How is this possible?

My little girl has had her first haircut...Here we are getting all set up in our airplane seat at "Pigtails & Crewcuts," and we have our trusty Bunny in hand...

Gotta wet the hair to get an accurate cut.

I found it hilarious that they actually sectioned off Carrie's hair to cut it separately, just as you would do an adult's hair. I guess it's a good thing that I didn't attempt to just whack a straight line across the back of her head, then.

All done!!

I'm not too proud to admit that, when we left the salon (if that's what you can call it since it caters to the under 10 set), I was a bit of a puddle. My little baby didn't look like a baby anymore. She looked very much like a little girl. It didn't help that, when we got her down off the chair, she just toddled off like it was no big deal, in search of toys to play with or other children to inspect. I suppose I should get used to this feeling. It's just one of many, many times during her life that I'll sit back and think "how is this possible? how is she old enough to be doing this?"

Lazy days

It's been awhile since I've posted, so I thought I'd better check in and write something before folks get bored and quit checking this blog!

We've had pretty laid back days lately, which is nice. This past weekend we took Carrie to the beach for basically the first time. I mean, we took her last year when she was about 3 months old, but all we did was sit in the little tide pools and splash a bit, then she got mad with the sand in her diaper. So that trip to the beach lasted about 20 minutes....which was a pain since it took about 45 minutes to actually get to the beach. Plus I was paranoid about her getting too much sun. Not that that's changed at all.

Anyways, back to the beach trip. She LOVED it. Loved everything about the beach. The sand? Great fun to toss around, dig in, sit in, you name it. The waves? Even better. She tried crawling into the ocean (she's still preferring crawling over walking, which is getting a little old) and realized that wasn't such a great idea when she got smacked in the face with a wave. She did think that was somewhat funny, though. She loved for me to hold on to her little hands while standing in the ocean, then pull her up at the last second over a wave. She played with one of my new Junior League-Savannah friends, Tricia, and thought she was the greatest thing since sliced bread...I think that may have something to do with all the food Tricia had hidden in her beach bag. Jerry dug a big hole for Carrie to sit in, and she thought this was pretty cool because she could sit in there, then Daddy would cover her legs up with sand. All in all a great day at the beach, even if we were only there for 2 hours. We are thinking we're going to take her back this next Sunday to see Hon & Pop at the beach house.

We're considering a trip down to Gainesville the first week in August, although I'm not sure I can handle it just yet. I really love our house there, especially Carrie's room. I'm getting teary just thinking about it. I know we'll find a great home here once we sell the FL house and I'll come to love it just as much....I just think of the FL house as "Carrie's house" I guess. Ironic seeing as how she's certainly not contributing to paying the mortgage each month, but oh well :) I'm surprisingly calm about the fact that our house has not sold yet. I knew going in it would take probably at least a year, if not more. We've lowered the price a couple of times, of course, and had lots of lookers, just no written contracts yet. (Mom, you can insert the "I told you so" comments here :) ) It's frustrating not to have our own "space" to be sure, but I keep telling myself it will be worth it once it's all said and done.

We are definitely heading to Atlanta on 8/7, though, and I'm totally excited about that. It's been WAY too long since we were up there last (Memorial Day), so we're overdue for a visit. It should be lots of fun!!

I guess that's about it. I'll leave you with a few pictures here that Alston took when she last visited of Carrie and her absolute favorite food.

What a weekend

July 4th weekend is supposed to be fun and relaxing, right? Well, on the one hand it was fun & relaxing, and on the other it was a pain....

