Maybe this week will be the week

One step closer. The bed is back inside. The staining is done. One coat of polyurethane is on. My house is a heck of a lot less fumey, but hopefully after a few more coats it will be all gone. Fingers crossed! Pregnancy nausea hit this week so it's a bit of a battle of wills to get up and work on this, but having my entire living space in my house full of bed is pretty good motivation. I'm getting pretty bad headaches to go with the nausea and the smell is certainly not helping, so that's excellent motivation as well. Here's to having this project done ASAP!

Bed Update

So this bed, it's built now. Well mostly. We did a trial run Friday night of having it put together. We brought our mattress out into the living room and set it up on the frame and slept there. It was awesome and so strange to be three feet closer to the ceiling after sleeping for nearly a year on the floor.

I made one awful discovery when it was all assembled. Somehow, and I have no idea how this managed to happen, but somehow the bed frame is actually four inches longer than it needs to be. I was so appalled when we put the mattress on and there was extra at the top. The width is perfect, but somehow the measurements are for the length of a cal king, not a regular. Yeah, cue thoughts of how I could possibly fix it, realizing there's no possible way without redoing two-thirds of the bed, and Bill repeatedly telling me it's an awesome thing because adding a headboard will work perfectly and make it awesome. The jury is still out for me, but that and the fact that I had a tool borrowed from a friend that I needed to return yesterday, prompted us to buy the wood and go ahead and build the headboard Saturday night. It's a good two inches wide or so, so it will definitely help and I think we'll be able to make it all work out pretty well, but holy cow, I couldn't believe that had happened when I made the discovery. I haven't actually put the bed together with the headboard yet, so we'll have to see how it all works out. We modified it to sit on top of the bed frame instead of being screwed to the end, so that should make a big difference. So yeah, that whole DIY thing sometimes ends up with comedic mistakes that leave me shaking my head.  This thing cost too much money to redo, here's to making it work and being happy about it! :)

This week is going to include building some drawers, which is tricky making sure they are exactly the right size to fit in the tracks, and then staining the whole thing. It's certainly going to take a good amount of time and I hope we'll be sleeping on the finished product by this next weekend. Fingers crossed!

The headboard. I love this thing. It turned out beautiful and I can't wait to stain it and see the finished product. I need to sand it a bit first, but that's it!

All the pieces of the bed, cluttering up our living room. One thing I will really appreciate in the future is to have a garage or even better, a workroom. 

The end section, finished save for hardware, which I'll put on after it gets stained. Those drawers are big enough for my children to comfortably fit in. They're awesome!

11 Months in the making

I have five sheets of plywood in my living room and a whole bunch of miscellaneous small boards on the back porch. I built some super simple sawhorses last night. Three boxes of screws are sitting on my computer desk as I type this. What for, you ask? For our new bed frame!!! That's right, our mattress has been on the floor of our bedroom for 11 months, ever since we moved to South Carolina. We sold our old bed before we moved here and the new one needs a platform bed frame instead of a metal one like we had.

I've been planning to build a bed for so long, however it's taken this many months for it to come up in the rotation of most important things to save for. But the time is now and don't be surprised if I have pictures to share in just a few days. I'm so beyond ready to have a normal height bed again. It turns out building a king-sized bed frame, while it might be cheaper than buying one, is still pretty pricey, so it's taken a bit to save up the funds. I'm building this bed and this headboard. Building furniture has become my creative outlet, so I can't help but modify these a bit to make them just what I want. We'll see how it all turns out, but I'm pretty excited. The storages bed style was picked particularly because we can use the extra storage space without taking up more footprint in the bedroom. I'll build nightstands eventually to go with the bed. Right now we have dressers serving that purpose, but I'll give them to the kids when I have nightstands built. Can't wait!

Running

Spencer likes to run! I had no idea. Like not just around the house, but for a pretty decent distance. We went out exploring this weekend to a place our friend told us about and started walking down a road to see what we could find. We didn't find much, but we ran the whole way because Spence started it and we had an awesome time! I love that little guy. It was so fun.

