flashback friday

I haven't done one of these in a while.



a picture of two of my loves on Valentine's day. D'Laney's little onsie said "daddy's cupcake," but you can't see it. We made cookies for daddy, but I didn't let them cool enough before I iced them, and the icing ran into a big, pink blur. I'm sure they tasted good, though you couldn't read the "D'Laney's 1st Valentine's."
These two love each other so much, they've always been buds. I think that's why I love pictures like this so much. Someone else looking at them would see nothing special, but I see that love, and I remember those awful cookies, and I'm now a little teary eyed and D'Laney's looking at me like I'm crazy. I am, sweet girl, about you and your daddy and your sister.

I love a small town.

After lunch, I ventured outside for the first time today to find a small ice pond in the middle of the front yard. A water faucet had cracked and had been spraying for who knows how long, a pretty good while based on the amount of water that was frozen. I called Cameron as I turned off the water to the whole house to see what he thought I should do. I figured I'd have to replace the faucet, and thank the good Lord that it wasn't an actual pipe. Cam told me to do just that, but said he didn't have a pipe wrench at the house, so off to Harrison's I went.
Harrison and his wife Courtney own the hardware store here in Stanton. The store looks completely unchanged over the last 50 or 60 years, they even store lumber in original, slightly leaning wooden cubbies in the yard. Even the door handle looks original to the building. It's a really neat. I bought a pipe wrench and cap, and Harrison said if I had trouble with it, call him and he'd come get it off for me.
I came home, put the girls down for a nap, and fought with that stupid spicket for an hour. I just got more and more mad. I sinfully prideful when it comes to things like this, I can fix a lot of things that most women would put on the honey-do list. I actually enjoy doing them. So when I couldn't loosen a simple faucet, it made me really mad. I called Cameron and said it must have been cemented into place, I couldn't get it, and I might have shed a tear or two out of frustration. He said he'd call me back in a sec, and when he did, he said Harrison would be there in a few minutes. Sure enough, about 5 minutes later, he knocked on the door. He had already gotten the faucet off and wanted to know if I wanted him to cap it or replace it with a new faucet. I made him lie to me and tell me it was really hard for him, and he kindly did. Another 5 minutes and he was done! And he wouldn't let me pay him a dime.
It's the kindness and willingness to help others that you don't find in bigger towns, and it's why we won't raise our family anywhere but a small town. So thanks, Harrison!
The ice created some really cool formations. It reminded me of underground caverns.

Good bye old friend

This bedroom set has been in my family for a whole lotta years. My great-great grandmother bought it when she was older and moved in with my great-great-aunt, her daughter. I'm not sure of the year, but I believe it was sometime in the 40s. Since then, it has made its way down to my MamaDeere, my parents, and finally to me. I've had this set since I was 16, and when Cameron and I got married and I moved to his house, the bedroom came with me. We have been wanting to get a new set for several years now. The bed is just a full, which is really small, especially when you don't like to snuggle to sleep (I say, please honey, scoot over, at least a 100 times a night!)
The set is now headed back to my parents. They're building on another bedroom and an antique set will go perfectly in their antique, 102 year old house, even if the bedroom it's in is new:)






Here's our new furniture:









I'm really pleased with it. I'm not really picky when it comes to furniture, but it took me forever to decide on something! I think, because I'm not picky, I was waiting for something to just jump out at me and I say, that's it!! But that never happened. Our criteria was price and storage, and we got an amazing deal on this set. It's a king bed, which makes me very happy. We would have been happy with a queen, but we had some gently used king mattresses in the family that we could buy cheap, so there really was no choice. Do you know how much a new mattress costs? Especially a king! The mattress is super comfy, too, the kind that you sink down 3 inches when you crawl into it. Eventually we'll get a new bedding set, too. (Can you see the old valances still in the picture? I didn't even think about taking those down, oops!) This quilt is also a hand-me-down from MamaDeere, but I love sleeping under a quilt, and, after having a plush comforter for a while, I know that whenever we do get something new, it'll be a quilt as well.
The furniture fits really well in our bedroom, too. Our room is long and narrow, but it's like it was measured perfectly for this particular set of furniture. If and when we ever move, that might not be the case, but for right now, it's a great fit. I'm very happy with it.

Brynna

~at her well baby last week, she weighed 19lbs, 10oz, and was 30 inches long, which bumps her up to the 30%! She showed great improvement since the 9 month appt where we had the whole nursing problem. She got rave reviews from Dr. Patyrak, and handled her shots very well. Yay for good checkups!
~has 8 teeth
~signs: milk, more, all done, please, ball, and eat
~says, some very clear, some not so clear, but we get it:) : Momma, Dad, D'Laney, eat, bite, ball, stairs (and points either up or down), cheese, milk, juice, stuck, cat, Papa (which would kill the grandmothers, if we told them!), coke (she's never had any), and no. She also says bop all day long, and we're not really sure what she means by it. I think she's trying to say wipe, because she says it the most when she's getting her diaper changed, or when she's following D'Laney into the bathroom. Who knows! I think that's all! She holds lengthy, serious conversations with us, but we just nod and pretend like we know what she's saying.
~points to her hand when she wants them washed.
~climbs on everything! She'll push chairs up to cabinets to climb up and reach something, and I've caught her standing on both the coffee table (not that high) to the dining room table (a little bit higher!) She'll climb up somewhere, but can't get down, and I'll hear her in another room saying, "stuck! stuck!"
~is becoming very, very affectionate. Loves to give hugs to the three of us, but is pretty stingy with her kisses.
~I'm tempted to start potty training in the next couple months with her. I know it's way early, but if she's anything like D'Laney, it'll take her several months, so I'd better get a jump on it! Seriously, I don't think it'll take her nearly as long, as she's already showing some of the "ready" signs. When she's pooping, she's very still while she's pushing, and then points to her diaper. I'll ask her if she's poopy, and she'll shake her head no if she is (she's a little confused as to what shaking her head means, she does this with a lot of things.) Her diapers are the consistency that they need to be for potty training, and she is usually dry when she wakes up from a nap, but wets her diaper shortly thereafter. It's probably just another of my hare-brained ideas that I won't act on, but I am tempted.
~Keva, once again, has taken some fabulous pictures of Brynna Belle. Here's the facebook album with all of them.

