RAISE YOUR HAND

... if you wish you could be Hailee Steinfeld. Because, seriously? Beyond the fact that she is:

nice
cute as a button
well spoken
one frickin talented 14 year-old

... she got to wear this dress. To the Oscars. Where she was nominated. Sigh.

What was I doing at 14? Oh that's right, jumping on my trampoline and listening to Natalie Imbruglia.

Yesterday's winner Melissa Leo was first nominated two years ago which means to be in Hailee Steinfeld's same place Melissa had to wait THIRTY FOUR more years. Ouch. But I guess that's better than my statistics for potentially being nominated for an Oscar.

Sidenote - Here's another fun fact that blew my mind yesterday. The first movie Jennifer Hudson was in, she won an Oscar. The first album she ever recorded, she won a Grammy. That would be fantastic and all but I would be seriously paralyzed by my own standards. What is there left to do but go for the EGOT?

YOU ARE MY FAV

Today I needed a few good hours to work on some things for church and the only way to get everything done plus keep Finley alive was to keep giving her new things to interest her every ten minutes. I got a little desperate until I finally started giving her non-toy items. And you know what pre-occupied her the longest? A ribbon, a hair diffuser and some blank cds. Oooookay kid, whatever.

So for a good 30 minutes she played with these:


Instead of any of these:


Or these:




Dear Fin,

Remember this day. You have just set yourself up for years of really interesting Christmas and Birthday presents. But good news! You are gonna save mom and dad tons of loot! Thanks a heap.

Love, mamma & the dad

PS - When you are 16 and instead of a car you get an empty coke can and a crumpled piece of paper, no complaints. Remember, they are your FAVORITE!

CURRENTLY LISTENING

I've been listening to this on repeat all morning - can't get enough. SOOOOO GOOOOD. Right now my favorites are: Rolling in the Deep, Turning Tables, and Set Fire to the Rain. But they are all fantastic. I think for the first time ever an album lives up to the hype and is unbelievably better than her previous album 19. I'm so excited to have good new music again, lately I have been in quite a musical funk.

EIGHT MONTHS

Our little monkey is 8 months old and getting more personality every day. She has learned to squawk, squeel, and squirm to get her way - a trait she uses to her advantage constantly. If only she weren't so darn cute then I would be a good mom and actually teach her she can't her way every time. Oops. Oh well. I've already come to terms with the fact that she will be spoiled rotten.

She takes bathes in our tub but sometimes when she's really fussy we go check out the wonder that is the sink. She loves sitting in it and playing with the faucet. On this particular day Brad had been gone all evening at a church function and sometimes you just do what you gotta do to keep the baby happy.

She has made big advances into the forays of crawling. She can pretty much get wherever she wants to go with the speed depending on how badly she wants to put something in her mouth. Often she ends up with her arms and legs completely extended so it looks like she's doing push ups. Or she'll get really excited when she's crawling and rocks back and forth until she realizes she actually needs to move her limbs to propell herself forward. This new mobility adds another level of sadness to my day because she'll use all her energy to follow my around the house just to have me move again. She hasn't quite mastered the definition of, "I'll be right back don't waste your energy following me." Poor child.

I don't normally let her play under the desk with all the electrical cords ready to zap her to death, but she found her way under there when I was folding laundry and then complained until I turned her around. She just couldn't figure out how to get back out.

I got a BOB stroller for Christmas and I L-O-V-E, adore, and cherish him. If me and the BOB could be BFFs and braid each others hair and gab about American Idol, we would. Can't say enough wonderful things about him. Fin is just big enough for him and when the weather is nice we go running. When it's not (which is more often these days) we find an excuse to take the BOB to the grocery store or library.

We sometimes wonder if we went home with the wrong baby. How could we have gotten so lucky with such a happy cute one? Maybe I should read that last statement on the days when it seems like she won't stop crying and pooping. Ha! Funny because it's true. Either way, through the good and the bad we love her more and more every day.

SPELLING FAIL

{image via flickr}

Do you ever find that there are certain words you just CAN NOT learn to spell? Because it happens to me all the time and I hope I'm not the only one. It's like there is some sort of mental blockage and no matter how many times you look up certain words and convince yourself that THIS is the time you'll remember, you just can't seem to get it in to the long term memory folder. It's not even like they are hard words! Which makes it all that much more embarrassing when they are consistently misspelled. Oh sheesh I'm ashamed just thinking about the awkward situations in which I've misspelled certain words. Here are my most common down falls:

definitely - I always put an 'a' instead of an 'e' or accidentally turn it in to 'defiantly,' which as it turns out has a different meaning

surprise - I literally learned to spell this word like two weeks ago, wow, who knew there were two 'r's? Apparently not me.

clothes - I always forget the 'e' so it often sounds like I'm wearing cloths instead of clothes, I vividly remember my fourth grade teacher circling all the 'cloths' in my thought journal with an angry red pen but I still have to hesitate and double check it every time.