Halloween

I've always liked the concept of Halloween and the thought of dressing up in an awesome costume, but I can't say that I've had a lot of success over the years with stellar costumes. I've rarely managed the type of costume where everyone knows what I am and are sufficiently amused/impressed so it feels like I've been successful in whatever it means to be successful at Halloween. However, now that we have a couple of kids, this is the second year running where our costumes have been awesome. Well, the kids at least. This year they stole the show and Bill and I just rode their coat flaps of awesomeness in our no costume laziness, but their costumes were fantastic.

Both kids absolutely adore the movie The Lorax. I know, it has a totally in your face message to share about conservation that you may or may not like, but the dialog is fun, it's got depth, the music is fantastic, and Bill and I still get a kick out of it even after Spencer watched it every day for a good chunk of this last year. I can't say that about many movies. It was a no-brainer a few months back when we decided to dress Spencer as the Lorax for Halloween. Genevieve was a tad trickier to think what to do on that theme, but we decided to dress her as a truffula tree and oh it worked out so well. I'm so proud of these costumes because I made them and the kids rocked them. They both absolutely adore the hats, and cried whenever I tried to take them off. That's my kind of positive response from a kid. :) You can't ask for much more than having them be bothered when you try to take away what you gave them. Lol!

So behold, the Lorax and his truffula tree:

Parenthood is such a roller coaster

I've been thinking a lot lately about how there are some really rough patches in parenting. I'm in a huge one right now. Spencer is stretching my abilities to the limit right now with his needs. I sincerely hope that my abilities are expanding with all of it, but since I'm not finding a lot of solutions for how to help the poor kid out, that is up for debate. We've been going through quite the rough patch, with what feels like the same old problems with eating and his ability to try new things and deal with change.

Ever since July when our pediatrician identified that he was indeed having beyond normal struggles with some of the details of living, we've been on a journey to try to help him develop better. We've been doing speech therapy to help with his problematic eating for several months now. It seemed like we were really making progress, but in the last couple weeks he's totally regressed and I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall at every single meal trying to help him eat healthy and happy, or just even eat at all. It's exhausting. We're back to a very limited selection of foods he'll eat and everything feels like a huge power struggle. I would rather not have it be that way, so I'm constantly trying to find new ways to interact with him so we can work together rather than at odds. But every time I reach out looking for solutions, the information I find is just depressing because it doesn't seem to apply to our particular situation and nothing I try really seems to bring improvement. I have no idea what will help him out to get through this struggle and it consumes my thoughts and time far more than I would like. The worst part is I see no end in sight and it's just rough. This is the biggest parenting hurdle I've experienced yet and it's a doozy.

This week he was screened for a 3K program, basically an early preschool program through the school that is particularly for kids with speech or occupational therapy needs. He pretty much knocked it out of the park. He was so far advanced on everything they screened him on that they were falling over themselves to compliment his abilities. They had such good things to say about how he did things the very most advanced way he could for their tests and that he was so impressive. That was pretty awesome, especially since it's so easy to look at the couple areas he really struggles and forget that he's an incredibly smart little boy who is far advanced in so many other areas. He definitely didn't qualify for the program, which is fine. It's nice to know that he doesn't even register on their charts for having any problems. But it also means that I don't have a ready made program to put him in that is free and will help him out. That would definitely have been the easy route, though I'm relieved that it's not necessary. Now it's back to the drawing board to probably find a preschool or Moms Day Out kind of program that will get him in a more structured environment where hopefully being around other kids more will help with the couple areas that really are hard for him.

