babies, pick up your mallets.

magz & daddy lending MORE musicality to the arcade fire (the band playing in the background). our Christmas gifts to her were the xylophone, some fun maracas, and the pink radio/iphone dock up in the corner of the screen.

surfacing

it's mid-holiday, and I'm fluctuating between wanting to rest and do nothing, working, and wanting to do EVERYTHING that needs to be done in my little world. I feel tired in my bones a little, as B2 would say. I'm normally not much of a resolution-maker, but am definitely considering how to enact some changes in the new year. woo-hoo, we get a new year! 2010 was a wonderful year in so many ways; it also brought it's share of challenges. was that the correct use of a semi-colon? anyway, I definitely feel older after having lived through this year, and stretched both physically and emotionally. I'm looking forward to a new year to do some things better, the most important being to give God more space in my day, my week, my year. more space, more heed, more reliance. more Effort.

here are some photos from this month, starting with the 6 month ones with little Raggedy Ann:

a few shots of christmas at the ranch!

and christmas at Grammy & Opa's:

she's growing so much. we're sitting up (she still needs a bit of help and tends to eventually lean too far and topple over) and can get up on all fours and rock back and forth (video to come!). crawling is in our near future. she's been on rice cereal, and now that we're back from holiday travel we'll be jumping into our introduction to other foods with both feet. Magz got a couple of sippy cups for Christmas and immediately knew what to do with it. I haven't put anything in it yet, but it's fun that she knows what it's for. she's also doing a little waving thing with her hand - mostly her left hand at this point - and she'll talk and shriek and babble to us a lot (she's gotten some consonants... mostly M and B). she's such a sweet, mostly good-natured girl and I feel so thankful and blessed to be her mama.

happy tuesday afternoon, everybody.

-m.y.

half a year

margaret ann is officially six months old today! un... real.

and it's been forever since I blogged! so much to say. so little energy to say it. it seems like we've been going full throttle since Thanksgiving, and my dance card is still pretty full up until we leave for our Christmas trip to Hico next week. hurray for the blessing of work, and quiet prayers for the energy and grace to handle it all.

we'll try to take some good photos tomorrow after our six month trip to the doctor and try to chronicle some of the cool things baby girl is up to these days, but here are a few choice digital nuggets of late... she's currently so flipping squeezable, and we're all about the oral fixation (especially when it comes to mr. elephant's trunk, though anything will do, really):

behold my homemade christmas craft, the felt wreath. :)

more blogging will happen, I promise. for now, I'll take 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep in my stocking, Santa. Santa? Santa! It's not polite to laugh like that, you jerk!

-m.y.

p.s. I heard this from a friend Saturday night and thought it was so good... I'm paraphrasing, but it went something like this; 'regarding willpower, I think it's about getting grounded in Another Way enough that the utter lack of willpower doesn't matter.' I really identify with that, and wish to even more.

thanksgiving 1.0

during my Mothers Of Pre-Schoolers group last week, I got the inspiration to serve a thanksgiving meal to the kids that come to church on Wednesday night. they already get snacks and stuff, I just thought it would be incredibly appropriate to actually have a real meal. so on Sunday, we asked the church for donations and as of COB Monday we had a bunch of money and willing volunteers to help! here's a peek at how it went down:

group shot #1. they look so SERIOUS.

group shot #2. MUCH BETTER!

look at whitney's cute banner! I made the signs with beth c's help:

sara's explaning what's what. we had turkey, ham, pizza, mashed potatoes, yams, green beans, mac & cheese, and broccoli-rice casserole, along with lots of fun desserts and drinks (including hot apple cider, which many of the kids were somewhat suspicious of). our guests were actually really good about trying some new things (even the apple cider!), and after we invited some of the adults from Cafe Grace over to have a bite we were still able to send a lot of food home with the kids:

we like these people a lot:

V.I.P. table:

the older kids (mostly) patiently waited for the little kids to go first:

my main cohort in thanksgiving crime. this girl was a huge help and is just a seriously lovely human being:

magz was with me @ the church for most of the day. she had her rough patches, but all's well that ends well. :)

I'm so glad we did this, and I'm grateful to everyone who helped! thanksgiving blessings!

-m.y.

holy mackerel! that's impressive drawing. :)

if you haven't already seen this, it's pretty amazing to watch. I'd be curious to hear any responses to the content, especially from educators.

five months old!

here are a few things about margaretann:

* she can hold her own bottle!
* mama bought her a couple of sleepsacks and she seems to like them a lot
* she's usually taking one really long nap a day accompanied by a couple of micronaps
* we're getting better about sleeping longer at night... last night she went to bed around 9:15, woke up at 4a to eat, fell back asleep, and woke at 8:30.
* (it's fun making up lyrics using the hymn "Peace, Perfect Peace"... 'Sleep, perfect sleep, in this dark world of nighttime, what I wouldn't give if she'd just sleep 'til nine?')
* she's rolling and scooting all over. she even managed to scoot halfway under the hideabed one afternoon when mama thought she was just playing on the floor in her room. margaretann is more closely supervised now.
* she's more interested in toys, and will happily take one from you to taste and handle
* she tastes everything.
* one of her favorite things to gnaw on is mama's knuckle.
* she's pretty easily distracted now... when she's nursing, if she hears something she cranes her neck to look around.
* she's showing interest in the things we're eating and drinking. I'm hoping that translates into a curiosity about tasting and trying food. our pediatrician said he'd prefer she be breastfed primarily for the first six months, so we're doing that and supplementing with the occasional bottle, but we're excited to introduce her to food (especially her Daddy!).
* before falling asleep, she often 'talks' herself down... it's pretty funny to hear.
* she's not really reaching out to us yet, but if you hold your hands out to pick her up she's learning to lean back, arch her back, and cackle like 'yes, PLEASE pick me up!'
* she mostly hangs out on the floor in her room, the living room floor, or in her bouncy plaything. I think she generally likes the floor the most, if you won't hold her. in the kitchen with mama & daddy, she hangs out in the bumbo or in her vibrating chair, and when she's in a good mood the swing is a good place to play and listen to music.
* she very obviously is gearing up to push up on her hands and knees. I'm not prepared for that yet (crawling?? um, there's dog hair everywhere...) but it's fun to watch her try to coordinate her hands and knees.
* I anticipate that the day will come when she'll push me away or think it's gross, so I just bury my face in her neck and pepper her cheeks with kisses as often as possible. because they are perfect and it's only right.

please indulge a few photos. 'a few' being a highly subjective description. happy birthday, sweet girl!

belated halloween photoz

to begin, Marmee made Magz & Mo sweet sweet halloween dresses... we'll probably get to wear ours next year, too! thank you for the fun, pretty dress Marmee!

here are some photoz from our church's halloween event:

we had a really great turnout (estimates are over 300 people). I'm hoping this event continues to grow... it's one of the times our neighbors come in and say hello, and I'm eager for this entire area to make us a safe, fun trick or treating destination:

by the way, the baby's been able to hold her own bottle for a couple of weeks now:

and we took some family photos with the tripod/timer after church last Sunday for the calendar we grandkids give YaYa every Christmas... this was the last photo we took:

picture perfect. :)

-m.y.