Jinxyisms

Here’s a snippet of our daily life.

Waldo was hanging out with Lily when I went to do the dishes. I walked into the living room to ask a question and found the two of them in front of Waldo’s computer getting ready to watch Yo Gabba Gabba. Waldo wanted to see what Lil would think of the bright colors and what not. Apparently the real person host was singing a bubble song and blowing bubbles. Waldo asked me to grab the bubble solution from the other room. As the host blew bubbles so did I. It was interactive tv to the max.

December has come and gone and with it so has Lily’s first birthday (a separate post to come) and Christmas. These events have brought up a lot of emotion and some questions. Mainly about Santa and weather or not we are going to tell Lily that Santa is a real magical guy or something else. This is something that Waldo and I have talked about since before Lily was born. Waldo remembers his brother breaking the news to him that Santa isn’t real (sorry to burst anyone’s bubbles) when he was about 4 years old and I don’t actually remember believing in Santa ever really. I don’t think that our non-belief in Santa hindered either of us in our childhoods and then there’s the whole issue of lying to Lily which I just don’t really want to do. It’s funny we know that we will just tell Lily the truth about my Mom being a lesbian. It wasn’t a decision that we had to make, we just knew that we wouldn’t lie or try to skirt the subject, like some people we know. So then why is this whole Santa thing harder for us? The only decision that I have come to about Santa is Lily looked really cute being held by him in front of our tree this year.

********

Since Lily’s birthday is three days before Christmas I was having a hard time deciding if I wanted to send out Christmas cards or first birthday photo cards. Then my friend Starr (Gramma Starr) gave Lily a beautiful princess Christmas dress so Christmas cards it was. One weekend we went and bought a Christmas tree and wreath fixings and rented a Santa suit (more on that in a second) and set up a whole scene in our kitchen and went to work. I took like 294 pictures over the course of the weekend. I’m no professional and all I have is a couple year old Sony point and shoot but I was pretty pleased with a lot of the pictures. Lily was a champ and posed for hours.

This is one of my favorites

This was Lily first taste of sugar, it happened totally by accident. We gave her the candy cane thinking that the thin wrapper would keep her clean. We didn’t take into account how sharp her teeth are.

The scene we created on our kitchen table

A couple weeks before our Christmas photo shoot I was telling Waldo that we were going to have to brave the mall one day soon to get Lily’s picture with Santa. He laughed and said that there was no way that Lily would let Santa hold her so (totally jokingly) just rent a suit and I’ll play Santa. He didn’t expect me to run with it. I showed him. I asked on facebook if anyone in our area knew where I could rent a Santa suit and was told to call the local costume rental place. For $25 we got the suit for 24 hours. It was money well spent. We had planned on taking some funny Santa pictures like Santa with his head in the oven but ran out of time.

When we were taking pictures I thought it would be great to do a picture with Lily standing up holding Santa’s hands. Waldo just put the jacket and the gloves on and for some reason it freaked Lily out big time. I was really surprised because she could still see her Daddy’s face.

The next day Waldo let Lily play with the jacket and wig for like two hours before he put them on and then she watched him as he got dressed. She was much more comfortable with Santa this time.

We tried taking some pictures in front of the tree as a family but we had lost all daylight by then so I wasn’t happy with any of the pictures.

*******

Christmas was a nice quiet event at our house this year. We woke up and opened our gifts and then Jack came over for a while. I made dinner for everyone and that was our day. We didn’t very many pictures somehow.

This little car was a birthday gift

It’s funny to remember that Christmas day 2008 we were bringing our 3 day old baby girl home from the hospital. Crazy what a difference 365 days makes.

**edited to add: It was the Christmas pictures that I was hinting at here.

Lily looked so cute in her little Dalmatian outfit. She wasn’t too sure of it at first but got more comfortable with it over time.

Since Lily is so little and we don’t need the candy we only took her to our next door neighbors house so we could get some pictures, then it was home so we could give away a little candy.

I took a bunch of pictures (of course) while we waited for the trick or treaters.

She really had fun playing with the candy but she didn’t get to eat any.

We only ended up with a couple of trick or treaters, this picture was taken right after the first ones left.

Our Halloween self portrait

Our Halloween got started with a bang or a bell really, the door bell. The very nice police officer had to ring our door bell probably 20 times before he woke us up at about 3 am today. He wanted to let us know that a not so nice drunk guy had plowed into Waldo’s truck which was minding its own business parked safely in front of our house. He also wanted me to know that Waldo’s truck then crunched my Honda’s rear end. This is how all great days start right?

I got dressed and went outside with the cops while Waldo cuddled Lily and kept her calm. She wasn’t thrilled to be awake so early, I will have to remind her of this next time she decides to play in the middle of the night.

I took pictures outside in the dark rainy street and was so glad I did. Both because now I can blog about it and show you all and because I had no idea how bad it really was till I edited these pictures this morning.

By the time I got outside the drunk guy was either already taken away or in the back of a squad car because I never saw him and I don’t recognize the car as one from my neighborhood so I asked the cop if he lived around here and he said he didn’t know. He must have been going pretty fast because Waldo’s truck ended up with the front right tire on the curb and my car was like 5 feet further forward then where I parked it.

This morning we found out this wonderful human being is uninsured. We thankfully have full-coverage insurance because it’s a good thing they are financed. Waldo is on his way to pick up a rental car. We’ll find out Monday or Tuesday if they are repairable. Man I really hate this guy.

Happy Halloween everyone!!