It's hard to keep my head above the water right now. I love my little guy to pieces. He is so fun, creative, inquisitive, and loving. He learns things so fast. For heaven's sake, he's not quite three and he can count essentially as high as he wants to. He regularly barters for everything he wants. He started doing that on his own. He knows the entire alphabet and is learning the lowercase letters too, since most kid ABC stuff is in uppercase. He knows all the shapes and has a huge vocabulary and a pretty decent attention span and is just fantastic in so many ways. Probably because of all this, it's really hard to understand why he has such a mental block on eating. When he's cranky beyond cranky because he hasn't eaten anything of substance for hours, but refuses everything offered, I just wish we could explain it to him and have it actually register. Believe me, I've tried and I keep trying, but it just hasn't clicked yet.

One of these days he and I will figure out how to work together on this. I really hope that the time comes sooner than later when this issue will be a thing of memory only. Just like sleep seems like such an obvious skill but babies have to be taught how to do it successfully, apparently eating is much the same. My little boy just seems to be a little more resistant to learning than some others. Heck, maybe my expectations are out of proportion. That's another thing that is hard to know since he's my first child. Maybe it's okay to eat graham crackers and toast and pancakes all day every day and he'll just figure it out on his own. I'd like to think that's the case, but I'm afraid it's not. But who knows? In two years maybe I'll look back and wonder why I freaked out so much about it. But for now the next meal is such a hurdle that I can't even imagine getting to that point.

So anyway, like I said, this has been a rough patch. I hope we get through it soon and we're all still in one piece. We started potty training at the beginning of the month and it seemed like an all encompassing issue that took all my thought. Now, three weeks later, it's a minor detail in the daily schedule. Some things still need to develop there still, but it's not top of mind. I just keep praying that somehow eating will turn out that way too sooner than later. I keep feeling like all the frustration he shows in other areas and the freakouts will calm down once he eats a reasonably healthy diet. Only time will tell. Whoever is reading this, just keep rooting for us. We could use it.                                        

Nothing special, but good times

I don't have a single picture from this week. We went apple picking. We watched some great football. We went to parks. Spencer is potty trained for the most part. I built a second higher chair for Genevieve like one I did for Spencer already. It's been a good week. So good I apparently couldn't document it with pictures.

We did have something funny happen today. I wanted to go on a walk, so we brought the bike trailer in to setup so we could use it. As expected there were a bunch of bugs in it since it was on the porch. A few spiders, including some jumping ones, a cockroach, some Japanese beetles, and a cocoon greeted us. That was plenty exciting, but as we were taking care of those Bill saw something scurry across a book on the floor and turned to find a lizard had been on it too and now decided to run behind our bookcase!  Dang! Thankfully he was able to coax the thing out and transfer it back out to its natural environment. Needless to say I found some room in one of our closets to store the bike trailer from now on. I'd like to be able to use it without a bug infestation the next time I want to pull it out. Hello South Carolina and all your bugs!

Tomorrow and Tuesday are Fall Break for Bill. Hurray! Having never had one of those at BYU, it is delightful to be able to have him around for a few more hours. He's still got plenty to do, but I'll take what I can get!

Oh, and knock on wood, I think we have had our last 80+ degree day for the year. I thought that was the case two weeks ago, so my fingers are crossed. That's right, it's snowing out west in a bunch of places, but we still have swimming weather. Good times! I find I'm missing the cold fall weather like crazy, but a temperate winter is nothing to sneeze at, so I'm trying to be patient. The weather here really is fantastic. It just goes to show it's hard to be content with what you've got even if it's fantastic.

It's been a big weekend

So many things have been crammed into the last few days. Not so much events, but just stuff happening that took my attention and wow, I am worn out, but generally happy about it all.

First, Genevieve has been teething lots, which brought on a cold, which she passed onto Spencer, which they must be passing back and forth to each other because their noses are both just pouring. Neither one seems to mind that much anymore, though the first day or two they were miserable. The cold is not so great, but having teeth is.

