yay, first easter!

a few shots from our easter egg hunt @ church today:

please ignore mama's slip strap:

we had some family and friends over for lunch afterward, and had a really lovely time. what a great day. :)

-m.y.

good friday

this has been a very busy week, which means I enjoyed today so, so much. so much! after breakfast and a few errands, I had my first meeting with a new personal trainer and then took meggy-boo out for the day to meander around in this pretty weather and do a bit of shopping. what a delicious day off!

this one's a bit blurry but it shows one of the baby's favorite daily activities, which is removing the books from the bookshelf.

'reading' in her room. this is 'The Awesome Book of Thanks' the Mohs gave us:

I confess that I didn't get the most stellar Raggedy Ann photos this month, but we'll make do. here's magz & ann with 2 favorites... the white blanket and our learning kitchen:

seriously, she loves this blanket. we let her fall asleep with it, then sneak in and remove it from the crib...

why do people feel the need to do things like put bunny ears on their babies?

I mean, the babies couldn't care less. in fact, they're wondering why you're seemingly freaking out and waving the camera around after putting some weird fuzzy thing on their head.

because it's flipping adorable, that's why. and because we can.

my happy girl! I loved spending time with her today. :)

I'm about to start reading The Eat Clean Diet Recharged by Tosca Reno per my trainer's suggestion. I'm a little nervous, but am hopeful that this will all be a really good experience. I was afraid she'd encourage me to go on a stringent diet or cut all carbs or something (which frankly I don't think I could do) but this essentially looks like a whole foods meal plan - eat proper portions of lean proteins and complex carbs, good veggies and grains, 5-6 smaller meals a day, cut all processed things and sugars. Kathy said that 80% of my success will be from what I choose to put in my mouth. She also said I've got great muscle tone and was super-positive about what she thinks I'm capable of. Upcoming travel may be a little challenging to navigate, but I can totally do this. I already think about and plan the baby's meals, I just have to give as much consideration to my own!

if she doesn't decide to come on her own in the next few days, our new little niece, Kaitlin, will be born on Tuesday. please pray for my sister-in-law, that everything goes well. we're so looking forward to meeting this baby!

-m.y.

overwhelming gratefulness.

for people who share themselves, who are brave enough to confess and uncomfortably compel us to it.



both this video and the one beneath it on their website are so good to me, and are wonderful calling cards of this church. If we move to Arkansas, I want to go here.

sniffling.

-m.y.

more than you wanted?

it's been a full past week, and it appears as though the hits will keep on comin'. on my dance card for this coming week: twenty-four chapters of an accounting course to narrate, baby dr appointment, an audition for some industrial thing, three-year wedding anniversary, a character on a kids educational dvd to voice, a commercial shoot for a car dealership... and, you know, the gym. oh, and my house could use a tidying once-over. heh. the following week I get to go back to Dallas for three days, and the week after than, for two. I'm thankful for work! thank you, Lord. I won't lie, though, it's not without it's stressors, some of which are just personal communications and little, important bits I've let slip through the cracks. but I'd rather enjoy this pretty Saturday morning than dwell on it right now.

I'm in the process of weaning Magz, which has happened pretty organically. we're down to one feeding a day, in the evening before bed, but my body is still trying to figure everything out and my chest has been feeling sort of full and 'ow'. I feel like it's time, but there ARE positive ulterior motives at play, too - not only do I have more work travel coming up, but I'm scheduled to shoot for a couple of days on a movie in Mexico in June (fun!), and want to have her in a good place to succeed if I'm away from her for a few days. as nice as I think it will be to have my body back to myself, I've really treasured the connection of our mealtimes and I'm glad I've been able to feed her this long. so far, she's a good eater and is still willing to try lots of new things.

so many photos for you to enjoy. sooooooooo many!!!! imagine I said that last line like we do when we read Pat the Bunny, or the Baby Elmo book.

first, we went to our friend SC's wedding. sorry, SCH!

she likes playing with mama's pretties, and I confess I don't really mind. she does WANT to put them in her mouth, though, and mama has to thwart her good time with noise about 'just touching'... also, mama needs a haircut.

with daddy @ the reception:

exhibit A of what our visitor was talking to us about at MOPS last week. a kind fellow table-mate snapped our picture for us, and though it's fine (I monkeyed with it a little in iphoto) I wish I'd asked him to take it without the flash. photos taken in natural lighting always look better, even if you have to take a few extra to account for blurriness or whatnot.

next, may I present Sunday in the Park with Magz:

still unsure of the bucket swing, will deal by trying to eat it:

Stayin' Alive:

it's all about the pointing, really. which is good! any communication is welcome.

with daddy:

we went to Froberg's to pick strawberries, and had SUCH a good time! what a cool outing!

tuckered out.

it's too easy.

berry-freaking adorable, right?!

mgb and the baby came with me to work in the metroplex this week, and we got to hook up with Miss L for lunch! which was a total highlight of our trip. she and mgb went to high school together and have been friends for ages.

mgb totally buttercupped me.

and no matter how cool you are, I don't think any Texan can resist the pull of the spring baby-in-the-bluebonnets photo op. we pulled over on the side of the road by the airport:

we got in last night around 1:30. I'm glad for this coffee and I'm glad to be home.