1. Pain- I get home around 3:30 on Thursday (thanks for letting us go early, Dr. Frost!) to find Bailey getting around quite well on three legs. He's holding his back right foot up and I immediately think "Great. He's torn the ligament in that knee now, and we're going to have to pay for another dog knee surgery." I of course want to immediately take him to the vet even though it's probably nothing serious, and Jerry thinks I'm looney tunes, but agrees to go with me to the vet anyways (basically because he knows I won't calm down till I know for a fact that Bailey's knee isn't hanging by a ligament). Well, turns out it's a good thing we did go because he had been bitten by a snake! We think it was a copperhead, although obviously can't be sure. His foot ultimately swelled up to about the size of my fist. He was miserable, understandably, but made a quick recovery. Chances are he'll now go seek out snakes to bite him due to the amount of dog biscuits he's received since Thursday.
2. Fun/relaxing - We got to have dinner with our friends Jen & Chuck and their son Drake on Thursday evening! They were down in Hilton Head for a quick vacation, so we got together to have dinner and catch up. I really miss them and wish we lived closer. We all get along so well, so it's a shame that we can't see each other more often.
3. Pain - The three of us were going to go to the July 4th parade at Oldfield, which the monthly bulletin said was at 11:30. We cruise up at 11:20, only to find out that the bulletin was wrong and the parade was actually at 10:30. As my mother said, thank goodness Carrie's not at an age that she can realize what she missed. I was bummed, though.
4. Pain - We go back to the house after the missed parade and decide to go down on the dock for some R&R. We've got our giant LL Bean bag that you can lose stuff in; I start unpacking Carrie's stuff and find there's a sippy cup in there that's emptied out in the bag. I take everything out of the bag and go to dump out the water....splash....something hits the water and I obviously missed something that was still in the bag. It took me a few minutes to realize what it was. I sent Jerry up to the house just to check to make sure, and sure enough....I managed to dump our cool digital camera straight into the river. At this point I decided that it probably would have been better for me to just go to work that day.
5. Fun/relaxing - Carrie loved the fireworks! We could see several shows from the dock, so we didn't have to go anywhere and get in huge crowds to see the fireworks. Double bonus was that the shows were past her bedtime, so while we were sitting on the dock in the sun chairs she would, every now and then, lay her head down on my chest and suck her thumb and just be still for a few seconds. I love those times :) Oh yeah, and hot dogs were a bit hit that night as well (there are very few foods that aren't a big hit with her, though).
6. Fun/relaxing - We were invited by some friends I'd met through the Junior League of Savannah here to go on the Pau Hana Catamaran, which was super fun. We were able to go on a date night, cruise around on a cool boat, and have some wine (I was a bit overserved, but it was all good!)
7. Fun/relaxing - The Ann Taylor outlet store opened last week and had a huge grand opening sale. I'm not sure this was so much fun for Carrie/Jerry, but it was great fun for me!!

So I guess that's it for now. I think that's enough, don't you?

We have liftoff!!

We caught Carrie in the act...she's finally decided that walking on land isn't nearly as bad as she thought!! Pay no attention to me shoving the poor dog out of the way.

If one hair bow is good...

Then five bows are WAY better...

One good thing about being alone right now...

I can enjoy my Starbucks java chip frappuchino without any help. Yum. The last time I attempted to drink this around Carrie she started screaming at the airport gate because I wouldn't let her suck the entire thing down. I had to throw away my 99% full grande Java Chip Frappuchino because of that incident. I'll admit I was a little teary-eyed.

p.s. As you can see I've finally realized how to make words hot-links so I can be cool like my friend Anne :)

I miss my kids.

This sucks. I've been out of town for approximately 62 hours now, and I am just counting down the hours till I get back to Savannah (that would be approximately 48 more hours). I'm in Atlanta for a conference. I got here at 8am on Sunday, and will be back on Thursday evening. This is the longest I've been away from Carrie since she was born. I was very conflicted about coming to this conference in the first place. I mean, before it was sort of a treat to travel for work. I never did it very much at all, so when I did, I looked forward to going somewhere different, staying in a hotel, and getting some "me" time all at the same time. And I was sort of looking forward to that with this trip as well, but I was over that by about 8pm on Sunday evening when I realized Carrie was probably sitting in her "Carrie" chair throwing back her nightly milk, and I was missing it. I'm not kidding when I say I almost lost it yesterday at the Georgia World Congress Center. I came out of a session and almost walked right into a woman who had her baby girl laid out on the floor getting her diaper changed. She must have been right around the same age as Carrie. I got tears in my eyes and had to go call Jerry just to see how everyone was doing. Carrie of course chose that time to actually say Mama - perfect timing, kiddo.

I miss Jerry & Bailey too. I think I've called Jerry no less than about 10 times in the past two days. To add insult to injury, I get home around lunchtime on Thursday...just about the time he'll be leaving to drive up to Atlanta for his MBA class. And I'm sad that I haven't seen Bailey come flying up the driveway to greet me when I get home.

I keep going back and forth with this - one second, I'm so thrilled at the idea that I can eat a meal without having to share mine and tear it up into little bits, then the next second I realize there's no way I can eat all of the food I got because I'm not tearing it up into little bits and sharing. One second I'm excited that I can read a book that has no pictures in it, then the next second I'm reciting "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" to myself.

So I guess since it's 7:30 and I'm done for the day I'll go finish eating my dinner, watch an episode of Lost that I've missed, and try to ignore that, right at this very moment, I'm missing bathtime.