Best Friends

As if I needed more proof...

...that I am a bad mom, behold the following conversation that took place this evening between me and Janelle, who watches Ryanne during the day:

Janelle: I see Ryanne got her first tooth!

Me: Whaaaa???

: ( I hadn't even noticed.

LOL Cats

Mark and I love LOL Cats, where people take pictures of their kitties and give them funny captions.

Today I found a website where I could make my own:
Yes, in fact, I do have a lot of spare time...why?

I look super goofy in this outfit, but let's go to the park anyway, mom.

Ty's Wedding

Ryanne and I went to Mark's cousin Ty's wedding, where Ryanne fell in love with a sparkly balloon. We both went home covered in glitter. These pictures were the best in a series of shots containing serious depth of field and focusing issues. Next time, perhaps I will have a little less champagne.

Grandma and Grandpa bought Ryanne this great car. The only problem is, the transmission is broken - it only goes in reverse! We are certain that Ryanne will figure out how to make it go forward by next visit.

Ryanne dancing. She does a cute little shimmy on command. Sometimes.

Note how she is getting farther away from the camera. This is the proper order for these pictures. She really can only go backwards.

Much like Michael and LaToya, pictures of Ryanne and me together are hard to find. So I jumped at the chance to get some shots of us this weekend. (The reason they are of such low image quality is that I used Paint to crop them. I really just need to suck it up and spring for PhotoShop.)

Ryanne's grandma sent me this picture and I just had to share it.

Ry's New Skills

Things have really seemed to click for Ryanne the past couple weeks. She waves and says hi. She gives high fives. She tries to feed herself - the other day I watched her successfully navigate a spoon from a dish of prunes to her mouth. She claps when she is happy. Basically she loves life.
Areas she seems to be seriously, developmentally behind in? 1. Teeth. At last count, her mouth contained exactly zero chompers. 2. Sleeping through the night. I've actually forgotten what it is like to sleep more than 4 hours in a row. Someone remind me. Is it nice? Do you wake up refreshed? Are you able to function at work and competently do your job?



Here, she was practicing waving to me and saying hi. She got so excited she let go with both hands though before I got the shot. So what you are seeing here is, whoa, I can't balance yet, I should probably grab this chair again. It's not as cute.

Weekend in Portland

We drove to Portland this weekend to visit family and friends. It was sunny all day there. We took a picture to prove it.

In retrospect, tying Stanley's leash to Ryanne's stroller 3 feet from the busy roadway seems unwise.

Saturday we saw Christina. She took us to the Nike store and we got some sweet new kicks.

Later, we almost went to a birthday party. The wife of a friend of ours from college had rented out a room at a bar. Christina made sure babies could come, and Sierra said yes. So, we showed up, walked in, and started to go upstairs. Then the bartender came over to us. "Um," he says. "We don't really allow babies in the bar." "It's okay," we replied. "We're going to a private party." "No," he said. "It's not."

Instead of the party, we settled for Chinese food. I gave Ryanne some yakisoba noodles and chicken.

Yakisoba face.

It's a funny face, but it is funnier because she would take a bite of noodle, and then make the face. Then she would take a bit of chicken, and make the face. She kept eating and making faces until all of the food was gone. If a food causes me to make that face, I don't normally keep eating. But she cleaned her plate.

Christina had a bike race the next day, so she taught Ryanne about carbo-loading.

Sunday we went to Great Aunt Celeste's and Great Uncle Dennis's house for breakfast. They made us potatoes and quiche. I. Love. Quiche. Pretty much anything with eggs in it is good for me. You could put eggs on a pizza and I would order it.

When I reread that to myself, it sounds kind of gross.

Anyway, they have a dalmation, Matty, who Stanley loved. Matty thought Stanley was just okay. Matty liked Ryanne though, especially after she gave him some of her rice cracker.

Matty intimidates Stanley.

After we went for a walk with Celeste and Matty and got nice and muddy, we went to meet Amy for brunch. Ryanne impressed all of the other diners with her cuteness and well-behavedness (I'm not kidding the people at the tables around us LOVED her.) We ate at Besaw's. It was really good.

She looks grumpy here, I'm not sure why. I think she had just woken up.

In summary, we had a great time in Portland, the sun was shining all day (yes it is raining here however), and we can't wait to go back.

Those of you who know me (and I assume most of the people reading this know me) know that I pretty much hate living over here. I hate the weather, I hate how I have no friends, and most of all, I hate-hate-HATE the traffic. Things reached a new low on Friday, though, when traffic, for no discernible reason, backed up from Nisqually Valley (exit 113ish) to Shoreline, north of Seattle (exit 175). It was over 60 miles of solid traffic. It was like hell, except rainy and cold. So basically, I left work at 4:30 to pick up Ryanne, and I arrived at the sitter's at 5:56, also known as $26.00 late. 26 minutes late at $1 per minute. It took me almost an hour and a half to drive 13 miles. (For those of you keeping track at home, that's an average of about 9 miles per hour that I was driving.) It was absolutely insane. Fortunately, the rest of the weekend was better.

In Case You Were Wondering

This is what Ryanne looks like when she feeds herself.

I'm not sure why she felt she needed to wash her hair with it.

Ryanne doesn't watch tv very often so the Super Bowl was very exciting.