A friggin' straw!!!!

Austin really must be working hard to make it to college by the time he turns 1. At 10 months old he now has 4 teeth (2top,2bottom), has taken a few steps on his own, says mama when he whines, and as of last night he now can drink out of a straw!

I want to personally give all credit of him learning to use a straw at 10 months old to my very favorite South Carolina smartass momma, April!! She told me a few weeks ago that now would be the best time to teach our babies to use a straw and to do that little trick where you plug the top with your finger to catch some of the liquid then put it to his mouth. WELL!!!! It finally worked. I have been doing this for a couple weeks now.

Last night at Austin's 10 month birthday dinner at On the Border, Dan and I ordered him some fries and a corn dog from the kids menu. It couldn't have gotten to our table fast enough. He was freaking out because we weren't feeding him what we were eating right then....chips and hot salsa. I don't think so little man. He's gotten used to me dropping liquids into his mouth by now. I was giving him some of my ice water with a lemon in it....City water is the grossest thing ever so the lemon masks the nastyness. Once he started to show that he was tired and done eating I gave him a little more water to wash down his food and he latched on to the straw! so I kept giving him more until he sucked the water from my cup. He's so smart.

April- I love you very much and you know I love that you are a smartass and you stick up for you believe in. You must have been a teacheer in some other time. You schooled me on how to teach Austin to suck thru a straw. It paid off. You are a genious. I can only hope to keep being schooled by you.

I took a picture but I cannot upload it to my work computer but I will do a post with all kinds of new pics.

Funny things about my loved ones

The other day my mom said 'Hoopla' while we were talking about something. I thought it was so funny and so cute that she knew that word. lol

Austin thinks it's funny when I'm laughing at something and he starts to laugh also. And he likes to 'kiss' my cheek which is a slobbery suction cup on my face then the sounds of him bah bah bah bahing. awwww

Dan likes to blame farts on anyone and anything but himself. He usually just makes a small smartass comment about the noise he just released but sometimes he blames Austin or the dog, or even me....which is very funny to blame me when i'm the one that couldn't 'let one go' if I tried.

Our Coonhound is confused by Speak and Sit. Apparently they mean the same thing. I'm guessing it's the S in the beginning of the words. He sits and barks once when told to Speak then stands and barks once when you tell him to sit. He's not the brightest. lol

Who would've thought?!!

It's been about 2 1/2 weeks since our new truck completely took a shit. Now every night I have to find someone to take me to work and then find someone else to pick me up from work to go home. I hate being that type of person that has to rely on others to get me places. I am very thankful for those who have been helping me. Since I am without my own vehicle....I had a wake up call, big time!

I finally found out how I can save money and make it last longer than 2 weeks. Don't own a car! There's no gas bill, no fluids being poured onto the ground, no way to take me to the Mall at lunch time. Note: I actually have to have a car since my work is pretty far from my house.

This week I am doing the impatient dance waiting for my taxes to be depositted into my account. I filed my taxes this last saturday and they say it could be 6 days to 8-15 days to get my money. uughh....

My plan is to buy myself a car. One that has 4 doors and is good on gas. I'm really excited to get a new car again but there's part of me that knows I will spend more money since I will have transportation to the stores. I will be doing my best to act like I don't have a car and not go down the street to the mall at lunch and buy things I can live without.

9 months old today =) / =(

my baby boy is 9 months today. He's only got 2 buds that haven't cut thru his gums yet. One roght top front and one bottom right front...kinda lopsided. lol. His hair is growing out slowly but surely. He's 22 pounds and 29 inches long. Says dadadada a lot and babababa. Loves all kinds of foods except peas....gets it from me. hehe. He's standing on his own for about 30 seconds. Crawls very fast accross any room. Drinks from a sippy well. I'll be working on teaching him to drink from a straw.