Plus it's not like my spelling will get any better. I'm so lazy, even my cell phone has spell check. Oh, well.

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED

GOOD DEED #1: Since Fin has started crawling I've discovered how disgusting I keep my floors. My apologies to anyone who has ever stepped foot in my house. So today I swept my floors and then mopped them by hand. I have wood floors so I use a hot water/vinegar combo and face it, mops are awful, so I use rags. It took a while but they look great and Fin no longer ends up with a coating of dust on her belly.

PUNISHMENT: Just as I was finishing our bedroom I went behind the door to get the corner which meant Fin had exactly 45 seconds on her own without my attention. She made good use of her time and promptly went over to the bowl of dirty water/vinegar and tipped the entire thing onto herself and the hallway. I was alerted to the disaster by a wave of water hitting my feet. One baby that smelled like an easter egg? Check. One hallway with two gallons of water on it? Check

GOOD DEED #2: Brad has really longs days and sometimes at night he has to go back to school for meetings, studying, or preparing for patients. So last night he wanted to take a power nap as I watched tv. Then Fin decided she wanted to take a pre-bedtime nap. So the baby and the husband snoozed peacefully on our bed while I watched American Idol with the volume way way down.

PUNISHMENT: Fin woke up after ten minutes, gave me a big smile and started coughing. It wasn't an alarming cough but I could tell she had something in her throat. So I lifted up one of her arms and gave her back a little rub. What came next was shocking to say the least. About a gallon of vomit erupted from her tiny little mouth. Not cute baby spit up, VOMIT. It went all over her and all over me. It's a miracle none ended up in my mouth. Gross. I was in so much shock I just took us both in to the shower, clothes and all.


There were a few other examples from this past week, but I'll spare you the details. And I was going to make brownies for Brad's church class but forgetaboutit. I'm afraid of what might happen!

CHRISTMAS WEEK TWO

Christmas morning Finley could not contain her excitement, although I'm pretty sure she had no idea that this day was unlike any other except that a whole lot more people were around. This didn't last too long, however, because after 30 minutes she was ready to eat again and have a nap. Her first Christmas morning was a lot to handle so we went upstairs and she napped for a good ten minutes and was awake and ready for action.

This was the Christmas morning gang. My in-laws, Brad's older sister and husband and their six kids, and Brad, Finn, and me!

Finley tried on her new ruffle pants just before she broke down begging for food and a nap. PS - Christmas morning is all about lazying about and not wearing makeup so don't judge me!

Finners and her cousin Ella (who simultaneously dressed for Christmas morning and a 1987 prom. It was hilarious).


To quote my brother-in-law Ken, "What did families do before youtube?" I believe in this picture they are watching Double Rainbow on Ken's Ipad. What does this MEAN?

After the entire gang (all 35 of us!) arrived in Naperville "plans" kind of went out the window so we ended up doing a lot of varied fun stuff. One night everyone went to our local church building and played some games in the gym (after we did a service project of cleaning). Most of the moms sat around with the babies and talked while the dads and kids ran around.





Finners loved this walker of my sister-in-laws. My pediatrician scared me with stories of imminent death if I ever put her in one these but she survived to tell the tale. I might consider getting one for my next kid, it was fun to see her having some independent fun at the pre-crawling stage.

Lauren was doing some major trash talk during kickball.


WICKED! Brad surprised me with tickets to see Wicked in Chicago for Christmas, which just happened to be in town at the same time. We even got to go with Brad's brother and wife and their daughter Lauren. I LOVED it and would go again in a heartbeat. Glinda and Elphaba were both fantastic. Glinda was very Amy Poehler funny. It was also nice to have a night out without the Finners. Although when we got home she had apparently cried for about an hour. I'm sad that she cried, but it's also nice to know she missed us. Is that a horrible thought?



Naperville got quite a bit of snow right before Christmas so one day the kids went sledding. Brad went to take some pictures but couldn't resist taking a few turns down the hill even though he was not at all dressed for the snow. Crazy husband.






It was fun to see everyone for Christmas and get in a nice loooong vacation. It might not always be so easy for us to see family depending on where we move next so we are spoiling ourselves with as much family time as possible. The next time the entire Carn clan will be together is this July for Family Reunion 2011 in Utah.

TRUE STORY

Today while Finley and I were watching the Pats get their trashed kicked, Brad was getting ready to take a bath. That's right. The girls were watching football and the man was taking a bath.



Dear Jets,

Thanks for taking out the Pats. Go Bears!

Love,
Brad. Bridget. & Fin

SEVEN MONTHS

Our little chub-chub is seven months! Her list of accomplishments this month include:

. Belly surfing on our hard wood floor. I don't think she'll ever learn to crawl because she's getting pretty efficient at pushing herself around on her belly. Oh well.


