Day 212 - July 31

I'm so happy to have pictures like this for blackmail one day.

And I'm thankful for thunderstorms that keep us inside so that I have the opportunity to take pictures like this.

(And I'm pretty sure today was the last day she'll wear that romper. I'm pretty sure it's too small.)

Day 211 - July 30

No explanation needed for today.... it was just another afternoon in the pool, the kid's favorite place to be!

Day 210 - July 29

That's it. I'm parking at the very back of the lot from now on.

I've had my car for less than a year (though it's getting close to the one-year mark), and it fell prey to an idiot in a parking lot today. I'm not sure if this happened at Toys R Us or Sam's, but I saw it as I came out of Sam's this morning.

I wanted to cry. My baby is not pristine anymore. I'm thinking shopping cart.

The good news is, it's just a rub on the clear coat, so most of it went away when I cleaned it up and the worst of it is probably fixable. I'll have the dealership look at it when I go in for my free oil change in a couple weeks.

But still, I just wanted to have a nice thing!

Day 209 - July 28

We have a trip coming up soon. Michaela and I will be going to visit family and it's been the topic of conversation for a couple of weeks now. She wants to go to the airport. She wants to go see "Grandpa and Grandpa" (and by that, she means Grandma and Grandpa Jeff) in "Connec-kit" and Mimi and Papa in "N'York." She wants to "roll in airport" (we have wheels for her car seat, so we strap her in and wheel her through the airport that way instead of using a stroller). She wants to "go airplane!"

Every day for the past two weeks, I've been counting down the days for her. Of course, a two-year-old has no concept of time, so that's pretty useless and she doesn't seem to understand that we can't go NOW, but she seems to forget about it after a while every day.

This morning, though, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She declared that she was "going on airplane," asked for help getting her backpack on, and then her hat, and she set off around the living room. I guess she was thinking she'd get to the airport that way. Thankfully she was easily distracted from her "trip" with some Buzz and Woody coloring pages, but I think we'll probably see a repeat of this over the next few days.

Hopefully she's still as excited to go when the time comes!

Day 208 - July 27

I so wish I'd thought to pick up my *real* camera instead of my iPhone for this one today. Keep in mind, the actual camera was closer to me than the phone, too... so that was dumb.

But any camera is better than no camera for stuff like this - especially since it's the best way to share with Daddy all the silly things Michaela does during the day.

She initially ran away telling me she needed her glasses because she had to go to Target (while pushing around her pink shopping cart) to pick up some stuff. So off to her bedroom she went to get some glasses. When you've got about five pairs of sunglasses, why not choose the silly Melissa and Doug turtle ones, really? And once you've got those on, it just makes sense to flip up the shades!

Such a nut!

Day 207 - July 26

Tonight was a smidge different from last night in terms of the weather. Last night I had a pretty sunset-ish picture to share. Tonight, I have rain.

I drove through a ridiculous storm on my way back from Zumba tonight. Apparently it had been going on for most of class, and then lasted about an hour afterwards as well. At least the pool got filled back up with free water!

So the picture isn't the greatest, but it's the view out the passenger side window while I was sitting at a light on the way home. I wish rain was easier to take pictures of!

Day 206 - July 25

For the first time in months - literally - I took the dog for a walk tonight. In cooler weather, we all go together, but since the summer heat really kicked in (back in April... ok, maybe May), we've been waiting until after Michaela's in bed and it's a little cooler, and only one of us takes Fred. I've been making Jason do it for various reasons, not the least of which is that I'm lazy.

But it was pretty cool out tonight (79 with 95% humidity when we set out, so it felt a little warmer), and I'm trying to step up the exercise on my non-Zumba nights, so I decided to go.

Besides the fact that I tried to kill the dog by walking a smidge faster than he's used to, I was also treated to a pretty night sky as the sun was getting ready to set.

With my trusty iPhone and the Hipstamtic app (with John S lens and Ina's 1969 film), I came up with my picture for today.

