The Lily Pad

In no particular order, here are some pics of our outside stuff! Nothing exciting going on here. I've got a lot of snippets to share so I'll try to do a list soon. Every day Madely and I walk around the yard and visit the flowers and check the mail. This morning we snipped one of those bubble gum pink roses for Miss Tassy and I noticed a new bloom on a different bush that we'll be snipping and bringing inside tomorrow. I've never had rose bushes and I love it! There are 5 out front, 3 of which are full of blooms, one is bubblegum pink, one is brightpink and white and the other has yellow buds...a bazillion yellow buds.

Madelyn is just so darn cute at Baby and Me. Today she was the only walker in the class and she kept handing out instruments, the puppets and even help Miss Tassy point out the ABC's. We did 3 crafts to get ready for the Easter Party and one of them gave me a great idea for our family art project! Here she is in a paint smock: After class Madelyn had her very first dentist appointment. I am so not ready for her to be old enough to go the dentist. OK I guess I am since I'm the one that made the appointment, but whatever. We went to a fabulous pediatric DDS in Carlsbad and Madelyn had so much fun looking at everything in the office and the Dr. keeps it very personal and there were no tears and no trauma. This picture is of the tech trying to get x-rays. We never were able to get them, but hopefully next time. Madelyn was warming up to the idea, but just wouldn't keep the bite plate thing far enough in her mouth. I love CA weather. At 8:30 this morning our heat kicked ...

There times when I miss my family and friends more than ever and today in Walmart was one of those times. There is a select group of people who would have giggled with me like a 12 year old girl at the sounds coming over the speakers at Walmart today and NOT one single one of them lives here (except Chris). I just wish this video would have captured them a little better. It sounded like two teenage boys were having a flatulance noise contest and it went on the ENTIRE 45 minutes we were in the store. Best listened to at half volume and I am not blowing into the mic...those are the loud speaker noises.

I keep talking about and I truly plan on starting running but I haven't. It's not because I'm lazy, or maybe it is. I haven't started because I don't want to share my runs with Madelyn. I want my runs to be a full release, total me time and I know that I won't zone out into my own little world if there's a baby in a stroller in front of me. This sounds horrible, but it's true. I just want to run by myself, turn the ipod up as loud as it will go, cross and run down streets as I feel without having to worry if there's sidewalk for the stroller, if she's happy, if she's getting too much sun, if the traffic is too heavy or if the dog up ahead will try to attack us. When I ran before Madelyn, I would zone out into some great beyond and work things out in my head, think about random stuff and just kind of regenerate. I want that again. I also want the weight loss that comes with that. I have been to yoga for 2 weeks now and I love that littl...

So after 4 decent nights, last night was a 3 hour battle from 1130 to 230 with a baby who just wanted to play instead of sleep. yuck

This is not a total success yet, but our nights have been a little easier and have had more sleep for mommy. There have only been two times that she has come wandering down the hall to our room so I am happy that she is not immediately hopping out of bed. I think she enjoys the freedom of knowing that she can get out of the bed if she chooses. Madelyn is a strong willed baby and choices are the best way to get her to behave and be happy. If she has too much freedom she is miserable and too much structure is just the same. She likes a certain amount of order, if her toys are a mess she won't play with them. If her building blocks sit in the middle of the play area for 2 days she doesn't touch them but 20 minutes after cleaning them up she wants to play again. I am happy that we decided to give the toddler bed a try. It seems like she is happy and comfortable to go to bed now, it's a bed and not a prison. We still have other battles to fight...**cough**milk**cough**.....

Yesterday we celebrated St. Patricks day by baking green blobby cookies, Wearing green and making shamrock necklaces at Baby and Me, and by helping Miss Tassy make a rainbow out of shamrocks! After class we went shopping at the outlets in Carlsbad with Kristen and Caroline and even though we were only out for a couple of hours, and in and out of stores and I had Madelyns sun shade up she still managed to get a little sun burn on her arms! I forgot how strong the sun was here. It was a gorgeous day and today is another pretty one.

