that last part felt really bizarre.

We tried to explain the situation to the doctor, but he really liked to hear himself talk and wasn't so good with the listening. Also he had apparently convinced himself ahead of time that my problem was not an ear problem, but that it was somehow caused by migraines (which I get pretty infrequently these days). He actually wanted me to see a neurologist about this, which I am not doing, because that would be stupid, since I don't have a problem with migraines.

In the end, I left feeling very frustrated because this appointment was similar to so many others. The conclusion was that my dizziness "could be caused by this, or it could be caused by that" and "this might help, or that might help" but "there's not much we can do." I was sent home with a sheet of Cawthorne-Cooksey exercises for my eyes. (I have done these before, though not as extensively, so maybe the extended version will help.) I am also supposed to be going back to physical therapy, and the doctor suggested I try the PT for at least 6 months (in the meantime, there was of course some sort of confusion about the referral so now I have to sort that out).

I left feeling very downhearted. (My mood did not improve when I was nearly mugged in the MUSC parking garage, but that is a whole different story.) I manage pretty well these days, but living life on an imaginary boat is not really ideal and it does restrict me and cause problems with certain tasks. It also makes me worry about being inadequate in taking care of Gemma. I really fear that one day the room will just start tilting and I will drop her or something equally bad will happen. I also worry that people think I am a hypochondriac because there is nothing tangibly wrong with me, and I function pretty well. Anyway. . .still very frustrated and could really use some prayer that the PT and the eye exercises will help. At this point, even the slightest improvement would be a welcome relief.

How Fast Does This Little Tree Twirl?

2010-10-13T17:56:00.004-04:00

Today I experienced yet another phase in my ongoing, epic battle with vertigo. I haven't mentioned it in a while, but it's still never gone away; it was merely pushed to the sidelines while I dealt with all the ups and downs that pregnancy threw my way. I knew that there wasn't much anyone could do for me while I was pregnant, but now, at 5 months postpartum, I figured that it was a good time to go back to another doctor. I'm not terribly hopeful that they will be able to fix my problem completely, but I figured it couldn't hurt to try. So I made an appointment at the MUSC ENT clinic.

This morning, I went in for a battery of ENG tests. When I called to make my appointment, the assistant I spoke to was shocked to learn that I had never yet undergone these tests. They are apparently pretty standard for diagnosing balance disorders, yet I have never had them although I have been suffering from vertigo for over a year. If nothing else, I at least felt that the MUSC folks were much more on top of things than the last ENT I saw (who did no tests and diagnosed me on the basis that I exhibited "classic textbook symptoms" and then simply referred me to someone else).

I was really dreading the testing this morning, as they warned me that they would be trying to aggravate my symptoms and that I would quite possibly leave feeling worse than when I arrived. After being dizzy for over a year, I was not excited about someone making me feel worse. (They even told me not to eat this morning as I was likely to vomit. Good times.)

For the first test, I was strapped into a harness and had to stand on a moving platform. The platform tilted different ways, at times the background scenery moved, and I had to do this alternating between having my eyes closed and having them open. One time I fell and we had to stop the test and start that part over. I had a very hard time keeping my balance and felt a little bit queasy. After that, they did a hearing test, which was fine.

Then it was time for the not-so-fun part: the rotational chair. I was strapped into a chair wearing weird goggles with a camera in them to track my eye movements. Then I was spun around various ways at various speeds. Then the chair stopped spinning, but for me, the room kept on spinning. I managed not to throw up. After that, I was laid back onto a table (still wearing the sweet headgear) and water was sprayed into each of my ears for 20 seconds. This made the room spin even worse than the spinning chair.

After that I was finally done. The audiologist said the tests were showing that I definitely have a vestibular problem (no kidding) but it will be up to the ENT doctor to make a definite diagnosis and decide on treatment. I will see him on Oct. 25. Right now, it is looking like I might have vestibular migraines, mal de debarquement syndrome (which I have suspected from the cruise I went on, and which is incurable), or possibly some neurological vestibular vision issue of which I can't remember the actual name. The treatment is most likely going to be to send me back to physical therapy, and possibly a special migraine diet too if the diagnosis is vestibular migraines.

Even though I still don't feel like I made much progress toward feeling better at this point, I was extremely relieved that I made it through the tests without regressing. I even felt well enough afterward to reward myself with an apple bagel and pumpkin spice coffee from Bruegger's. I have felt a little queasy and shaky the rest of the day, but much better than I expected.

Anyway. . .that is the latest update in my ongoing battle to debark my invisible, personal cruise ship. We would really appreciate prayers that this doctor will make an accurate diagnosis and that any treatment will be effective. It has been a long year and a half, and although I've learned to cope, the constant dizziness is very frustrating to live with (especially as it fluctuates in intensity) and there are occasional meltdowns.