My  Dad keeps asking for pictures of the area where we live.  I figured rather then just send them to him I’d share the beauty with everyone.  These are pictures of my direct neighborhood, I’m still working on a post with the second half of my in-laws visit which will have a lot more pictures of the surrounding area.

I took most of these pictures one evening when we went for a walk.

The front of our house when we first moved in

Looking north on the sidewalk in front of our house

Looking south on the sidewalk in front of our house

A couple blocks over

Our backyard

A neighbors tree

Of course there is a lot more to our town, but these are my current favorite parts.

It was a joyous day last week when I was driving to the pet store and saw a park with a baby swing. I had been looking all over the place for a baby swing because I wanted Lily to have the fun of swinging without being attached to me. When I parked the car I texted Waldo that I found a baby swing, this is how excited I was about it.

On Sunday afternoon Waldo and I packed Lily up and drove the 10 minutes to the park. The poor girl really dislikes the car and was crying within minutes of taking off. I kept telling her the torture was going to be worth it when she was flying freely on the swing and that we would be there in just a minute.

We pull up to the park and I’m surprised by how few trees there are, I guess I didn’t really notice the other day because I was driving and trying not to crash.

As we get out Waldo asks me if I’m going to put a blanket or something on the swing, even though he knows the answer. I tell him of course I am, I don’t want her touching the dirty swing or especially trying to eat it. He says don’t you think people will think you’re weird when they see pictures of her with the blanket. I reply that I don’t really care I’m just keeping Lily safe. Even I have to admit it sometimes that I’m a little crazy about washing my hands before I touch Lily or putting a blanket down for her, not OCD crazy but a little crazy. But you know what? I don’t care.

So I grabbed the blanket and her hat and he grabbed Lily and away we went. I tucked the blanket in and we put Lil in and I excitedly pushed. She couldn’t have cared less. She wasn’t upset but she wasn’t excited either.

We would have let her swing till she got tired of it but we didn’t have any sun block (I don’t even know if she can use sun block now or what kind to get if she can use it) and the sun was directly on us. It was HOT so we only stayed out for about 7 minutes. Then we had to put her back in the car and you guessed it, more crying on the way home. It was like a big tease. Poor kid.

I have been so inspired by Maia’s love of the swings that I plan on trying a couple more times before winter, hopefully Lily will start to enjoy them.

A couple of weeks ago Lily got a chance to meet some of her family and we had a blast and of course there are pictures to prove it. What kind of blogger and new mom would I be if there weren’t?

Lily got to meet her Grandparents on her Daddy’s side and her Aunt and two cousins. For right now Lily is the youngest and only girl on that side of the family, so everyone was really excited to meet her. Ok they probably would have been just as excited to meet her even if she wasn’t the first or only girl, but you know what I mean.

It was really nice to have them here because it gave us an excuse to do the touristy thing. We live in a very beautiful area and don’t every really enjoy it. So this was great.

Some of the highlights:

We went to the park that’s about a half mile from our house.  Its a great walk and we need to do it more often.

This is Lily with her Grandpa David and Grandma Rita

Lily got her first swing ride.

I’m really irritated, I can’t find a single park around here with baby swings.  This is one reason why we don’t go to the park more often, there’s nothing for her to do yet.

But the boys had a blast.  Brendan is 10 and Jude is 2.

Jude really was having fun.

We went to breakfast at our favorite place, The Buffalo Cafe.

Then we walked through downtown Whitefish and it just happen to be Huckleberry Days so they had lots of booths set up in the park and Jude and Brendan got to look at the trains.

Christy, Jude and Brendan

Jude and his Mommy Christy

After looking around downtown we drove up to the ski resort, Big Mountain and took the gondola to the summit.  Of course I waited 12 years to do this so it was a cold (42 at the top) and foggy day in August and there was NOTHING to see but fog.  But I did get some good pictures of Lily with her Daddy and Aunt Christy.

Me and Jude

We spent a lot of time just hanging around the house talking and enjoying each others company too.

Waldo and his sister Christy getting burgers ready to bar-b-q

Lily with her Aunt Christy

Grandma Rita playing with Lily.

Lily with her cousins Jude and Brendan

Since I don’t know how to do a photo-lite post I’m stopping here for now.

Part two will include the day we decided to drive across the whole state accidentally. Or maybe it just seemed like it since I get car sick and have a baby that hates the car. There will be lots more pretty pictures.

I came out of the kitchen the other day and this is what I found.

A little while later I found this.

They are too cute together.

I’ll post soon about our fun visit with my In-laws and more pictures. I just need to sleep right now and maybe all day tomorrow.

This past Sunday Lily had her first bit of sorta solid food. We went with homemade rice cereal. I wouldn’t have attempted making my own but Lindsey had just done a post about making her own and it seemed really simple so I went with it. It was really simple. I used organic sweet brown rice, which gave a nice little bit of sweetness to the cereal which was nice.

At first Lily had no idea what to do with the gloopy stuff I was putting in her mouth. But with each bite she got more and more of a hang of it. It was amazing to watch the little gears working.

First bite

Rice cereal bubble

The fingers are tasty too

The food was everywhere by the end of it

This is my first attempt at video editing.

Lily’s first solid food from Christy Wiggins on Vimeo.

Check out wholesomebabyfood.com for more homemade baby food recipes and information.  Its a great reasource.

*post edited to add links*

I hope all the Father’s out there have a great day, but especially first time Daddy’s!

Happy First Father’s Day Sweetheart.

Thank you for being the best Daddy my girl could ask for.

Honestly I should have put my cordless mouse in her hand rather then the remotes.  They just happen to be on the couch, sorry I’m lazy Honey.

We got Waldo a new shirt for Father’s day.