Curveball

Sometimes, life throws you curveballs.

My latest curveball was thrown by the Target "Dollar Spot." For those of you not familiar with this wonderful thing, it is the place in Target where you go to get lots of different things, all for a dollar. They regularly have festive onesies and socks for whatever the upcoming holiday may be.

About a month ago, I was browsing the Dollar Spot and hit the jackpot. I found a cute bunny rabbit costume for a baby. It was just a diaper cover, and bunny ears on a headband. I thought, "These are going to make some VERY cute pictures for Abigail's first Easter." And all for a grand total of $2. Totally worth it.

I was VERY pleased with my find. I could hardly wait for Charles to get home from work so I could show him the cute costume. The only weird thing was that they didn't have the normal baby sizes on the headband, or the diaper cover. They only had extra small, small, medium, large, and extra large. I sized Abigail up and guess a Medium would do the trick.

Well, I showed Charles first thing when he got home, but was disappointed to find the diaper cover was defective. For some reason it had three holes for legs.

Three holes. Why on earth would it have three holes. This question occupied my mind for the rest of the night.

As I was rocking Abigail and feeding her a bottle before putting her down for the night, I contemplated the possibilities. I thought for a minute or two and something came rushing to my memory.

The dollar spot is great for a variety of things. Including... dog apparel.

Three holes. Two legs... and a tail.

Suddenly it was clear.

But why let the fact that fact that I bought dog clothes ruin a perfect photo opp?

Mr. Teddy

Abigail has grown quite fond of Mr. Teddy Bear. She likes the big one that we have a lot. I think her favorite part about him is his voice (as created by Charles and I). It is really funny to hear "Mr. Bear" talking from another room in the house. I know Charles is amused by it in the same way I am. The first time he heard the teddy bear voice, he was in another room and asked, "Was that the teddy bear voice?" After I told him it was, in fact, the teddy bear speaking, he was impressed, "Wow, you can make your voice really low." haha... yes, it is true, one of my many talents. I do a great teddy bear voice. Charles has picked up on it too, and Abigail seems quite entertained by it.

Bananas

We like the real fruit a lot better than the baby food. She loves eating bananas, but isn't too hot on the Gerber bananas. This feeder is really cool, thanks Lori!

Out for a walk

It has been pretty chilly and drizzly here lately, imagine that...

We take every chance we get to take a walk outside, even if it means getting seriously bundled up.

Morning Person

I was thinking lately that I haven't gotten many pictures of Abigail while she is sleeping. The most recent one is pretty funny, this was a night that she was just exhausted and fell asleep on the couch. It was while Charles was out of town, and she was having a hard time missing him.


Well, this morning, she was sleeping in a little bit, so I thought I would sneak in and snap a shot or two of her before she woke up. I love getting Abigail up from her naps or when she wakes up in the morning because she is so cute and happy. So this morning, as I ever so quietly opened her door, she immediately perked up. I didn't get a shot of her sound asleep, but I got something better. Personality.


This is what I get to spend every day with. I just can't get enough.

I happened to have a picture of myself as I was waking up too. This is me when someone came in to wake me up on a morning I was trying to sleep in.
There are several people who know, I am not really kidding too much. I don't know where she gets it, but I sure love her happy demeanor, even first thing in the morning.

Intruder

This is from a while ago but Charles reminded me that I never blogged about it, and I think it is blog worthy, FOR SURE. Here is another reason why being married to Charles Himmer is full of excitement and surprises.

When we got home from our Christmas trip to Texas, we discovered that we'd had an intruder in our house while we were gone. This pest had gotten into our newly opened 20 lb bag of rice. He had left little pellets all around our house, including Abigail's crib. We were at least happy at the size of the pellets. We could tell, it couldn't be bigger than a mouse.

First of all, what the CRAP was that mouse doing in Abigail's crib? And second... was it really necessary to leave droppings there? That just ticked me off.... And made me nervous to let Abigail ever sleep in her crib again. But we have gotten over that now.

Anyway, we heard the little creature up in our attic every night as we were putting Abigail down for the night. We heard him scratching around above our heads while we tried to go to sleep. Charles informed me that there was "No way" he was sticking his head up there to get him.

One night, we were up a little later than normal, and had left a cookie sheet out on the counter (no cookies on it, we never leave cookies on a cookie sheet, just for pest control reasons of course). I heard a sudden clanking in the kitchen and alerted Charles. He s l o w l y walked down the long hallway to the kitchen, with MY shoe in his hand. What he was planning on doing with that, I'm not totally sure. When he peeked his head around the corner of the kitchen, the mouse shuffled again, and sent Charles running back down the hall, with a, "Holy Crap!"

Me: "What? Did he come after you or something?"-- This was my logical deduction from his reaction. It must be a rabid mouse.

Charles: "No, it just made a sound."

haha... The next day Charles created this contraption.




That's right. Your standard- toilet paper tube, with peanut butter and cheese in it. As the mouse goes after the cheese, it is sure to tip the tube, and thanks to our friend, gravity, the mouse will be trapped in the trash can, atop a chair.

Charles actually unrolled the toilet paper from that roll so that he could do this.

He brought me in to show me and declared with confidence, "I bet we'll have us a mouse within a couple of hours."

Two nights later, for our date night we went and bought rat poison.

And that was the end of that.

Daddy's Girl

If you only know a few things about Charles- here is one that is essential to understanding him.

He loves cereal.
More than most things. In fact... we have a whole cabinet stocked full of probably at least 25 boxes of cereal. That is our idea of food storage.

Anyway, about a month ago, we introduced Cheerios to Abigail. She was a bit apprehensive at first, but just like her dad, she has learned to quite like them.

The only problem now is, every time Abigail starts chomping on some, Charles has to have some too.

Thank you Francis

Two Saturdays ago, we got a package intended for someone else. Charles tracked down the address and delivered it to a widow that lives around the corner from us. He stayed and chatted for a while and then came home telling me I should go visit her sometime. Last Saturday, she called Charles and invited us over, so we spent a lot of the afternoon over at her house. She showered us with homemade blueberry pie, homemade bread, and some good conversation. She filled us in on one thing that I am REALLY happy about. The water we have over here is REALLY, REALLY hard. It is nearly impossible to keep bathroom fixtures clean because they get this gross brown stain on them from the water. I had pretty much decided that I was fighting a losing battle... until Francis gave us the secret.
She sent us home with a thing of this Bar Keeper's Friend, with a promise, that with a little elbow grease, it would do the trick. I was a little skeptical (we have tried EVERYTHING), but optimistic and willing to try it. By golly, IT WORKED! I have used the whole bottle this morning scrubbing away. I need to get some more to tackle my two biggest challenges, but I am certain I can make that porcelain shine with my new pal. You know it made an impression if I am blogging about it...