Updates!

Reese and I enjoyed a week out of town visiting family and doing a little pre birthday celebrations. Grampy even made headway and got to play with Reese and hold her for a long time without Reese crying. Major accomplishment.
Reese really picked up a few more tricks this week, it was like a small light bulb went off in her head. We're looking forward to celebrating her first birthday this week.


Her new little denim overall dress. I bought this for her before she was even born and she can finally wear it.

When I get dressed, and she's not playing in the kennel, Reese spends her days taking my clothes out of the dresser.
Busted!
Reese trying to decide....a crawfish po'boy or a fried oyster basket
Ahhh meat!
Dad and his grill
Mom and Dad's house sans fence
Fun with Aunt Leslie, my number one favorite Aunt

She knows what she's doing
Playing by the fireplace
Can I pleeeeaaaase touch the camera!!!

Cooler weather! YEAH!

Yeah for an update with actual pictures! So things are back to normal here. Mom and Dad were able to get power on this evening. Grandma and Grandpa have power but no TV, and Nana is still using the extension cord which is powered off the neighbor's generator...hopefully she'll have power in the next day or so.

We are back on track at Stroller Strides after taking a short vacation due to the Hurricane. Next week we'll be running on our own in Kingwood (fighting off mosquitoes no doubt) as we'll be visiting the family (Ryan will be out of town all week).

Reese is standing up on her own for longer periods of time now, although she still likes to have something to hold on to. She's talking up a storm, it's still Chinese sounding, but she talks a LOT. We're getting ready for our second BIG Aggie tailgate this weekend and visiting with our friends from College Station.
Reese playing with the box of items we packed up while we "fled" Hurricane Ike. This is what we figured we would be sad if we lost had something happened to our house.
What the windows looked like after being boarded up. Tiny little holes for your hands to hold the boards while putting them up. As weird as it is being inside and having no sunlight, Reese slept

like a champ that morning. The bigger hair bow...before Church...
We didn't make it out of the living room before she pulled it out.
I think her thoughts would be "It's 7:15 a.m. what's with the pictures?"
Corpus is having a fluke weather system right now. It was 61 degrees when I woke up this a.m. It's WONDERFUL! I can't tell you how much I am enjoying Stroller Strides without choking on the humidity. I didn't have her in pants long, when it warmed up to 68 I put her in shorts. I think even she was thinking "WTF" about wearing pants.
Ok, so she looks slightly scary in this pic. Reese is in the process of cutting a tooth (or at least I hope so because she's been a bear lately) and so she has a runny nose. I think I took this as she was coughing up snot.

The madness was in FULL force on Monday night. I guess I would say it started at 1 a.m. that morning. Reese decided it would be fun to get up and not go back to sleep. We chilled on the couch for 2 hours before she finally passed out. At least she was nice enough to lay there in the dark quietly during that time. (I tired letting her stay in her crib but that induced a mad hysteria) The real fun was after her evening bottle. I should also preface this with...No Ryan was not at home, he was at a football meeting...OF COURSE!

She chugged her bottle like she was dunking her ring in Aggieland. I think I timed it at 1 min...needless to say after that we had a happy camper. I guess dinner that night didn't sit to well with her. After brushing her teeth she let me know just how much she loves me by throwing up directly on me not once but twice. I was holding her while we walked to her room so she hit me dead on the chest. I think I had 6 oz. of formula in my sports bra. Sorry folks, when discussing mothering madness I don't skip details.

So I cleaned that up, she played in the bathroom while I tried to hose myself off. I laid her down, she started to whine so I figured I would hold her for a little while since pretty soon she won't be a baby anymore. As I sat down in the chair...she graced me not once more but twice...dead on the chest with chunky dinner puke. Not cute baby puke anymore. This was full on big kid/adult puke. I think she took a note from the Exorcist because this was NASTY and had some force behind it. However after that she felt so good she stayed up until 10:15. Then Ryan wonders why sometimes I silently curse him in my head for always being gone. I would also like to point out the three times she has puked like that I was home alone each time. I think Ryan owes me. I'll tack that onto the list of IOUs.

I like Ike...

Well at least that was what the buttons said when Dwight D. Eisenhower was running for President of the United States. Well I fled to Houston only to have Ike follow me. We boarded up the house, took in everything from outside and the end result was NO rain and a little breeze here in our neck of the woods.
Now when I say Ike followed me to Houston, I really mean it. The whole thing pretty much passed right over Kingwood in the middle of the night. Leslie has had power, lucky girl and managed to take some pics and send them to us. Nana, Pop-pop, Grandma, Grandpa, Mom and Dad are all in Kingwood surviving. They don't have power right now but Mom and Dad have the generator turned on and are of course watching TV. All the old people survived the storm without any issues and amazingly our soon to be cousin in law James showed up from Alabama (he drove into the storm) so he would be in Houston to help with storm clean up. He worked magic as soon as he arrived, helping the fire department move trees off the streets. Mom reported he was driving the Bobcat around cleaning up before it even finished raining. Talk about good service. I will post a picture of the trees near Leslie's apartment...but just reporting that thus far all is well.
I on the other hand decided at the last minute to leave Houston as well. Reese, Chewie and I drove to Kingwood Wednesday morning, spent the day visiting grandparents etc, and by Thursday at 7 p.m. we were back in the car headed home. I never hit any really bad traffic (never had to go below 60 mph) but there was always a steady stream of cars on the road with me. So we made it home about 24 hours before Ike decided to wipe Galveston and Surfside beach away. I guess in the future I will just stay and rough out the storm at home, that way the damn thing won't follow me and cause problems for other people.
Before I left I did help Mom and Dad bring the stuff in from the yard and three strapping young men helped Dad put up all the boards on his house as well. Nana, Hurricane expert that she is, said the winds would never get more than 40 mph...her predictions were however wrong. She said the wind was pretty bad, Mom and Dad's biggest complaint as well. Kobi was scared too, sleeping with Mom all night. Poor dog...

I guess I owe everyone an update

We ventured to College Station this past weekend to kick off the football season. Sadly I think Reese might have been more effective on the playing field Saturday night. Thankfully she and I skipped out on the game and played in College Station with Aunt Leslie, who is always much more fun than football. Yeah for that. Reese really enjoys all her time with Leslie. We also have lots of fun in the condo with Mimi and Grampy this weekend. I must also admit she tasted her first Doubledave's pizza roll and she LOVED it. She is obviously my child with the new found appreciation she has for pizza.
We have nothing else exciting to report. It's business as usual around here. Reese is getting taller, as I realized much more of her head sticks out the top of her playpen when she is talking to me from the other room.

She LOVES playing with the laptop and our keyboard at home.

Practicing the "wheelbarrow" so when she is in elementary school she'll have the moves down pat.
She likes my cell phone too.
When Ryan left the condo she was sad, she cried at the window for him to come back. Yes it was a first and she proved to him she likes him, I'm still number one but at least she protests him leaving as well.

And I just have to say...I watched the new 90210 tonight, pretty decent. Funny things added so all of us old folks who watched the original can pick up on a laugh but all in all a decent show to keep me entertained Tuesday nights this fall. Yeah for 90210..next week Jackie Taylor makes a cameo...I love this stuff