A day at the fair

(Getting ready to leave to go to the fair!)

Last week we took Abbie to the fair – her first fair experience.  It wasn’t really the “full” fair experience since we didn’t go on any rides, but close enough.  We’ll wait until her daddy is with us to take her on ride.

(Pointing at the tractor that took us to the gate.)

I wanted to get Abbie around the animals since she loves animals.  I don’t think she’d ever seen a cow up close before today and she was hesitant since they were so big but she really liked looking at them.

(Checking out the cows from a distance.)

(She actually touched his nose and pet him a few times.)

(Isn’t this the cutest calf ever??  I want one.)

Next were the bunnies.  She loved the bunnies.

This sheep was just as interested in her as she was in it.  She turned her back on it for a second and it stuck it’s nose through the railing and touched her arm and she about jumped a foot.  It was pretty funny and she kept a close eye on it after that.

We took a stroll through the cow barn and she was able to pet a few of the bigger cows and one little brown calf named Raspberry.

After that we watched part of a tiger show.  Abbie was pretty interested at first, but it was HOT and very humid so it was pretty much miserable sitting there in the sun.  I snapped a few pictures before we headed to the shade.

We wandered through the carnival area and thought about taking her on a ride, but each ride was 2-4 tickets and each ticket cost $1.25 and she couldn’t ride them herself so we would have had to buy her tickets and tickets for an adult too, which would equal at least $5 for one ride.  WAY too expensive so we’ll wait until she’s older and then take her to a bigger amusement park when Mark is around.

Despite being super hot, we still had fun.  I’m just ready for Mark to be home to enjoy these experiences with us.

(Yes, my 2 year+2 month old is over 3 feet tall…)

Friday Fill-in

 
Last week it was “or’s”… this week it’s fill in the blanks. I love quotes (you might have noticed that I start each of my posts with one) so these are the beginnings of famous quotes… I want your version of the last part of the quote.

1. Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll have cat breath for the rest of his life.
2. It is amazing what you can accomplish if  you have an uninterrupted afternoon to yourself (aka NO KIDS).
3. If you can’t stand the heat sure as heck don’t move to northern IL where the heat and humidity are unbearable at times.
4. What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what we’re currently standing in.
5. Well behaved women seldom get into trouble, but are still able to have fun! =P

Baby boy clothes

Since we found out we’re having a boy, I may or may not have gone a little haywire in buying baby boy clothes…  But I am having a TON of fun.  I haven’t bought anything for baby #2 prior to this weeks shopping sprees (except for the onesie I bought him in Vegas) since I was waiting for the anatomy scan before I went crazy with my shopping.  And now I have 2 months and 1 week left in the States to “catch up”. 

I really am not a huge shopper.  I need to be in the mood to shop and I like shopping much better if I have a specific thing in mind that I’m looking for.  And I tend to be somewhat of a “speed shopper”.  I like to get in the store, take a quick walk through, and then get out.  I don’t like to wander around aimlessly, and right now, it hurts too much to walk to not have a purpose in what I’m doing anyway. 

But shopping for baby clothes is completely different.  Besides the fact that I’m getting bigger and I can feel the little guy more now, buying clothes for him and imagining what he’ll look like in them is what’s making this pregnancy seem like it’s moving forward.  In 4-ish months we’ll have a new addition to our family and we’ll get to dress him in these cute clothes.

I have to tell you though, shopping for a baby boy isn’t NEAR as much fun as shopping for a baby girl, because, in my opinion, baby boy clothes just aren’t nearly as cute as baby girl clothes are.  I still find myself gravitating towards the baby girl clothes, even though I’m looking for boy things.  I hate the color brown.  I think it’s just ugly.  Especially the poop colored brown.  I could like deep, rich brown colors, but the majority of boy clothes are the ugly brown color.  Or orange, which I also dislike.  Or even worse, they’re brown and orange combined.  Gross!  I have been SHOCKED at how many baby boy clothes have skulls and bones and aliens and monsters on them.  Who wants to put their tiny little baby boy in those sorts of things?  I find that pretty much weird and I’m shocked that it’s not just a few things here and there that have those characters on them.

So far I’ve been to Target, Kohl’s, Old Navy and Younkers.  (For those not from the mid-west, Younkers is kind of like a JC Penney’s except a little more expensive.)  All these pictures are of my purchases from Target, Kohl’s and Old Navy.  I went to Younkers yesterday and hit the jackpot, but I haven’t taken bunches of pictures of those clothes yet.  They were having a yellow dot sale so I got lots of clothes at 75% off and all of the clothes I bought were at least 30% off because they were all on sale some and then I had a 20% coupon that could be applied to some of the sale items.

 

I still have a ways to go with my shopping, but I’m getting there, slowly but surely.  It’s MUCH more fun to shop in person than it is online, especially since baby clothes seem to vary so much in their sizes.  I’m going to try to get most of his wardrobe through at least 18 or 24 months since we don’t plan on coming back to the States again before we move, which should be in Spring of 2013.  Since he’s already measuring long, I’m trying to keep that in mind when deciding what sizes to get him for different seasons, and it’s definitely not been easy.  It hasn’t been easy, but it has been fun and I’m excited to check out stores during our upcoming trips to Colorado, Kansas City and Branson.  I have a little notebook dedicated to inventorying his clothes and I’ve written down everything I have for him so far and I’m making lists of what I need for him so I don’t end up buying him the same things in the same sizes.