Day 205 - July 24

Take two at the first movie was a success! Well, sort of.

Let me explain.

The success was in the fact that we bought tickets in advance from Fandango, we got to the theater in plenty of time to ensure we'd get seats (in doing that, we understood the sell-out yesterday... they have Winnie the Pooh in a theater with only 74 seats in it!), we got our popcorn bucket filled, and we even had a separate cup for Michaela to use so she wouldn't have to dig in the big bucket.

The "sort of" was in the fact that we got there early enough to ensure we would get seats. What that meant, of course, was that we were there WAY early. So we sat through 15 minutes of commercials, and THEN another 20 minutes of previews, and THEN the short animated film they had to throw in before the movie started, and THEN we finally got to the movie. If it hadn't been for all that extra time, it would've been a very successful trip.

Instead, we had a toddler, who doesn't generally sit still for longer than about 15 minutes at a time, bouncing out of her seat about 10 minutes into the movie. There was spilled popcorn, lost shoes (which were found, but which she didn't want to put back on, though she wanted to stand up... ewwwww!), a dropped sippy cup (multiple times... again, ewwww!), and, finally, the appearance of the emergency pacifier to try to get her to relax for the last 20 minutes or so of the movie.

Next time, one of us will go get seats while the other waits at home with the kid, or goes over to Target to wander around until just before the movie starts. We thought a movie that was just over an hour long wouldn't be too bad, but we were wrong!!

Meanwhile, today's picture is another iPhone one and it's terrible. But it's all I had to document the momentous occasion. Can you tell that my girl doesn't normally see a flash? (My DSLR doesn't even have an integrated flash so I NEVER use one!)

Day 204 - July 23

I had high hopes that today's picture would be of Michaela sitting in a movie theater seat, getting ready to see her first movie.

And then we waited as long as possible to go so we wouldn't have an antsy girl on our hands.

As we stood in line to buy our tickets and popcorn (one-stop shopping here... which is nice), the family in front of us also asked for tickets to Winnie the Pooh and were told it was sold out. Apparently, the 4:05 movie on a Saturday afternoon is a little more popular with the kiddie-set than we realized!

So we left the theater, headed across the street to Target to get popcorn, and brought it home to let Michaela watch Toy Story (3, again) with her Target popcorn in the giant refillable popcorn bucket from the theater.

(We might be trying the movie again tomorrow.)

Day 203 - July 22

Two pictures of the kid today. She was the only thing I had enough energy to take pictures of today, again with my phone.

We spent another hour at the Watermelon Patch this morning. Complete with the red dress-up dress, she decided she needed to shoot baskets. With wiffle balls. For at least 15 minutes. (Which wasn't the most fun I've had ever. What we do for our kids, right?)

So two pictures because I couldn't decide between them. In the first one, we see the level of concentration it takes to get a wiffle ball into a ginormous hoop. The second one is what you get when you miss (or maybe she made that one...).

Day 202 - July 21

Since a whole bunch of pictures from the last week were ones NOT of the kid, I feel not the least bit bad about subjecting you all to her two days in a row now.

Besides, with the exception of going to a hip-hop fitness class tonight and cleaning bathrooms this afternoon, it was an all-about-the-kid day. And I'm thinking a picture of a clean toilet or a ridiculously uncoordinated me trying to do hip-hop-type exercise wouldn't be that exciting.

I purposely decided to leave my camera at home today when we went to the splash pad again, though, since I didn't intend to post another picture from the splash pad. Then I took no other pictures during the day. Thank goodness for an iPhone!

Day 201 - July 20

It's a two picture day. It probably could've been at least a 6 picture day, if not more, but I got it down to these two. I just couldn't decide between them in the end, though.

For whatever reason this morning, Michaela decided it was a good day for a tutu. She went into her room at one point looking for her megablocks, which are up on the top shelf of her closet, and must've seen (and thus, been reminded of) her tutu. So out it came. And I'm not going to lie - part of me was a little happy that Kinder-Gym was cancelled last-minute because that meant I didn't have to try to explain the tutu there, since she insisted on wearing it.

