These 4 Walls

At 4 pm Sunday afternoon, I looked at Brent and told him that if I ever spend another weekend locked up in this house, someone was probably going to lose their life. And that someone would probably be him.

Over the course of my 48 hour weekend, I spent 2 hours out of the house.


It was brutal.


But that's what happens when your baby has a runny nose and a smoker's cough. I blame Brent. He brought the funk in the house the week before last, gave it to me, then we gave it to Cecilia.


It wasn't pleasant at our house. Everything that wasn't done Cecilia's way caused drama. EVERYTHING. I think we all know how well that went over with me.


Cold + teething= one cranky baby and a mama on the edge.


It wasn't all drama, snot, and tears. There were moments we would roll around on the floor and laugh and make noises to get the other one to smile.


There was a few fixer-upper projects we had to do and Cecilia was glad to help.





Never seen the girl move as fast as she did once she saw a hammer in her daddy's hand.


I attempted to clean and straighten the house but about the time I got everything shoved in a closet (out of sight, out of mind) I heard the sound of a 1000 piece puzzle hit my kitchen table.

Don't try to call us, we will be busy for the next 2 weeks.

And while we sorted through 1000 pieces that seemed to all look alike, Cecilia sat down for a movie and snack.

About 10 pieces in, I bailed on the puzzle and joined her. Toy Story 3 was WAY more interesting than the 1000 tiny pieces laying on my kitchen table.

The snotty nose is still with us but the smoker's cough is gone.

One day the sun will decide to come out and stay for good and all the snotty nose everywhere will disappear.

Another Year Older

Here's to you, Uncle Mayo...

Happy birthday!

We hope your birthday is as fabulous as you are!

Down the Hatch!

We aren't sure when this happened...

One day she grabbed the bottle as if she had been feeding herself for months.

The one-hander has even been mastered...

She acts like nothing is new.


Seriously Dad, nothing to see here.

There's no telling what other tricks she has up her sleeve.

10 Months

My, my what a completely different baby you are! I shouldn't use the word "baby" because I feel like I have a toddler.

I'm guessing here but based on your last doctors visit at the beginning of last week, you are weighing about 22.5-23 lbs and are about 27 1/4" long (9 month stat so you could be a tad longer). You wear 12 months clothes, size 3 diaper and a size 2 shoe.

Your personality has really come out this month. Words I would use to describe you: dramatic, hard headed (sorry it comes from both sides and you had no choice!), sweet, funny, and loving.

Your daddy and I laugh everyday over something you've done or a new facial expression. Here lately you will shrug your shoulders, wrinkle your nose and flash a big smile. We have no idea where you got this but it is the funniest thing! I keep trying to get it on camera but most of the pictures look like you are trying to handle your business.

You LOVE food and are a healthy eater. You have a big bowl of oatmeal in the mornings, a fruit or veggie for lunch, puff as a snack and a veggie/meat and a fruit for dinner. You are still taking 4-8 oz bottles but we are switching to whole milk this month! My pocketbook thanks you!

We have started letting you feed yourself. I asked the daycare to help us out and apparently you picked it up in a day!

I'm assuming it didn't take you long to figure out that if you do it yourself the food will go in a lot faster!

You are now a crawler. You don't find it necessary to crawl from room to room but you will crawl to get into something you aren't supposed to or to grab a toy your eyeballing.

You love to stand and are really good at it. You will hold on to my legs or the ottoman for support and just hang out awhile.

You have gotten brave and let go a few times and can stand for about 2 seconds then fall. But no worries you just pull right back up.

We've gotten you to take a few steps while holding on to us and you are getting stronger with it. We are hoping we have a walking flower girl come April.

You are still a really good sleeper at night. You usually take about 1 good nap a day so by 7:30 you are pooped and ready for bed. You then sleep until about 5:30. We try and leave you up a little longer on the weekends so we can sleep in a bit.

I'm not really sure how you sleep so well because you are a WILD woman in the bed!

No wonder I never get much sleep when we share a bed. You flop around like fish out of water!

This month has been so much fun! You are interacting more and more and becoming a little girl. Its true I want to slow things down but on the other hand I love celebrating your milestones and watching you grow!

Daddy and I love you very much, even if you are the most dramatic thing I have ever seen!

Contentment

I never thought this day would come. I have prayed hard and my heart has begged for this day.


It's a day where I can finally say, "I'm ok with Cecilia going to daycare."


After a rocky start and a VERY rough fall, I am finally at a place of contentment with daycare. Cecilia spends her day with 3 wonderful women who seem to love her as their own. There aren't too many days that I walk in that I don't find one of them holding her. One has even taken her on her lunch break because "Cecilia just didn't want to be away from me."