We have about 4 months to get him off of formula cause WIC stops giving it at a year old. He's eating our food good but not perfectly. He can use his pincher finger to pick up tiny objects to his mouth.

i'm very proud that he is very determined and has a huge sense of independence but still shows that he needs me. On that note I will fill you in on my idea for a tattoo I plan to get right after he turns a year old in april.... I want a blue KOI fish like the one below (head upwards) with out the water waves. I want the fish curled around a pink water lily like the tattoo this random girl has. I dont think i want the water but i haven't decided for sure yet. I would love to get it on my side off center on my ribs. But not as huge as the random chicks. The koi is going to represent Austin and his determination to overcome difficult obstacles and the lily will rep me. I would like to add something in there to represent Dan but I havn't figured out what yet. I refuse to get his name tattooed on me too. This will be my 7th tattoo.

I have a piece of Sh*t Truck!!!!

I love Dan but he just waisted all of the money from selling our car to buy a huge piece of junk truck-1975 GMC Sierra Classic long bed single cab......not baby friendlt in the slightest. I hate the truck so much. It's nice looking on the outside but under the hood it's a huge mess. The pastor that sold it to us most likely knew it was a peice of shit and sold it anyways. It's sad to think you can't even trust a freaking pastor nowadays. Whoever worked on this piece of metal last hooked everything up wrong and backwards and upside down. Now this morning Dan is broke down on the side of the freeway saying he may have blown the head gasket....very bad news. I'm just waiting for my w2's to come in so I can go file my taxes and buy me a good car like Dan promised he was going to get in the first place.

Ever feel like you don't fit?...

I was born and raised in (hotter than hell) Mesa, Arizona. That is pure city living right there.....and I 50x more than hate it. Anyone that knows me knows I hate living here. I am a native to this state. I will not die here if I have ANY say in it.

You can say you hate something when you have compared it to something WAY better than it. I have done just that....Colorado! I moved to CO in the middle of my senior year.....dumbest thing I ever did cause it messed up my credits.....for my boyfriend at the time. I was 17. My ex and his family moved to Durango. Absolutely beautiful. So much to do and so many things to learn. I loved it. I ended up moving back to AZ a few months later and finished high school at Mountain View. It was rough but I did it in time to graduate with my class. Then I moved back to CO.

This time they moved to a small town an hour away from Durango called Pagosa Springs. Breathtaking gorgeous....but stinky. lol. They have the natural hot springs there and The Springs Resort which I worked at for a while. Mountains and trees and nice people that wave to you when you drive by or say hi on the street. There were like 5 stop lights at the time.

To me, being from the city, this was as country as it could get for me. I felt like I belong there. I was comfortable enough to leave the freaking keys in the ignition when I went shopping or left the car. Bad stupid idea I know but I did it all the time. I have felt for a long long time that I need to be in the country living lifestyle away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

I have made it very clear that I am in love with country music and cowboys and rodeos. Anything that has to do with western living pretty much. When I meet new people, I tend to get remembered as kinda the cowgirl type. I don't do it on purpose. I just talk a lot about the things I like and I make banners and collages and widgets and tickers all about country. I nicknamed my fetus at the time, cowbaby. That was when we didnt know he was a he. I just don't feel like a city girl. Let me put it this way....My favorite woman is Gretchen Wilson. She's a gorgeous redneck....and I love her songs. I have been told I look like her and that makes me happier than a fat kid in a cake shop. lol.

My ex, Wade and I split up of course and I dated someone new, Devon. He left for the Army and we split up too. I moved back and forth from CO and AZ about a million times cause I'd get so caught up in my drama and think I could run away from it.

Now here I am back in AZ for about 5 years now or so. I have my handsome son Austin now. I get that things go a certain way for a reason but I just don't like the fact that my damn stars alligned the right way to make me live in AZ again. I am dying to go back to Pagosa or Durango or maybe even Colorado Springs. Dan agreed he doesn't want to live in AZ aymore. We'll see what happens. We'd like for Austin to grow up learning the Cowboy ways and not how to kill someone or become a theif.

Can you tell the difference?...One is Gretchen and one was faceinhole.com-ed with my face. Check it out.