We got the tutu off of her to play at the playground (Plan B after Kinder-Gym cancellation), ride home, swim, eat lunch, and take a nap. But then it went back on. I caught these shots this afternoon as she was playing and generally running around. All while watching Toy Story (3, I think... all three of them have now replaced Nemo in the continuous loop in the Blu-Ray player).

*sigh* I just love this kid.

Day 200 - July 19

Two hundred days?? Two hundred pictures (plus some bonuses)! Go me!!

Today is about Michaela's birthday, take 4 (or 5 or something... kid's already learned the beauty of the birthday week/month).

I (I should say "we" since I conned Jason into taking the morning off so I had help) hosted playgroup at my house this morning so we could do a little something more for Michaela's birthday. Although our mini-party on Saturday was really fun, I thought it would be nice to do something with her playgroup friends. Essentially, it was just kids (and moms) swimming, a "Happy Birthday" banner and some decorations hanging from the patio umbrella, and some festive snacks.

By "festive snacks," I mean cake balls. This was my first attempt at making them. As I've mentioned before, I am not a baker, with the exception of cookies at Christmas and the occasional boxed quick-bread mix. But I thought these would be perfect since the only baking necessary is a boxed cake mix. Little did I know how much *cough* fun (and by "fun" I mean "pain in the $%#") it would be to coat them in the melted chocolate once they were rolled. Ugh.

But they looked good in the end, and they tasted phenomenal, even though I stayed safe and did vanilla cake with vanilla frosting. If there's a next time, I'm branching out to carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Or devil's food cake with chocolate frosting. Or I'm going to figure out how to make peanut butter frosting and use that with chocolate cake. Or I'm never making these again.

Day 199 - July 18

Today's picture should've been one of a screaming toddler. We took her to the doctor today for her 2-yr-old well visit, plus some shots, and it wasn't pretty. At. All. But since I have her screaming ringing in my ears for all eternity, it wasn't necessary to capture it as a visual, too. I'd like to block it out, actually....

That was the extent of our excitement today, though.

Thankfully, I had a new recipe to try out tonight. This recipe was meatless, and it's a Monday, so.....

A new Meatless Monday dish - Baked Ziti (or penne in this case) with Summer Veggies. It was delicious and we'll be keeping it in the regular rotation, as long as I can remember it exists when meal planning time rolls around.

Yummy!!

Day 198 - July 17

In one of her rare moments of being in a good mood today, Michaela decided that Fred needed to wear a necklace. The poor dog looked at me like, "What are you letting her do?"

She wasn't coordinated enough to get it on him all the way, so it ended up hanging across his face. Of course, in trying to get it off, Fred only succeeded in ensuring it ended up exactly where she wanted it to be in the first place.

I think blue star Mardi Gras beads are perfect for a lab, don't you?

And it doesn't get much more pathetic looking than this.

Day 197 - July 16

I knew this day was going to come around eventually in my 365 project, but I had no idea it would happen this fast!

What day? Michaela's birthday!!

She turned 2 today. I don't know how this much of the year has gone by so quickly already. But I REALLY don't know how two years have gone by since she joined our family. In some ways it seems like she's always been here and in others it seems like she was just born yesterday!

In any case, her request for her birthday this year was a Nemo cake and orange balloons. She got both, though I think the orange balloons were a bigger hit than the Nemo cake! The cake went over very well, though!

Happy Birthday, Lady-lou!!!! (aka Sweet Girl, aka Kiddo, aka Michaela) Mommy and Daddy love you more than you can imagine!!

Day 196 - July 15

It was date night last night!! And I ate way more than I'm used to, with way richer foods (pork belly anyone?), so I wasn't feeling well enough to get this done last night.

We dropped the kid off at Parent's Night Out (PNO) at Watermelon Patch and headed to True Restaurant for fancy schmancy dinner.

