I’ve got several other things I should be doing, but I just had to put these deep thoughts into cyberspace:)

After becoming a parent, you have a whole new understanding of the word “tired”. I am a person whose body has always needed good quality rest. I was never one who could pull an “all-nighter”, and usually my evenings don’t go any later than 11pm. I’ve had seasons in my life where I experienced tired in new ways. I was sick for about 10 months and felt exhausted and extreme fatigue. That was one kind of tired. When I was pregnant, I was VERY tired. My body just felt like it couldn’t handle creating a new life and carrying on my own. Thank goodness for a quiet office to take a brief midday nap in while working! Brian and I experienced a completely different sort of tired/exhausted/zombie status feeling in the first 3 weeks after Analise arrived. The only way to understand that is to live it… But our bodies adjusted, and Analise started sleeping better, and you really learn to appreciate sleep. I had always said that I would never make it if my baby wasn’t sleeping through the night by 6 weeks (when I went back to work). Amazingly enough, as she continued with a 2:30-3am feeding, my body adjusted. I was tired, but life went on. We’ve had quite a few nights where Analise slept through the night. We’ve even determined that “sleeping through the night” is logically until about 4am… since she goes to bed at 7:30! She’ll wake up, come to bed with us, I’ll nurse her really quick, and she’ll be back to sleep before I take her back to bed. Then she’ll sleep until 6:30 or 7.
Last night was ROUGH. Tom & Beverly put her to bed at about 7:30, we got home and were in bed by 10. Analise woke up at 11:30, 2, and 5. (Those are all guesstimates, and there may well have been another wakening in there, because both Brian and I were completely out of it. I guess I think now that “tired” is just a part of parenting. I’m not low on energy. There will be nights like this. There will be nights of solid sleep – and BOY do they feel GOOD! But after 9 1/2 months of interrupted sleep, my body’s learned to make the best of it and life goes on. And it’s all forgotten when Analise curls up in my lap, sucks on her thumb and falls asleep on my chest… for a 2 hour nap, during which I can enjoy a brief rest!:)

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

Reading material

Right now, believe it or not, both Brian and I are reading the The 9/11 Commission Report. It’s interesting to see some of the reasons the government found as to what happened that day and why. If anything, it’s made me realize that I shouldn’t complain about any security lines or precautions when traveling.

  

Baby Galileo

I’m not sure if you’ve ever experienced the Baby Einstein DVDs, but we just got one – Baby Galileo. It’s about space and the sky. Quite captivating, and Analise just loves it. She has this cute little habit of making a “oooooo” mouth and sound when she’s excited about something (shown in the first picture above). She’s full of oooooos and squeals when this DVD is on. Note: There’s not that much TV watching in our house, especially for Analise. This is the only thing she gets to watch, and only once a week or so, but it’s nice because she’ll curl up in your lap and watch the whole 30 minutes!

Sweet Moments
As Analise is getting older, I know there will be less and less quiet moments with her. She’s an active one! Recently, I’ve been reading on the couch in the morning. She’ll play by herself, for quite a while. But about 2 hours after she’s been up, she’ll start getting a little bit whimpery, crawl over to the couch, and pull herself up close to me. That’s the signal that she’s ready to snuggle. Then she’ll let me pull her close and we snuggle into the corner of the couch. Her thumb will go into her mouth, and she’ll curl up on my chest, sometimes falling asleep (other times, just rest for 10 minutes and then pop up ready to go again). It’s so sweet to pull her close and have her fall asleep on my chest. Moments I love…

Now that I’m reconnected – Yeah! – I mentioned in my last blog that Tuesday Analise and I went to Bud’s Best cookie factory with our Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) group from church. It was really fun! They loaded all of us moms and kids (from baby to preschool age) onto a little train to drive us through the factory. We had to wear cute little hats and hairnets – even those of us with very little hair, like Analise:) We saw them mixing dough and all the cookies travelled around on little conveyor belts through the ovens and cooling to the packaging area. They make over 1,000,000 cookies a day! We got some cookies fresh out of the oven – and Analise LOVED the warm butter cookie she got her hands on (below).

So here are a few pictures from our field trip. (Sorry there are no sweet Analise smiles… they’re harder to catch on camera these days. I’ve been trying to get one all day, but as soon as she sees the camera, she crawls over to me real fast and tries to climb onto me to get to it! Gotta be sneaky and fast… I’ll work on it!) This last picture is after we got home – the cookie factory wore Analise out! (The little red sticker says “I rode the COOKIE TRAIN at Bud’s Best’s cookies!”)

As if I wasn’t already lonely enough. Today our wireless network went down, so I was unable to get any internet connection until just now. Then as I restarted our lovely, wonderful awesome new (from January) Dell laptop upstairs, it stalled in the middle of startup three separate times. GRR. I’m starting to get a little panicky about the photos and little projects I had on it. Isn’t it amazing how we can get attached to BITS and BYTES? *sigh*

Anyway, I was going to post a cute little blog about our Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) outing to Buds Best Cookie factory this morning. Quite fun! I think I might have gotten a good picture or two… except that I left the camera there. Thankfully, I can pick it up tonight at church. So I guess the cute pictures will have to wait. And my blog will have to wait. And my email will have to wait. (HINT – now’s the time for you to overwhelm me with email messages so that when I’m reconnected I wonder why in the world I was so lonely today.) Say a quick little prayer for our computer!

