New Look

I've been working on my new look for the new blogger. I'm not sure how I like it yet. My only experience with HTML was experimenting with the old blogger until I got it to do what I wanted. So this new widget stuff is just something else to figure out. It's supposed to be easier, but I want to tweak stuff that is not in the easy to change tabbed sections. So I have to go into HTML and figure out how to do it. It's taken a while, but I think I like what I have so far. The biggest thing I don't like is that my tickers for the kids don't fit neatly across in the template, so the looked silly taking up so much room on the top. I relegated them to the bottom of the page for now, but I want to figure out a better solution for them.
Oh and I like the new spell check format even though the suggestions still leave quite a bit to be desired.

Lily at 11 months

Lily is getting better at making her will known, though she has always been pretty good at getting her way;-) She is now pointing and shaking her head. She points to things, up at you and puts her hands on your legs when she wants to be picked up and in the direction she wants you to carry her. She also points at things and says "sDat?" which I assume means "What's that?". She can also reliably point to my nose and mouth when I ask her, but she won't do it when anyone else is around; maybe she is too distracted. When she doesn't want to do something she shakes her head "no". It's the kind of shake that would make her hair fly out if she had any. It is so cute I can't help but laugh. This has become a problem because now she thinks it's funny and she does it to make me laugh too. Usually I can tell which one it is. When she is just playing sometimes I'll shake my hair back at her and she thinks it is hilarious. Her little sense of humor is coming along well.
She is not quite as portable in that she wants to be down on the ground doing things. I used to be able to take her to Ryan's gymnastics class and I would just hold her while we watched or carry her around the classroom when I watch the 2-5 year olds for Bible study. Now she protests violently. She wants to be in on the action. It's not as easy as just letting her walk around as she wants to run into the gym or eat the carpet. There is a class at the same time as Ryan's for 1-2 year olds, so we can join that class next session. It starts in April. I have no idea what I'm going to do until then.
She is quite a vertical child. She climbs on everything. All those table toys that are meant to help kids start standing? Yeah, she would rather be on top, thank you. We need to keep them away from all furniture because she will use it as a stool to get on the table or piano bench. You should see the look of satisfaction she has on her face when she stands up on the coffee table. It's like she's saying "I'm the king queen of the mountain, HA!" Of course climbing stairs is one of her very favorite activities. She has gotten pretty good at going down too. She always turns and backs down on her tummy now. She still needs someone to be behind her just in case, but she almost always makes it just fine.
She says "Da" when she sees Jay, but it is also still her generally happy noise. She also says, "Ma ma ma" when she wants me, but it can also just be rambling. She does that..."talks" a lot. She just brought me the Baby Beethoven DVD and said, "dadadada." I guess she likes it. Maybe she wants to watch it while I blog more;-) Really though I have spent enough time blogging. I should go pay attention to the munchkins for a while.

Here Lily is playing peek-a-boo with daddy. It's one of her favorite games.

Decisions, Decisions

Ryan wanted to make his own peanut butter and jelly sandwich today. I'm all for independence and letting kids accomplish tasks for themselves, but peanut butter and jelly? That could get messy. VERY messy. He has been making his own cheese sandwiches for months. Since he doesn't like anything but cheese on bread it's really not too bad. He sometimes ends up tearing the cheese in little bits and placing it all in the middle of the bread. That's fine with me because it's not messy and he is still getting the same amount of nutrition he would have been getting anyway. This peanut butter and jelly thing has HUGE mess written all over it. Against my better judgement I let him do it. I did give him some assistance, like holding the jar for him and guiding the knife when he was getting his jam. He did most of it himself with some "here use the knife this way" and "let's turn your plate so you don't get peanut butter on your arm" he did a really good job. It was really hard to let him take that step though. Sometimes it's just easier at this age to do it for him. He does get a lot of joy out of doing it himself though, so I guess it's worth a little extra mess and some heartburn.

Am I the Last One?

Blogger finally let me switch to the new version. Apparently my blog was too big before. I don't know how that was since I know people who have blogged much longer than I who were able to switch before me. I have not really explored all the new stuff, so I will reserve judgement for now. Seems okay so far though.

Reconciling Myself

I often feel at war within myself. No, it's not some spiritual awareness problem. It's more like feeling like there are two parts of me. Two parts that it's hard to reconcile. I was thinking about it the whole time I was picking up the kid's toys last night. There is the ultra organized part of me that has all the toys in separate bins according to what type (i.e. wooden trains in one bin, cars in another, take-a-long Thomas in another, Wooden blocks, foam blocks, you get the point) and there is the super lazy part of me that has every surface above Lily's reach stacked at least 3 inches thick with stuff and the dishes overflowing from the sink. There is the [slightly] germaphobic side of me (stop laughing Jay, I'm not that bad) and the side of me that doesn't get around to wiping the table down for days (maybe even weeks) at a time. There is a part of me that has wants a place for everything and everything in it's place and yet dusting, not so much and making the bed? Why, I'm just going to get in it again and mess it up. I know some of you are jumping out of your skin right now, sorry. It's not just cleaning either. There is the part of me that wants to raise grateful, well balanced children and the part of me that wants to buy them everything and make them happy all the time. There is a huge part of me that HATES to look or sound stupid and yet I still write as I think, no drafts, no trying to organize my paragraphs the way they tried to teach me in English class and the closest I get to proofreading is spell check. Part of me thinks with two kids under 3 there is not enough time in the day to do all I want to do and the other part wonders why I am blogging instead of cleaning the bathroom. So how do I reconcile the lazy and the wanna be clean, healthy, do-the-right-thing side of me? I don't know, but for starters maybe I should go change the stinky diaper I smell. ::sigh::