Playing with blog layout

Do you like it? I'm having trouble deciding on colors. I think it is a little hard to read this way. Suggestions are welcome.

Easter Pictures, Take One!

So I was inspired by my MOM friend, Megan. She takes such adorable holiday pictures of Big C, which double as great blackmail photos for when he gets older. Anyway, the pictures are so super cute, I decided that I needed to take some holiday pictures of my peanut. What better holiday to start with than Easter. It just so happened that I had a giant basket from a baby shower and some platic eggs, so what the heck, I decided to try my hand at it.

I figured this would just be a practice session. So I tried out some different backgrounds and things. Fiona was even more cooperative than I thought she would be, at least at the very beginning,

What a cute Easter treat!

I wanted to put some little bunny ears on her. I even had 2 pairs of them. One pair was giant and wouldn't stay on. The other pair was tiny and too small. So no bunny ears. I think I can operate on the smaller pair and get them to work if I have the time and patience for a second photo shoot.

So then I decided it would be way cuter if she was naked (well, mostly naked, she had a diaper on because that is one mess I don't want to think about cleaning up).

As you can probably tell, she was getting more and more fed up with me. However, I didn't let that stop me.

So the pictures are okay for a first attempt. I need to try it in a different spot in the house because the lighting was not the best. I think it was a successful practice session and maybe I will get the energy to do a "take two" with some better lighting and some bunny ears. Either way the baby in the basket is the prettiest little girl I've ever seen.

If you haven't seen her pictures of Big C as the Easter bunny, you should go take a peek. He makes a cute baby in a basket as well. At just one month older he is almost double Fiona's weight. His mom has hired him out as Fiona's body guard, so no bullies will be messing with my baby.

Act of Kindness

Sometimes I am just absolutely awed at how amazing and generous people can truly be. A little bit of back story is that my father-in-law had a case of appendicitis that was not caught in time and spiked a fever of 110 degrees, which caused some brain damage. He now gets fatigued easily and has some difficulty with motors skills like walking and writing, etc. Since he was unable to go back to work my in-laws are trying to sell their house because they can't afford the mortgage anymore. They have been working very hard to try and get the house to a point where they can put it on the market, because it needed a little work. They have both been working very hard and we have been worried about them. It is not work that is easy for my father-in-law and my mother-in-law is now working full time to try and support them.
They hired a company to come build a small deck off their house. Well, a couple of days later that same company showed back up at the house and painted my in-laws house FOR FREE!! They painted the inside AND the outside of the house for NOTHING. They were just trying to help out. I was absolutely astonished. This means so much to all of us, that these strangers would volunteer that kind of time and effort to help someone that they really don't even know. Due to their generosity my in-laws should be able to get the house on the market much more quickly, which is a blessing. So if any of you in the Omaha area need any construction type work done you should use J&J Construction. Just let me know and I will get you their contact information. They have been so amazing and generous. This is just such a neat thing, and definitely an answer to some prayers. I just had to share this story.

Busy, busy, busy

We've had a busy couple of weeks, which is nothing out of the ordinary. We've been to play dates, St Patrick's Day parties, and moms' night outs. We've dealt with a broken dryer, a clogged sink, and some very cranky/loud neighbors.

Fiona and I had a fantastic time at a St. Patrick's Day party with our MOM friends. It was a full house, but lots of fun. Then after a good nap we headed over to my parent's house for some more St Paddy's Day fun. We had some delicious corned beef and cabbage (minus the cabbage for me) and some Irish coffee. Fiona was pretty grumpy while we were over there, I think she was a little partied out. She did stay happy long enough to snap a family photo.



So our dryer definitely is broken. It has been a whole week with no dryer. I was walking through the hallway and smelled something burning. The scent of course led to the dryer, which freaked me out. It would not be good to have the dryer burn down our house. So it is not working and no word back from the landlord if it will be fixed soon or at all. I have made 2 trips to Mom's house to do laundry and since there were a couple of nice days I also hung out some clothes on the clothesline. Since the dryer took a break we also took a break from cloth diapers for a couple days. I did finally wash all the dirty diapers and hang them up to dry. I wish I had taken a picture because that was a lot of diapers blowing in the breeze. Keep your fingers crossed that our dryer gets fixed soon because I am NOT going to the laundromat and the good weather isn't likely to hold out in March in Nebraska.


