Short hair again

In 2010 I want a new haircut. Check.

Happy National Pancake Day!

I know what your thinking. What? National Pancake day? Isn't that a holiday invented by IHOP to sell pancakes? That's what I thought, too! But then I looked it up and it is real! So here's some random trivia for you: Fat Tuesday is also known as Pancake day because pancakes used up foods traditionally given up for lent, like milk, eggs and sugar.

But wait. Fat Tuesday was last week. Ok, so I guess IHOP does have some sway over the holiday.

Tangent: This morning I had a "mother" moment. As I was making pancakes I thought, hey, I should add some wheat germ to this to add more fiber. So I did! Ha, ha!

My thought process last night...

...behind all the "wow"s and "amazing"s and "that would be so hard"s. It went something like this:

So I guess Shaun White is such a big wig in snowboarding that he can get away with wearing jeans in the olympics.

Wait, all the American snowboarders are wearing jeans.

What idiot thought jeans would be a good uniform in the SNOW in the WINTER olympics? That can't be right. But gosh they sure look like jeans.

They all look like slackers.

But every pair of "jeans" is faded and worn in the exact same places. They can't really be jeans.

It's actually pretty cool.

Whoever thought of making snowpants look like jeans as the official Olympic uniform had a great sense of humor.

Go USA!

All About Grace: 9 month installment

Height: 26.75" (25th percentile)

Weight: 16.8 lbs (25th percentile)

Grace is already 9 months! It's so fun to see her little personality make an appearance. Here are some things we love about Grace (in no particular order):

• She is crawling like a champ, but prefers to walk with support whenever possible... or even run. She's a mover.
• She still sucks the two middle fingers of her right hand, but that's not all. Her left hand now has the job of twisting hair around her fingers, either her own hair or mine.
• She loves to be held, but wiggles constantly. Not an easy combination.
• When she's happy she bounces and chirps.
• She can be quite stubborn, persistent and obstinate. She gets super focused on something she wants and it isn't always easy to distract her from her goal. (Can't wait for the teenage years with this trait.)
• She's a very careful and gentle baby, but surprisingly strong.
• She's tough. She doesn't cry or fuss easily when bonked, bumped, scratched, etc. Just this week she dove head first from my lap to the hardwood kitchen floor to get a toy. I gasped as her head bonked the floor and picked her up right away only to have her lunge right back towards the toy as if nothing happened (example of her persistence).
• She is such a joy. She makes Scott and me so happy. We love this little girl and are so happy to have her in our family.

Bake away the winter blues

I have always liked winter, but winter with a baby and without a car in a house that is smaller than 800 sq. ft. is a whole new experience for me. I now fully understand cabin fever.

Luckily I've keep my spirits up by BAKING! Hurray for my new baking cookbook that I got for Christmas! (Thanks, Trent and Beth, it's been well used already.)
We have made all of these new things just in January! So fun! Ok, the cookies weren't a "new" thing, but we made them twice in the past month so they warrented a photo in the collage.

In 2010 I plan to bake new things. Check.

p.s. If you can't get enough info about these goodies, you can read more about them on my other blog.

Just for the fun of it

Thanks for the photo, Tamara!

One of my favorite things!

I have a habit of walking around the house while I brush my teeth. For the past few months I have noticed that Grace really enjoys watching me brush my teeth and will smile. Now that Grace is mobile, she has started to crawl to me in the mornings when she sees the toothbrush in my mouth. I picked her up this morning, and continued to brush my teeth when she opened her mouth and took the handle end of the toothbrush to do what dad was doing. We love it!