The fun part of having a young child - and set hours for PNO - is that you end up getting a 6pm reservation for dinner and having the whole restaurant to yourself for a good portion of your meal. I should post that picture as a bonus...

So the night started off with a yummy, refreshing, sparkly beverage for me, and a happy spouse across the table. From there we ate delicious food, drank good wine (and beer for him), and generally just enjoyed each other's company with minimal discussion of the kid!

When we picked up the girl, we signed her up for next month's PNO, too. We definitely don't want to miss those opportunities!!!

And here's the bonus empty restaurant picture. Not a good one since I snapped it over my shoulder on my phone, but you get the idea!

Day 195 - July 14

Sometimes you DO have to put (the) baby in the corner....

(Please tell me someone else gets that!)

I don't know if it's teething or the full-on onset of the Terrible 2s, but Michaela's been a bear lately! My angelic, sweet, darling toddler will turn on me in a minute and yell, "NO!!" at the slightest provocation. On top of that, she's been crying very easily when she's scolded, which means it's nearly impossible to get your point across.

So we've been making use of a corner. It makes her calm down so we can try to tell her what she's done wrong instead of just yelling at her. It mostly works for both of us.

Shortly before dinner tonight, I told her to do something and she told me no. I calmly said her name (the whole thing), asked her what I've told her about telling me no, and she promptly said, "I go in corner."

Yeah, so I'm not 100% sure this discipline is going to work, but she's quiet for two minutes while she's in there (she ALWAYS stops crying as soon as her face is to the wall), and sometimes that's all I need to deal with the situation. *sigh* Parenting a toddler is not the most fun I've ever had.

So here she is, in the corner, where she put herself. I would've liked to get a closer picture, but I just grabbed my phone real quick and didn't want to get close enough that she knew I was taking a picture instead of being a stern disciplinarian. Another *sigh* Trying not to laugh while disciplining your child is not easy either.

Day 194 - July 13

I'm not gonna lie... this was a last-minute desperation picture tonight.

I spent a good part of the afternoon today trying to start mapping out our Disney trip this fall. The irony of this is that I still haven't figured out what I'm doing for Michaela's birthday party on Saturday, but at least I know where I'm eating dinner on September 21st (and 29th, in case you wondered).

So this was my arts and crafts project this afternoon... homemade calendars of our two-week trip. One calendar has all the park hours for the time we're there so we can accurately plan which days we want to go to parks. The other calendar is my fill-in-the-blank calendar to help us try to decide which activities we're going to do on which days.

I think normal people would use a spreadsheet or something like that. I'm old fashioned and I like a pencil and paper for this kind of thing. Now to fill in the blanks....

Day 193 - July 12

I took a couple of cute pics of the kid at the playground this morning, but decided to go with two iPhone pics from this afternoon instead.

We've had a pretty serious lack of rain around here lately. We've been getting afternoon thunderstorms, but they always seem to just skirt our neighborhood, so we get thunder and lightning, but little rain.

That changed in the last two days. Last night we got a wicked storm around dinnertime, and then we got another this afternoon during Michaela's naptime. Thankfully, none of the thunder claps were loud enough to wake her up. Last night, we had to tell her that the thunder was just "God bowling with the angels"... a story both Jason and I heard in our families growing up.

Anywho... two pictures so I can show off the rain. It POURED. The lawn has been so deprived of water, though, that the small pond was quickly absorbed. We'll see how long this rainy streak lasts. The garden, lawn and my water bill really appreciate it!!

Day 192 - July 11

Oh boy, does this one keep me on my toes! (Yet another reason to not have another kid. One seems to be more than I can handle!) At least she makes me laugh, too!

We had some errands to run this morning. Michaela decided her Easter pinwheel needed to make the trip with us. So, off we went, pinwheel and Bear in tow, to mail a package from the local mail services store and grocery shop at Target.

While I was busy stuffing things that were sort of too big to fit into a flat-rate box, Michaela came over to me and told me to hold Bear and then disappeared behind me. (No worries... it's a very small store and we were the only ones in there. And you can tell when someone opens the door.) The next thing I knew, the owner of the store was chuckling, so I looked up to see what she thought was so funny.

