Story teller

Warning: These videos are dripping with Eliza adorableness.




Go Illini!

The girl is a chatterbox. She babbles all day long. I don't think she is going to be shy like her dad was as a child. Instead, she will probably get in trouble at school for talking too much like her mom always did. She talks in front of people, when she's all alone. She will talk in her crib when she is supposed to be napping. She talks herself to sleep, and she starts talking again to let me know she woke up. Her first official word is Mom. Bruce can attest that among all the noises she makes, one noise clearly sounds like mom. She only uses it when she wants me to either come get her out of her crib, or she wants me to come back into her room so she can smile at me one more time before she goes to sleep. It is so cute!! I love being Eliza's mom.

Eliza also sang her first trio in sacrament meeting. Our family sang "A Child's Prayer" to end the primary program on Sunday. When I started singing, Eliza joined in. You could hear her sweet voice through the microphone. During the interlude, Eliza thought she would start in on her first solo. She stopped when her dad started his part, and started up again when we sang our parts together. Yeah! IT WAS SOOOOOOOOO CUTE!! Wish you all could have seen it.

I feel so blessed to be her mother. How did I get so lucky to have such a great family?

Eliza's first Halloween

I'm impressed. This picture was taken at 9:30 at night, way past her usual bedtime.



Thanks to one of my former students for giving Eliza this adorable ballerina outfit. Although I would never wear something like this, it was cute to put Eliza in it. Let's hope that someday she will forgive me. Although, it doesn't seem to bother her too much. I think the slippers are adorable.




Here we are at the ward trunk or treat. Yes, I did take her around trunk or treating. I do plan to let her eat the candy albeit vicariously.
We had a lot of trick or treaters come last night. More than we ever have before, we ran out of candy and resorted to handing out some old candy we found on our junk food shelf. Good thing the kids won't remember which house handed out the old candy when they can't get it open because the wrapper is stuck to it. (Yeah. It's that old) :)


Bruce did dress up to teach his lab on Halloween. He went as a nerdy scientist whose experiment went a little hay wire. His students thought it was pretty funny. One of the things they did in lab was create the digestive tract of cows, horses, and chickens using Halloween candy. That was my brilliant idea, and Bruce said the students really liked it. They even labeled all the parts.



He kind of looks more like Frankenstein in this picture. Still as dashing as ever nonetheless.


On another note, Eliza also experienced her first snow storm. It snowed all day on Saturday causing many trees to fall and the power to go out for 6 hours. Bruce was in New York from Thursday to Sunday morning at the Dairy Challenge, so Eliza and I were on our own in the dark and cold. The power came back on just as I was getting the candles out. If that's all it took, I should have gotten the candles out earlier.


When we came back inside after snapping this picture, Bruce mentioned that his grandma will probably ask him where his coat is.

What a happy girl!! Happy Halloween everyone!

I'm from Idaho

I went to a music store today and asked for a piano book of scales, chords, and arpeggios so I could feel more comfortable teaching piano lessons. Before the clerk left to find my request, he asked me where my accent is from.

I told him, "I'm from Idaho, and I didn't know I had an accent."
"You do. Compared to us New York and Philadelphia musicians, you do have an accent. It's actually pleasant so I wanted to know where you were from."
After I told him why we were here, he gave me a hearty, "Welcome to Pennsylvania."

Now that I think about it, I was asked where my accent was from when I first moved to Illinois and talked to a native Chicagoan. However, that person had to ask me where Idaho was, and made me feel like a foreigner.

In France, (when I participated in a study abroad program) my "accent" passed me off as British. Needless to say, I was treated much more cordially than my American counterparts.

So... I have an accent. An Idahoan accent! Way to go Idaho.

My daughter is bulimic

See those fingers!! They are the guilty party. Baby Cakes has developed a new habit. After she is finished eating, I will sit her up to burp her. The moment she is upright, those fingers are shoved in her mouth and stay there until she gags herself enough to spit up. I can't even get the first of it cleaned up before she is at it again.



After three times of gag and spit, she decides she's had enough for at least 5 minutes. The Cakester rarely spit up before this. Now she self-induces spit up after every meal. When I pull one hand out of her mouth, she quickly puts the other one in. How can I hold both hands down and clean up the mess?? If I keep pulling her hands out, she thinks it is a game. She'll start laughing and smiling. It's super cute, but still annoying with the gagging.



The fists, I don't mind. They do make her choke a little on her own spit, but she usually pulls them out of her mouth. The fingers however, remain there no matter how many times she gags herself. I usually hear her gagging herself when she wakes up from naps before I hear her cry. I don't know what is so pleasurable about gagging yourself, but she continues to do it time and time again. When she is tired, she tries to fit both her binky and her fists in her mouth. When it doesn't work, she gets frutrated. She'll go back and forth between them before deciding on her fingers.



I don't mind that she sucks on her hands or her fingers. They are always available for her. I just wish she would stop shoving them so deep in her throat. I don't want this habit to continue into her later years.


Stop gagging yourself cute Baby Cakes. Stop!

When your dad is a dairy farmer...

In which the maintenance man knows me by name

My neighbors probably think I have a crush on the maintenance man considering how many times he has visited our town house. It's not so. However, the maintenance man has fixed every small problem we've had this month.
1) Our front door wouldn't shut properly - he moved the latch down.
2) Our front door wouldn't unlock with a key from the outside - he lubricated the lock
3) Our heater wouldn't turn on - he lit the pilot light
4) I heard squirrels running through the vents. (I am not kidding! They were loud and sounded like they were going to jump out and start chasing me.) He dismantled the furnace vent and assured me it was impossible for squirrels to get in. He went outside to fix the screen that covers the vents. Turns out it was the neighbors vent whose screen had come off.
5) I got out of the shower to find water leaking from the living room ceiling and water running down the wall.

For this we had to remove all the contents from the messiest and most disorganized closet in the house so he could get to the bath tub pipes. He did something involving a piece of the pipe and a gasket. After about an hour, we are free to shower without flooding the downstairs. :)

These five visits don't include the additional two they made to change something in the utility closet to comply with new township rules. I realize that some of these I could have done myself, but one of the perks of renting is to just call maintenance when you have a problem. Hopefully we won't need to make any more maintenance calls for the rest of this month. Now, when I am walking around the property, the maintenance man recognizes me and waves.

Famous Dr. Bruce

Check out Dr. Bruce, the new face of Delaware Valley College. I'm so proud!