Hedgehog

Sorry Karen, not that hedgehog. 


To everyone else not in the know, while Karen and Larry were visiting Karen and I drafted a little hedgehog toy and started making it.  We were half way done when they left.  A day or two after they left I started working on it again...and then got stumped.  Maybe we should have made it a few inches longer?  I still have everything so I will fiddle with it some more.


Needless to say I've had a hedgehog toy on my mind and decided to try a different version.  Here's what I came up with: 

I wanted it to have ruffles (the one we were making had raw-edge ruffles down the back), and I used the same nose/eye patch that we made up, since they turned out so well.  I decided to paint on the face to make it easy, and added a little smile just for fun.  It's not perfect, but I thought it turned out cute.  

I haven't sewn up the opening just yet.  I'm trying to decide whether I should stuff something crinkly-sounding in it (like pop-tart wrappers work well I've heard), like other baby toys have.  Decisions, decisions...

Little Shoes

We may have mentioned that Noelle doesn't like shoes much.  Considering she will be in cold weather on Christmas I thought we should "practice" wearing shoes.  Noelle has now decided that wearing shoes is just having a toy stuck to your foot.  A little awkward to work with, but doable.

On Sunday I had her wear shiny black shoes, by the end of church they were matte black shoes.  Her teeth scratched off most of the shine, opps!  Good thing they were super cheap (bought on clearance before she was born).

Noelle is also getting better at standing while you hold her.  Similar to how she curls her toes when she wears shoes, while we're holding her and "walking" she'll curl her little toes and stand on her tip-toes.  Maybe we have a ballerina in the making.

Baby Kiss

This is a tiny clip of Noelle giving Corey a "kiss".  Noelle's version of a kiss is opening her mouth and lunging at your face.  You have to be careful because sometimes she will bite, now that she has teeth.

Mini-Quilt

Shhh.  Don't tell Noelle.  I made her a mini-quilt (maybe for Christmas?).  I had a lot of leftover pinwheels so I decided to make her a tag quilt.  I think she will like it as she is gravitated towards anything with a tag on it.

Along with the pinwheels I used fleece for the back to make it soft (didn't use batting), and then various ribbons I had already.  I decided to quilt it for fun.

What about the other quilt I made her?  Don't worry about it.  I might still be finishing the binding. ..

I have a few other projects I hope to get done before Christmas is here.  Hopefully I can fit them in.  Happy December!

Odds and Ends

I could make a few short posts, but I'll just stick everything in one larger post :)

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving.  We had been planning on having our own Thanksgiving dinner, but at the beginning of the week got invited to dinner in Mesa by one of Corey's classmates.  It was nice to get out of town and enjoy some good food.  They have grass in Mesa!

On Friday we put up the tree.  Really I did, but Corey helped me get it out of the shed (there are spiders in there).  We snapped a few pictures when we got Noelle up from her nap.  She had fun looking at the tree and likes to grab the branches.

Noelle's new favorite kind of toys are un-toys.  Anything that really isn't a toy is so cool.  Be it a roll of tape, pen, glasses, or chapstick (look mom--I think she's going to like chapstick too).  

We try not to let her play with things that aren't toys (so she'll learn what is a toy and what isn't), but sometimes we still let her. 

Seven Months!

The months seem to be flying by.  We can hardly believe our little Noelle is already seven months old!

She's growing up before our eyes.  She loves when we read to her, when we play peak-a-boo, dance, and recently she's loved being "tossed" in the air (I use "toss" loosely here as she doesn't even leave our hands).

She has discovered the world is an interesting place and wants to hold and eat anything she can.  Especially things that she notices Mom and Dad use (watches, remotes, phones, etc).  Her most favorite thing on her toys are tags.  She still likes her binky--only to chew on the ribbon that's holding it.  Silly girl :)


She has recently discovered that she can reach for things she wants.

She's dying to play with the camera.  It's making it harder to get good pictures.  Look at the determination on her face.

We love those cheeks.  We kiss them as often as Noelle lets us.

Introducing...

Sabrina! (Sorry, we don't have any pictures of her yet!)

We were very excited to meet the newest member of our family last night.  Gavin and Lesa had their first yesterday.  Here's Aunt Lesa with Noelle seven months ago.

We got to Skype with Ms. Sabrina (or Bri for short) just a few hours after she was born, and she is adorable.  It looks like she might have gotten Lesa's pretty blond hair.  Noelle was so excited to meet her very first cousin that she babbled for most of the chat (making it a little hard to hear the grown-ups talking).  It will be very fun to see and hold her in person and see these two cuties together in a few weeks.