Second, the timing felt right, despite colds, so we started potty training Spencer again on Thursday. I somewhat changed methods Friday morning and we are on day two of that and seeing lots of success. Spencer is way more excited about it and apparently gummy bears and fruit snacks are potent motivations for him. It could be because he never gets to eat those things on normal days. :) He only had one accident today after I don't even know how many yesterday. He climbs like a monkey onto the toilet himself and is totally on top of the peeing part. Still working on number two and also going of his own accord, but I upped the reward from three gummy bears to a pack of fruit snacks for success and he seems pretty motivated. lol. I have high hopes that in a few days he'll be done and by the end of October he really will be.

Speaking of the end of October, since it's only the 5th and all, I'm really excited for it to come because I feel like in that many weeks several things that are causing me either stress or excitement will be resolved for good or bad, though I'm hoping good. We've had some crazy things happen with grad school funding as well as my job being slow. That's been stressful. We've had this potty training excitement/awfulness to experience. I feel like there are about eight other things, but maybe it is just that and they just loom in my mind, covering up everything else or just seeming really big. Oh, the end of October also means Halloween and I made the cutest dang costumes I've ever done for the kids and I can't wait for them to wear them. That's of utmost importance too. Hahaha!

For now though, the kids are cuter than ever, and so fun together. Genevieve doesn't seem like a baby at all anymore. She's into everything and nothing seems to be out of her reach. She thinks she can do anything Spencer can, and it's amazing how much she really can do. They are the best little buddies, even though sometimes they know just how to drive each other crazy. It really is such a fun time playing with them. And now for the picture explosion from this week, in no particular time order.

They were watching a movie together. Personal space is of no consequence. They love cuddling up.

This was my project this weekend to keep my sanity. I don't have any money at the moment for the big pieces of furniture I want to build, but Spencer could use a step stool at the toilet and I had the scraps. In between rushing to the bathroom all day the last two days I managed to throw this little thing together. The legs are totally skewampus because I used my jig saw so I didn't have to get the big saw out and I wasn't terribly accurate, but it's flat, it works and even looks decent, it saved my sanity on day one of potty training, it didn't cost me a penny!

There weren't any baby swings. She was totally okay with that.

Turns out she doesn't care which parent. Just keeping swinging guys!

She will bite anything that looks like food. I had to swipe the jalapenos from the garden before she got a hot surprise. The bell pepper didn't bother her at all. 

He doesn't just pound on the keys. He really tries to play. Now he likes having music up because that's how he sees me play. I'm so excited to put him in piano lessons in a few years. :)

She fell out of this chair onto her head literally three times but was so mad when I finally had enough and took it down. 

Bill scored these relics at the wind tunnel when they were cleaning it out and all four of us love them. So comfy. Newer chairs have no contest on these.

She climbs up on the little chair and just sits contentedly. It helps that she has a hard time getting down. Hahaha!

Homecoming at Clemson

This was a fun weekend. It was Homecoming at Clemson, which is a bigger deal than I have ever seen anywhere else. I can't say I have a lot of college Homecoming experience, but this is certainly bigger than at BYU. Clemson has a free bus service that runs all over the city. It's fantastic. We live on the main line, so during the week it comes every half hour, but only on the hour on weekends. We decided to try our hand at riding it down to campus to see the festivities. The sororities and fraternities each year build these things they call floats, though they're stationary. I imagine there's a competition, but for us it was just cool to go look at them. They look something like this:

They're made entirely out of crepe paper, so it's amazing to see how detailed they get.

It was also football game day, so all the tailgaters were out. Oh my gosh, they know how to party it up here. They bring out their awnings and tables and BBQs and big screen TVs or two or three and what seems like truckloads of food and just party it up all over campus. Most of these people don't even go to the game. There's still 80,000 others that actually do that. Did I mention our town has like 14,000 residents? There are more hotels here than would seem possible to keep in business until you see the sheer number of people that arrive every game weekend. I'm sure that carries their business for the rest of the year.

We had a great time wandering around. We headed back to the bus stop not knowing what time it would actually come. Turns out we had just missed the last bus by maybe 10 minutes, so we had to wait 45 minutes for the next one. Good thing our kids were in fantastic moods. They did great. On a side note, apparently Spencer is terrified of busses. Who knew? He cried for several minutes the first one we went on. He was okay on the second, but he sure didn't love the ride.

