Yuula And The Guitars

This is Yuula

This is the guitars

This is Yuula and the guitars

I think I'll start her on bass

Gorilla Girl Does The Duck Run

The Room Of Doom

Today we tackled the toughest room in the house. The dumping ground thru the summer and into the holidays and the new year. Not to mention all supplies hidden in the nooks and crannies, bits and pieces of projects we planned on getting around to on those rainy days and then never did. This day was dreaded. We put our heads down and got thru it, and possibly even had a good time by the end of it all. Yuula appreciates another room for her to run around in, and I finally have the setup I was looking for. Albeit temporarily.

Yuula helped vacuum.

And then she ran around like a bird.

And we love her.

Mystery Solved Thru Nostalgia

five years ago, tonight

February 27th 2007 @11:00pm

Canton Mill Lofts

Canton, Georgia

...and she wonders why we have a broken broom downstairs

Who Eats Black Raspberry?

Monday's are always such a flash. Today was tired baby day. My parents came out this weekend and wore her little ass down. That's fine tho. Whenever my parents come out it gives us an excuse to break out of the grapefruit and yogurt cycle.

Plus my father's itchy hammer hand couldn't resist pushing us to finally put up the shelves and decor in Yuula's room. It looks good tho. hanks G-pa.

Screaming Herself To Sleep

...and a heel stretch to boot

While We're Out And Early

Early morning trip to the storage unit turns into a kamikaze style visit to the grocery. Stocking up on whatevers and eating donuts on the aisles, that's how we do it.

A Corner Formerly Known As Useless

Living in an A-frame by way of barn style house has presented some challenges in the ways of maximizing wall space. Yesterday I think we finally made something out the strange slanted cubby corner next to my side of the bed when I transformed it into a 3 foot deep closet that rendered useless an entire dresser and wall of chicken coops worth of clothes.

Victory.

It was wasted space that had guitars collecting dust and a dumping site for my unmentionables and while there's still some construction to be done to make it look less utilitarian (like a nice 7'x3' piece of wainscoating to cover it and a curtain to hide it), this month has seen a real purging of the unwanted unnecessities in this house. Spring is coming folks. We need to make room.

I Love You Olive Yuula

She gets that from her mother....

thank goodness.

Making Duck Soup

There's A Second Bourne

I don't know how I feel about this...

Yes I do.

Feet In The Beads

So last night Yuula starting playing this strange new game with her beads, which up until now resided stringently around her neck or stored in the hidden seat of her pink truck. But with this new game a whole new world of bead usage has been discovered and I'm not sure we're ready for the ramifications of such a revelation.

The game is quite simple. Step 1: Get beads.

Step 2 is laying those beads out in as close to an open form as possible, but at least big enough to fit two tiny feet inside of.

Step 3 is then step inside beads and with deep concentration remain inside beads for an indeterminate period of time, but at least long enough so that your parents look at each other with expression of concern for what they may have created and wonder if there's any remedy for this obvious abnormality.

Step 4 is apparently run around beads as if you, or maybe they, are on fire.

Good game. I think she won tonight.

The Days Are Higher

I made a nice transition towards comfort in the new office space today. It is a whole new world up here, for myself and Yuula. Now instead of having a free for all in the living room she has fulltime access to her own bedroom, plus ours, which really is a better deal if you ask me. Plus I know she won't be getting into food, fire, or the like. So there's that. I did try and leave her down in the living room yesterday while I worked upstairs but that lasted about 8 minutes when I heard what sounded like this...

So that was the end of that experiment. But she likes the change so far. There's still a TV if she wants to watch some Sprout, and there's all new toys and books in her room, so it's kinda like Christmas. Plus she really likes her duck bath, even when it's not bath time.

To play in...

To watch TV in...

Or to take a nap in.

But finally today we did use it for what it was intended for. Bath time,

which she just doesn't get enough of. And it does lower her energy level a notch or two, so it's a little easier to transition to bedtime. I thought I'd put the nail in the coffin with a little Pajanimals sleepy time show but those fools were having a party, singing and splashing and taking rocketships into outerspace. I'm trying to put a baby to bed here Jim Henson. Pull it together please.

Eyes: Piers Morgan interview Chris Christie

Ears: Ryan Teague - Field Drawings

Muddy Bum

We have a patch of slippery mud in our yard, about 2 feet by 8 inches wide, and while we loaded vans and trucks yesterday we let Yuula play in the yard with her big purple ball and sure enough...

She found it.

Storing Sundays

Storing Sundays. Sounds like we figured out a way to collect the best day of the week and set them aside for later on in life, a 401k-day if you will. Let's see that's 52 Sundays a year, I'm 33, Laura's 25 and Yuula's 1, we got about 3000 Sundays waiting for us. We should start cashing in now...

However, that is not the intent of the title. I mean that we spent Sunday, the entire Sunday working in our new storage unit. We use Uncle Bob's. They got a nice family vibe. We've inhabited a 5x10 unit for a couple years now, but since the baby and our neverending home re-decor we've been forced into a larger space. Three times larger. 10x15. Nice. So the job yesterday was making three trips with both vehicles full each time, and shifting the stuff from the old spot to the new. 2-3 hours tops.

We started at 8am. Around 7:30pm Yuula had had enough and Laura took her home. I finished up around 8:30 and came home, feet sore from crawling around on concrete and back sore from lifting unnecessarily heavy boxes. So it's somewhat done. I mean, the stuff is in there. Still some organizing to do to optimize our space, plus Laura has a hit list of things that she wants to go and join the gang in good ol' 3024. If I don't adhere to her request I just may end on that list myself.

Moves Getting Weirder

Making The Way In The World Today

Today was very productive and very busy and very scattered and very messy. But it's all come together, sitting here at almost midnight and feeling like I've had my most constructive day in a long time. So many things were checked off the to-do list, I don't think I need one anymore. But that's not why you come here, to hear about my silly little heretofores. No. You come for cutie pie. Well she had a productive day to so, yeah.

She may have set the tandem record for messiest and most abundant ingestion of Cheerios.

Here she is after she decided it a good idea to climb up and stand on the swivel chair and try to erase Daddy's work files. Haha silly monkey.

She decided that today, she is no longer scared to climb the stairs solo. So that's a new thing to worry about.

She learned to keep lookout for Mommy so she can be the first one to give her a hug after work.

This is just her walking outside looking a little lost.

This is Yuula rediscovering that she owns a giant purple ball.

This is when she took the giant purple ball for a walk.

This is when we thought it may be fun to fill her cup up with marinara. Why not right?

And this is when her and her mother had an angry stare contest. No one has won yet. They're still down there.

Even the cats were productive today.

Here's Swaboda working on completely destroying our garden screen door so all manners of wildlife can take vestige in our hard grown produce.

Here's another one climbing the tree to, well, get higher off the ground.

This cat is running.

And at the end of the day, after closing out a large and trying job, re-registering the van, renewing my license, catching up with our finances, fixing our EZ Pass disasters, upgrading our storage unit, and relocating the computer I can lay down and sleep well, because tomorrow for work, I have a very short commute.

Not bad.

I have a lot of t-shirts.

Eyes: Pirates of the Caribbean part whatever

Ears: Lamchop - Mr. M