They openly admit to spoiling her and you can tell by her actions! She is used to nonstop attention and we usually have to detox on the weekends!

They are always happy to see her and sad when she isn't there. I know she isn't the only one they show this kind of attention to. It's another reason why I have found contentment. I know there are no favorites and that all the kids are loved on equally.

I am very thankful for those women. More than they will ever know or I can express. Not everyone can do what they do and they are the reason it's a little easier sending my baby to daycare.

I won't say there still aren't days that I can't even make it out of the parking lot before I breakdown. But those days are far and few between. And I'm not saying given the chance I wouldn't stay home with her everyday. But finding this place where I'm at with the situation has lifted a huge weight off my shoulder.

Maybe this will make me stronger when she goes off to college or moves farther than an arms length away. I doubt it but it is a good thought.

A Good Balance

This weekend was a good balance of busyness mixed with lots of family time.

Our weekend started off with a last minute sleepover at my parent's. I had a baby shower early Saturday morning, so I decided to load Cecilia and I up and stay at my parent's. It worked out beautifully! Cecilia ended up sleeping till 7:30 am and I was one happy mama because I was able to sleep that late too!

Saturday morning, I helped host a baby shower for Natalie. She is expecting Jackson in a few weeks so we showered her with lots of gifts!

Jaclyn did an amazing job decorating and pulling it all together.

As you can see the sun was super bright but Jac has better pictures that really show off the decor.


After the shower, my mom and I took Cecilia to her very first kid birthday party. One of Mom's co-worker's has a son who just turned 1 and they had a Mickey themed party.

All the little ones got their very own Mickey ears and there was Mickey everywhere! They were even VERY smart and had a TV set up playing Mickey dvds for the kids to watch.

Cecilia, however, didn't need the entertainment. She had Kila!

Kila kept Cecilia entertained for most of the party and Cecilia had a good time. Our first birthday party was a success!

The rest of our weekend was full of family time. We get so few weekends with Brent here with us so we like to make the most of it. We even managed to get a few things done around the house while Cecilia took a nice LONG nap yesterday.

Today, it was back to work and I'm wishin' for another weekend.

The Baby Shuffle

I used to love snow days when I was in school.

On the morning I woke up to snow, I would pray it was enough to keep us home. When I finally heard my school's name on the closed list, I would shout and jump up and down and go back to sleep.

Those days were wonderful!

Now, snow days turn my world upside down.

It hasn't happened often; only twice so far. But as soon as we see Cecilia's school's name across the screen, I'm on the phone dialing my parents to see if we can do the baby shuffle. My next call is to my Nanny to see if she cares to have a visitor.

Que baby shuffle. I take Cecilia to my parent's house. My mom takes Cecilia to my Nanny's house on her way to work.

Thankfully, she is willing to help us out when a snow day occurs or when Cecilia can't go to school. They love playing together and Cecilia is always on her best behavior. I'm not sure which one of them laughs more during the day!

I don't know how some people manage without family/friends around to help out. It takes a village these days!

A Clean Bill of Health

A few days before Christmas, Tuck came to stay with us for the holidays.


Thankfully today we found out we can send him packing in a few more days and we are hoping we won't see him for a really long time.

With all that has been going on with Cecilia and the holidays, I have failed to mention a few new tricks she has learned.

For starters, we finally have a mover! Not a fast mover or even a constant one, but a mover none the less. She started crawling 12-30. According to Brent she has done it before but he didn't consider it a crawl since she didn't go very far. Hello! Any movement from our child who seems content staying in one place is a big deal! Anyway, since then she has moved from here, there and yonder. This weekend she spent much of her time mopping my floors.

Second, I have worked with her on giving kisses. I will ask her to 'give kiss' and she puts one right on me. (See below)

Now you really have to like open mouth, lick kind of kisses but lucky for me those are my favorite coming from my precious baby!

Third, we have been able to start her on table food. SWEET! So far we have just worked with green beans and the baby puffs.

I would love to say its going well but she seems to think the concept is to mash it with her hands then throw it on the floor.

It is a total score for Colt! I think he ends up with more in his belly than she does!

Finally, she has added a new word to her vocabulary. Hi/Hey. We can sometimes get her to say it when she is supposed to but most of the time she just says it at random times. About like her waving out of nowhere. Sometimes to herself and backwards and sometimes in the right direction using both hands.

All these things have literally just happened. I feel like she makes all kinds of leaps and bounds all at the same time. I didn't want to wait until her 10 month post to write about it because the way my mind is working right now it might never get told!

