Closer to my goal

OK I'm still a long way away from my 5K goal, but as I've said, I just need to improve my distance a little at a time. Today I did just that! I ran 1.47 miles! It's kind of a disappointment to be sooo close to 1.5 but that just means I need to work a little harder next time.

I would really like to buy a reliable pedometer that would accurately measure my distance as I'm out running. I think that if I knew today that I was .03 miles away from my halfway point that I would have kept going. I bought a new iPod last week and have heard that there's some good apps that could help me but I'm having issues with my iTunes account so I'm waiting to get them resolved before I can look in to it a little more.

On to the fun topic... my little 2 year old! Autie is talking up a storm these days. Unfortunately I only understand about half of what she says. The sad part is that I can see her frustration when I don't understand her! We just do a lot of repeating around our house. She is so much fun to be around. She is a bright, funny, curious, precious, kind-hearted and sassy little girl and I'm so lucky to have her in my life.

We started regularly going to Sunday School at the church down the street from us and
Autie and I are both getting a lot out of it! She seems to really enjoy the class and teacher and a couple of weeks ago she came home singing a song that I didn't recognize. She was very persistent in singing this and repeated it over and over for a long time! She would dance around marching and then would yell what sounded like "Ahhh-saa!" The next Sunday I went to the teacher and asked what they sang each week and she said that we were welcome to peek in on their worship time when they do all of their singing. My mom snuck in and I'm positive that she found which song Autumn was singing! So cute!

Untitled from LaNell German on Vimeo.

Happenings

Over the last couple of weeks, I seem to have hit a plateau in my running. As I posted a couple of weeks ago, my personal best was about 1.3 miles and I was proud! But if I am going to run that 5k in November, I need to keep going a little further. It just wasn't happening though! I have still kept my 3-5 times a week plan but just couldn't get back up to that 1.3 mile mark. Today I was determined to beat it and set out for my run. I just ran until my spring was gone and I felt that each step was a burden on my body. I got home and clocked it and found that I beat my best with 1.44 miles! Go me!

This weekend a very exciting thing happened in my family! My sister Kate gave birth to her first daughter, Drew Frances. I was allowed in the delivery room and actually got to see little Drew enter the world and I must say that it was the most incredible thing I've ever witnessed. It seems that when I was giving birth to Autumn I was on a different planet because I didn't watch and I guess I wasn't in the frame of mind to really pay attention. But I am so thankful to Kate and Ron for allowing me to be a part of that wonderful moment. I am constantly amazed at how strong, amazing, and resillient women's bodies are. Not only do we create a life, but we grow one in our body for 40 weeks and then to top it off, we make food for the baby! Miraculous for sure. So help me to welcome my new neice who was born February 25th at 11:01pm. She was 7lb 1oz and was 20 inches long.

I am so in love with her already and can't wait to see her grow in to the beautiful amazing person that she is destined to be!

A New Goal

These last couple of months, I've managed to make some time for me, which is definitely hard to do as a new mom. In this "me-time", I have discovered something that has never even remotely interested me in the past... Jogging! I began this journey last July in the dead heat of summer. I started out with a walk. What began as a tool to help me finally shed the baby-weight became not only something to do, but something to look forward to and to be proud of!

When I started, I walked. Period. I walked almost every single morning. My neighborhood route was 2 miles and I felt great! I started to see the weight come off. After a few pounds, I started to think, hmmm, maybe I can jog to the end of that block. And I did! It was challenging but seemed to be fun! I liked to get home and look online to see how far I ran. And although it was only about .25 miles in the beginnning, it was a start! Over the last few months, I've seen my distance get farther and farther. A couple of weeks ago I hit a mile! I was so proud. I had never run a full mile in my entire life. All this has made me want to keep going and push myself. And I've set a goal that I need to record somewhere so I cannot back out. So here it is...

I will run a 5K this year! RUN! The race I'm reaching for is the Susan G Komen Race for the cure in November. It's totally doable!

I still have a long way to go to reach my goal, but every day is one more step to achieving this goal. Today, I ran 1.31 miles. Hopefully I'll be able to use this blog as a way to keep myself in check.