OK, blogger is being a total turd tonight so it's only loading like every other picture...this will have to do for now. Hi! Welcome to our home. Please come in and make yourself comfortable. To the right are couches for your sitting pleasure or you may rock and watch the kids play. Would you like something to drink? Please excuse the boxes in the kitchen. That short one in the middle with my purse on it? It's holding the place of a new fabulous pub table that should be here in a week or so. I don't know why the Dyson is still hanging out in here. Sit down and enjoy some TV while I fix up some snacks. I have an idea to fill that big gaping hole above the fireplace...if it works it will be fabulous! You are right, it's gorgeous outside, lets go out there! The backyard, home to a bazillion lizards, a few spiders and one little bunny who likes to poop on the patio. (There's more to the left but blogger is loading slow...) Ah, here's our patio, have a seat a...

We took the drop down rail off of Madelyns crib today and transitioned it to a toddler bed. She is such a big girl and I'm hoping that this transition will help her sleep better in her own bed. I think she equates the crib with confinement and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this new arrangement will make the bed more enticing. Of course it could just mean that she'll scare the crap out of me with cold little hands in the middle of the night. Last week I gave myself a week to get the house decent for an internet tour so...tomorrow I am going to post a tour of the house in all it's undecorated, unpacked craziness. We'll see how much I get done tonight and tomorrow before I take pictures for the internets.

Dash the bear was innocently sleeping on the chair when he was suddenly kidnapped by one Becky and forcibly driven across the country. Luckily there were plenty of friends to snuggle: He visited the petrified forest and decided that bears do in fact poop in the woods He stayed warm on the dash when there was snow in Arizona(!): He then went on a trail ride into CA And needed a whole lot of aloe for all those saddle sores He watched the silent drill team He got to relax on the beach in Carlsbad after a seafood dinner: But I'm afraid that after such an adventure to a Marine base that a little something rubbed off on him and he may have a little bit of an attitude now: So beware of Dash the Bear. My Dad is involved in scouting and on specific training/level is assigned different animals and his is the bear. Dash is one of his many black bears and was one of Madelyns favorites to grab off his nightstand every chance she got. Everytime we set him on the dash during our trip she want...

So you know you're out of shape when at the end of a fairly easy yoga class the instructor looks at you and asks if you were hurting because you seemed to be struggling at the end of class. Yeah. Blech. Overall it was a nice escape and I will be going back...hopefully looking a little less strained. This morning we had our first Baby and Me class and it was a blast! Ms. Tassy is awesome and we had music, toys and painting! Madelyn tries so hard to be tough but she's just a girly girl. She immediately stuck her hand in the plate of paint and about .2 seconds later she was rubbing her hand on her smock and crying because she couldn't get the paint off her hand. I forgot the camera so I don't have a picture of the little spot on her shirt or of her hands, but thankfully I have two new best friends to help me with that little spot. Meet Martha and Rico: Martha is my super huge washing machine that is water and energy efficient and she doesn't have a big agitator so I ...

Madelyn is SO happy to be back with her Daddy. On Wednesday night after we got here she started the night off in a pack n play in her room (our stuff from Asheville wasn't here yet so no crib and not even her pack n play) and around 3 she came to bed with us. Apparently that whole time she held on to Chris' arm and just loved and snuggled him. On Thursday Chris met us at the Exchange and Madelyn and Daddy had a little lunch date at Wendy's. Mom and I walked in and she was sitting in the chair next to him in a booster seat snacking on fries and looking like such a big girl. Two days prior to that I couldn't get her to sit still for 2 minutes in a booster seat. This morning she woke up after Chris had gone to work and immediately looked on his side of the bed asking "Da?", she then checked the bathroom and office for him. When we did see him on base she was so excited! Madelyn is such a little Daddy's girl and I am so happy to be here with him and her a...