Where do you buy most of the clothes for your kids?  I got at least 60% of Abbie’s first year wardrobe from Ross (like TJ Maxx or Marshall’s) but they don’t have Ross around here and I miss it!  What brands do you like best for baby clothes?  And what would I need for a boy that I didn’t need for a girl??  (Like those pee pee tee pee things.)  I’m open to any and all suggestions!!

(Mark’s call sign is “Moose” so I thought this shirt was especially cute!)

Pool time

Buying this little pool for Abbie after we got to the States was probably the best $35 I’ve spent in a long time.  She LOVES it and she’s perfectly happy playing in it for hours.  Her favorite toys are old syrup containers and an empty yogurt cup, although she has lots of buckets and shovels and other things.  She’s able to take the lid off the syrup container, hold it under the water until it stops bubbling and then put the lid back on it by herself now. Funny how she likes the cheap toys best.  She also loves taking Maddy’s tennis ball and trying to keep it from her.  Maddy will jump right in the pool with her to get it and Abbie thinks that’s the best thing yet.  She also likes to get the dogs as wet as possible so she chases them all over the place throwing water at them, and they don’t really mind.

New camera bag

My early birthday present to myself was this camera bag.  I wanted something that wasn’t huge, but could hold most of my camera stuff, which includes a few lenses, external flash, diffuser, battery charger, etc.  I wanted to be able to hang it on our stroller or have it fit underneath it, and also fit easily into a carry on suitcase when we travel.
I found this bag on Etsy from Janine King Designs and I really like it.  It has decent padding all the way around, it’s a perfect size, it’s well constructed and the strap is long enough to wear as a messenger bag, but also adjustable.  Hopefully it’ll last me a long time!

July 2011 Abbie-isms

** The Theisen’s in Dubuque gives away free popcorn.  I had Abbie there a couple months ago, and my mom had her there once in the past month and both times we got her popcorn.  Today we went there so my mom could return something and as soon as we pulled in to the parking lot Abbie said “Grandma go get us popcorn??”.
**My mom sometimes tells the dogs to “vamanos” when she wants them to move and now Abbie says “Vamanos dogs” when they’re in her way.
**On the way home from town today, Abbie and I were listening to music in the car.  All of a sudden she said “I no like this song.  Turn it off, momma.”  I don’t even remember what song it was, but I thought she was just kidding until she got really persistent and asked me to turn it off a few more times.  When I did turn it off, she was happy as a clam and said  “Thanks momma.”

**Abbie has started telling me she wants to dance while we’re driving in the car and asks for “dance songs".  (She likes upbeat songs with good beats to them to “dance” to.)  And then she likes me to snap my fingers to the beat and she tries her hardest to figure out how to get her fingers to snap until she finally gives up and just starts clapping.  I love seeing the concentration on her face as she watches my fingers and then tries to get hers to do the same thing.
**Any time she sees those little reflections from sunlight hitting glass (like on your watch), she calls them “Tinkerbells”.
**I was sitting in the living room and all of a sudden Abbie started to cry her “I’m terrified” cry.  I went running in to her and my parents cat, Elsie, was in the process of puking up a hairball.  (Elsie pukes a lot.)  Abbie was absolutely traumatized by the sight of it though.  She was pointing at Elsie while crying “Elsie’s puking on the rug” and “Me no like Elsie puking” and “Elsie’s sick”.  It took me a while to get Abbie calmed down and she asked if Elsie was okay for the rest of the day.

**Abbie LOVES to ride in my dad’s truck.  Since my car is being repaired, I put Abbie’s car seat in the truck and she gets SO excited to leave now and she’s always talking about how fun it is to ride in Grandpa’s truck.  She likes it because it’s big and it’s loud and she asks to go fast in it.  Silly girl.
**I told Abbie to hold her horses and she gave me a quizzical look and said “Where are my horses?”.
**On our way to Chicago there was a commercial on the radio.  Abbie said, “I want to listen to music!  Push that button right there!” as she pointed to the button on the steering wheel that I push to change the channel.  It’s becoming apparent that she’s very particular about what she listens to.  She is also singing along to the radio more than she ever has before, which is fun to listen to.

**I have been teaching Abbie that the dogs growl when they are unhappy.  My mom and I were having a “heated discussion” on a car ride to town while Abbie was in the back seat.  She kept saying “Quit growling momma” and “Quit growling grandma”.
**We drove by large, shirtless, VERY hairy guy mowing his lawn the other day.  Abbie pointed at him and said “Look at that hairy guy.”  She was quiet for a few minutes and said “That’s nasty!”.
**Sometime over the course of this month, the dogs became hers, in her mind anyway.  (I don’t think the dogs agree.)  But she now refers to them as “My dogs.” and she definitely prefers if you don’t pet “her dogs” while she’s by them.