I took a couple pictures of the kids this morning. Spencer loves to play with water colors, or really mix them into the water and turn it black. Cute kid.

Genevieve is just into everything. She loves to climb, do everything Spencer does, and generally be in the middle of everything.

I walked in the other day to find them wrestling and laughing hysterically. They are in such a fun stage now together.

Spencer loves to spin on this chair. He occasionally throws himself off he spins it so hard. I put Genevieve in with him and they loved it.

And this is just classic Genevieve. She loves to laugh. She finds everything funny. She really is my little ray of sunshine.

What a week!

It's been a crazy week. Spencer decided he wanted to potty train. In his words, "You want to sit on the big toilet with no diaper on." That was huge. So we tried Thursday afternoon and Friday morning, but he got overwhelmed about it, which is fine. We stopped and we'll try again when he shows interest. He asks to go every once in awhile. I'm excited to not have two kids in diapers, but I don't see a need to be the one always getting him to go to the bathroom. I want him to recognize the need. When he's ready, he'll get there, and that's just fine in my book.

In the midst of this Genevieve decided to get all her molars. At least one is in, but the others are all coming still. We had one cranky baby all week long. She's a lot happier this weekend though, which is great.

She's also our little daredevil. She's a crazy climber. She also thinks she's a big kid and can walk down stairs forwards instead of going down backward. We don't have stairs in our apartment, so she doesn't really practice going down them. So Tuesday she walked off the bottom step of the jungle gym at playgroup and came down on her cheek, scuffing it nicely. Thursday she did the same thing off the bottom stair at another park. Friday she climbed up on one of our kiddy chairs, then got distracted playing and tripped off backwards, clipping her cheek on the edge, leaving a huge purple bruise. I managed to grab her before she hit her head, but no such luck on the cheek. Her poor face. She takes it all in stride though. The fact that she can't get down from somewhere she climbs has absolutely no bearing on whether she climbs it. Spencer tends to stick close to my side when we're out and about, but Genevieve is off to the races the instant she gets set down. It's going to be exciting with this one!

Happenings this week

I finished painting my desk. I love it more than I should. The finish is silky smooth and I'm so pleased how well it turned out.

This not so little visit decided to make a massive web across the stairway by our front door. It's an orb weaver spider, also known as a garden spider or a writing spider or lots of other names. From what I've heard from friends and the internet, this isn't even that big, at about the size of a walnut. Some can get as big as your hand. They're pretty gnarly looking spiders. Our friendly maintenance guy was nice enough to find this sucker a new home.

Genevieve learned how to open our pantry and has been pulling out stuff ever since. She particularly likes the open box of pasta. She keeps chowing down on the stuff and drooling up a storm since she doesn't have enough teeth to really chew the stuff. A baby lock has since been installed on the door for my sanity's sake. Spencer already knows how to open it, but he has a bit more restraint. :)

Spencer decided to teach Genevieve the fine art of toothbrushing this weekend. It may backfire on him as he hoards our extra toothbrushes and she now thinks they're hers.

Genevevieve got to wear a new dress to church yesterday and the cuteness nearly killed me. This girl rocks the color orange. She had the cutest little shoes and an orange bow to go with it for church. It made her look like she was a miniature 15-year old.

Spencer's not much for pictures these days, but I snagged this one last night. Notice the lock on the pantry in the background? He can't be bothered to stop long enough for a cute shot, let alone open his eyes for the one I got. Hahaha! Stripes and print for his outfit? He's totally rocking it.

Genevieve LOVES to read these days. Her favorite books are Dear Zoo and Five Little Monkeys

This is how she signals she's ready for more food. It's hilarious. Usually she just feeds herself, but we were at Panera and Bill tried to keep up with feeding her as she inhaled their mac and cheese.

