We’re off to Panama City Beach, FL this weekend. Brian and I are going to a marriage conference put on by our church, and Grandma and Grandpa Toone are coming along to babysit. How lucky are we?!? Hopefully there will be a little sunshine so we can introduce Analise to the beach. We’ll have pictures for you on Monday.

Thanks for all your comments thus far… I love knowing people are checking in! It inspires me to blog more:) If you didn’t see Analise with a bow in her hair, go check it out here and tell me if you like it!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

Inspired by my wife’s post yesterday, I decided to put together a blog with some of the pictures I like the most from my bike rides here in Alabama. Most of these are from January, February, and March so the leaves still haven’t turned yet. Everything is so green now. You’ll have to wait for the pics from my bike commute today to see just how green!

Beautiful view looking northeast from atop Double Oak mountain.




From atop a different point of Double Oak mountain looking south on a different bike ride.

On Easter, I went for a bike ride that took me down to my brother’s house in Pelham. Since it was Easter, I had originally intended to take an Easter egg, but I forgot it! So I dropped off a water bottle instead.

Easter present for my brother.

Another ride took me past Star Lake in Hoover. As you might be able to see, it gets its name from the manmade island near the middle of the lake that is shaped like a star.

Hoover’s Star lake

Steve Donaldson and I drove down to Marion, Alabama in Perry County in Alabama’s historic cotton belt to ride 100 miles in a century organized by none other than Samford University. Steve is a fellow computer science professor at Samford. It’s hard to believe that I am teaching at a university where one of my co-workers totally into cycling and which would organize a century my first semester teaching! Below are some pictures from the ride.

First, a picture of my really bad sunburn after the ride.



There were several fields of flowers blooming in the early Spring.



Another field of yellow flowers.



This was one of the coolest things I’ve seen on a century – a bagpiper playing for the cyclists as we rode by the site of the original Alabama Baptist convention. This bagpiper is a Samford student who can be heard throughout the campus whenever he plays his bagpipes in the football stadium.



Here’s a view of some green hills on the ride.

And finally, here are two more from bike rides in Hoover.

First, here’s a sunset view looking from the top of the hill in our neighborhood. In the distance are the Vestavia Hills ridge and Shades Mountain.



Lastly, here is the view from atop Shades Mountain looking west at a Robert Trent Jones golf course.

Today, we had lunch with Grandma Locke. She’s in an assisted living center just down the road from Samford University, where Brian teaches. We join her for lunch every other week, but this is the first week we’ve eaten in the main dining room. Analise was the star of the room – gurgling and babbling, trying to pull the tablecloth off, gobbling up her veggie puffs and cheese, twice trying to steal a Chicken McNugget, and smiling all the while. Grandma is so proud to tell everyone Brian “teaches at the college” and let everyone “ooh” and “ahh” over her great-grandbaby, whom she insists looks just like her (see above).

As we were leaving, Grandma was walking us out and a friend of hers came up. “Are these your kinfolk?” she asked Grandma. I have to smile, even now. I don’t think I’ve ever been kinfolk before.

Adapting to this southern language is fun. I like “y’all” – in fact, having lived in Louisiana when I was younger, I even said it now and then before we moved here. But now, it makes me feel REAL southern. But there are several Southern-isms that I probably won’t find myself using. Among them: might could (“I might could do that for you, if you need me to.”), rekon (“I reckon it’s gonna rain today.”), and fixin’ (“I’m fixin’ to go to the store.”). My little girl may grow up with a southern drawl, but I’ve got to make sure she’s speaking good English or Grandma Sandy won’t be happy:) Growing up, I couldn’t even say “gonna” or “gotta”.

  

Now that you can make comments on my blogs, I need your input. Analise finally got a bow in her hair this weekend. Brian wasn’t so impressed, and neither was Uncle Matthew, but Grandma Beverly and I thought she looked cute. What do you think? Leave us a comment!

Photos: Top- Analise and Grandma Locke in January; 2nd- Standing tall for a picture. Analise loves to stand by herself these days. Won’t be long before she’s walking! 3rd- Vote for the bow:) Above- Analise has a way of finding things she wants to get into. This basket of shredded paper has been in our front room for a while, and she’s found it several times. I think her memory is improving, because now if she’s in the hallway, she heads in that direction.

Yeah! After just a quick evening of programming (and teaching me programming!) Brian updated the blog to include a comment section. Below, using the add comment link, you can enter your own tidbit that will be posted below my blog.
Feel free to point out how much you like the pictures, how deep my thoughts are, how cute my little girl is, etc, etc:) You can post other comments as well… those are just some suggestions if you are at a loss for words. I’m excited to see what y’all have to say about my musings:) One last suggestion… you could post how amazing my husband is for setting this up for me! I love him!

Just a quick glimpse of our weekend adventure… Brian, Analise and I went hiking in a trail that’s hidden right in the middle of a neighborhood near us. It was a beautiful trail, culminating in a pretty waterfall (this is the small part – it got bigger!). Analise loved the gurgling water. I think it reminded her of her bathtime, and she was ready to jump in. I’ll post some more pictures tomorrow, but I thought I’d reward all my diligent readers with a quick pretty picture. Hope you had a great weekend!

I got The Book of Proverbs in the Message translation in the mail as a gift this week. The introduction had an interesting thought that I’ve been pondering and wanted to share:

Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our lsexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace. Threaded through all of these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God.

Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust GOD from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
    
Listen for GOD’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track.

Just something to think about this weekend!

Ok, I just looked back in the blogs and noted that on April 1st I posted about My Little Sleep Fighter and how she’d slept for 3 nights straight (a couple sweet sleeping baby pics on that page, too). Well, since then, I don’t believe she’s slept through the night once. She’s been teething, and though I tried letting her fuss for a bit a couple of nights, she’ll just keep fussing. So I bring her to bed with us, nurse her, and take her back to bed. Several nights, she even woke up twice, which just WEARS me out for the day before it even begins.

I had to mention all that to put this in perspective: she slept all the way through the night last night! WOOHOO! From 8pm to 6:30 am and it felt so very good. She, too, is in better spirits, and I think the nights of waking had left her tired as well. I hope this continues… *fingers crossed*

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!”)