D'Laney

~poor thing has had the croup again. She had fever for a good 5 days, and felt just terrible. She still has a cough, but the fever has been gone for several days and she's acting better.
~today said her first cuss word. I'm positive she heard it on TV. She said "what the h-e-double hockey sticks is this?" I could not stop laughing! She said it very quietly and very sweetly, and I had to ask her twice to repeat it, because I couldn't understand what she had said. Then I felt bad about making her say it over and over again.
~I really need to get this kid in some sort of two day a week school. She needs the social interaction and some class room structure. There is a church in town that also has classes for Brynna, but I want to make sure that it's not just play time for D'Laney. It's also hard to drive 30 minutes to town, drop them off, then either kill time in town until they're done, or drive home and then back to pick them up.
~She showed her first little bit of animosity towards her sister by pushing her out of the playroom. After her spanking, I told her to give Brynna a hug and tell her she was sorry. Bless her heart, she really tried, but Brynna ran from her, which only made D'Laney cry harder.
~still has no interest in letters or numbers. I'll ask her what a letter is on a shirt or sign, and I know she knows, but she just shrugs, says I don't know, and turns her attention to something else. I'm secretly a little glad that she's in no rush, though. If she learns to read too soon, my life, and the life of her kindergarten teacher, will be miserable. She'll be so bored, she'll act up, or talk incessantly like she does now.
~refuses to wear clothes at home. She strips down to her panties as soon as she wakes up. However, she must wear pajamas to bed. Particularly, a night gown with the disney princesses on it.
~won't let me fix her hair. And she has some crazy hair! When we're going somewhere, it has to be freshly washed and dried in order for me to leave it down, otherwise it's in a ponytail, just one!, and has to be straight.
~if you can't tell, D'Laney has a mind of her own! It's exasperating, but I gotta say, I love it.
~D'Laney has always struggled with whining, which irritates me more than anything else on earth. When she's sick, it's a billion times worse, and she gets very, very clingy to me. This past week when she felt so bad, she wouldn't let Cameron hold her, and cried for her mommy, which she never calls me. She wanted me to hold her all day long, and that was a problem because her little sister was also croupy and wanted to be held. D'Laney feels a lot better, but the whining and clingy-ness has not gone away. For the first time, we're discipline her using her room. To me, when she's crying, I don't want to spank her to make her stop, because that just makes her cry harder. Of course, sending her to her room makes her cry, too, but I just can't hear it ;)

On the home front

~Cameron was sick last week as well. He was iced out at work tuesday-thursday, so he would have been home anyway. He had the same croupy symptoms as the girls, but not as bad. Although all three are still coughing a little bit. I really don't know how I didn't get sick. I had one of the three coughing on me at least 15793 times a day, and had two little fevered bodies curled up beside me 18 hours out of each day. And just to note, neither of my girls have ever been snugglers, and it irks me a little that they have to feel so bad for momma to get a little lovin':)
~we finally got a new master bedroom suit! I'll post more about that later.
~I finally got my chirstmas present, too... a Driod phone!!! As with all things, I'm a little behind when it comes to trends, and this is my first smart phone, and I love. love. love it. Cameron has a work issued phone, but still had a personal phone, as well as my phone, so we cut mine, I took over Cameron's number since it was a Midland area number, and he's just carrying his work phone. It cut our bill by almost half, even with the data package I now have to have! BTW, if you need my phone number, but didn't get a text from me, let me know. I don't know why I'm saying that, the only people that call me are my husband and my mom! I'm still trying to get the thing figured out, but my cousin, who has the same phone, assures me I'll get used to it quickly.
~we're getting a puppy! A little girl boxer. I've been waiting for 2 years for the dog of a friend to have a litter, and they're here! My mom is also getting a puppy from this litter, and I'm almost as excited for them as I am for us. My parents had to put down Keida, the boxer they'd had for 10 years, last fall, and it was so sad for all of us. Cameron is a lot less excited, he's not a dog fan. He worries about the girls, and of course the grind of what to do with her when we go out of town, etc. I think every child needs a dog. This is an odd thing in our marriage, to disagree about something. We're usually always on the same page. And this is certainly the first time that I've sort of done what I wanted, regardless of what he says. Don't get me wrong, we haven't argued about it, there's no animosity. His opinion is just, I'd rather not, but whatever. So now we have to come up with a name! We've always named our dogs after Lonesome Dove, and even though Cameron didn't mean to, several years before me, he had a dog and named him Newt, keeping with our trend. We've had a Gus, Maggie, and Jasper. It's harder to do that with girl puppies, because they're aren't many girls in the movie, and the ones that are are all prostitutes! I know there's a Lori and a Clara, which aren't great dog names, but I'm going to watch the movie again and see if there are any more to choose from. Then I'll run them by D'Laney and see what she likes. We haven't told D'Laney yet, because I don't want to have to answer every single day why our puppy isn't home yet.

I need to blog.

I'd love to say that my blogging absence has been because we've been so busy, but we haven't been. Not any more than usual, anyway. Like I said at the beginning of January, I've had a bit of the blogging blahs. I haven't stopped reading, just haven't posted.
I'm going to bullet a few posts and try to briefly catch up.