Wednesday morning we woke up excited that we'd be making it in to see Chris. I made the mistake of telling Madelyn that we were going to see Daddy before we were actually ready to leave prompting a temper tantrum at the door of our hotel room because she was ready to go right then. We were a little slow getting started and Madelyn graced us with a lovely poo diaper on our way down the mountain so we had to stop and take care of that little situation - the first time on our whole trip that we had to stop specifically for her. Every other stop was for gas, food, and leg stretches. I woke up with a headache, luckily Mom was up for driving and drove 90% of this leg of the trip so I could just chillax in the passenger seat. We had a couple more stops but not too much time in the desert because we chose to cut down to Phoenix and then pick up the 10. It was a gorgeous drive in Arizona. Absolutely gorgeous. We got to Chris just before sunset and got to see our new house, new neighborhood ...

Our butts are dragging but we keep plugging along. Our hotel had a pretty decent breakfast and an awesome attendant that brought Madelyn yogurt out of a secret reserve. We were soon out of Texas and into New Mexico where the bridges were pretty and we kept seeing snowcaps. In New Mexico we stopped at a Dairy Queen that had Layaway! You can see the sign in the window to the right... OK, so there was actually a pretty nice store inside, it was a truck stop kind of place, but we got a kick out of the sign regardless. I think I will put my vanilla cone on layaway for the next time we drive through. Arizona was the next state and our place of rest. It was gorgeous! In Flagstaff, there was snow! I never really thought of Arizona getting snow but it did and it was pretty cool. Before we stopped I made Mom stop at a tourist trap that was an old trailor with fake dinosaurs, petrified wood and ostriches. It was fabulous! Madelyn got a piece of petrified wood and we had a nice little break. Of...

Another wonderful travel day with Madelyn, she is really handling 10 hours travel time better than I ever would have imagined! We finished up Arkansas with me making fun of the state our entire trip. Actually, I still am making fun of them. It's a whole post all its own. We passed through Oklahoma where we saw windmills and stopped at Braums for lunch and a frozen yogurt that was so rich and creamy you wouldn't have known it was yogurt. For the night we stopped in Amarillo. Our hotel was OK. We've been spoiled by our Holiday Inn Express experiences and we decided to go a little cheaper. The room was clean, just not as nice as we were used to. But the people in Amarillo were so nice! Unfortunately we didn't get a steak...our hotel people referred us to Outback or Logan's Roadhouse and we wanted something a little more Texas. We ate at Rosa's tortilla factory...yummy!

If you wake up and drive 30 minutes and the road looks like this: and 30 more minutes down the road you sit in traffic where people ahead of you have had time to build an anatomically correct snowman. She's on the left... Then it should be no surprise when you only go 10 miles in 2 hours and only make it to Arkansas. Of course, there was a gorgeous sunset And a pretty sweet hotel room and mediocre pizza to end the day with. Our day was long, my hiney is sore and Madelyn was a dream! She watched movies, ate snacks and played with toys (and Nanna) with so little complaining that I'm not sure I brought the right baby with me. We were on the road for 12 hours today and we're barely 700 miles into our 2300 mile trip. I really hope tomorrow doesn't have traffic. I'll have some more fun stories after I get some sleep and get over my road rage...one too many truckers tried to run me off the road in the last 25 miles of our trip. Sitting in traffic was not too horrible...

It is 20 til 6 and Mom and I are trading off doing make-up and such in the bathroom. Madelyn is still asleep and I'd like her to stay that way as long as possible. Last night we drove about 100 miles to get out of the mountains and away from the snow they are calling for. Other than the ache I feel from ripping my baby away from her family, the trip is going well so far. Nothing too exciting happened but if the commercials are to be believed, today will be an awesome day because we stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. We hope to really push today and make it to Fort Smith, which is right on the Arkansas / Oklahoma state line. That will put us in a good position to make it to Fallbrook by Wednesday and if we make it by Wednesday my daughter might forgive us by Thursday for shoving her in the car for 4 days. We have snacks, toys, movies, music, more snacks, more movies and chammomile tea in our arsenal. Hopefully that'll be enough.