TaDa! Bookcases!

Wow! Four posts in one month. Am I feeling OK? Maybe its because its almost the end of the school year and I am thinking of summertime when I am hoping to have a little more time to get some things done around here....yeah, I must be delusional!

As I mentioned in the last post, Holly and I went to see Grandma & Grandpa for Memorial Day weekend. Holly got to spend lots of time with Grandma while Mama finished up the bookcases for the living room.

Grandma taught Holly how to rock on the teeter totter. Holly like it MUCH better than the big teeter totter at the park last weekend! Since it seemed to be such a success, we moved the teeter totter out into the driveway by the chairs where the adults were sitting and relaxing. Well, except Grandpa, who you can see walking around in the background. Holly also loved the freedom to be able to walk to almost the end of the driveway, then turn around and come back to us all by herself.
When Holly got bored with the teeter totter, she found the spigot for the garden hose and spent a lot of time with it in her mouth. We had to nix her idea of walking around with it in her mouth, though. She only has 4 teeth for crying out loud; losing any of them in a garden implement accident would be tragic in a number of ways! We finally convinced her that sitting on Grandma's lap while she had it in her mouth was about the best she was going to do.
The bookcases got finished over the weekend and Grandma and Grandpa came over to help put them up in the living room on Tuesday afternoon. Here is Holly banging on the table, maybe in anticipation, but maybe just because its plain fun!
Here are the bookcases partially assembled. Holly discovered the step stool. She was not content to just examine it for very long.
Grandpa didn't even know he needed help making the ladder taller, until Holly came to help him! She could turn out like her Mama yet and be a handy kind of girl who can fix all of her own stuff.

Here is what Holly thought would be a better idea with the step stool. The scary thing is that she climbed right up there all by herself! Even with the tape measure on the bottom step. She is turning into quite the dare devil. Glad I have good health insurance for when she discovers monkey bars.

But wait, maybe she's just going to be a conductor for some fancy symphony and travel all around the world conducting famous musicians. Or, maybe she was just telling us how to put the bookcases together.

Even with all of Holly's help, we got the bookcases assembled in short order. Here they are in all their glory. Sorry about the ladders in the way! If you are a book reader, are you drooling yet?

After assembly, I talked Grandpa into helping me install my screen door on the front door. I thought it would just take a little while...I was wrong! Instead of going to dinner early, like he wanted to do so they could get home early, we left about 6:30. Yikes! Sorry, Pops!!! Father's Day is coming up soon, so maybe you will forgive me then. :-)

When we got home from dinner and I put Holly to bed, I was able to unload about five boxes of books into the shelves. As I got about to number five, I was thinking "Hmmm. Maybe I SHOULD have added one more section to the length of the bookcase. These shelves are filling up way too fast!" I still have about four or five more boxes to empty. I might not get everything in without double stacking the paperbacks up top.They are fabulous bookcases and I am quite pleased with how they turned out! I feel like I am in heaven now. I have a gorgeous new bookcase and an almost empty closet to start filling up with more crap. Hopefully, I will be able to keep the closet fairly empty, though.

Here's a sweet picture of Holly after her bath tonight. Notice the gate in front of the laundry room door in the background, as mentioned in the previous post.She always has to get 15 or 20 minutes of playtime in after her bath and before bottle and book time. The quilt that she is playing on is one that Grandma made for her. It won 3rd place in a quilt show earlier this month. Its all hand stitched and so beautiful!!
Salem loves the quilt as much as Holly does. He sleeps on it as often as he can. When Holly is playing on it, he has to migrate to the coffee table to stay out of her way. Then, when she discovers he is there, Salem has to move to higher ground. Like the back of the couch. Here Salem is looking very unimpressed with Holly's play time. He always has to sleep with one eye open, just in case!That's about all the excitement we've had in the last week. I don't know if Holly will go to the high school graduation with me on Saturday, but she will definitely go to all the parties afterward. There will be food at all of them, so she will be perfectly happy! Haha!

What's New

Holly's new thing is paper. Fortunately, not so much putting it in her mouth as just tearing it up into little tiny pieces. Then, if she gets bored, she will eat it. Here she is with paper from somewhere. Either mail or an advertisement, I think. She was busy walking around, talking all about the paper, tearing it up into little bits, and tossing them on the floor as she went about her business.