Unannounced Visitor

We had a surprise today.


We opened our door and found this little guy.

There might have been some school girl yelps and some quick thinking (binder trap).


We finally got him back outside where he belongs.

Poor thing.  We think it literally had a heart attack as it sat in the same spot outside for quite a while.  Then after some time elapsed Corey stepped by and it was off like a rocket.


Good luck little lizard.  Next time you want to visit, call ahead please.

Hang Ten

Sometimes we find Noelle in funny positions when we go to get her up from a nap.

Socks half off, feet hanging over the edge.  Silly girl :)


On an unrelated note, do you like these jeans?  I made them.  Aren't the back pockets cute?

Well, they don't fit.  I actually don't know why I made these.  I just thought one day.  Hey, I'll make Noelle a pair of jeans out of my old jeans.  I was going fast and used some knit pants as a guide to make these and they ended up too high in the front and too low in the back.  Oh well!  I'm going to hem them up short and they can be dress up clothes for a teddy bear or doll.


Also.  Her quilt is almost done.  Yay!  The question is should I give it to her now or wait for Christmas or her birthday?  I haven't decided.

Merry Mail

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to discuss Christmas cards.

This may be a shock to some of you, but…I love Christmas.  Corey may have heard me talk about it once or twice.  I love the atmosphere, the snow, the Christmas music, Christmas cards, etc.  Whilst thinking about Christmas cards and browsing online I came across a sweet offer from Snapfish.  Talk about Snapfish and get a free set of cards.  Cool, I can do that.

I had fun browsing their Christmas card selection and narrowed my favorites down to nine (like this, and this, and this…).  Ha!  I am so indecisive sometimes.  I have completely extinguished my handmade card thoughts this year. All I have to do is pick my favorite card, pick a photo-or two, and done.  This will save me hours of wishing I hadn’t decided to make my own cards.  I have never used Snapfish before, but I think I'll hop back onto Snapfish when Noelle turns 1 to make a book of her first year too.  As much as I would like to scrapbook, I'm horrible at it.  Pick-and-click is my kind of scrapbooking.

I'm excited to see how our cards turn out.  Want to see our Christmas card picture?  Well you can’t!  What’s the point of sending cards if I give it away now!

Here are a few ones that didn’t make the cut:

Games

We've been having fun playing games with Noelle.  She loves when we play peek-a-boo, or parachute, or sneak-up-on-Noelle.  

We found a new one yesterday.  Here's a little clip:

Long Weekend

Hi all.  We don't have much to report this week other than we're hanging out and enjoying a long weekend.  

Corey has today (Veteran's Day) off of course, and his professors decided to cancel class Friday as well.  Thus far it's been pretty quiet.  Corey's been working on a paper revision and I've done a little work whilst the little one is napping.  We took a few pictures outside for fun, but Noelle wasn't really in the mood to smile.  We even tried upside down and didn't get so much as a hint of a smile.  It happens.

We are also enjoying the weather.  It was really nice today, it was in the upper 60s (I put on a jacket for fun).

Giggles

Sometimes Corey or I have fun sneaking up on Noelle when she is in her crib.  Sometimes when we do we are surprised ourselves when there's a cutie pie looking back at us.

Who's there?

Oh, it's mom and dad!

 This afternoon Corey snuck up on her and was popping over the edge making her giggle.  Here's a short video:

Oui Oui

Today was pretty fun.  While Corey was at school Noelle and I took a quick trip to France.  Here's us at the Eiffel Tower.

Or maybe I was just playing with GIMP (a free Photoshop type program) and pictures from Flickr with creative commons licenses (which lets you use their pictures without copyright issues)... this is fun!  Aside from changing the background I changed the color of my shirt (used to be purple) and whitened my teeth.  I also played with the coloring so we didn't look too out of place with the other picture.  It was fun messing around.


Where should we go next?

Gottcha!

Can you see them?  Look really close.  There are two tiny teeth in that mouth.  Until now it's been impossible to capture them on camera.

Noelle has been much happier since her teeth broke.  She was a tad grumpy for a few days.  Luckily she had a nice teether to chew on to make her feel better.

On an unrelated note.  Here is my first tomato.  Look how tiny!  Corey and I split it and enjoyed our bite of tomato.  

Time Flies

Four years ago today Corey surprised me on my doorstep at school and proposed.  It's true time flies when you are having fun.

We haven't aged a day since then.  Or so we like to think.

