Happy Birthday Pippin!

Monday was Pippin's 7th Birthday!It's hard to believe 7 years have already come and gone with him!!! (We "adopted" him in October, but his papers had his actual birthday. I think he was around 8 or 9 weeks when we brought him home.) We used to think he was high maintenance - HA! Or that he was good practice for a kiddo - Double HA!
We always make a big deal of his birthday. In the past I've ordered cakes, but the last several years I've just made dog friendly cakes. This one was just carrots, peanut butter, honey, plain flour, an egg and baking soda. For "icing" I just use plain peanut butter and decorate with his kibble.
He LOVES it! I promise every year he knows when the cake I'm making is for him. Brent says it's because he knows when his birthday is. I don't think he's THAT smart!
Of course we sang happy birthday to him and all wore our party hats. The party hats are in some of Lilli's dress up baskets, so we wear them a LOT. Monday they just happened to be appropriate!
Getting ready to dig in!
Poor guy had to deal with little sis being in his cake. Once she started to dive face first into it and eat a piece. We let him lick and eat on it for a few minutes before just cutting him a piece. Naturally when I cut it into pieces Lilli grabbed one before I could stop her and ate it. It must be good because she asked for more and Pippin loved it!
Get out of my cake kid!
She would just watch him and watch him. She loves to feed him and he ends up being hand fed a LOT of her snacks and meals.
Then she started dragging his plate around. So jealous of the attention he was receiving!
She is such a mess!
Then she got a little personal with him!
Minus the little sister bugging I'd say Pippin had a great 7th birthday! He's still eating on his cake, a little each day. We also got him some frozen doggie treats (kind of like ice cream for dogs) from Publix. It's peanut butter flavored and I know he's going to go WILD for it!

Blue Skies, Fairytales and Baby Dolls

Saturday morning we got up and decided to go out for breakfast. We had a Groupon for Sky Blue, a little restaurant in our neighborhood. It's been a LONG time since we'd eaten there - I think exactly a week before Lilli was born.

Big difference:The food service was a little slow, but nothing bad. It's a small place and we only thought it was slow because we had a hungry toddler who doesn't understand waiting. She ended up eating a ton that morning - pancakes, bacon, cheese, fruit, etc. I had this crazy stuffed pancake with bananas and nutella. It was SO good! Lilli was also super well behaved, she kept talking to this young couple sitting beside us. Thankfully they didn't mind her being so social and when they left told us how impressed they were with how good she was. That's always nice to hear and helps even out the times she's terrible in public!
After we got home and played around for a while I took her over to Fairytales for story time and to do a little shopping. She had so much fun pushing around their little buggy that I almost bought her one! The story that day was about Guitars and we made little cardboard guitars with rubber band strings. Lots of fun!
I picked out a couple of number puzzles and magnets for her since we're working on counting (as well as colors). I just tossed them in her buggy so then she wanted to put EVERYTHING in her buggy. Thankfully we were able to sneak the extra stuff back and only get the couple of things I had gone for.
That evening we headed out to Nashville West for dinner and some sales tax free shopping. We ate at Bojangles. Of course she was socializing with anyone sitting around us. She was SO hungry and ate ALL this food. It was kind of spicy, but she loves spicy stuff so it was a huge hit.
She's such a turkey. She laid back in the chair and just ate and ate and ate.
HEEEEEYYYYY! She will yell at you until you acknowledge her.
At Target we let her play with toys while we shopped. She things the huge balls are hilarious.
For some reason she wants to stuff her face in it and then just dies laughing.
While I picked out a wedding gift Brent had her in BabyDoll land playing. She LOVED this peek-a-boo doll.
The mini dolls were a big hit, too!
We lined up several of them and she'd just play with one and then the other and back and forth.
We were looking at some of the stuff and turned around to notice she'd pulled the bottom row off and was hanging out on the bottom shelf. Ooops!!!
I was open to buying her a new doll but the ones that didn't do anything were all ugly, and the ones that did things were at least $20 and that's just stupid. So the only thing she got that night was a little $4 play broom because I'm tired of her knocking things over playing with my broom! She loves to "sweep!sweep!" but is pretty dangerous with the full size one. This one is working out much better, and tonight she had us both out sweeping the deck.

Say Cheese!

Here's a couple of recent videos from over the weekend. This is exactly how we end up getting so many odd pictures of her saying "cheese"!

Sign #5,283 that we are Parents

I don't know if it was good fortune or bad, but when we pulled into Publix this afternoon a large monstrosity was available in the buggy return area.Clearly we've given up on trying to look cool, particularly in the rather nice part of town we happened to be in since we both jumped on it. Maybe it was the heat, the constant fuss Lilli was in most of the weekend, or the effect of being around way too many shoppers out for tax free weekend but we thought it was pretty much the coolest thing ever and jumped all over it, holding up several other shoppers from returning their buggies and almost getting backed over as we tried to spin this thing around and head into the store. If you think the turn radius on this thing is awful you would be very correct.
She thought she was hot stuff for about the first 5 minutes and then the excitement wore off and she would've preferred to be facing us. So for the rest of our grocery experience the Fuss was on but at least with her facing forward it was directed to the rest of the customers at Publix, and since our Boat was already in their way we might as well add a whiny Toddler to their experience.
And to make it even better, when we downloaded our pictures we noticed this lovely couple in the background. That guy used to be one of my semi-bosses a few jobs ago. Naturally in the obnoxious excitement of Lilli's first giant Buggy ride we didn't even notice them leaving the grocery store as we snapped pictures, made race car noises, drove her around in the middle of traffic like she was an actual car and just generally made total fools of ourselves. Can't imagine why they didn't say hello to us.