Long Locks

In the past couple of weeks we have noticed Cecilia's hair really filling in. So much so during bath time I am able to do this...


If I try hard enough, I could probably get it into a ponytail.

Excuse her being super close to the camera. She had just discovered she wasn't touching me so she was trying to get to me.

It is coming in dark, but what choice did it have, and a little thin. I kind of reminds me of my hair when I was younger especially when a few strands fall over her ears and stick out. It will be interesting to see which turn it makes. She could have Brent's super dark thick hair or my medium dark kind of thin hair.

I do know one thing; I will let her wear her hair however she pleases. I was never allowed to make decisions about my hair length when I was younger. I did one time when my dad took me to beauty shop. When we came home with my new short hair, my mom was not happy. I'm pretty sure my hairdresser, my dad and I all got threatened that if we ever did that again we were in MAJOR TROUBLE! And of course then my dad was never allowed to take me to the beauty shop again and my hairdresser only took orders from my mom. We all remember this story very well. It was not a good day in the Mayeur household.

Oddly enough, I have only cut my hair short twice in my life after that when I was old enough to make my own hair decisions. I think I just wanted it short back then because my mom wanted it long. Her struggle with me started at a very early age. As I'm positive mine will start the moment Cecilia can talk in full sentences.

I'll be needing the names of some good drugs please.

It's Game Day, Baby!

Somehow the stars aligned and the football gods were upon us because we scored tickets to the Colts vs. Titans game on Sunday thanks to my FIL.

Brent and I were pumped. It was my first Colts game and his first game in the new stadium. Regardless of the game time switch which would put us home in the wee hours, we were there!

Thanks Brent! Next time just run right at me when I'm taking a pic.

It was a sea of blue and white and everyone there was excited. This was a game changer. We win, its a ticket to the playoffs. We lose, not so much.

Our tickets were great! Right close to the action where you felt like you were cheering at your high school's football game.

I felt all nervous and giddy as the players ran out as if I was about to play. That's what the stadium does to ya. My heart stopped every time the Colts kicked off. Best feeling!

I may have married into the Colts fan club but over the years I have grown to not only like the team but have a lot of respect for the franchise and its players.

They are one of the few teams whose player's names aren't spread across the headlines in the latest scandal. When Tony Dungy was there, he picked players who not only played well but also those who would take their job seriously and respect the position they held.

The 6 of us "kids" had a lot of fun as we usually do when we can get away just us. Again, I hate that these events only happen to us a few times a year.

Me, Brent, Kathie, and Brandon (Brent's older brother).

Kathie, Brandon, Kaci, and Bryan (Brent's younger brother)

We managed to pull out a "W" Sunday at the last second which means PLAYOFFS BAY-BEE!

Gosh I sound like such a Colts fanatic. Seriously, it's the stadium!

Christmas in Muncie

This weekend we headed to Muncie to celebrate Christmas with Brent's family.

We had many events planned, the first one being a New Year's Eve party. Every year his parents get together with 2 other couples to eat, hang out and ring in the New Year. His parents hosted this year so we decided to celebrate with them along with Brent's younger brother, his wife and their 2 girls.


We had a lot of fun catching up with everyone and enjoying a low key night. Cecilia did pretty well for her first New Year's Eve..she lasted until about 8:30.

I am still recovering from staying up that late. 12 is a far cry from my normal bedtime!

The next day was the Miller Christmas.

It usually takes us all day but this year every one's list was pretty short so it didn't take near as long. Plus we somehow convinced his parents to let us open our stocking the night before. That has NEVER happened and we still don't know what we said to finally convince them. The boys (who really didn't want to open but us girls did) kept saying 'are we really doing this right now?' It didn't help that it was 1 in the morning!

At their house we all open gifts one at time so we let Aubrey go first since she clearly was the only grandchild who knew what was going on. Cecilia patiently waited her turn then went to town!

She got more cute clothes and toys to play with.

But as it always goes, she would have much rather play with my water bottle than the new toy sitting in front of her face!

I kept trying to get it away from her and get her attention on the new toy but I failed several times!

That night Cecilia got to meet a new cousin of hers, Adyson. She is 5 and clearly loves little ones. While I was feeding Cecilia, she came over to rub on her and to talk to her. She is so precious!

I hate that Christmas time is about the only time we are all together. With all of us living in 3 different states and very busy schedules it makes family time hard but we enjoyed it.

The two newbies...

Nora and Cecilia

And two more newbies...

New moms that is!

On Sunday, the 6 of us "kids" went to the Colts game while Brent's parents watched the girls. It deserves its own post so I will chat about that later so for now I shall crawl back to my bed because my eyes can't stay open any longer!