Thanksgiving

Here are a couple of shots of Noelle in her new coat. It's very warm and she seemed to like it, but it provides her limited mobility when she's in the carseat. Her arms are pretty much stuck in that position.


This is Noelle enjoying a hug with Uncle David and his dog, Lucy, while Hannah pouts for being left out of the hug.

Here's a camera-phone picture at lunch on Saturday. Noelle entertained us all as she fed herself applesauce with a spoon. Incidentally, applesauce is her new favorite word. It usually comes out as "appleposs."

One other thing...

We went out of town for Thanksgiving, and guess what I forgot??? Diapers and Wipes!!! What is happening to me???

Mommy Brain

I've heard forever that when you get pregnant and have kids, all of a sudden, it's like your brain is gone. A few of my friends have said you get your brain back after the first one is born, but after your second one it's gone forever. Even though we don't have two kids, my "mommy brain" is in full force.

Over the last couple of days I:

1) Forgot to turn off our oven after dinner & Chris noticed it the next morning (cringe).

2) Emptied a can of vegetables into a pan, but forgot to turn it on until the whole rest of the meal was ready.
3) Left wet laundry in the dryer because I forgot to turn it on, until the next load was ready to be dried.

4) Have almost poured Noelle real milk in the morning instead of her rice milk--which would have resulted in a very horrible mess.

5) And the worst of all: I left my purse in my grocery cart at Wal-Mart (At least I didn't leave Noelle, right??). It was not there when I went back, resulting in an evening canceling credit/debit cards, etc. Urg! And I really liked my old driver's license photo!!

I have some theories about mommy brain. Maybe it's from sleep deprivation. Although I'm getting plenty of sleep now, I'm wondering what a few months of only sleeping 3 hours at a time did to me permanently. Also, I now have to think for 3 members of the family...me, Noelle, and the dog. :-) You thought I was going to say Chris, right?? Getting the 3 of us packed to go out of town is brutal. But right now what is contributing most to my mommy brain is lack of "brain exercise." This brain used to do complicated math problems, prepare lesson plans, and read literature, but now I spend the majority of the day saying "Did you go potty?" and "Don't hit the puppy!"

At least I'm not the only one in the family suffering from this condition. The other morning, I went into the pantry for my cereal, and this is what I found. And the shock of the century is that I didn't do this!

My major accomplishment of the day:

I used up the last of our industrial sized Pine-Sol, all 1.12 gallons of it!! My mom took me shopping at Sam's when we moved into our house and bought us tons of cleaners...one of them being this huge Pine-Sol. I only use it for mopping and so it's taken FOREVER to use it up. I really hate mopping so this was a fun accomplishment today. Plus, I'm looking forward to choosing a new scent...hmm, maybe Orange Energy or Lavender Clean. I was getting kinda tired of the pine one.

Applesauce

It seems as though each new stage of eating takes a long time and makes a big mess, but is still fun. The next stage for Noelle is mastering her spoon. She seems to have a lot of fun feeding herself, but we're back to very messy, sticky faces.

She's no Popeye

Tonight while Sarah and I were eating our dinner, Noelle repeatedly asked to eat some of Sarah's spinach. She was persistent and always said please, so we gave her a bite. She liked it a lot and quickly asked for more. This went on for 4-5 bites, and then Noelle began to shudder and make an awful face each time she swallowed. She continued to ask for more though. I ran to get the camera to video her shuddering, and this is what we caught on tape.

This is where the spinach ended up.

Here are a couple random pics Sarah took of Noelle today.

On Wednesday nights Chris works with the 3rd - 6th graders at church in AWANAs. Since it was Halloween and the kids would want to dress up, it was deemed Bible Character Night. That way everyone could come dressed up, but it wouldn't be as some evil, one-eyed creature. Chris decided to join in the fun too. Here he is as Esau.