Standing up!

I took baby boy over to my friends Heidi & Taylor's house earlier today for a visit. David was playing on the floor next to me, and proceeded to stand up all on his own- and managed to stay up for a few seconds! He's let go while already standing for a second or two before, but never managed to get himself up without holding onto something else first.
He now has 6 teeth, too. His upper right lateral incisor started coming in December 26th and the upper left lateral incisor made its appearance on January 4th.
Growing boy!
On that subject, I got the mother-of-the-year award last week when David's nursery school had to ask me to bring in more food for him. I thought I was bringing in enough, but apparently not! I was bringing the same amount I always packed for him when he was in the baby room, but he's graduated to the young toddler room now and I guess all the extra activity (it's a bigger room & they go play outside now) has made him hungrier (or he's in the middle of a growth spurt). I felt absolutely horrible.
*sigh*

C's birthday cake

So I had this fabulous idea of making a cake small in diameter, but rather tall. I baked 3 6-inch diameter cake layers, and cut each in half to make 6 layers total. I've seen cakes like this in restaurants, how hard can it be? (insert maniacal laughter here).
I didn't have much else on my to-do list yesterday, and figured it wouldn't be too difficult. I was sadly mistaken.
Below is a picture of the "good side" of the cake.

Even the good side isn't so good.
Unfortunately, once the layers were piled high and frosted, the side of the cake sort of... slipped.
I ended up with a Dr. Suess cake on acid- "the cake was small, the cake was tall; the cake couldn't stand straight at all!"

Note the look of sheer disbelief (albeit amused disbelief) that this was his birthday cake:

Chris, ever loyal, proclaimed that it looked "fine" and that "no one else would have a cake just like it!" Um, yeah.

Even if it was funny-looking, it must have tasted pretty good...

Later that evening, Kristi came over to babysit. Baby was already asleep and Nolia was very excited to have Kristi all to herself. She rushed us out the door, "Mama, Daddy- go!" I thought, how nice that she loves Kristi so much that she feels no sadness in our leaving for a few hours. Ha! We'd gotten two blocks away from the house when Kristi calls my cell phone. Magnolia is asking to watch Mama Mia and tells Kristi that we've said it's okay. This (rightly) sounds rather suspicious to Kristi (as it was already 8pm at night), so she called to verify. The little rat wanted us out of the house so she could get a quick start on her movie extravaganza.

So Chris & I splurge on a supper out, then meet up with Christine & John at The Top, where they've been celebrating John's birthday. From there we go to Durty Nelly's for a bit. I think this was the first bar-hopping I've done in about a decade. It's probably a bit sad that a lot of the conversation centered around how we were among the oldest groups in the bar. Apparently this is not the case for 30-somethings in Atlanta, but in a university town... well, once the table of 3 50-something men left the building, let's just say the age range suddenly shrank, leaving us in the upper portion.

Oh, well.

It was still lovely to stand around chatting for a good long time, drinking beer (everyone else) and hard cider (me). Even if I did have to immediately take a shower once home to rinse the stink of cigarettes from my hair.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is C's birthday.
I have the whole day planned.
Tomorrow morning I'll make pancakes for breakfast (well, I mix up the batter, then C cooks them 'cause I have a tendency to burn them).
I'll keep Magnolia home from pre-school and we'll bake C a birthday cake ("chocolate" she insisted, when I told her of my plans while tucking her in bed tonight). I plan to let her go a bit wild with sprinkles. It'll be interesting to see the state of my kitchen once we are through baking.
After David has napped, I'll drop him off at the baby nursery and take Nolia to see a movie. I've been meaning for us to do this for a while, and tomorrow seems like a good day.
Once C is home from work, we'll feed the kiddies supper, sing happy birthday and eat cake & ice cream.
Then Kristi is coming over at 8pm to babysit, and C and I will go out for a late supper on our own.
I can't wait!

Nolia's Sleepover

Nolia's little friend Claire is spending the night. The girls have had a grand time with the Dance Cam, playing with her teaset and with their Ariel polly-pocket type dolls. They've had their teeth brushed, their princess nightgowns put on, a story read, prayers said, and have been tucked into bed since 8:30pm.

It's now 10:50pm. I just had to confiscate a flashlight, their toothbrushes, and Nolia's hair detangler from the bed. They were trying to brush their Ariels' teeth and comb their hair. I can't believe they are still awake. Bleary-eyed, but still chit-chatting away in there.

Night-time conversation with Joy

9:30 pm Saturday night 1/3/08

Magnolia, what are you doing out of bed?
My legs are scared.
Why are your legs scared?
They're hungry. They're hungry 'cause I'm hungry.

PHOTO TAG!

So I saw this on another blog and was intrigued. It's billed as a fun picture game. Here is how it works. You must go to your documents folder and go to your 6th picture folder, then go to the 6th picture in that folder and post it on your blog. Tell us a story about that picture.
Here's my photo:

July 3, 2005

Nolia was being bussed by Nolan.

I'm completely biased, but isn't she just adorable?

We pretty much spend every July 4th holiday (and the days just before and afterward if it's a weekend) at our family lakeplace. Everyone has a grand time and the 'boys' (now men) spend way too much money on fireworks that get set off at the end of the dock once it's dark. If we get there early enough on the 4th, we wave flags and yell encouragement during the annual 10am boat parade- a big line of boats all decked out in red, white & blue.

So I'm tagging everyone I personally know that has a blog: Aimee, Alison, Bev, Dana & Joy- you're it!

(Bev, I know I don't know you well, but I really enjoyed meeting you this past summer & I like reading your blog and seeing all the cute pictures of your unbelievably gorgeous kids! Hope you don't mind me tagging you). ;-)

Catching up

We visited Joy & Zach in South Carolina mid-November. On our way home we stopped at this museum & I took some really cute pictures of baby boy. I just love that smile!

David was baptized November 23rd. The service was lovely and David entertained the choir with his smiles during his time up at the front of the church. Afterwards the extended family came back to our house for lunch & Jamie took this picture of us all (well, most of us- Katrina unfortunately had to work that day).

Picking out a Christmas tree. It's our tradition to put up the tree the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving. Nolia picked a good one!

Joy & Zach came over and helped us decorate our Christmas tree & make gingerbread houses (no, not from scratch- from a very handy pre-fab kit). Here's a shot of Zach & Nolia clowning around.

This is one of the (doctored to remove red-eye) photos we're using for Christmas cards this year. Amazing how many shots it took to get just a few good ones!


Okay, so that mostly catches me up for now. Except for the masses of photos I've yet to even download to the computer. But that's for another day...