We bought this beautiful home with a beautiful lawn and yard (the back needed some work, though!). We quickly found out that keeping the yard and lawn beautiful involves some diligent work. Thankfully, Brian’s parents, Beverly and Tom, are amazing landscapers and gardeners. Their house yard is one of the prettiest I’ve seen, and I’ve been checking them all out! So under Beverly’s watchful eye, I planted my first flowerbed last weekend with irises and daisies, as well as a small rose bush. In the Easter Fun blog, you can see a picture of the dogwood tree we planted to grow along with Analise. Today, Beverly brought over 3 beautiful hydrangea plants from her yard to transplant for me. Tom was busy weed whacking our back yard because it was too overgrown to mow:) Hopefully, Brian and I can learn enough so that they won’t have to spend every other weekend bailing us out of yardwork. I’ll post pictures of my flowerbed when it blooms!

Foto Frenzy!

I thought maybe I’d post one a day, but since I’m here, and all the pictures are ready, I’ll just give you all of them at once:) Above – Analise has finally decided she’s interested in something other than milk! Here she’s seriouly involved in a biter biscuit. I have not been prepared for how messy eating can be!

  
Above – We took advantage of Grandma Toone’s beautiful yard and the beautiful spring weather last weekend to try to get some pictures outside. Unfortunately, Analise was quite unsmiley… at least that we could catch!

Below – My little monkey is at it again. A different end table, this one sandwiched between the computer desk (to the left in the picture) and the sofa (to the right). Analise noticed a leftover plastic egg hiding back there, and while I wasn’t watching, climbed back between the table and the wall! I couldn’t reach to get her out, so I snatched the egg, set it back out from behind the table, and she quickly came out to get it:) I’ve got it on video, and I’ll try to upload it. Quite comical!

   

Lastly, a cute one of bathtime. A far cry from the screaming photo we have of her from her first bath!

I feel like the events of this week have caused the world consider death much more than we normally do and prefer to do. The death of Terry Schiavo forced us to think about the end of our own lives and what we would want for ourselves and our loved ones. Discussions with some people at church this week came back to the fact that as Christians we have so much to look forward to beyond this world. We’re going to meet Jesus and be with God for eternity! How great is that? We think this world is great – and it really is full of blessings. But God’s told us over and over in His Word that this earth is just a shadow of what’s in store for us.

“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall knaow fully, even as I am fully known.” –1 Corinthians 13:12
But as wonderful as we know it will be, there’s still considerable fear at the thought of getting there – the process of death. I think the death of Pope John Paul II has been very exemplary. I can’t think of anyone on the earth who would be watched more closely, espeically as the end of life draws near. And as his life waned, he was an example of peace. I hope that as people watched and prayed for him this week, they take this lesson away from his death. He walked into the presence of his Lord in peace, knowing Who was waiting for him.
In the words of Jesus,

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me… Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
–John 14:1-7, 27

Analise has gone through various phases of sleeping. Back in California, we could lay her down and she’d put herself to sleep without a sound in about 5-10 min. It was amazing. Since we’ve moved, though, she’s fought sleeping so hard. She did get more mobile when we moved here: rolling over, crawling, pulling up. She uses ALL of these after we put her down. I’ll lay her down, she’ll put her thumb in her mouth and close her eyes as I leave. Then moments later, I’ll hear a slight effort over the baby monitor, and we know she’s rolled over. She’ll usually get on her hands and her knees and crawl her head into the corner of the crib and then start fussing. Or she’ll sit up and play with the fish aquarium on the side of the crib. Or perhaps she’ll pull up and stand at the side fussing. I usually let her fuss and get a bit more tired before I go in, snuggle her and return her to normal sleeping position because I’m not sure she can get herself back to laying down. A couple times, I’ve gone in there after she’s quieted herself down to find that she must have been sitting up and gotten tired, so she’s about folded over in a seated position with her head laid down. Poor girl…

This morning she was been pretty good about sleeping. She was tired this afternoon, but just didn’t want to go to sleep. But I just went in to check on her, and she was curled up the opposite direction I laid her down, asleep with her thumb in her mouth. (Just in case you were worried, I always pick her up and put her back into a good sleeping position.) So here’s a glimpse of my angelic little sleep fighter who, by the way, has slept through the night for the last 3 nights – WOOHOO!

I just had to post one of my favorite links to the Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time. There have been some pretty amazing hoaxes pulled off around the world! Among my favorites (in case you don’t have time to enjoy them all):

• The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest (#1)
• The Taco Liberty Bell (#4)
• Alabama Changes the Value of Pi (#7)
• Planetary Alignment Decreases Gravity (#10)

Enjoy! I hope you don’t get April Fooled!

I wish I had a comment section for this because I’m sure we’d find everyone likes them differently. But I believe that Brian’s come up with the most original Peep creation – the Peep-a-Latte. Here’s the story:

Yesterday at work, he was enjoying his coffee (with Latte Creations mix) but found he needed sugar. The Peeps I had included in his lunch looked like the perfect solution, so he dropped one into his coffee! Sure enough, it was the perfect amount of sweetener. The only problem, he said, was that the little Peep just floated there, slowly, slowly dissolving, with its little eyes looking up at him. He said all afternoon, he kept hearing little “peeps”… (and his instant messages to me always began with a “peep, peep!”

So I created my own Peep-A-Latte this morning. As the water was boiling for coffee, I HONESTLY was hearing little chirps… was it the Peep that was soon to meet its demise or the eggs I was hardboiling?!? I’m not sure… but my Peep-A-Latte sure hits the spot this morning!