In the background of this picture you can see the empty box to a new baby gate that I had to purchase. One of three, I should say. The day after we went shopping, she showed Mama that she now knows how to turn sideways and slither through the laundry room door that (I thought) had a chain that was too short for her to get through, but wide enough for the cat. She was ever so proud of herself and showed me over and over that she hadn't forgotten how to do it. Hence, the new baby gate; the cat can just jump over it to get to his food. Also, the box is where the garbage can USED to be. She is tall enough to open the garbage can and discovered throwing things away...just not the appropriate things. So now, the garbage can is on top of the counter. I am hoping this phase will be short and I can take it down again very soon. But I am not counting on it! Here is Holly taking a commercial break. Either that or Jeopardy just came on and she's looking up because the theme song came on. I think she looks like a little frog here, ready to spring into action. All she needs is a green outfit instead of Winnie the Pooh & Tigger.A more fun new skill, at least in my opinion, is that Holly loves to stack cups now. She has had a fascination with cups for a while, but has always put things in and taken them out, or stacked them inside each other. Now, she is turning them over and stacking them up on top of each other. I tried to get a picture of that, but knocking them down is fun, too! She has also started to "drink" out of any cup or cup-like toy that she has. She is very good at drinking by herself from a real cup and its so funny to see her take a slurp of water, then smack her lips and go "Ahhh!" afterward. Like she is really enjoying every drop. But she only does it with water, not milk.I had a school function at the park the other night and the high school girls entertained Holly on the swings (she screamed her head off when they started swinging her) and on the seesaw which, as you can see, she wasn't too keen on either! That is one of the few looks of panic I have seen on her face. I was also very puzzled about not liking the swing, since she likes the one at home just fine.

She much preferred hanging out where the food was - big shock! Holly always has a big smile for Kate or anyone else with a potato chip. She particularly liked the root beer float that Mama made. It went well with the banana that she scarfed down...after the chips and macaroni salad and slice of cheese that she had after dinner at home. Where does this kid put it all?! Anyway, this was by far the best picture of the day with her big old grin and the giggles to go with it.

We will be going up to my parent's house tomorrow for Memorial Day weekend. I have plans to finish my new floor to ceiling bookcases that my dad and I are building. I only need to finish staining and sealing them. I can't wait to put them up and get my books out of the closet in the spare bedroom. I will definitely post a picture of the bookcases, so I can show off our work. Its going to be spectacular!

Catching Up

For Holly's birthday, I got her some outdoor play toys. Actually GETTING them was a huge ordeal, and putting them together was almost as bad. I went to two different ToysRUs stores looking for what I wanted and didn't find them at either one. I ended up having to order them online and paid shipping (Grrr!) for what I should have been able to pick up. After I got her slide/swing completely assembled, I realized they had sent me the wrong one! I called, had them pick it up, and then had to reorder the correct one. I was just about to give up at that point, let me tell you, but I will do anything for Holly and this is a case in point.

Finally, after all that ordeal, here she is playing the little sailor this afternoon.After losing interest in that, Holly played in her new sand/water box. It has sand on one side and water on the other. Of course, she loves to mix the two together or just throw the sand onto the patio. Good thing the bag of sand seemed to be way more that I would ever need for it. I guess ToysRUs knows more about little kids that I do. :-) The great thing about this toy is that Holly will play there for a long time and I can just sit on the lounge chair and read for however long she's there. What a luxury!
Here's Holly thinking that she can climb up the slide. That was the very first thing she tried to do when I got the thing together. Of course, she can't go up, but she did remember how to climb up when I took her around to the other side. What a smart girl she is!
She absolutely adores the swing and giggles the whole time she is on it. Here she is when I first put her in, before she even started moving. Just chillin' out waiting for Mama to finish with the darned camera!

Up until just a few days ago, Holly hated the grass and wanted nothing to do with it. She would cry or scream every time I would set her down in it. Sometimes, she would tolerate walking in it (in shoes of course), but freaked when she fell down. It was pretty humorous watching her try to figure out how she would stand up again without having to touch the grass with her hands. No worries, Mama to the rescue! However, she has just recently discovered dandelions, and has decided that grass isn't so bad. I also think it has something to do with the fact that she can now stand up without having to pull herself up on something, so she doesn't have to crawl across the grass to get to something stationary. She just has to touch the grass once to get up and go.

Playing outside works up an appetite, and Holly can eat more than I ever thought a little kid was supposed to. Here she is finishing up some spaghetti and meatballs. It goes without saying that she liked it. Her face may get really dirty, but she hardly spills a bite when she is hungry.