5 Months Old!

2010-10-07T18:35:00.005-04:00

Gemma is officially 5 months old today. I thought this month's picture turned out extra cute, as she gave her giraffe a great big hug right as I snapped the picture. As you can see, she is definitely growing! (Although she is pretty tiny compared to other babies her age - she just recently outgrew her 0-3 month clothes!) It has been a crazy fantastic 5 months - it has gone by so fast!

First Time Eating Cereal

2010-10-07T06:48:00.007-04:00

A couple of nights ago, we fed Gemma some rice cereal for the first time. Because she has already displayed some food allergies, her pediatrician wanted us to wait until she was around 5 to 5.5 months old before starting any type of solids.

So the other night we fed her some rice cereal. I use the term "fed" very loosely here. She's not so good with closing her mouth and swallowing, so mostly the cereal just came dripping back out down her chin. (We made the rookie mistake of not having any plastic bibs on hand--the cloth one she was wearing was dripping with cereal by the time she was done.) She actually did much better than we were expecting--she gave us such a hard time transitioning to formula that we were expecting more of the same behavior in this situation. But when we "fed" her the cereal, she actually swallowed a lot more of it than we were expecting. We also got some really good laughs at her facial expressions. Can't wait to see what happens when we start her on some veggies!

The Flack Attack

2010-09-28T06:58:00.007-04:00

Last week, my roomie from college, Laura, her husband Michael, and sweet little daughter Lucy were vacationing at Litchfield Beach, and drove down to Charleston one night to meet us for dinner. We hadn't seen Lucy since she was about the age Gemma is now, and Michael and Laura hadn't gotten to meet little Gemma yet at all! We met up at Vickery's on Shem Creek for some yummy food and some hanging out time.

Lucy was so much fun - she was "dancing" in her high chair the whole way through dinner. It was so cute! After we ate, we took the girls outside on the porch that overlooks the creek. Lucy had a great time running and crawling around out there. Gemma behaved in typical Gemma fashion and just chilled and looked around a lot, taking everything in.

It was soooo great to catch up with the Flack family - we miss them so much and don't get to see them nearly often enough! And Lucy was so sweet with Gemma - she even gave her a kiss!

Weekend at the Lake

2010-09-13T11:53:00.011-04:00

Cy's dad's family has a large piece of property on Lake Murray with a house on it, and they have been wanting us to come for a while. This past weekend, we decided to try a weekend at the lake (we had been putting it off until Gemma was a bit older). Gemma and I picked Cy up at Blackbaud on Friday afternoon with the car all loaded up and we took off. We made it to the lake around 7 pm. We were a little wary at first as we passed a rifle-toting shirtless old guy just up the street from the lake house. But when we got there, and saw all the work they had done on the property, we were amazed. Tons of brush had been cleared so you could see the lake really well. (The house sits on a small peninsula and is surrounded on 3 sides by water.) Cy's parents had done a really great job of fixing up the inside of the house as well.

It ended up being a really relaxing, peaceful weekend getaway. The Shealy land is in its own secluded little cove, so it was very quiet and there was no one else around. We had fun sitting on the porch swing and reading, playing Frisbee in the huge yard, going on many walks beneath the shade of the tons of tall trees, and we definitely enjoyed the many rounds of Mexican Train dominoes! I of course, enjoyed taking gazillions of pictures as usual. Even Gemma seemed to have a really great time - she was super happy the whole trip. (As exhibited by her huge smile in this picture - she especially enjoyed many walks in the Baby Bjorn with her daddy!)

Gemma even got to dip her toes in the lake. . .she wasn't too sure about it, but she didn't cry, so it must not have been too bad!

It was a really great weekend, and we can't wait to go back to the lake!

Four Months Old

2010-09-07T16:27:00.007-04:00

Today we took Gemma for her 4 month checkup, and she is officially 4 months old today. The past 4 months have gone by incredibly fast - it is so hard to believe that she is this old already. And everyday with her is crazy and new - she is changing so much and is so much fun.

Not surprisingly, Gemma didn't even make the 25th percentile on everything this time. . .she is a tiny girl. (She still has yet to outgrow her 0-3 month clothes.) Here were her stats:
Head size: 16" (25th percentile)
Length: 23" (10th percentile)
Weight: 12 pounds 4 oz. (10th percentile)

Poor little Gemma had to get another round of shots today. I vowed I wasn't going to cry this time. I failed. Last time she had shots, she wasn't fussy but just slept most of the day. Today she slept for over an hour right after we got home, but when she woke up, she cried and cried for almost a solid hour. Then she fell back asleep and slept for two hours straight. That seemed to have done the trick - she woke up her normal happy self after that second nap. I really hate seeing her feeling so bad, but I know it is better for her in the long run.

While at the appointment, we spoke to the doctor about some issues Gemma has been having with eczema ever since her last incident with milk-based formula. We have a treatment plan in place for the eczema now so hopefully we can get it cleared up soon. At long last, we also have finally found a formula that works: Similac Alimentum.

Because Gemma has already had some issues with food allergies, the doctor wants us to wait until she is 5 or 5.5 months old before starting her on any solids, and then to proceed very carefully with what we feed her. He also said that she will have to avoid allergen foods longer than what is normally recommended for other babies her age.

