time to get up

Most years for Memorial weekend, you can find us with the family in West Virginia. We have very busy plans of doing nothing all day long punctuated by bonfires at night. This year was no exception.

Our "cabin" is my dad's hunting hideaway. The women get to visit when there isn't any game in season. It's barely a two room shack with bunk beds and an outdoor toilet. But it's pretty nice as far as shacks go.

But when you stay in a one bedroom shack with a baby, you're pretty much bound by baby's schedule. If JT napped, we stayed on the porch. This probably helped keep us from overeating much since the snacks were inside and he napped about 3-4 hours each day. If JT was awake, everyone was awake because he isn't very quiet.

Here he is patrolling the bunks for sleepers:


Aha! He spots some!


Wake up, Aunt Theresa and Uncle Bill. Wake up! "No, no... go away," they say.

Having no luck with his aunt and uncle, JT moves on to Grandpa. "Here's your water, Grandpa. This will ease the cruel blow of morning. I heard you were up pretty late."


"Oh good, you're up. I've been dying to know which is harder, this block or your head. Lean down here and let me find out."


"Uh-oh. Do you think he'll still make us breakfast?"

last weekend

Last weekend was the first Worthington farmer's market of the summer. JT and I met up with Jenny and Becka for breakfast at La Chatelaine. We finished breakfast before the market even opened, so we got to stroll around before it got crowded. I got JT some apples from Gillogly's Orchard and a couple potted herbs for me.

My first mother's day was lovely. I got to sleep in a bit while the boys made me breakfast. I also got a homemade card and a gift card toward a new camera lens.



I spent the rest of the day restocking the freezer with baby food. Appropriate, huh?

tag, you're it

This came by email today, but makes for good blog fodder when I'm too busy watching Lost to create an original blog post. Plus, John is eating all the popcorn and I want to get in on that...

Two names you go by

1. Stacia

2. Mama (pronounced "bah-bah")

Two things you are wearing right now:

1. A black patent and leopard print belt

2. A sweater vest

Two favorite things to do:

1. play with JT

2. scrapbook

Two things you want very badly at the moment:

1. to be with JT

2. more time to do fun stuff

Two favorite pets you have had/have

1. Bubba, my kitty

2. Beady and Speedy, hermit crabs

Two things you'll eat today:

1. wedding soup

2. oreos

Two things you're doing tomorrow:

1. working

2. Going to the YMCA with my boys.

Two longest car rides:
1. All over Ireland

2. Harrisburg, PA to Boston, MA. With a kidney infection....makes it seem longer

Favorite Holidays
1. christmas

2. 4th of July

Two favorite beverages:
1. Tall non-fat no-whip mocha

2. Grande java chip frappuccino, no whip

Now you answer the questions!

no, no

So JT is quite the expert crawler now. He's well into the curious phase also. You can imagine what that means... we say NO a lot now. Let me tell the story of last Friday evening, Pioneer Woman style, with lots of photos.

It was raining cats and dogs outside. It had been a long week, with a sick, feverish baby and we were tired. So we were trying to lounge around while waiting on the pizza delivery. Not JT... this was prime exploration time. Here he is tasting the tv stand:

So after saying "No," "no, no," and "no, JT," multiple times, Dada gets up and removes JT from the tv stand.

JT wanders over to the coffee table and tries to grab whatever he can reach (scrapbook, magazine, some crumbs). Dada tells him no multiple times and then finally removes him from the source of trouble.


You can imagine what happens next. JT wanders from the coffee table to the fireplace. Dada tells him no multiple times and then gets up to place the baby in a more suitable location.


The pizza arrived. We ate. Then we bathed baby boy and he was off to bed, postponing exploration and discovery to another day.

weed control

JT and dandelion, originally uploaded by brungrrl.

Happy Mother's Day from one happy mama... hope it was a great day! Here's a pic of our new "weed control system". hee hee.

the roundup

Not much is new on this rainy Thursday evening. I stayed home with JT yesterday. He has had a fever since Tuesday. We think it's roseola. He's acting perkier now and the fever is under control with medicine. So now we just wait for the rash to show up to signal the virus is on its way out! How about if I take pictures when it shows up?

Here are a few interesting things... Google Reader has a shared items page for each user. My page is here. I also have the feed for my shared items at the left side of this blog.

Ali Edwards is doing a series on photos + words this week. I love photos and words (obviously)... I would love to find time to follow along with her prompts.
Some Twitter friends (fellow Tweeters) are writing a short story via Twitter. Each person writes one line of the story at a time. It's fun to play along just to try the technology. My creative writing skills are not so much. I did have my Twitter followers wondering the other day when I "grabbed my helmet and ran out the door" though. lol. If you want to follow the story, get a Twitter account and track #shrttb. One thing to note, once you start tracking, you'll only get future tweets, not the full history.

Another friend passed along a few recent copies of The Economist. I've decided that I need to be more informed this election year. Plus, it's just interesting. That's right... I'm trading in my Memory Makers, Real Simple, and Wondertime subscriptions for The Economist. I always catch up on Vogue and Vanity Fair at the salon. heehee.