Not only has this exercise given me a little of my figure back, it's given me something to really look forward to. It's just a little something to recapture a little of "me" which is so hard to do when my whole life has centered around my precious little angel for the last 2 years!

Autumn's first hair cut!

We went to get Autie's first haircut today! We were a little aprehensive because she barely lets me comb it, but decided to give it a try anyways. We went to one of those kids haircut places and the first thing that she wanted to to is to get in one of the cars that are the salon chairs.


Once she got up in it, surprisingly it was really easy for Amy, her hairdresser, to do her job! They had a movie playing for Autumn to watch and of course there were all of the buttons in the Barbie Jeep that she was sitting in. They wet her hair and saved the first cut curl in a little baggie for us to keep. She sat patiently while the rest of the haircut took place and even let Amy blow-dry it!

She then got a treat when they painted her fingernails. It was a real day of beauty!

I almost started to cry during the whole process, but Jeremy snapped me back to reality when he started laughing at me. The other moms in the salon understood, though!

We left with a beautiful little bob, baby pink fingernails, a commermorative certificate, and a little curly lock of hair. It was a great trip, one that I will never forget!

My almost-updated kitchen!

Jeremy and I bought new countertops for the kitchen about a month ago and have been anxiously awaiting the install. There were a couple of delays, but we were finally going to get them and started our demolition this week. Jeremy ripped out the majority of the counters last weekend but left the sink in as long as possible so we wouldn't be inconvenienced all that much. Jeremy also decided to stain the existing cabinets for an updated look so he started doing that this last weekend as well! Although he only got 3 pieces of the bottom cabinets done, I just know that the results will be stunning when they're all done!

Last night, Jeremy and I took out the sink and dreaded the next couple of hours without a sink or dishwasher in the kitchen, but knew that the pain would be worth it.

Our installer showed up today and began putting in the countertops and I was immediately in love. I am SO glad that Jeremy began staining the existing counters because I have to admit, the beautiful new counters do not look good with our existing cabinets at all. However, the stained ones are absolutely beautiful against the counters that we chose. After seeing everything go in, I was so glad that we decided to get this done. It really adds a lot to our little kitchen!

About half-way through, the guy doing the installing called me over to show me the worst possible thing... a big crack in the sink!! I don't know if you know the story behind my sink, but it was a really big deal for me. I knew the type of sink that I wanted and set out on the Internet to make it a reality. I located a little store in Northern CA that stocked it and placed my order. Mind you, this was back in July that all of this was done, so this dream sink has been sitting in the box that it was shipped in in the middle of my garage since it was delivered by FedEx. I called the store in CA and was promptly reminded of their 7 day return policy and also of the fact that I should have opened the box when I received it! I told the guy that I realize that I should have, but the truth is that I just opened it and it's cracked! He told me that he would have to "see what he could do" and would call me back. Really, though, how the heck was I going to take the 50lb sink out of the box to check it? I would have never gotten it back in :) He did call me back, and after reminding me once again of their 7 day return policy and what I should have done, he said that as long as I was willing to pay for the shipping charges, that he'd ship me another one, even though, as he had to throw in, most companies wouldn't do that.

While I am grateful for his cooperation and willingness to bend, the fact remains that I have half of a kitchen, and it's not the half that you'd want if given the choice. We are going out of town over the Labor Day weekend which will soften this blow a bit, but I guess we'll be eating out and washing Autumn's sippy cups in the bathroom sink (that just doesn't even sound sanitary, does it??) until the new one is here and installed. I'm guessing that will be about a week.

Below are the pictures of the kitchen as it looks at this time. I actually like that Jeremy's only done some of the staining becuase I'm able to see what it would have looked like if he had decided against it. You can also see the lovely hole where my sink will someday reside.

I've decided that the red walls no longer go with our new design, so that will be the next to go. Poor Jeremy is going to be busy for the next couple of months... When he's done with that I'm sure I'll have thought of something else to add to my "honey-do" list.

