Brushing off my Dusty Sewing Skills

What on earth do you put your ten month old baby in as far as footwear? They can't have solid soles, she needs more traction than socks provide (besides how nasty dirty she gets them), and they all look way uncomfortable to crawl in. So, I saw this pattern on Etsy and decided that since the pattern said beginner I could probably dust off enough sewing skills to make them. They turned out really cute and only took me an afternoon to make. Yay! Elise had shoes to wear to Disneyland, thank goodness.

By the way, could my child look anymore like me?

Oh the ability to stand up

Elise can stand up anywhere now, including standing at the back of my legs,

the bathtub and in front of the tv to name a few of her favorite spots.

I think I've been having the tv on too much lately so we are going to cut ties with the cable. I had the TV off today and Elise was playing with the remote and somehow turned it on and got it to a channel with Sesame Street and watched for a good long while. Obvious sign that it's been on too much. She's a cute silly girl though.We got a netflix account and so hopefully that will cut down on the amount of time I waste in front of the tv. I really would love to do more things and haven't because of exhaustion, Elise, and my desire to keep things clean and not have Elise ruin stuff.

So my goals for TV free life are to

1. get more active (I'm thinking about joining a gym with the money I will save from canceling cable and dvr, the gym is way more expensive than canceling cable! I was shocked!)

2. start doing crafts or scrapbooking again

3. listen to music to fill the silence

4. Spend more time in the scriptures

5.read or listen to more books

Goodbye Mandi, Goodbye Disneyland

This cute girl just graduated with her Duck-torate in Making Magic. It's a sad day because now she is returning to Utah and we will only see her on vacations yet again. It's been so much fun to have her come up on her free days and to go down and see her occasionaly. We got to do new things in Disneyland and have an insider teach us cool things. Look how much Elise will miss her. Poor thing. We love you Mandi. Come back to live here when you are done with school!

The New Favorite Game

This is Elise's new favorite game. We don't have a dishwasher that will dry the dishes so we have to open it and let them air dry. Elise has figured out how to open the dishwasher all the way, and stand up on the door, and reach into the lower basket and pull clean dishes out and chew on them. The things I never realized that I would have to watch out for. Now I pull out the knives and hand dry them and put them away. She has so much fun that I don't mind washing some things over and over again.

We also saw the doctor for her 9 month check up. She is getting skinny but staying tall. She's 90th percentile in length and getting down to 70th in weight. I feel like she's been teething forever and in fact I did find a fifth tooth this afternoon. But the only way I can really tell is because she doesn't finish all her bottles and seems to always be tired and grumpy. Count my many blessings.