All those things my parents did

The older my kids get and the fuller our life gets, the more I am amazed by how regular my parents were with all the things they did with us each day to build our faith and testimony. We had morning family prayer and evening family prayer and we ate dinner together and we had daily scripture reading. They drove us to seminary every morning as all seven of us went through high school and the accompanying early morning seminary. We went to all the primary activities and then youth activities when we got older. They just managed to make it all happen. I'm so amazed as we try to do the simple things with our tiny kids. Family home evening? How the heck do you fit that in? We did it every week growing up. That's a work in progress around here.

Bill and I jointly made a little thing last night to help us out with at least one thing. A friend from church had a bunch of these she was passing out, so we grabbed one and it turned out pretty cute. I painted the stars and put names and ribbons on them, but Bill did the rest: painted the board, drilled holes for the pins, put the vinyl on, etc. Now hopefully it will help us actually do FHE every week.

Brasstown Falls

Saturday night, after staining and painting all day, we decided we had to get the kids out of the house, so we found a waterfall with a super short approach hike, and headed out. It was probably 45 minutes away, but once we got there it was super short to hike out. We had such a fun time. Spencer loved it. The decent from the trail to the waterfall was super steep, so I ended up carrying/lowering him down that little part, which he thought was great. Once down he threw rocks to his heart's content, we took some great picture, we ate some celebratory cookies for having left our house that day, and then we went back.

The one thing I could do without down here in the summertime is all the bugs. Everything seems to be super sized or there are just an over abundance of them around. The forests are beautiful beyond description, but not nearly as inviting as out west because you know when you walk in the bug life is going to try to eat you alive. That sounds way more negative than it actually is. It just takes more preparation to have bug spray and a little more vigilance to not step in some random poisonous plant or nest or huge bug of some kind.

This trail we went on was totally infested with the hugest daddy longlegs I have ever seen. Their bodies were probably the size of a pea or bigger and their legs were probably four inches across when you were looking down on them. Needless to say I wished I was wearing closed toed shoes. :) They didn't want to be near us, but they were so numerous it was kind of inevitable. It was also apparently milliped mating season. They were totally coating the roots and branches everywhere. So aside from the crazy quantity of bugs, this was a great hike.

The finished desk

 We spent a huge part of this weekend painting and staining our new desk. Saturday was a lazy day since the kids woke up at 5:30 and decided that was a great time to get up. Both Bill and I felt like we'd been hit by a truck by the time we got them to sleep again. He tried to sleep a bit more with little success and I just got up and started painting. I figured I better capitalize on the time at least one child wouldn't be standing right next to the wet paint.

I have a love/hate relationship with finishing the pieces I build. They look so amazing in the raw wood, but I've had a lot of problems getting the finished look I want. The projects I've painted turned out great, but the ones I've stained just haven't been anything special. I've been reading up on lots of different finishes and I came upon water-based polyurethane. I've seen it before but didn't know anything about it or why I should pick it.

I guess oil-based polyurethane is the standard finish for most people because it is so hard and durable. It has a yellowish cast, so it changes the color of the stain, though that's usually a good thing, not bad as it gives a richer glow to the finished product. Water-based polyurethane is also really hard, but not quite as hard as oil-based. The big difference is it dries completely clear. I was intrigued by that. I looked at some of the varnishes and shellacs too, but this desk is a pretty high traffic area and I just didn't think I'd get the durability I wanted with those. So I annied up the $23 for a quart can and crossed my fingers. I did some research on best brands and went with Varathane Satin finish water-based polyurethane. I read it had much better results than the Minwax you see at the big box stores.

So yesterday was the day. I can't tell you how nervous I was. I'm really pleased with this desk because I designed it myself from a basic plan I liked. I wanted the finish to look as good as the bare wood. We decided on a white base and dark top using a vinegar/steel wool blend. That was an experiment too. The desktop is oak, so when I stained it I got a super dark, rich, beautiful color. It has some kind of strange patterns in it, which bugged me, so I actually ended up going to the effort of taking it off and reapplying. That is not for the faint hearted and probably took me a couple extra hours to do. When I did it the second time and there were still some strange patterns, I decided it must just be the wood/stain combination and I let it be. It looks great, but I would have always questioned if it could look better if I hadn't done that so I don't regret the extra effort.