Our little mommy

I want to let you know what this little stinker is up to! First off, I never thought that any toy that we could ever purchase would ever live up to Bubby. As you know, Bubby goes with us everywhere! Last Friday, we went to the pool at the Y with Erin and her son Hutson, daughter Bailey, niece Rian, and nephew Griffin. Griffin is only 9 months old and quite a chunk, so we brought along our little umbrella stroller to haul him around in. When we were leaving the pool, Autie decided that she needed to be the one pushing Griffin in the stroller. She pushed him out of the pool, all through the Y, and out to our car in the parking lot. She actually got mad at me when I took her away from the stroller to put her in the car.

On Saturday, I went to Toys R Us and checked out what they had for baby strollers and found a mini version of the umbrella stroller we have. I brought it home and Autumn has been inseprable with the thing since. The only time she would walk away from it would be if Bubby got left behind. We actually had to fashion a way for her to be able to bring Bubby with us, since he is too good to ride in the stroller and she couldn't figure out how to carry him and push the stroller at the same time.

I took these pictures today on the way home from Erin's. We usually just ride over in the stroller, with me pushing of course... Today, Autie had to push her own stroller to Erin's, both ways. When we got home, she had to finish the walk by taking a couple laps around our yard/cul de sac. Her little face was so red from all that walking I had to put an end to it and get the girl some water. She is so strong-headed, I wonder where she gets that from...

I will say that Bubby has not been replaced by any means, but that may only be because the stroller doesn't fit nicely in her crib at night.

Playground Daredevil

Today, Autie and I went to the park, as we've been doing for months. On a normal day, I follow her as she climbs up the stairs of the playscape, crawl/walk around the little circle at the top, and then she sits on my lap as we go down one of the three slides. Today, I went up the stairs with her, and she went straight to the swirly slide and tried to hurl herself down head-first. I panicked and grabbed her little feet at the last second. She screamed at me as I pulled her back up, and put her on my lap to go down the slide. I realized that her screams were her way of showing her ever-growing independent streak. So, at the bottom of the slide, I decided to let her try a solo flight. I watched in amazement as my little one go up the stairs all by herself and run to the slide and go down, once again head-first! Luckily I had my camera and was able to catch one of the many runs.

Autumn at the Playground from Karen Wallace on Vimeo.

I swear, we were there for an hour and it was the same thing over and over. I guess that I knew this day was coming. She is growing up so fast and I am realizing that she is gaining more confidence and independence every single day (much to my dismay!).

Walking!

So, after many long-awaited months, Autumn is walking. Walking!! I am so excited about this, but mostly for purely selfish reasons. I have always said that I would never worry about my daughter's milestones. Children accomplish things at different times and at their own pace. I *know* this in my head. And up until this point, Autumn as either been on track or early in doing things. Let's just say, I've been a very proud mommy. But this walking thing, well, it's for the birds.

Autumn took her first steps a long time ago. She first started standing by herself before her first birthday and I have been saying since then, "oh, it's just a matter of days before she walks!". Well, it wasn't! And I've been patient. I've watched her learn new things, and say new words, and accomplish new skills in the past 3+ months. But walking has been what I've really been waiting for.

I have many friends who have babies just a couple of months younger than Autumn and I've been so excited to learn that each of them have been walking and believe me, I'm SO proud of those little ones. But what happens in my head is the worrying about why Autumn hasn't bothered to do it herself. And I've kept telling myself what I've been saying all along... the proverbial "any day now".

Unfortunately, at 15 months, when you have a daughter that's just as happy to crawl for what you think will be the rest of her life, you begin to become a bit concerned. I even got a comment the other day from a well-meaning friend who, when asking how old Autumn was, with my response of 15 months, she said "well she's walking obviously". And I had to respond while gritting my teeth, that no, she wasn't.

But today, my friends, at just shy of 16 months, Autumn is walking. I picked her up from our babysitter's house and we were on our way home. Lately, I've been letting her "walk" home, and she just holds on to the basket of the stroller and follows along. But today, she saw something that she wanted across my neighbor's yard, and the little stinker just took off.

I'm so proud of Autumn and I'm more than delighted that she finally decided to take this next step. I realize that she's completely perfect in every way, but I'm still a new mom. I think it's my job to worry. So now that she's taken this step, I'll move on to worrying about the next thing. Friends? Boys? College? Who knows what's next!

