Following Leanne's example

Our excellent buddy Leanne showed me how to cover unrecoverable stains on Alice's clothes with fabric paint in her great blog Kindred Design

Here is a previously blueberry stained onsie, modeled by the little lady:


Alice will point out the details:





I used a poppy pattern that I originally made for Alice's baptism announcement:


This method will salvage quite a few outfits, so my thanks go out to Leanne and her excellent crafty blog.

Houston

We just returned from an excellent weekend in Houston visiting Aunt Karen, Uncle Toby, Cousin Andy, Cousin Marilyn, and as a special bonus Uncle Mike. The trip has left Alice reeling with delight. She literally played herself to exhaustion every night and was then wired for hours after a quick nap. It was such fun seeing all the kids playing together now that they are old enough to acknowledge each other's presence.

Andy was especially good at dolling out hugs to the younger two. Marilyn was pretty chill considering that Alice was ransacking the toybox. Marilyn, by the way, is fearless on the playground. We visited a huge kid gym/coffee house and watched Marilyn run a baby obstacle course maybe seventy-four times. Conservative estimate.

Alice was blasted by that time and just wanted to hug me and moan. Though Alice did at the end drag herself up the padded incline to the top of the slide and called down "Hi" to all of us on the ground. She seemed to be stuck, and Marilyn tried to climb up and save her cousin but fell asleep halfway to the top. Ultimately Alice did her first solo slide to much applause from the gathered relatives and tiny snores from Marilyn.

We also attended a BBQ hosted by our good friends Cathleen and Daniel who lived in Chicago with us for many years. Their house is a bit of a kid wonderland with everything from complete model train sets to fully stocked kid kitchens. Alice even got to taste her first lollypop courtesy of Cathleen. The pops were made from organic juice of all things! We also saw our friends Dave and Bethany with their lovely daughter Violet. I didn't have my camera but Cathleen sweetly took some great shots and sent me copies. You can see all the kids here except for Andy and Marilyn who needed to hit the road as they had a long drive home.

The big Sick

As a family we have settled into a happy evening rhythm. We eat dinner out on the back porch. Alice is allowed to go nuts on several colorful piles of baby food while Tony and I enjoy some adult conversation. After that she goes straight into the bath for a de-sticky process. Alice Loooooves bathtime.

As a result, on most nights Alice falls right asleep and doesn't peep until her next feeding.

This all changed last weekend.
For Valentines Day Tony gave me the freedom to go to a movie all by my lonesome.
On Tony's birthday this week I paid him back in kind. A whole slew of friends (including all the Howe siblings) came to Austin to see "Watchmen" at the Alamo Drafthouse. So I took over baby duty while the group took Tony to a night of movie joy and drinking.

The revellers returned full of good cheer and they even brought me a cookie in the shape of the Watchmen logo (smiley face with a blood stain), it was delicious. Most of the folks were planing to sleep at our place after a long night of chat and board game fun.

The group kept the celebrations down to a whisper for Alice's sake. But at midnight she woke up screaming. Tony gamely went to take care of her for the first shift, and that is when everything fell apart.

Poor kid had the perfect storm of teething pain, a bad cold, and a diaper that had not seen poop in several days. We had to keep Alice upright so she could breathe and sleep a bit. Even so, she woke up every twenty minuets crying her little heart out. It was horrible. We tried to keep the chaos to a minimum for the sake of our upstairs guests but failed pretty miserably. I couldn't wait for the night to end. As a happy coincidence we lost an hour that night. Never been happier to "Spring Forward".

When the sun came up we tried to sneak out of the house (coffee for us and a sleep inducing drive for Alice). Before we made it out of the driveway some of our guests drove up. They had bought us breakfast. Thank you Chiara and Amber! We were assured that no one heard a peep out of Alice in the night. It was a very friendly lie.

Now several days later Alice is feeling much better and even sleeping comfortably flat on her back.

In an effort to re-boot my engines Tony kindly took the kid on a two hour drive in the car so she could sleep and I could nap. He even listened to classical music the whole time to soothe her. She must have been pretty relaxed because that several days missing poop...yeah she painted the whole backseat. Happy Birthday Tony!!

Jeff & Nathan (not pictured)

I just recently figured out how to get JPEGs off my phone via bluetooth so I now have access to 2 years of pictures!


For instance, here is the photographic evidence of our first visit in Austin with our buddies Jeff and Nathan who were in town for business. Well, Nathan was doing business and Jeff was enjoying an excellent vacation! We were at "Freddies" which is a dog and kid friendly burger joint. Nathan was so sweet to treat us to lunch when we were the ones trying to show them Austin. Thanks guys!