A Whole Lot of Rambling and Insta(notquite)Friday

We’ve had a developmental explosion around here during the last few weeks, and with my insistently mobile and curious baby, I’m having a hard time keeping up!  She also appears to be a teething baby who woke up four times one night this week.  And another night she insisted on sleeping on my chest the whole night!  That night was a treasure, something she hasn’t done since she was squeaky new.  The night she was up four times felt less like a treasure at the time, although I’m sure I’ll feel differently years down the road (when I’m less sleep deprived).

In the last few weeks, Isla has started standing more consistently, has figured out how to push things around while she walks with them, and has started climbing stairs.  She insists on having me “walk” her around the house, crawling over to me, taking my hands and dragging me behind her.  ;)  This new mobility has also led to her reprogramming our tv remotes and breaking the power jack on the laptop, but the good news is she’s only bumped her head (and left a mark) once.  Yay!

She thinks it’s pretty funny that she can dance on command, and she also likes to jump, which looks a lot like dancing except it’s faster.  Playing peek-a-boo is her favorite game, and she’s figured out how to play with her hands if she doesn’t have a blanket handy.

She’s also talking lots, and even said her first sentence, albeit a short, “Hi, Gabe!”  She crawls around the house saying, “Hi!” everytime she sees one of us.  I think she does it to be endearing so we’ll keep picking her up in the middle of the night!  :)  The other words she says are: Daddy (we think she says this, but it sounds a lot like Gabe), boom, bye-bye, night-night, no, yeah, thank you, stop, Isla (we think, not certain), tickle and woof.  She’s quite a little talker!

In other news, she still doesn’t say mama, despite my best efforts.  I’m working on her!

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Tahd’s entering his busy travel season this week.  Several of his trips are pretty short, but he has one trip that’s 12 days long!  I’m hoping we can arrange to join him for a little while in the middle of it, but the tickets are getting pretty pricey and I’m not sure it’s wise to spend that much for a short trip, especially when he’d have to work during much of it.  It’s in Texas, though, a state I’ve never visited, so that’s a secondary draw.  As is the fact that we’d be in a hotel where someone would make my bed and bring me clean towels EVERY SINGLE DAY!

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We went back to the church we visited a few weeks ago.  We still liked it, but I don’t feel like we’ve made a final decision.  The first service we attended was unusual because it was put on by their college ministry.  This one was a more regular service, and it was definitely less contemporary and peppy.  A big plus was that Gabe enjoyed the kids’ program, though, so that’s a huge consideration.

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If you’re the praying type, I would appreciate your prayers for the 12-year-old daughter of some friends.  She developed the flu this week and gradually got worse until they finally had to take her to the emergency room late Saturday evening.  She went downhill rapidly and has ended up on life support machines in the ICU.  I’m so sad for them and what their sweet girl is going through!  Right now she’s stable because of the life support machines, and I believe the next several days are critical.  I know prayers are of tremendous comfort to them!

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Finally, I started preparing the photos for InstaFriday on Friday evening and never got around to finishing things.  So here’s our most recent instaweek!

Isla has very pinchy fingers when she nurses, which is not horrible unless she has sharp fingernails, too.  Then it’s a form of torture!

The birthday cake!

Birthday girls!

Inauguration day!  I loved the First Lady’s dress – so striking!

I just couldn’t put her down that night.  She snuggled up close and fell asleep, and I held her for the longest time!  I had to laugh, though, when I saw this picture and saw all the red pinch marks on my neck!

She loves her dolls!

I got this book this week after seeing it in someone else’s instafeed.  I read an article somewhere about selecting three non-decorating words you want to describe your home and decorating style.  I’ve decided “playful” is one of mine.  My second is “inspiring.”  I haven’t settled on a third yet.

Tahd and I went on an anniversary date to PF Chang’s and got some See’s candies for dessert.  YUMMY!  We’d never had them before.  I love the white chocolate strawberry truffles shaped like hearts.

We also saw Lincoln, which was excellent!  I wished we were watching it at home, though, because there were so many times when I wanted to pause it to ask Tahd and question or look something up.  We were the only ones in the theater, which creeped me out a little bit after the Aurora theater shooting.  You know we’re old, married people when we were completely alone in a movie theatre for 3 hours and there was no hanky panky!  ;)

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I’ve decided I want to grow my photography skills and do a better job at documenting our daily life, so I’m undertaking a project I’m calling “A Day In The Week.”  For the next six weeks I plan to select one day and photograph our events from morning to evening.  I want to rotate the days so we cover each one individually (I’ll cover Saturday and Sunday together).  I’m planning to have the blog post up toward the end of the week, and if anyone wants to play along I’d love the company!

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Birthday pie made, bread out of the oven, time for bed!