I'll end this post with a video that I took as soon as we got home. Isn't she the most precious thing you've ever seen? I may be partial, but I sure think so!

Autumn is officially walking! from Karen Wallace on Vimeo.

Why Dolly Has Been Gaining Weight

Why Dolly is gaining weight from Karen Wallace on Vimeo.

A Year in Pictures

December

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Happy Birthday, Beautiful Girl! You have made this past year unforgettable. We love you so much!
Mommy and Daddy

Disturbed

Maybe I'm just completely naive, but I'm seriously outraged right now. I have a YouTube account, and every once in a while I'll post videos that I want to share with my friends and family. For example, if I take a video of your kid and my kid together, rather than emailing the huge file, I'll just post it to this account so you can see how cute it is! I don't use the account very often, but seriously don't think twice when I do.

I posted a couple of new videos today to share with friends and family (separate post about that one) and then went back to look at how much my little girl has grown in the past year. When you have a video uploaded to YouTube, you can see if people have rated it, if someone's commented on it, or you can also see how many times your video has been viewed. I don't think of my videos as hot topics and so the majority of them have about 10 views, and I know that they're the ones I've sent out to my friends to see. You can imagine my surprise when I noticed that 2 of my videos had over 150 views (no ratings or comments, just views). Do you want to know what these videos contained? They were of my daughter having fun in the bath with her friend. These are BABIES, people. Little cute BABIES and there was nothing on this video other than 2 little BABIES from the chest up, sitting in the tub splashing eachother and having a fun, rated G time in the bath. What I want to know is who the hell has been looking at my BABY playing in the bathtub??

Needless to say, these videos have been deleted from my YouTube account. I have created a new, private account on another website that I won't be publicly announcing, for my friends and family. Period. If you fall in to one of these categories, I'll gladly share this new place to watch my daughter grow. But to all you pervs out there who have repeatedly watched my precious bathtime videos, you're sick and need to stay away from me and my family.

A Month of Firsts

It's amazing to me that November is almost over. This last month has been a month full of firsts! To recap, I've decided to list them here!

First Trick-or Treating trip!

Talk about time flying... it seems like just yesterday, I was parading my little pumpkin down the street with her cousins and having a great time. Amber, Mark, and the girls came down to celebrate with us, and we took Parker and Autumn out to Trick-or-Treat. We walked around the neighborhood and discovered that I really have some cool neighbors! A lot of the houses that we visited were just parties set up for the kids with treats and even a bouncy-house. Autumn had a runny nose so we didn't stay out too long, but I really enjoyed it.

First Real Cold!

Right before Halloween, Autumn's nose started running. I took her temperature multiple times and thankfully it was never above 99.1 degrees. I called the doctor anyways and was just told to stock up on nasal mist and Baby Tylenol and to ride it out. I was also told that it could last up to 2 weeks. I shrugged that off, never thinking it would actually last 2 weeks and followed doctor's orders. I discovered a product called Boogie Wipes which I fell in love with and stocked up on as well! Luckily, I have a rediculous amount of money left in my flex spending account! (Side note, any good ideas on how to spend it in the next 31 days??) A week in to it, I got sick so the second week was extra awful. However, on day 14 when I was feeling better and my little one was not, I called the doctor again. They told me to bring her in and we discovered our next first...

First Ear Infection!

The doctor told me that when you're snotty as long as Autumn was snotty, it all backs up in the head and inevitably gets infected. I have to admit that Autumn was really a trooper through the whole thing and ended up looking forward to her bubblegum-flavored antibiotics.

First Ride in the Big Girl Car Seat!


Jeremy and I decided to buy the big-girl car seat a little early so Autumn's trip to Mansfield would be extra comfy! Jeremy bought a new truck a couple of weeks ago with a huge backseat, so he picked up the car seat last Wednesday and installed it! The first time we sat her in it, she was really excited to see all of her surroundings! While she still fits in the infant car seat and it's actually still in my car, I know that she really appreciated our little gift. The regularly under 3 hour drive ended up taking 5 1/2 due to holiday traffic and she really held up well!



First Thanksgiving!

