Ranch party, Sunday the 6th

On Sunday evening, we headed out to our pastor's ranch in Collinsville, TX for a cookout with several other families. What a fun experience! Lainey enjoyed all the animals had fun with the other kids. She had her first real hot dog - loved it - and ate a bunch of other fun snack-type foods. She was a happy camper! :) It was a great evening, although we didn't get to stay for s'mores...we had to get Lainey in bed!

Bud pointing out cows to Lainey

Cally

eating a smooshed Cheeto off the ground (sad to say that this happened more than once)

Collin

Ella and Lainey...a captive audience

She LOVED putting these water bottles in the chair's cup holders. As you can see, she filled each slot!

17 weeks! You can see that the belly is definitely there!

Cally on a hay bale

feeding time for the cows

Hook 'em!

Purse on the shoulder, ready to leave for the game.

Maybe I'll take this brown purse instead?

Or maybe both? Brown and black?

It's decided - I'll take both purses. Off the train and into the car we go!

Blog book

I finally finished the blog book!! It came in the mail last week and I am so excited about it. I did miss a few things (one picture has some foreheads missing) but overall, it turned out great and I'm very glad that I did it. It took me awhile to put it together, and I was grumpy about it sometimes, but 250 pages later (it's only a 7x7 book), it's all in there. I combined 2007-2008, and now I've started working on 2009. I am thankful to the website, www.blurb.com, for assisting me in this process! Check it out if you are interested in doing this same thing. The site actually imports the blog into a default format, so it's up to you to design it the way that you would like. I know there's another site out there called Blog2Print that does the same type of thing but I had already started my book on Blurb, so I stuck with that!

front cover

sample pages

School, day 2

Yiyia and Bud are back in town after being in Colorado for 5 days. Since Yiyia's office is right there at the church (you can see it in the background), she can be a little "spy" and check on Lainey and Ella throughout the week. Welcome home, Yiyia and Bud! My parents, Emmy and Pops, are still in Colorado and will probably come home at the beginning of October. Cannot wait for y'all to come back - it's been a long time!

Today at school Lainey made a red barn, she painted, and they sang songs. Oh to be a fly on the wall...I bet she loved every second of it!

Fun with K-cups

Lainey looooves playing with these coffee k-cups for our coffee maker. When I'm making dinner, she generally pulls them out of the pantry, dumps them out of the bag, and starts to just play with them. They go in drawers, they get stacked, they go into other containers, they get spread across the kitchen and living room. It's fun for her and easy for me...except last night, when I was cleaning up after dinner, I accidentally stepped on one and it popped. A bit of a mess, but nothing that the dustbuster couldn't handle!

First day of school

Lainey's saying "cheese" in this picture (well, it sort of sounds like "cheese").

"What is in this bag? Why have you never let me play with this bag before? Oooh, diapers and a sippy cup...and my sleep sack...where on earth am I going?"

So our little girl started school today. I didn't even try to take my camera inside the building to take any pictures of her inside of her classroom because (1) I knew she'd be crying and (2) I was going to have to get out of there as fast as possible...no lingering! I am going to pick her up in about 30 minutes and I wish that she could tell me how her day was. I bet she had fun! We go back again on Thursday. :)

Back to school

This year, Lainey is going to start going to "school" two days a week! It's really a Mother's Day Out program at our church, but we like to refer to it as "school". :) Last night we attended her orientation, and this morning Lainey got to visit her classroom and meet her teachers and classmates.

Here is the sign above Lainey's crib. Her teachers were being funny and thought it'd be cute to pair Lainey and Ben together (on different days, of course!). I hope she takes a nap in this crib...I do know that these teachers can work wonders with the little ones!

exploring the room

With Ella...Ella will be attending school on the same days as Lainey.

Oooh! Big hug!

This is a very typical pose these days. Lainey doesn't quite suck on her fingers, but they are in her mouth almost all the time (or something else is). She's still a very, very oral child. I don't know if it's just the constant presence of emerging teeth or what. I do think she's working on getting more teeth - she currently has 12, which seems like a ton, so maybe some others are trying to push through? Not sure!

Gatorade and blocks need love, too...

This is how I found Lainey and her stroller after her nap today. She's not into baby dolls yet, so for now, this stroller is used for blocks and Mom's Gatorade.


In other exciting news, Lainey just got over an ear infection. Number 9 (but who's keeping count?). This is her first infection post-tubes, so it was a bit scary because I was not expecting it! Instead of the infected fluid pooling inside of her ear, it poured out of her ear (gross) and it had me worried because it looked bloody and yucky (for lack of a better term!). On Tuesday, we got the majority of the gunk vacuumed out at the ENT (not a pleasant experience) and we've been treating the infection with drops since then. She seems to be better, but goodness...I don't want this to happen again! Lainey hates, hates, hates the drops - not because they sting but because they are cold - and so that's been our biggest hurdle. Thankfully, we seem over the worst of it!

Lainey and Reagan

Let me explain what is taking place in these pictures. First, a little background on our dog, Reagan. She's quite the finicky eater. She prefers to drink water out of those little Ziploc storage containers (the tiny ones) and she likes to eat her food off of a towel. Ever since Lainey became mobile, we had to move R's food and water to the landing on the stairs where it would be safely out of Lainey's way. Well, obviously, Lainey can climb up the stairs now when the gate's open but she's usually pretty good about just waving "hi" to R's water and food and then she goes on her merry way.

The other night she decided that she would be responsible for feeding Reagan. She would go over to the stairs, get one or two kernels of food, and bring them to Reagan on the living room floor. She did this over and over, very methodically. Reagan happily ate what she gave her. Lainey did this for probably about 5 minutes (while I was making dinner) before I grabbed my camera to take a few pictures. In the top picture, you can see Lainey and Reagan and then there's a few food pieces in between them (hard to see). In the second picture, Lainey got a little more creative with her food placement and put the kernels on Reagan's bed.

It all went downhill after these pictures were taken. Lainey climbed up to Reagan's food/water spot on the landing, dumped out all the water, and grabbed the towel upon which Reagan's food was resting. We stopped the game of "feeding Reagan" after that.

I am grateful that our child loves our dog. She's learned to say "leash" (sort-of) and loves to try to put the leash on Reagan (quite a sight). She also likes to feed Reagan by shoving food into her mouth (either her food or dog food). We're trying to limit the people food that Reagan gets, but these two are sneaky. ;)

Party pictures

My sweet friend Marissa sent these pictures to me from a birthday party we attended this weekend...look at the mess this child made after she dug into her delicious cookie (with lots of orange icing). And check out that cute little belly she's still sporting. It looks like she swallowed a small beach ball. I do love it though... :)

Peter Piper Pizza

The Harris/Cook clan got together this evening at Peter Piper Pizza for a family celebration of Yiyia and Bud's 40th wedding anniversary! The kids had a blast, and thankfully Lainey was at an age where she still didn't care if the machines were "on" or not. Thanks for a fun evening, Yiyia and Bud. And Happy Anniversary!!

so cute of Kate and Brooke - so upset that it's blurry...