A visit to Wisconsin and a fight

For Labor Day weekend, my mom, Romelie and I went to Spring Green, WI, to visit my brother and his girlfriend Carrie and see their shows at American Players Theatre. Romelie was very well behaved for the 4.5 hour drive (closer to 5.5 on the way out there – traffic was not our friend), and she was generally pretty good for everyone. Paul found a couple of babysitters from the company to watch her so mom and I could see the plays, and she was reportedly very well behaved for them, which was a relief. Other than her grandparents and Crystal, she’s never really had a babysitter before.

We had a great time in Wisconsin. Romelie’s big into separation anxiety, so she cried nearly every time Paul picked her up (sorry!!), but she had a lot of fun with him, too, and it was great to get to know Carrie a little bit better. They were fantastic in the shows (we saw “Henry IV,” “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Belle’s Stratagem”) and we ate really well – quiche and ribs and s’mores and banana bread and all sorts of home-cooked treats. I remember when I used to cook…now Chason and I eat pizza three nights a week. Sorry, hubby. Anyway, Paul took lots of pictures but I forgot to get them from my mom before she went home so I don’t have any to post yet – but I’ll get them up later, don’t worry.

Also, yesterday Romelie got into her very first fight. Yup, you heard me right. One of the girls in her daycare tried to steal her bottle yesterday while Jen was changing the diaper of another little one (the girl is about 13 months, so she wasn’t being mean or anything…just saw a bottle and decided she wanted it!). Well, Romelie wasn’t about to give up her bottle and fought for it, so they ended up scratching at each other. Romelie’s smaller, so she got the worse of it. Jen felt really bad, but I understand she can’t be there every second. And it could’ve been worse but it wasn’t, and Romelie’s fine, so what can you do? My little Rocky…getting in fights…

Finally, Romelie has been doing this spitting thing for months now, but I finally managed to get a video of it yesterday. It's really cute except when she does it with a mouthful of food.

General updates

Romelie had her 9-month well-baby check-up (do all those words need to be hyphenated? It seems excessive…). She is 29.5 inches long and 19 lbs. 10 oz. So she’s still long and lean. She also has some funky skin patches that may be eczema or may be ringworm (ew, fungus). We’re treating it as eczema for now and we’ll see what happens. No major concerns, otherwise. She didn’t have to have any immunizations, either, so she was moderately pleasant for Dr. Mitchell (and she got to see Dr. Dukinfield, technically her pediatrician but hard to schedule appointments with, as well).

Volleyball is in full swing. Everyone’s working hard, I’m exhausted and don’t have to do all the work that I’m making my players do (not that my job isn’t tough, too), and I think it’s gonna be a long season. But a good one. Kudos to Chason who’s taking on his extra daddy-and-baby time while I’m at practice without complaint.

And Crystal is officially in Houston. Sad Danni. Now she gets to read the blog for updates, too! We love you, Crystal. Say “hi” to Houston for us.

Slacking on the picture taking. I’ll get on it, I promise.

Change is in the air

Cousin Jessica is pregnant! More babies in the family; hope people can stand all the cute!

Speaking of the cute, Romelie got a gift in the mail yesterday from our friends Scott and Ellen who’ve been touring with Up With People for the last year. This dress came from Thailand, and even though it’s a bit large for her, I couldn’t resist taking a photo. Check out their amazing stories at http://www.schmenebojourney.blogspot.com/.

Some sad news to announce – Crystal (affectionatly called Aunt Crystal) is moving to Texas in a week. She’s got a great job teaching theater in the CyFair schools near Houston, and I’m super happy for her, but I will miss her very very very much. She’s been a big part of Romelie’s life, and it’ll be hard not to see her every week, but the good news is – hey – Houston. We go there. So we’ll see plenty of her and hopefully will live not too far from her in the not-so-distant future. So Texans, treat her well and invite her over for dinner now and again!

Life’s about to get a little crazy ‘round here. I start volleyball on Monday, which means Chason is going to be on baby duty until I get home in the evenings for the next couple of months. I can’t believe I have three jobs again. Granted, one of them is only two hours on Sundays, and I can bring Romelie along – have I written about that? I work at a church daycare Sunday mornings. It’s a pretty easy job and the kids are sweet. But still – three jobs. Hope I have an awesome team of girls again this year – last year was a great season.

One more cute picture of Romelie just for the grandparents. Check back for more updates soon.