It was my daughter. She had figured out the benefits of a fan when it meets a pinwheel. I need to get a fan for the house, now. I think we could have hours of entertainment with this one.

Day 191 - July 10

Where do you think she learned this?

Day 190 - July 9

I'm going with a non-kid picture here tonight, but I have plans to update our real blog with a bunch of other kid pictures from today. So if you're missing Michaela, check out The FlyingFish for your fix.

Meanwhile, we hit up another splash pad today. This one is quite a bit closer than the one we went to last weekend, with no traffic to contend with to get there or back, and no temptation of shopping surrounding it. Plus we got to go to Mississippi. After three years of living on an isolated island in the Bering Sea, it's still a novelty to be able to drive to another state.

In the midst of all the Michaela pictures, I snapped this one of one of the fountains on the splash pad. I love a fast shutter speed to make it look like water stops mid-air.

Day 189 - July 8

Oh boy, do we have a character on our hands.

I took Michaela to the Watermelon Patch to play today. After a fitfull nap yesterday afternoon that led to a very cranky kid last night, I decided she needed to get some energy out.

What I didn't expect was for my bouncing, running, zip-lining girl to decide to dress up for the second half of our hour.

She chose the dress herself out of a whole rack of different kinds of outfits and costumes. The hat was short-lived, but hilarious while it was on. And the picture isn't the best quality, but that's a sparkly red dress in case you're wondering.

Her Daddy's in trouble.

(And the playtime worked... she napped great this afternoon and was more than ready for bed tonight. Hurray!!)

Day 188 - July 7

We had no power today. We stupidly decided to wait until the summer to have a switch/panel put in that will allow us to power the whole house with our generator in case of a major power loss (rather than plugging in extension cords to the generator). The major benefit of this is that we'll be able to use the air conditioning if a hurricane leaves us without power for a while. This is not an issue for me because I'll be packing up the kid and dog and heading north in the case of a hurricane. Jason will probably have to stay here to work, though, so he'd appreciate the a/c - and power in general.

Anywho. We waited til summer to do this, which was dumb because power had to be shut off to the entire house so they could do the work. So we had no power from about 8:45 this morning until about 4:30 this afternoon. Guess what? It's HOT here. Thankfully, the house only got up to about 83 at the hottest, but it wasn't that comfy.

We also couldn't do much cooking and didn't want to open and close the fridge too much so we could keep it cold in there. So we had to go out to lunch. We decided to try out the Hungry Owl. They just opened a new location, and were apparently featured on Man v. Food within the last couple of weeks.

All Michaela cared about was the owl on the table. This started as a hug (her new favorite thing... giving hugs to anyone and everyone). It all spiraled out of control from there.

Day 187 - July 6

It was a big day in my world today... well, not as much in my world as in my brother and sister in law's world. But it was big by association for me.

Welcome to the world, Gabriella Grace! My newest niece was born at 10:30 this morning, a little peanut at only 6lbs, 8 oz. My plane ticket is already purchased for the beginning of August, so I only have to wait a few more weeks to get to meet her!!

All of that has nothing to do with today's picture. In fact, today's picture has nothing to do with anything really. I ran out to snap a quick picture this afternoon after the rain broke because the only other picture I'd taken was a funny one of the kid first thing this morning, and I wanted a non-kid picture today.

So this is a zinnia from my new flowering plants that are currently just sitting in their pots from the store on the back porch, where they've been since I bought them on Sunday. Theoretically they'll get into prettier pots and onto their stands tomorrow. We'll see if that happens!

And I have to say, I'm sort of wondering why I need the big fancy camera.... this was taken with my iPhone (with Hipstamatic app). And I LOVE it.