Random objects in my life.....

I'm sittin here at work and bored out of my miiiiind. I look to my left and I can see the new addition to my desk objects....a tac containeer turned into an unwanted pennies holder. I made this just the other day because I or the other person in my office (Tom) doesn't care for pennies....at all. I normally throw them or leave them behind. Tom normally has a pile that grows on his desk of pennies and I have stashes in my drawers or my purse or my pockets. I fianlly decided that I need to contain all of our unwanted pennies in one place. So I went hunting thru the file cabinets and drawers to find something that would work. Thats when I spotted the lonely tac container full of tacs I will never use. I dumped out the tacs and printed out he words Unwanted Pennies and colored it with my highlighters I never use and taped it to the tac container. There is currently about 15 pennies in it. 2 weeks ago Tom and I both put an overflowing handfull of pennies under the microwaves (theres a counter underneath them) for someone to take. They went missing about 20 minutes later. haha.

-I appologize if you love pennies and think that if you save all your pennies you could end up with a ton of money....I just don't care to hold on to them until it turns into butt loads of cash. Maybe some day I can give one of these away....

1 million pennies

What's the opposite of a Bro-mance?...

well...whatever it is, that's what I have with 3 other mommas. We call ourselves ABCD and are babies COLA. =) ABCD-April, Becky, Cami, Dawn.....COLA-Coleton, Olliver, Laney, Austin.

Cole is Cami's baby boy which is the oldest of the four. Ollie is Becky's 2nd son. Miss LC, the lady of the group belongs to April. And Austin, the "baby" is my little man.

Here's the catch tho....None of us have met eachother in person. We all met on a website called What to expect when you're expecting. It's from the holy grail of pregnancy books. You see, we all got pregnant about the same time and were due about the same time, April of 2009. Mother nature and certain babies like to be fashionably late or make an entrance early. Cami had Cole early. He's the preemie of the group. He came in March instead of April. Wte has a message board for almost everything you can think of relating to parenthood, pregnancy, losses, coupons....you get the idea. Well, we all are part of the April 09 expecting board. I believe I am the only one of us all that actually had a baby in April. lol. Which makes Austin the youngest.

I have grown a relationship with each one of them individually and then we all have one as a group. Remember we all just know each other from talking on WTE and mostly these days on Facebook.

April, I think of her as the veteran mom of the group. She has 3 kids total. I won't get into it but she also has a loss under her belt, which sadens my heart deeply. She has the lady of the group. She's big pimpin with 3 boys her age she doesnt know but if they meet one day, I know all 3 boys who protect her from anyone mean. April is in SC with her hubby Dean. They are a Cajun family which I love because Dan is a Cajun also. Aprils sense of humor and smartass-ness brightens my day everyday. she loves gossip and feeds off of dumb people. She's actually the one that got me into blogging. I love going to her and asking questions or to BS with. She's a full time SAHM and the leader of her pack. She's been put thru the worst with her ex and now she has an attitude and a mouth on her that could scare the shit out of you. She loves GOD and has no problem in telling you so.

Becky...,her and I have soooo much in common it scares us....but she lives in WI which is too far from me. I call her my twin tho. She just recently got married to James who is Ollies daddy. James is so much like Dan it worries me. They both have put Becky and I thru so much shit it's sickening. They plan to have a big party for their reception in August this year. She invited us all to come and I will try my hardest to make sure me and Austin and hopefully Dan are there for her. Becky just started being a SAHM the first of the year. So far she likes it and I'm secretly jealous b/c I'd love notjhing more than to be at home raising my only child my self during the days. Ollie has PKU and has to watch EVERYTHING he eats his whole life. Becky takes it upon herself to monitor his eating and makes him the right foods.