Autumn has been eating real food lately so on Thanksgiving, we just let her try everything! We set a little scoop of each dish in front of her on her high chair and watched her go to town. She truly enjoyed the turkey above everything else, and it seems that the majority of the sides (stuffing, sweet potato casserole, jello, etc) ended up on her rather than in her belly! I really think that it's best to tell the story in pictures, though! I'm not sure that any captions are needed...
Thankfully, she cleaned up nicely (the high chair literally needed a hosing down), and the tryptophan kicked in nicely which led to a good nights sleep!


Our biggest first yet (birthday!) is coming up a week from today! While I'm still a little in shock that this milestone is approaching, I am so glad to have spent the last year with one of the silliest, funniest, most pleasant people I know. My love for this little girl grows exponentially each day and I've been so blessed to be able to share these days with her.

The Best Costume Ever!

Chandler Smile

You've all probably seen the hilarious episode of Friends where we discover Chandler's inability to smile normal when a camera is stuck in front of him.

I think that Autumn has figured out what she's supposed to do once I stick the camera in front of her face and what's funny is she has discovered her own "Chandler Smile". Here's some of the latest evidence of her new talent...

Is it totally wrong to laugh so hard at pictures of my daughter? Oh my goodness these could keep me rolling for hours.

This next weekend is Halloween! People keep asking me what Autumn is going to be for Halloween and my standard response has been "Uh, hello, have you met me?" I found the most precious pumpkin outfit at Gymboree and yesterday we did a photoshoot in my front yard with about 50 pumpkins of various shapes, colors and sizes. I can't wait to see the results! Once again, it's so awesome to have such an amazing photographer as a sister. Thank goodness Kate's talent for Photoshop is just as strong as her talent for taking the pictures! She may be working overtime on this batch of photos with the new look that Autumn has developed!

Two of my Very Favorite Things

With each new accomplishment...

...comes a little extra attention on my part! We're both learning, you see!

Specifically, last week Autumn started pulling up on things. The first couple of days were slow going, but she has officially become a master. She can pull up on just about anything now and she gets a huge smile of accomplishment each time she gets to a standing position.

The only problem that we've found is that she has not mastered the art of sitting back down once she's standing. This means that I need to be near her pretty much at all times, which is tiring! I am also learning that, while I want to capture all of these new things on video, I neeed to suffer the consequences when I do! Here's our latest example:



I want to add that the end of this video when you hear me say "oh sh.." you can just imagine what came out of my mouth next. What came out of Autumn was expected, she cried until I could distract her enough to make her realize that she wasn't hurt. She was fine! No bumps or bruises this time around. The kid needs to learn to sit down!

My new job this week is to show her each time she stands that she can drop to her bottom quite easily. Wish me luck.

Big Girl

This past week has been FULL of new accomplishments for my little girl. Not only is she dancing to every song she hears, waving to strangers, and getting to a sitting position by herself, but as of Tuesday, she can pull up to a standing position! All of which means that my days chasing and entertaining her are now officially nonstop. I am more and more amazed by her every day, and could go on for paragraphs about how much fun she is. So rather than bore you with every detail of each accomplishment, I'll just post my favorite pictures from our latest photoshoot that took place this afternoon. Thanks again, Aunt Kate!

Temper

I think that Autumn had her very first temper tantrum yesterday. She had eaten dinner, and I was giving her a bottle, and when it was done, she started screaming and full-on crying (red face and all). I picked her up out of her high chair and tried to distract her to take her mind off of the situation and she just got even more mad! She started flailing her arms around which was hitting my face, so I took her little arms and just gently pinned them to her side, which of course made her even more mad. I ended up just putting her in the baby jail and walking away for a minute. About 20 seconds later, she was fine, happy, and playing with her toys. Wow! I'm not sure that a temper tantrum at 9 months is a good sign, but I guess we're all learning in this process.