Day 186 - July 5

It's the fifth day in a row of a kid picture. Time to broaden the horizons. I'll have to work on that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, she was too adorable this morning, climbing into her rocking chair to read her "God is Great" book. The book gets it's name from our dinnertime prayer, which the little miss can recite by herself now, after about a month or so of working on it. The prayer, "God is great. God is good. And we thank him for our food. By His hand, we all are fed. Give us, Lord, our daily bread," comes from this book. We haven't branched out to any of the other 99 prayers in it yet, so it'll probably keep that name for awhile.

The particular book is also a novelty because it has actual paper pages. My Type A-ness shows through when it comes to books... I have a whole box of non-board books packed away in her closest - that she doesn't have access to - because she's not very gentle with pages. I pulled this one out to find the prayer and never put it away, so she enjoys flipping actual pages instead of cardboard pages. She's only ripped one or two... maybe it's time for real books. We'll see.

Onto the picture.... look at that concentration! Look how big she is in that chair! But don't look at how un-ladylike she is!! Oh, and I remember when she couldn't get into that chair by herself. I'm pretty sure it was yesterday (10 months ago). Time MUST stop. Now.

Day 185 - July 4

Happy Independence Day!! And Happy 235th Birthday to our wonderful country! Like most Americans, even with the faults our country can have, I feel very blessed to be from here, and to live here in freedom.

That said, I wasn't feeling very festive today. I'm not sure why, but I definitely put my cranky pants on this morning. Because of that, I saw a lot of my bedroom, my Kindle and the backs of my eyelids today as I tried to get rid of the crankiness. So there was no picture taking today.

Instead, you get another shot of the kid from yesterday. We made a visit to Chill yesterday afternoon. We've learned not to try to go after dinner... the kid gets too tired and no one has a good time. So we went between naptime and dinnertime yesterday and we all enjoyed our frozen yogurt and some time together.

And, look... another picture of the toddler actually looking at the camera/iPhone!

Day 184 - July 3

I'm calling today's picture-taking endeavor a major success. Why? Because I managed to get the toddler to look at me while I took her picture. I'm all for the faceless portrait (remember this one and this one?), but it's nice to have her actually look at me every so often! Not only that, but we did a little posing practice, too.

Ok, well, posing practice consisted of me trying to get her to recreate an accidental "pose" where she had her hands up under her chin (looking adorable, but my white balance was off and I couldn't adjust it enough when I edited the picture), and it didn't really work, but this was cute anyway!

Day 183 - July 2

I really am more than halfway done now. Ok, just had to get that out there.

Moving on...

We could've just stayed here at the house all day today, taking advantage of the fact that we have a pool and therefore didn't have to fight with any 4th of July weekend crowds. But there's no fun in that, so we headed across the Bay to the Eastern Shore shopping center. Theoretically, we were going to do a little shopping and then let Michaela play at the splash pad over there.

Notice I said "theoretically" because, once we told the toddler about the "fountain" to play in, there was no way we were going to go shopping first. (We did get a stop at PetSmart and a stop at World Market in after lunch, and then paid for it by not getting her home for a nap at the right time. Awesome.)

She was a smidge wary of the idea of the splash pad at first, and would hardly go near any of the sprayers. But she got over that quickly enough and soon started stealing all the other kids' toys (seriously, scoping out the outer ring looking for unattended buckets) and generally enjoying herself.

Can you tell?

Day 182 - July 1

This kid has such an imagination! I have no idea where she comes up with stuff, but it makes me so happy to see her developing these thoughts and ideas on her own!

In the past two days, she's been fascinated with the Boppy pillow. I honestly have no idea why it ended up back out in her room when we got here (probably because it was just packed with her bedroom stuff and got unpacked with it all), but it sits on the floor between her crib and the rocking chair. She's played with it a few times over the months, but she's been dragging it all around the house in the past couple days.

Yesterday, she wanted it on the chair as an extra cushion. Today, it was the beach. I'm not kidding. She moved ALL her Little People toys off the Little People mat, laid the pillow next to it, and then laid down like this and told me she was "layin' at beach!"

Yep, the beach in our living room. Whatever makes her happy!