Other than allergy-related issues, she was doing great. The doctor was not concerned about her small size, since she is growing well. She is just not going to be a very big girl (no surprise there!).

She seems to be doing great with the developmental milestones too. This past week, she fully mastered the art of flipping onto her tummy from her back without getting her arm stuck. She immediately flips over pretty much anytime we put her down now. Hopefully soon she will be flipping from her back to her tummy on her own (she has done it a couple of times by accident).

We are excited to see what the next few months will bring!

A Fun Labor Day Weekend

2010-09-07T11:53:00.003-04:00

We had a really fun Labor Day weekend together. Gemma and I both really enjoyed having Cy home for an extra day. On Saturday morning, we drove down to Brittle Bank Park and took Gemma for a stroll (I of course took my camera and snapped some pictures). Then we did a little shopping, then went home to get some lunch and continue our Vampire Diaries season 1 marathon (we received the blu-rays on Friday). On Sunday, we took it easy with some more Vampire Diaries and hanging-out together time. We got to play a few games, which we enjoyed. On Monday, we went to The Park Formerly Known As Sunrise Park for more strolling/picture taking time. We took a towel and let Gemma roll around on it in the grass while we enjoyed the nice weather. Then we met up with the rest of the Shealy family for some burgers. After we went back home, Gemma snoozed for a bit and we took the monitor outside and threw the Frisbee around in the backyard. It was pretty hot, and neither one of us is in Frisbee shape, but it had been such a long time since we had thrown the Frisbee, and we really really enjoyed it. We finished off our fun weekend with a nice walk around the neighborhood, and some reading (with a few more episodes of Vampire Diaries thrown in here and there). It was so nice and relaxing - all three of us really hated it when Cy had to go back to work this morning!

Improper Use of the Bumbo

2010-09-03T06:52:00.004-04:00

THIS OBJECT IS NOT A CHEW TOY. . .or is it?

I put Gemma in the Bumbo and I looked over and saw this. She was pretty much folded completely in half, so I wondered what in the world she was doing.

When I got closer, I saw this:

Yum. . .

Norfanger Plantation. . . now on Kindle!

2010-08-31T15:43:00.004-04:00

I finally finished up everything for the Kindle version of Norfanger Plantation and uploaded it to Amazon.com. I saw just a few minutes ago that the page is up and running and the Kindle version is now for sale! To try to expand my pool of readers a bit, I am going to be selling the Kindle version for only $0.99 through the end of September.

If you are interested, you can purchase the Kindle version here.

While I was proofing the Kindle version, I noticed some mistakes and typos (not just formatting issues), so I am now working on updating the print version. I uploaded a new file and the publisher said I had to order another proof copy and approve it before it could be made available for sale again. I got the proof this afternoon and unfortunately, all the page numbers had disappeared from the latest version. Also, some of the fonts on the cover looked weird. So I am now working on yet another new file and will then have to wait for another proof. Hopefully by the end of the week or the beginning of next week I can have the print version back up and running.

By this point, I am pretty much so sick of Norfanger Plantation that I never want to see it or read it or think about it ever again.

Hula Monkey

2010-08-26T11:01:00.003-04:00

I had to take some pictures of Gemma in this cute little hula monkey outfit. It has a little terry cloth jacket that matches which is also super cute, but since it is blazing hot here today (although significantly cooler than it has been), I opted to skip that part of the outfit.

When I dressed her this morning, I remembered picking out the outfit before she was born, along with a bunch of other cute outfits. It seems so funny to look back on that now -- picking out outfits for her while wondering just what she was going to look like. Now it is so much fun to put those outfits on her and finally get to see her in them. Especially since she is infinitely cuter and sweeter than I could have ever imagined!

In Which Gemma Makes Pterodactyl Sounds. . .

2010-08-25T10:43:00.006-04:00

A few days ago, Gemma learned to make a lovely, indignant grunting sound. I am not a fan. But now she has also learned to make high-pitched, squealing, pterodactyl noises, which I like a lot better. Here are a couple of really short clips of some of her strange (and funny) new noises.

Playing Halo with Daddy

2010-08-17T07:22:00.006-04:00

Last night was video game night, so I was entertaining Gemma while Cy played Halo with some friends from work. (In exchange, he entertains Gemma one night a week while I get some work done on my current novel.) I had to run to the bathroom, and when I came back, Gemma wasn't where I left her. I looked around and this is where I finally spotted her:

So much for making sure she doesn't start playing video games too young. I love how they both look kind of guilty in the picture.

Actually she seemed to enjoy sitting there watching her daddy shoot everyone. When I tried to take her away to sit on my lap instead, she started fussing. Oh boy.

This is why feeding Gemma is so difficult:

2010-08-15T08:29:00.004-04:00

Or at least in part - passing out asleep just after starting a bottle is only one of the many issues Gemma has with eating. . .