Good Morning Mama!

So I was woken up just about the cutest possible way yesterday morning. Ben had gotten up at 7 with Lily, and let me sleep in. I could hear her every once in awhile, and finally woke up for real about 8:00 because I could hear her and Ben. Then shortly after that I hear a knock on my door, and then another one. I said "Come in," and then Ben opened the door and Lily walked in. I was still lying down, but I sat up so Lily could see me, and Ben says, "Where's Mama?" and she looks up at me with the hugest smile and starts toddling as fast as she can over to me and comes to the side of the bed, still with a huge grin, and reaches up so I can pick her up. :) It was so sweet. But what makes it even cuter is that Ben told me before I heard the knock, Ben had asked Lily, "Where's Mama?" and Lily looked around and got a really sad look on her face when she didn't see me. He asked her again, so she looked around again, and looked even sadder when I wasn't there. AND THEN, she walks over to my bedroom door and she starts knocking on the door! So it was Lily that was knocking on the door, and not only that, but she was able to figure out that I must be in the bedroom, even though she hadn't seen me all morning. We haven't even tried to teach her how to knock, I think she just figured if she banged on the door something would happen. But it seriously made me really happy. I love being a mom!

So the week before last was spent mainly at my parents home. They were able to go to Hawaii (Lucky Ducks!) and Ben and I were helping with Josh and Anna, my 15 year old brother and 10 year old sister. Mainly they just needed help getting to school and their other activities. But it was a lot of fun hanging out with them for a week. Lily really enjoyed it too - she loved having some other people around other than just Mom and Dad to play with, and they were always really sweet and playful with her. Josh worked all week to get her to learn to say his name, and by the end of the week, she said "Dosh" once. He was thrilled. :) Lily also had a really great time playing with Mary, my brothers dog. She loves dogs, and Mary is pretty gentle with her, so it works out great.

Pictures!

Josh and Lily just chilling on the couch.

Lily and Mary playing together. Mary loves her and always wants to lick her face, which Lily just thinks is hilarious (I know, dog spit, I'm a bad mom). But they're really cute together. Mary will drop the ball in front of Lily and expect her to throw it. Lily just laughs. :)

I just love her chubby little legs in her boots!

Swinging with Daddy. She's a fan of swinging.

Jumping on the trampoline with Auntie Anna. Anna's a great aunt, always willing and wanting to help. She even changes diapers!

 
Lily has recently discovered that it is lots of FUN to pull things out of holes one at a time - mainly diaper wipes and tissues. Anna and I were talking in the kitchen, and looked over to see that Lily had emptied half the bag of wipes. The funniest thing about it is that she'll grab a wipe in each hand and run around waving them in circles. It's quite entertaining. We figure it's cheap entertainment for her too, at about 2 cents a wipe. :)

She got all the tissues out before we noticed what she was doing. Still, can't complain too much, she's pretty adorable, even when she's being obnoxious.

So the next time you hear from us, we'll have gotten back from Colorado. I'm really excited to go, it's been quite a few months since we've seen Ben's parents and even longer since we've seen some of his brothers and the sister that will be there. It'll be nice. So, Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Enjoy your turkey! (And mashed potatoes, and rolls, and stuffing, and green bean casseroles, and pie, and... man, I'm making myself hungry!)

Hola Amigos!

My mom got this for Lily. Isn't she an adorable little gringa?? :)

She didn't particularly like having it on, so she would lift up her arms, trying to get it off, but it was too tight around her head for her to pull it off, she she just walked around, lifting her arms up and then putting them down, and then lifting her arms up again and running into things. It was really funny.

There's a video of her doing it, but I haven't figured out how to use Soapbox yet, so I'll upload it later.

My life right now

So it's Ben this time. Usually Emily is the one to blog, but I thought I'd take a turn. Life lately has been busy. I've been working extra at work lately and really doing well (if I do say so myself). I'm one of the more productive members of my team, so I think I'll have a favorable review next year. At least that's what I tell myself when I have to work extra. The downside of being so productive at work is that they expect so much sometimes. Emily has been very supportive. Did you know that I don't have to get up in the middle of the night when Lily cries? How lucky am I? Lily's sleeping a lot better at night lately. If we get her to bed on time, she'll usually sleep all through the night, and if she doesn't, it's usually just at 5 or so, so she sleeps most of the way through the night all the time now, and that's nice. (By the way that was just a big run-on sentence, but I'm not going to change it because I don't want to!)

I'm still taking the bus to work every day. It takes about 45 minutes when I could drive it in 25ish, but I get to be on my laptop the whole time, plus we don't need two cars which saves a lot of money too. Oh, and did I mention that not only does Microsoft pay for my bus pass, they sometimes give out gift cards to people who ride the bus. I've already gotten 3 so far. I like having the bus time to work on my laptop and work on whatever project I'd like, but with the rainy Seattle weather, I have to put it away during transfers to keep it from getting rained on.

For those of you who don't know, I started programming when I was about 13 years old. My brother Daniel and his friend were making small programs in QBasic, and I, being the tag-along little brother that I was, learned to so I could fit in. Well it turns out that I'm good at it and I love programming (I actually enjoy going to work every day). So anyway, you can't find a QBasic compiler anymore these days, at least not one that will run on Windows Vista. But they did come out with something similar called Small Basic recently and I've been teaching Emily how to program using that, and she's doing really well. She's working on a Breakout (single player-pong) type game, which is really good for a beginner. Small basic does make things a little easier than they were back in the days of QBasic where all you had was PSET, and that wasn't fast enough, so you had to figure out how to write directly to the screen using PEEK & POKE (I bet Daniel is the only one who understood what I just said there).

Emily's Game. She even made the blocks pink so it would be a girly game.

Me and Emily are on the ball! We're both almost done with Christmas shopping, and birthday shopping which is pretty impressive because I usually wait until the last minute. Now the hard part is keeping everything hidden until Christmas. There's not a lot of places in the condo that we don't use on a regular basis, so we'll have to be creative about hiding spots.

We're going to my parents for Thanksgiving, and I'm really looking forward to it because we don't get to see them very often, and I'm close with my dad. We're spending a whole week there, which means we'll be there for Em's birthday too. I've gotta take Em & Lily to the zoo there because I keep telling her how the Denver zoo is so much cooler than the Woodland park zoo. So look forward to pictures of that in a month or so.

So there it is, my life right now, but the only reason my mom reads this blog is for pictures of Lily. So this next section is dedicated to you mom.

My Lily...so adorable

Lily has been making roaring noises lately, it's so cute!!

Lily all bundled up for a walk outside

Rubber ducky, you're the one!

Lily taking over the computer chair.

Our Halloween costume. Lily's wasn't that creative, but me and Em
liked dressing like babies.