Once the stain was done I painted the bottom. That went really well and three coats later it was done. Now time to do the polyurethane. I started going on it and was so incredibly pleased with the water-based formula. It is SO much easier to apply than oil. It is thinner so it goes on smoother and more easily than oil-based. It only takes two hours in between coats to dry as opposed to more like four or five, and I ended up doing four coats on the desktop and three over the white. The finished product is amazing. It's a satin finish, so not super shiny, which is just what we wanted. I'm giving it a couple days to dry all the way through like is recommended, but I'm so, so, so excited to finally have a piece of furniture I made that I love the finish on as well as the build.

She's 1!

I can't even believe how fast this year has gone by. I just spent a while going through my iPhoto picking out pictures to go in Genevieve's awesome 1st year album from her Aunt Megan. It was fun to look at all the pictures we have from the past year or two since we found out I was expecting. So much has happened. Bill graduated from college. We moved across the country with a nearly two year-old and four month-old. He started his PhD program. We've been hiking and camping and exploring our new home. We flew back across the country and then drove home with a now 11 month-old and 2.5 year old. We've made friends and fallen in love with South Carolina and just really had a fantastic year.

Through all of that Genevieve has grown and grown and grown and now she's walking and eating like a big kid and starting to talk and is just the most delightful little girl I could imagine. She's such a joy in our little family. Spencer doesn't know what to do without her. He's always saying how he loves her and he gets bothered when she's asleep and he wants to play. She returns the love.

She bonks her head against yours to show she loves you. She says yes, boo, baby, mommy, daddy, dog or some version of those words. She loves food and gets very bothered when she can't get it in her mouth fast enough. She shunned her lunch the other day and chowed down on my taco salad instead. She only has four teeth, but it doesn't stop her in the slightest from eating anything she wants.

She plays peekaboo and is delighting in her newfound ability to walk. I had to go bring her back to our pew probably four times today in church. She's mostly gotten over her fear of strangers and charms everyone now with her cute little smiles and red hair.

She loves her water bottle. It's a Camelbak kids one and she and Spencer both have one. She chugs that thing all day long.

Her stuffed dog is her dearest of possessions. She has recently decided it needs to be at her side pretty much at all times. If anyone, and I really mean anyone, gets near it, she glares at them and starts hyperventilating and half crying until they give it back. That includes me, Bill, Spencer, and anyone else.

She recently discovered dolls. She has a few floating around and just decided they're pretty great. We have a mesh hanging thing of all the stuffed animals in the toy room and she will pick ones down from it to play with. She'll give them hugs and kisses. It's so crazy to me the difference in personality between her and Spencer. I have no idea what is different from boys and girls, but they definitely have different interests. They both love books though. It makes me happy to see her in the toy room reading her books.

She fancies herself an artist, particularly when it comes to kitchen bowls. She grabs crayons from Spencer's art supplies, heads for the kitchen and colors in my mixing bowls. I just thank my stars it's not the wall. She likes to color on paper too, though she's only just getting a good enough grip to really draw much. We picked up an easel with a white board a few weeks ago and both she and Spencer just love it. I don't trust her with a dry erase marker yet, but she'll love it once she gets one.

She has a halo of red hair. It's getting longer and longer and she has opposing cowlicks on the crown of her head, so it just sticks straight up in the back. It has just a hint of curl, but nothing major yet. Spencer's hair is already starting to darken up and I think he'll end up dark like me, but I'm guessing she'll stay light. Her skin tone is totally that of a redhead.

And that's my Genevieve. It never ceases to amaze me how much we can love our kids. It's cliche, but I really can't imagine life without our little lady.