-m.y.

Feeling Gravity's Pull. or Saucer Full Of Secrets.

the title of this blog really has no bearing on it's content. they're just the suggestions of my husband and, let's face it, they DO pull you in.

this has been a rather challenging week. mgb was sick the first part of it, and he's now dealing with hives. poor man! he even has them on the bottom of his feet, I've just been informed, which is why he has to walk 'that way'. let your imagination fill in a fun visual of that. I followed last week's awesome gym-going (4 times! shazamm!) with a paltry two times this week, and somehow managed to tweak something in my back that's making me hobble a little today. egad, girl, get it together. I've only yoga'd once this week, and it's still pretty hard. bouncing back a bit at a time.

I was suddenly bitten by the spring cleaning bug yesterday, and effectively made a pretty big mess before it (mostly) got cleaned up. come to think of it, it's possible the back tweaking happened somewhere in the cyclone of yesterday's domestic activity. huh. anyway, I actually wasn't sure what was going to come of turning the house somewhat topsy turvy, since doing anything like this with a baby around makes for a very stop/start kind of day. I probably fed her too many toasted Os to bribe an extra ten minutes, you know? in the end, I moved a cool coral chair out of our bedroom to the office, gave everything a good dusting and the floors a good vacuum/swiffer, and to make things a bit more sunny I changed out the curtains in the living/dining room for the ones I'd made for our bedroom. we also decided to go ahead and finally let go of the ikea chair thing I bought years ago (and recovered with my mom & grandmothers... remember that, mom?!), so there's a lot more space happening in the living room. space that's mostly strewn with toys right now, but still. later, in the future, we have hopes of replacing some of our furniture... like our beloved sofa with the holes in the leather in which Magz loves to fish her little fingers, or our dining room table whose chairs get ricketier and ricketier. in the interim, a little clearing and airing out has left us with a much better vibe - here's what the curtains look like from my vantage point on the holey sofa:



I still love those yellow birds in the pattern.

put a bird on it!

I don't care if it's trendy, I'll still do it. IN MODERATION.

and now for baby photos.

this is the current wallpaper on my phone and I love it so much.

hanging out in the back yard:

whaddup, mom?!

you're probably starting to notice that I tend to take rather a lot of photos when she's eating. the reasons for this are twofold - A) I want to remember what she's eaten, and B) she can be pretty flipping funny at mealtimes. this week, she's super into broccoli.

like, grabbing-a-floret-and-shoving-the-whole-thing-in-her-mouth-into-broccoli.

I love this expression. notice the bits on her tray... there are half-moons of Os that she'd bitten into and discarded the other half, small cubes of cantaloupe (which she was also way into this week, as we learned when offering her a sample at Central Market), and slivers of apple. I came in with the rest of the apple to eat with her, and she insisted (through pointing) on trying mine.

which she seemed to prefer, no matter how much I tried to convince her that what was on her tray was the same thing I was holding.

it's all about the clapping right now. super fun! ask her to clap for you next time you see her! or start singing the pattycake song...

done with dinner. DONE.

we are also terribly into bananas. loooooove them.

I wonder what this weekend will look like. we've got a wedding to attend, which will be fun. I want to build up my flower beds in the front and plant things. I pruned the hedges back to within an inch of their lives out there. I want to sleep. I want to love on mgb. I want to go to the gym. I want to hang new curtains in the bedroom... and maybe give the bathroom a fresh set?! see, that's how inspiration strikes. bam! I want our family to play in the park again. I want to see friends. I want to teach and sing and worship. I want to find a good facial exfoliator. and a better short slip for skirts. I want to finish putting stuff away (okay, I don't really want to do this but I have to). I want to use my $5 off coupon at DSW and shop for my new niece, Katelin, who's supposed to be joining us at the end of the month. I want to do most of the above while drinking coffee, black please.

I probably won't do some of those things. but it's nice to write them down anyway.

here's Magz jamming out to Will.i.am's song, 'What I Am', recently on Sesame Street. it is awesome.

clink on the link above in green to view the Sesame Street video yourself and see if it doesn't make you ten times smiley-er than you were before.

time for cookies. I mean cardio! no, I really mean cookies.

-m.y.