Mom and I went to a kid's consignment sale and picked up a few cute clothes and an exersaucer. I was excited for the exersaucer because she is starting to want to be more upright and not be as entertained by the swing or the bouncy seat. She is a little too short/small for the exersaucer right now, but I'm sure it won't be too long before she fits in it.


Fiona has been rolling over like crazy this week. She has now mastered tummy to back and back to tummy. It is quite entertaining to watch, but she is becoming mobile which means nothing is safe. It also means my baby is growing up, which I am definitely not ready for. Fiona loves naked time and laughs like crazy when you tickle her. Nathan caught a cute little video the other day.

Zoo Trip

Fiona and I took our first trip to the zoo on Thursday. I love Omaha's zoo and it had been quite awhile since I had been. Our MOM group was going to spend the morning at the zoo since it was supposed to be a gorgeous day.

It turned out to be an even more beautiful day than I thought it woud be. I think it got all the way to 70 degrees. It was perfect zoo day weather and it wasn't too crowded. Fiona was happy to ride along in her stroller for most of the morning.

We walked around with a couple of other MOMs with babies and had a great time chatting and visiting the zoo. Fiona took a nap through the aquarium and the giraffes. I was hoping she would be awake for the aquarium, because she could actually see animals from her stroller
in there. Oh well, maybe next time.

It was so much fun, but I can't wait until she gets a little older and can enjoy it a little more. She was really well behaved until we went back to the car to get ready to go home. Then the halo came off and she pretty much screamed bloody murder until we got home. I think we are going to get a zoo pass so we can go back a bunch this year. Nathan is excited to go to the zoo with us since he didn't get to come this time.

Another Month

I can't believe that it has been another month already. Fiona was 3 months old on Saturday. It as flown by. She is getting so big. I weighed her on our scale at home and she was right about 11 pounds. She has officially outgrown all of her newborn clothes and is even in some 3-6 month clothes. Thanks to some hand-me-downs and some generous gifts, we are not in any danger of running out of clothes in the near future. She will be a well dressed baby for the next couple of months.

It has been a crazy month, but so much fun. Fiona now sleeps about 5-6 hours a night and takes some pretty good naps during the day. Sleep has been wonderful! We had a bad night the other day and I couldn't believe that I used to survive on that little sleep. Fiona is cooing and babbling up a storm now. She is very talkative in the morning when we wish she would sleep a little longer, but it is way too cute to be annoyed. I have tried to capture this with the video camera, but everytime I get it out she immediately clams up. She is getting much more fun to play with now and she is starting to get interested in her toys.

She had a couple of weeks where she screamed everytime that I left the room, even if Nathan was holding her. She liked her daddy, but only when mommy was holding her or sitting right next to her. Thankfully, she has gotten over that recently. It was really hard on her daddy (and her mommy, who didn't get to shower much). Yesterday, I went into work for a couple of hours and she was a happy baby the whole time she was home with her daddy. That night she even wanted to be held by her daddy instead of mommy (sniff, sniff ... I have secretly liked that she was a mommy's girl, not the screaming for daddy part, but the wanting to snuggle with mommy part). She gets happier every day and it is amazing to watch her grow and learn new things. I love all the new things she is learning and doing, but part of me doesn't want her to grow out of the little baby stage.

We joined a mommy group here in town and have been to several playdates. It has been a lot of fun and we have met some great mommies and babies. The other day we had a playdate for babies only (most of the time there are bigger kids too). Well, truthfully it was more of a playdate for the mommies, but I think the babies had a good time too. It is really nice to get out of the house and talk to other grown-ups during the week. That has definitely been the hardest transition for me, so this group has been a blessing.

Okay, funny story that she will hate me for later in life. Fiona and I went to the afternoon mass on Ash Wednesday. It was mostly older people and it was absolutely silent in the church before mass. All of a sudden Fiona lets out the loudest fart I have ever heard in my life. Half the church turned around to look. I was sooooo embarrassed. I wanted to hide or at least yell out that it was the baby and not me. It will make a great blackmail story later in life.

And finally,here are a few pictures from the month:

She is definitely going to be a thumb sucker. Orthodontist here we come.


So wide-eyed


Big girl holding her head up.

Sleeping baby

(I know she's not supposed to sleep on her tummy, but tired mommies do what it takes to get the baby to nap)

Cute Valentine's Day outfit

First time out in the snow with mommy

Making baby snow angels

Out in the snow with daddy

What a cutie pie!

Smiling for the camera

Sleeping angel