In happier news, Autumn is learning new things daily and it's a joy to watch her! She can stand up while holding on to things, but she can't quite get her balance, so I think walking is a ways off - thankfully! She is trying to wave and beat on things, but she's not all that coordinated, just like me, so she just flails her arms around and doesn't actually accomplish much. She is also saying da da da da da when she's really happy and playing and in the last 2 days has started saying ma ma ma ma ma only when she's terribly upset. I'm not quite sure that's fair, but oh well. Even though she's screaming when she does it, it's still wonderful to hear her say it! She's also dancing and singing along with the radio! She bobs her head to music and just makes noise with her voice whenever music is on. It's hilarious. We were in TJ Maxx today and she started dancing when she heard the music and she was totally cracking me up. She just gets this huge smile on her face like it's the best thing she's ever heard, no matter the song.

She now has 3 teeth. She has the 2 on the bottom center and then one little odd one on the top that I think came in out of order. It looks like it's the canine tooth, but it could be the one right between that one and the front tooth. I lovingly call it her snaggle tooth!

With all of these things going on, I guess a temper tantrum every once in a while is to be expected. I just hope that in the future (not including her teenage years, because I know they'll probably be daily at that point) that they are few and far between!

My Happy Place

This last weekend we made an impromptu trip to Leakey for a much-needed getaway. I was literally bitching to Elizabeth on Thursday afternoon that I didn't have any plans for the Labor Day weekend and she said "Let's go to Leakey tomorrow" and I said OK! Jeremy wasn't hard to convince either. I guess we both needed a little time away from the house.

We packed up the car (you'd be surprised how much crap a Jetta can hold) and headed out Friday afternoon. We didn't go overboard with food like we normally do and packed the car with a couple of t-shirts, some shorts, some swimsuits, flip-flops, 3 chihuahuas, a whole lot of champers, and Autumn's entire room*. We got to Leakey at about 6pm and just relaxed!

The relaxing continued the entire weekend and the weather was incredible. It was not too hot and there was a nice breeze that even brought in a couple of sprinkle showers. Unfortunately that meant the Frio was even more frio than normal, so we didn't spend a lot of time in the river. We did, however, sit on the porch, gossip, take long walks with the girls, sleep in, and have a wonderful chill long weekend. Just what the doctor ordered!

As usual, we took a whole bunch of pictures which I've put on my Picasa album. It's far easier to just have them as a link you can go to and take a peek than to actually post them here! See, my laziness continues... We also got some video of the girls that we are going to cherish forever. The first 2 below are of Autumn and Felicia playing outside. Autumn loves the swing and Felicia loves to get in to everything so this set up was ideal.



The second was just a couple minutes after Felicia got tired of pushing Autie in the swing. She decided to run back to check on the situation and things got a little out of hand. Unfortunately I was sitting about 6 feet to the right of where I should have been sitting to caputure this moment properly, but you get the gist.



And finally, we took a lot of video of the girls in the bathtub together. Of the ones I took, this one's my favorite. Felicia splashes the crap outta Autumn, but Autumn just seems to take it all in stride. While she may not be able to splash her back now, I'm sure that it will come in the future.



We had so much fun and remembered what it's like to be without cell phones, tvs, internet, and civilization once again. Pure bliss if you ask me. While it's nice to come back to it, it sure is wonderful to be without every once in a while!

*Unfortunately I've learned that it's virtually impossible to travel light with a baby! The trouble of getting things to where you're going far outweighs the convenience of having things with you!

I have become the person I always bitched about...

Here's what store managers need to realize: when you have a 20 pound baby in a cart that you've left in the car seat because cart germs freak you out, and you've failed to park near a cart return, a dilemma arises. You only have 2 options. Do you leave your baby in the car that you've had to turn on because it's 207 degrees in the shade in a lovely Texas summer to walk 5 cars away to be the good person and return the cart? Or do become "that guy" and leave the cart by the car? Folks, I've become "that guy". And what's worse is I don't feel all that bad about it.

HEB, for example, has wonderul "people with baby" parking. But what is the point of having that baby parking if there's no cart return right next to it to put your baby in? And do you want to know who the worse store offender is? Babies R Us in Austin! No kidding. In the parking lot, there are about 3 cart return areas. Where are they? At the back of the parking lot! It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, now does it?

So next time you see a lone cart in the middle of the parking lot, please don't cuss the person that did it. Just think that there's a good chance that there's acutally logical explaination for it.