The Real Deal

This week has not been the best. The pits would more accurately describe it. The entirely too sudden "promotion" of Lilli to the next room up at her daycare didn't go well, to say the least. Ever wonder what it looks like when completely incompetent people give Lilli (who is lactose intolerant) real milk?
Um yeah. Not good. One would think that sending her milk (labeled of course), a note detailing what she can and can't have and separate discussions with the director as well as her head teacher would prevent someone from pouring her a big old glass of milk. Not so much. That's just one of about a million things (also including 2 of her 3 new teachers quitting last week) that drew the final line in the sand with her current daycare.

She's had about 24-25 different teachers in the last 14 months. Um yeah, that ain't right.It's one thing when she's an infant and pretty much just needs to eat, sleep and have her poop changed. Most any trained monkey can handle that. But now she forms attachments and her school has lost some seriously good teachers lately (with more on their way out) and we're tired of baking brownies and making going away cards. And we're getting SO BIG! We need teachers who will be there for us, and directors who actually care enough about their teachers to make that happen. Would you work somewhere for a small salary with absolutely no paid vacation and sick time having kids scream at you all day? Yeah, I didn't think so. Besides, when you're just throwing subs in a room and telling them to give my kid a glass of milk and thus make her sick - there's no way it's going to work out.
So I've been back on the tour circuit. We went ahead and put in our two weeks notice last Friday. We don't have anything lined up, but one smaller in-home daycare I toured last week has major possibility. It's also just 1 mile from our house, so it would save me probably about 30 minutes in the afternoon. I have one other tour on Tuesday so then we'll decide. Even though I haven't toured the other center I'm leaning towards the in-home place, especially after calling her references this afternoon and talking to other parents. It seems like it would be a much less stressful environment and she's running a very well organized little operation. She has a website but for both her and our privacy I won't be posting a link. With a face like this, who wouldn't want to take care of Lilli???
She was a MESS all week this week. She went to bed between 1-1.5 hours early every night just from being overstimulated so much all day. She also came home starving from the absolute crap they were feeding her during the day, so normally I'd have to give her a snack the second we hit the back door upon getting home. Friday night (once again) we had to give her a snack at 4:30, so we waited until a little after 6 to head to dinner, and decided just to go to Nuvo Burrito in our neighborhood since it's super low key and close to home.

She really, really can't stay in her seat anymore. Who is the idiot who designed all these restaurant high chairs where they can use that upper bar to push up and stand up???? There's not a seat-belt invented that can hold her down anymore....
She actually did really well at dinner. As usual, she talked to anyone sitting around us. Since it was a pretty hip and trendy crowd no one hardly gave her the time of day. However, that really doesn't stop her because she will continue to yell HEY at you until you acknowledge her in some way.
So, that's the real deal. There's a lot going on here in Lilli-land. I guess the up-side of potentially having to sneak Lilli into our workplaces in my handbag is that it could make for some interesting blog posts!

Bad Hair Day

It's been a really, really busy week around here and I've got a great little sinus infection going on in the middle of the 100+ degree heat. Ugh. It's been 103 here today, the heat index was still 112 this afternoon around 5!!!

When we got her up this morning Brent said "It looks like we forgot to slick her hair down last night." HA! Can we say Bad Hair Day????This afternoon. She has REALLY taken to coloring. Herself. She's got purple marker all over her arms and pen all over her legs. When she added her beads (ALL of them because a girl can't just wear one set) she looked like a little biker chick all tattooed up. And yes, she is playing with a plastic knife.
When "the moms" were helping we clean out our garden almost 2 weeks ago we found several big green catepillars and captured them in a Gatorade bottle. The actually turned into cocoons and we had 3 butterflies hatch! She was SO excited to see them this afternoon! One had died, so we released the two that didn't swelter to death in the 100+ heat! They turned out to be really pretty black butterflies.
The stairs are coming along - this shows the progress on the handrails. Also, the balusters have all been cut off and it's ready for the top piece of wood now.
A better view of the trimming off of the balusters sticking over the top:
It's really coming along!

Decks, Decks, Decks

Finally this one will have more pictures of the progress than anything else! Here's where it was at towards the end of the weekend, Brent's out there pouring concrete and finishing a few things now but I'm sure the dark, evening pictures are getting old. I think these pictures were taken around 5 pm.

Here's the side set of stairs to help with access to the front yard. When everything else is done I REALLY look forward to getting that little walkway done and planting a shade garden there and getting rid of the junk and mess that's been hanging around the last 4 years.Lilli took a great nap this afternoon - 12:15-3 pm, so I got to help quite a bit. I finished screwing in the decking boards throughout the deck. Of course Pippin was glad to supervise....
Then Brent put me on attaching the remaining balusters. He makes it look pretty easy, but I was able to work through 2 sections before Lilli woke up. It takes a lot of strength in holding the posts level and also screwing in the wood without it slipping. Of course Pippin was nearby....
I hung this section and one around the side before Lilli woke up. It was HOT today - my car said 101 this afternoon, ugh.
After her nap Lilli admired my handiwork! Luckily her big head can't fit through!
But her sippy cup can and she thought that was awesome....She loves the new deck and just runs and runs out there.
After she woke up I took her to the East Nashville Y for a while to swim and cool off. Their kiddie pool isn't my fave so we rarely go there, but for an outing just for her and I to get out of Brent's way it was fine. She had a blast and we ran into one of her former daycare classmates.
They had cleared the pool when I took this pic - TRUST me, it was packed today.
Here's the main steps.
And here's a view of the deck from the yard - looking good!!!
The steps need to be finished, the rest of the balusters attached (just one side section near the house), handrails for the stairs attached and then the balusters cut and top railings attached. Sounds like a lot, but it's coming along! We'll wait a couple of the weeks for the wood to dry and then stain it. And then - Relax on the new deck!!!! (Oh yeah - and landscape the whole yard....)