And that's life on the internet for this Thursday evening. Ciao!

this baby right now

football star
Originally uploaded by brungrrl

Right now, at almost 10 months old, this baby...

- Likes strings. Strings on toys are ok, but Mama's shoelaces are the bomb.
- Grunts and yells at us. Oh, he may not "cry" ever... but we get "yelled at" plenty. I'll be glad when he learns some words to express himself.
- Crawls all over the place. He follows us all over the house. Especially into the bathroom.
- Kicks his feet and grunts when I pick him up at the sitter. I need to be picking him up and kissing him RIGHT NOW.
- Loves the swing at the park. He is the noisiest baby on the swingset.
- Grabs your mouth when you try to sing him to sleep. Ok, I get the hint, I'll quit singing.
- Gets so sleepy, but fights sleep hard. Tonight he wrestled, literally wrestle-mania style wrestled with sleep.
- Likes to play catch with his Dada. Here's video proof.

Can scrapbooking really save the world?

Haha... my week of blog subjects as news headlines is coming to a close. I think I'm running out of steam with it anyway.

Yesterday was National Scrapbooking Day (NSD). Did you celebrate? I celebrate it every day, really. But yesterday it happened to coincide with needing to make some flyers for a scrapbooking night I'm putting together for the gals at church. The make-n-take I'm going to do that night will be a quick coffee sleeve book. So as part of the advertising for the event, I made up a few little books to stash in high-traffic spots at the church. In order to save time, I designed them digitally and printed. All I had to do then was put them together.

You've probably seen these little books before... but I did add one thing that is worth pointing out. I wanted these little books to have tear-out pages that ladies could take with them to remember the event details. To make sure they knew to tear out a page, I perforated near the binding. I used my Basic Grey Notch and Die Cutting tool to make the perforations. But really, there are a number of ways to do it... such as with a ruler and paper piercer or x-acto knife.

This would be a great way to make a coupon book as a gift. Or... a coupon book/gift card combination. If I get time to make one up, I might make a sample coupon book for the event. It would have to be tailored for the recipient, but I'm thinking coupons like "free hug", "ride to the airport", "dinner delivered to your door", "free night of babysitting", etc. Oh, the possibilities.

I'm very excited about the event... and hoping that the ladies at church will join me. I would love to have the opportunity to help others learn to explore family, creativity, and faith through scrapbooking.

The pretty flowers and other elements on the page are from an old Two Peas free kit. This little project is about as pink as I ever get.

Community spreads the digital television love

You might have heard that in February of 2009, television broadcasts convert from analog to digital. We have a high definition television that I have discovered I love. You might have heard me mention Sunrise Earth in HD. It's an experience!

But some folks in our city may not be aware of the changeover. They may not be aware that they'll need a converter for their existing tv. And they may not be aware that the government is offering assistance for purchasing these converters.

The following announcement from WOSU tells you how you can donate your converter coupon to someone who needs it (and why you should). So read this and go request your coupon. If you can get your coupon to me, I can trek on down to deliver the coupons to WOSU for you! If you live outside outside Columbus, find out if there is a similar program in your city.

Here's the info:

WOSU Public Media is offering a special opportunity to help your neighbor prepare for the digital conversion that arrives on February 17, 2009. In a nutshell, on that date the analog signal (or the over-the-air signal) will be replaced by a digital signal. Those folks still receiving television without the benefit of cable or satellite need to purchase a converter box that will translate the analog signal to a digital one.

We are asking the central Ohio community who has no need of the converter box coupons to go ahead and request those coupons from the NTIA. The NTIA has told us we can collect the unused coupons and then purchase converter boxes from local electronic companies that we will then distribute to the elderly and shut-in community through two social service agencies: the Central Ohio Area Agency on Aging (COAAA) and LifeCare Alliance (a nonprofit home care service that provides health care at home for senior citizens, disabled and the homebound). These agencies already go into the homes on a weekly basis, they have relationships with their clients, and so they are the best ones to do the installation (we are training them how to install the boxes). Our goal is to get these converter boxes into the hands of the most at-risk population who may not be able to secure the boxes themselves. WOSU staff will train the social workers of COAAA and LifeCare (who already go into the homes on a regular basis), and then those social workers will hook up the converter boxes for their clients.

Once you receive the coupons (and it takes about two months), you can drop them off at WOSU Public Media (2400 Olentangy River Road). It is important that we move quickly on this because it does take a while to get the coupons, and there is a finite amount of money the government has set aside for this. BTW, when you apply for a coupon at
dtv2009.gov, you get an online form page, and you check under TV service that “All or some of the TVs in my house subscribe to one or more pay services….”

This project has received a warm reception throughout central Ohio, and it has also allowed us to get the digital conversion buzz going in the community. The sooner we come together as a community to secure these boxes for our elderly neighbors the better: we don’t want anyone left without television in February when so many depend upon it as a lifeline to the external world. People are responding to this
message very positively—and most people are thrilled to be able to help those in need

Visit WOSU for more information.