Cami is married to Charles and they have Coleton. I love that their names all start with C. =) Cole was the preemie as I stated before. He's doing so well now. He's not behind in anything. He is taking his time in crawling forward...but some babies skip crawlling all together so no worries. He's very inteligent and interactive. He's almost a year old! Holy Cow! They all live in Idaho, still to far from me too. Cami is the creative one of us all. She's into making banners, hats, tutus, editing pictures, bows, and who knows what she'll learn to do next. Cami seems to know a lot about a lot. She's also a SAHM and loves to spend all her time with her boy. She has mean friends that thinks she's crazy for not taking Cole to a sitter so she can go hang out. I don't think thats crazy at all.

I love them all so much. It feels like I've known them for a few years now. I cincider them my real friends. I have friends here where I live but we've grown apart. I do have Julie tho. I will be writing a blog about her soon. She's my little sister I never had. I'd never do anything to lose her freindship. I love her more than anything.

I wish I could put up a picture of all of us together but that may come after Becky's big shin dig this year. =) My little descriptions of these three ladies doesn't do them justice. They are amazing moms and great freinds. I'm so happy to have them in my life. I have always been able to go to them with any question or just to talk to. We all talk just about every day when we have time. I'd give anything to have us all in the same state so we all can hang out and have mommy fun together.

My relationship with Google

I am still trying to find a good way with words and I just can't seem to find mine. Let me explain first that I couldn't win an argument if my life depended on it. I suck at arguing and I really suck at describing things I want to say. I love reading other peoples blogs and reading their staus updates because I like to see new words that I don't use in my nomrmal vocabulary. Once in a while I get my point accross but it doesn't happen all the time. So just a heads up...I typically just do a verbal throw up and my mind skips around so my sentences don't stay on the same track very often.

So here it goes...

It's now 2010 and I am 25. I always wanted to be 25 for some strange reason. I always thought it souded mature enough that society wouldn't think of you as a kid anymore. 25 is half of 50. That makes it sound old. I never thought I'd have a baby when I was 25. I have no clue how anything will go in the future but that's ok with me. I like suprises. Keeps life interesting. I don't feel any different except for the fact that now all of a sudden I want to learn how to cook easy meals and be able to change my tire by myself if I ever have to. Dan showed me and explained how to change the tire this weekend. He let me do most of it.

Now about my new cooking lessons I'm giving myself....

It's really not that hard. I was always intimidated by cooking. I thought that it would definitly come out nasty and burned. But I have this magical block box at my fingertips every day for 9 hours straight and a close friend I call Google. Google lets me learn things that people in my world just would never know. Some things Google tells me isn't true and I know it but for the most part I trust him. Anyways...Google and i have come to an agreement that he would give me recipes to make easy meals that are cheap and take very little time if I give him hourly visits and just ask a simple question. I have gotten some great tastey meal ideas from him. I have almost mastered Stuffed bell peppers and mozarella chicken with spagetti sauce. mmm...makes me hungry thinking about it. He tells me in detailed description of how to make these delicious meals. I feel bad not being able to share with him my creations. I offer at least.

Dan doesn't know about this relationship I have with Google. He has an idea that I talk to him but he doesn't know the debth of love and appreciation I have for Google. We not only look for meals together but we look at pictures of new hairstyles and clothes and baby shoes and infant toys and check to see if I or the baby is dying from red spots on our body. I spend a lot of time with Google. More time I get to spend with Dan and Austin. Google and I have agreed to stay good friends and I can use him whenever I need to. He's always been there for me and will continue to be. However, he owes me for not getting me anything on my birthday. =(

Maybe you have heard of my friend Google? He's very informative. He doesn't talk a lot but just shows you pictures and describes in writing what you want to know. He loves when you ask him questions. But watch out tho! He can be tricky. sometimes if you ask him the wrong question or word your question wrong he'll give you answers do didn't want to see....like naked bootys and chi chi's. He's a guy so I kinda expect it. Perv!! But I love him...as a freind. He gets into the holidays, all of them. He puts on these festive images in his name to show he cares. Some I don't quite understand but that makes him a little bit mysterious. lol

You'll always have a special place...at my fingertips Google.

Here are a bunch of my favorite Google outfits. Enjoy!