Float Like a Butterfly...

Sting like a bee!

We thought it would be fun to dress Noelle up as Rocky Balboa.  We already had the grey track suit--how could we resist?  


Happy Halloween!

Six Months

I can't believe Noelle has already passed the half way mark on her first year of life.  She is growing up so fast!

She had her six month checkup today and she is doing great.  She's still in the 75th percentile for length and average for weight.  She got her first doctor's prize today, a little book (not the one in the picture).  She happily munched on it while we waited for the shots.  She still didn't like the shots, but was able to calm down pretty quick.

She is ready for fruits and veggies now, I think I'll try giving her some carrots tonight.


Also, a few hours after Karen and Larry left we had a surprise.

**Image pulled from Google Images, linked to source

Her first tooth!  It's really hard to see right now, otherwise I'd share a picture.  Maybe in a week or two she'll have a pearly white to show off.  No wonder she had some grumpy moments over the weekend, her tooth was probably hurting her.

Thank You, Come Again.

We had a great weekend with Karen and Larry in town.  Noelle had fun playing with Grandma and Grandpa.

Grandma gave her a new book.  She loved it.  About thirty seconds after this picture she tried to eat it.

We also got a spooky i-spy type book.  If you come visit you can try to find the horse and carriage.  It's tricky.  Karen and I made up a pattern for a little hedgehog toy while Corey was in class.  We didn't quite finish, but once I have him all put together I'll share some pictures.

We toured the Biosphere 2 on Saturday.  Why #2, what happened with #1?  From the intro video we found out that the first biosphere was planet Earth.  Ohhh.  It looks pretty space-age-y.

 I think they may have filmed a few sci-fy things here.

They don't have anyone living there anymore.  People lived there for a few years at a time for a while, not allowed to go out or have any outside things.  It sounded like a good idea for a reality show, only a few years too early.  The U of A now uses the facilities to conduct experiments and such.  

Corey's favorite part were the giant "lungs".  Since they are dropping and raising temperatures so much they risk blowing out the windows if there isn't an outlet (and originally this was supposed to be a closed system).  So they created these giant domes with rubber "lungs" inside that grow and shrink to accommodate the air.  Here's us going down a tunnel to look at the lungs.

Karen and Larry were kind enough to watch Noelle one evening while Corey and I went to dinner and a movie sans baby.  We were so out of touch with what's out we ended up seeing Despicable Me.  Why that movie is still in theaters and Inception was not, I have no idea.  I still haven't seen it, eventually...


The weekend flew by, and Karen and Larry are already on their way home.  We're looking forward to a fun Christmas!  It will be here before we know it.

Sat-tire

I was trying to think of something witty--but this is all I could come up with: What do you call someone who tires of sitting?  A sat-tire. (wah-wah)

Noelle is getting better at sitting every day.  We're spending time on the couch so Noelle can practice sitting up.  We play in her Bumbo too, of course.  We've been letting Noelle sit by us on the couch to practice being a big girl.  She does pretty well, but after a minute or two she wants to go somewhere else.

Look!  I'm sitting by myself!

 It's also a fun to snap some pictures while she's sitting.  

 Look, my hair is growing!

 Hey, whaddua looking at?

Don't you like her shoes?  She's worn them for maybe an hour total in her life.  She's used to bare feet and still doesn't care for shoes much, but I put them on sometimes just for fun.

Muted

Noelle's latest funny thing is silent talking.  She looks like she does when talking, only no sound comes out!  It's like someone accidentally left the mute button on.  Corey and I think she gets so excited about talking sometimes she forgets.

Here's a video we caught tonight.  Don't worry if you can't hear anything.  It's because she isn't making noise.

Plugging Along

Nothing too exciting has happened this past week.  We're just plugging along!  

My tricks to make Noelle smile are getting old some days.  But sometimes I catch a cute face-pucker up!

Noelle is liking food more.  By "more" I mean now she'll swallow it.  She's still only eating about half a tablespoon a sitting, but it's progress right?

The thrill of nap time seems to be wearing off, unfortunately.  Noelle still gets pretty excited when you come to get her out.  Save me!

We tried going on a little hike last Saturday morning.  Noelle isn't happy when she misses her morning nap, we were reminded.  We lasted about 15 minutes on the trail before heading back home.  Once she was in her car seat and we were headed home she was perfectly fine.  Babies are puzzling sometimes.  Good thing she's so cute.

In between a little work I'm even making progress on her quilt.  I'll get some pictures once I've got a few more rows sewn together.