Cake walks and army crawling

Romelie crawls! Okay, well, she doesn't crawl, but she army crawls. She started Thursday night, just pushing herself around with her toes. Well, Friday at day care, she was apparently army crawling all over the place, and she continues to hone her skills today. She's becoming pretty good at it - check out the video of her crawling earlier today.

We got out some this week. Tuesday was our neighborhood carnival/party thing, so we went to check it out. We bought tickets for hot dogs but they were all sold out so we used our tickets to do the cake walk. Like, three times. No luck, unfortunately, but a good first cake walk experience.

Tomorrow night we're going to my dad's house to meet Great Uncle Bill and his family. They moved to Florida last summer and haven't met Romelie yet, so hopefully she'll put on her cute face. For those still uncertain, here are a few examples of what her cute face looks like:

Thomas family reunion

We just got back from St. Simons Island in Georgia. For those of you who have never been to Georgia…it’s hot there. Very hot.

We had a great time visiting with relatives. Romelie and I met lots of new people, while Chason had a chance to reconnect with family he hadn’t seen in some time. We arrived Friday evening and headed over to Duane and Carol’s (I hope I have the right spelling of Duane…someone correct me if I’m wrong!!). Carol is Chason’s second cousin (right? Mom’s cousin), and a fantastic cook. We went there Saturday night as well and had an amazing meal called a Low Country Boil which consisted of shrimp, sausage, corn, potatoes and onion. Delicious. I think I ate enough food in Georgia to feed at least two people. And we got to watch a video from about 20 years ago that was pretty fun – little Chason, aww…

Sunday was the big reunion, and we met lots of people. Lots. I remember some names, and I feel proud for that. Then great uncle Glenn took us on a tour of some Thomas family sites, including the house that he grew up in. It was pretty amazing, and Romelie was very well-behaved through the whole thing (thank goodness).

Most of the rest of the time was spent relaxing. We went to the pool a couple times and sat on the beach. Romelie loved playing in the dry sand, but she was scared of the crashing waves so we never actually made into the ocean (unlike her cousin Greta who played naked in the waves – super cute!). Monday we went on a boat ride with Duane and Carol and saw an alligator – well spotted, Chason – and ate more food.

All in all, good vacationing. Thanks so much to Diane and Roy for the gift of our accommodations – they were in a perfect location, and we had fun playing Spoons and Apples to Apples with the cousins. I’ll end this blog with an explanation of this video – Amanda, when she was about a year old in the video we watched Saturday, was asked the question, “How big is Amanda?” She responded by lifting both hands over her head, touchdown-style. Super cute. Well, Bronwyn starting asking the same question of Romelie, and Romelie did this:

Puppies and duckies and babies...oh, fer cute!

As promised:

and of course...

The puppies one didn't turn out so well. I was hoping to put her on her tummy and let the puppies crawl around her, but one of the puppies nipped her hand and she cried. So I figured it wasn't worth torturing her for a picture.

She comes home today! Romelie, we miss you!

And just for the record...I got no cleaning done. Chason and I went to dinner on Monday night and saw Iron Man last night. First movie in the theaters in a LONG time. Good stuff.

Fun times ahead

Just thought I'd send an update on our plans for the next couple of weeks. This weekend, we're headed up to my mom's place to see her baby puppies and baby ducklings. Many, many pictures involving babies, puppies, and ducklings will take place, so be sure to check back to see all the cuteness next week. Then the following weekend, we'll be heading down to Georgia for a Thomas reunion (that's Chason's mom's dad's family - I think that's right). So we'll get to see the cousins and aunts and grandmommy again as well as meet some new folks. Romelie's third vacation involving a plane ride...what a lucky baby.

We're also going to have our first few days without Romelie coming up. Jen (her daycare provider) is taking her one-week vacation next week, so my mom is going to watch Romelie. But she'll be watching her at HER home on Monday and Tuesday and at our home Wednesday and Thursday, which means...we'll be leaving her with her gramma for two nights. Sob. The "brighter-side-of-things" me is excited to get the house clean without interruption (I know, the brighter-side-of-things me is lame-o), but the rest of me is going to be super sad and a big worry wart while she's away. But this is good, right? It'll be a big step, but not a bad one, and it's only two days. She'll spend the whole time laughing at the puppies (that's what she does with our cats, anyways), she won't even notice that Chason and I aren't there. Maybe.

So that's it. Plus work and BBQs and baby food making and other merriment. Ooh, and working out. Started doing that last Monday. No dieting, though - I tried eating less and my milk supply went WAY down, so apparently my body won't accept anything less than tons of food. Thanks, body.