After a bath and getting into her pj's, Holly likes to play for a while before drinking her "ba ba" and going to bed. She has taken a particular liking to her tunnel, as has the cat, and often chases Salem through it or sneaks up on him by crawling through it and surprising him on the other side. What a tricky girl! Although, let me tell you, Salem doesn't see the humor in that nearly as much as either Holly or I do.
Recently, Holly was just sitting on the couch and playing with her little feet, giggling and talking about something that was very funny. Here she is in the middle of that conversation with herself.
I am spending a lot of time chasing the little speed demon down because she loves to run, run, run these days. Here's Holly giggling and running away from the nightlight after a warning not to touch. I thought she was going to trip over all those doll clothes that she had just drug out of their crib, but she managed to zip right by them on her way to the bookcase to take all the books out.
Last weekend, we went up to Grandma and Grandpa's for Mother's Day. Grandma had bought Holly a little bench to have on the back porch that is just her size. Holly spent the weekend practicing how to get up on it, turn around, sit down, and then get back down to start all over again. Of course, she had to do this with a toy pan, a rock, or Bunny in her hand at all times. It was very entertaining watching her try to reach down from a sitting position to grab Bunny when he fell off the bench. Obviously, that didn't work because of gravity, but she did figure out that she needed to get off to grab Bunny, then get back up there again. You can see how pleased she is with herself and how much fun she had doing this.
Holly is also talking up a storm! She has added words like monkey, giraffe, grandma, hi, that, done, fishy, and many others to her vocabulary. Now, let me say that they aren't always clear, and you have to know that is what she is saying, but she definitely knows what she is saying. She also loves to sing along to her music cd in the car, in her own little language. I am amazed that she knows the tunes to the songs, and sings to the tune, even if the words don't make sense. She wants to talk more than she is so badly! She often forms words with her mouth as you say them, but almost always practices them in a whisper until she knows she has them right. Its fascinating to watch the process, and I wish I knew what was going on in her head!

I look at my baby every day and shake my head in wonder about how fast she is growing up. She's not a baby anymore, but a very independent little girl. It amazes me that it was only May 17th of last year that I got a call from Journeys of the Heart, telling me that they had a referral for me. In one year, I have gone from wondering if I would ever get "the call" to being the mother of an energetic one year old delight. She rocks my world and it makes me tear up to even think about it! I waited so long to be a mom, and I am enjoying every minute of it. This Mother's Day was incredibly meaningful to me, but I also sent up a prayer for Holly's birth mother (even though they don't celebrate Mother's Day in Taiwan), hoping that she knows how happy Holly is and that my daughter completes my life in so many ways.

Happy Belated Birthday

So, I took Holly to have her one year pictures taken and scheduled them for the morning so that she would be happy, charming, and smiley. Since this is her usual self, I figured no big deal. She was a trooper all morning and had lots to say to the photographer until we got into the studio. Then she got shy and started crying like I have NEVER seen. Of course, the photographer thought we should document this part, so her is a picture of how Holly really felt about the entire thing. She's hanging on to Bunny for dear life, since she wasn't clinging to me at the time!

This is not a pose that anyone could even ask a child to do and expect a response! Just Holly deciding to show off her little attitude to everyone right before her meltdown. I am really glad that the photographer caught this one, because its the best picture that really captures her personality.

After the major meltdown, the kind folks at the studio said that they were not that busy that day and asked if I wanted to leave for a while and bring Holly back in later that day to see if we could get any other good shots. Of course, I said yes, with a sigh of relief!! We went and ate pizza (mmmm!) and Diet Coke (the big girl even drank out of a straw), then went to the play area at the mall for about 20 minutes. Then, we returned to the studio and caught a few more frames before we were satisfied with the results. Here is the only smile of the day...its such a fleeting thing when you ask for it from Holly!

This was actually a picture that was taken from further away that I cropped and enlarged. No matter what the pose, my dear little Holly is just so much fun - even at the photo studio clinging to Mama and crying her eyes out until my shirt was sopping wet! I am really grateful to the photographer. She was really nice and patient, and was able to get shots like these in between the crying and pouty lip.

I've actually had these for a while, but didn't want to post them until closer to when I would be able to pick the pictures up. I didn't want to ruin the surprise for Grandma, in case she checks the blog that hardly ever gets updated!