. Screeching. No this isn't a Saved By The Bell reference. More along the lines of a screeching that sounds like a whistle or possibly Mariah Carey doing vocal practices in her upper range. Not fun.

. When she's not screeching she has started to do more baby talk. She has mastered the "gahb" sound. It's only a matter of minutes until she's reading Shakespeare I can feel it!

. Eating solids. And by "solids" I mean all manner of pureed food and some puffs that dissolve in her mouth. BUT she has learned to chew the puffs as they dissolve before swallowing them whole. We had a few scary almost choking instances that got my heart racing. But all is good, everyone is still alive. (sidenote - whenever she takes the first bite of something she makes this face as if she's stunned/angry that something has entered her mouth.)
. She's starting to get more hair!


. When she gets excited she flaps her arms like a seal. This most often happens when she encounters new people, when dad comes home, and when I'm too slow to feed her the next bite of food. It's adorable.
. The most common comment she gets is about her "big blue eyes" and the fact that she is such a good happy baby. No complaints there!
. She has been wiggly but generally quiet through church the past few weeks. In fact this past Sunday I got to sit through the first hour without having to get up.
. She's started tilting her head to the side when she smiles, much like an adorable puppy. It makes me melt every time! (Yes I just compared my child to a dog, get over it.)

. She loves all these electronic - cell phone, mouse, remote... If one comes in to her view she becomes unhinged until she can touch it. So now we have to keep these items out of her line of sight. Just add it to the list of ways a baby changes EVERYTHING in ways you'd never imagine.
. She has two bottom teeth. Hopefully she doesn't have any more coming soon I need a break from teething.
. Balancing. She can sit by herself now unassisted. Her balance still needs some improvement because as soon as she reaches for something she usually topples over which startles her and makes her cry.

. And I've saved the best for last. She is finally sleeping through the night! We had to wait for the perfect storm where she wasn't teething or sick and for a time where we could be consistent. That day ended up being when we got back from Christmas vacation. Her old bedtime was about 11:30 on a normal night so we are working on moving that back. The new schedule is I nurse her and put her down between 10:00 and 11:00 and let her cry it out and she has never cried more than 8 minutes! I was all geared up for hours of crying for Finley and hours of emotional torment for me. But it was really anticlimactic. Oh well, I'm not complaining! She sleeps solid until 8:30 or 9am and it is fantastic! My friend at church asked if I love Finley a little more when I have a full nights rest and the answer is, honestly, yes. Sleep problem? Solved. For now.

A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

Our first week in Naperville was very relaxing and calm. We slept in, went shopping, and ate way too much. In fact I spent so much time being lazy that I realized two days before Christmas that I still hadn't picked up Brad's present ("oops"). So I went to the mall by myself which turned out to be a big mistake. Traffic was insane and the mall was even more insane. While I was hurling myself from store to store (the specific Bears hat I was trying to find Brad was sold out EVERYWHERE) I noticed the crazy line of parents waiting with their crying children to get a picture taken with Santa. I thought, "oh those poor parents I'm glad I don't have to do that. Oh wait! I'm a parent. I do have to do that!" From there I started getting guilty that I hadn't done more to make this first Christmas special for Finley.

So I went home and declared to Brad (remember this is TWO days before Christmas) that I wanted Finley to get her picture taken with Santa. Brad is a lovely sort of husband and could tell this was one of those occasions to humor me. So we got up Christmas Eve morning and got to the mall when Santa was scheduled to arrive at 10am. It turned out that pictures with Santa would cost at least $25 dollars. Apparently you CAN put a price on memories and that cost is $25... too steep for us. So we went to the center of the mall and took some pictures by the giant indoor tree. I was disappointed but satisfied with our effort.



Fast forward a few hours later. We are back at Brad's parents house and I hear a knock at the front door. And who could it be? SANTA! Or rather Brad's wonderful neighbor dressed as Santa on his way back from another neighbor's house making a Christmas delivery. They knew nothing of our bad luck with Santa earlier in the day but just randomly thought to stop by and say hello. We called it our Christmas miracle because not only did Finley get a picture with Santa but she got about 400, they were free, and she didn't have to sit on some strangers lap that smelled like beef and cheese!


Plus they brought Finley a present! She got to open her very first Christmas present with them... a beautiful ornament. The Simnick's are truly awesome people - their kindness goes on and on.


Other than our Christmas miracle here are a few other pictorial highlights from our first week in Naperville.



Every year Brad's siblings would fight over who got to put the star on the top of the advent tree on December 24th. This year Brad was the only sibling there on the morning of the 24th and he allowed Finley to be the first grandchild to put the star on the tree. The siblings were none too pleased.


Evidence of our sleeping in. Also evidence that Finley was not a good sleeper while were on vacation.

This was me showing Finley snow. I thought it was fun. Finley thought it was cold. Put a hat on that noggin!