*corners of my home

I really like SouleMama's "Corners of my Home" string of posts - simple sweet snapshots of those little spaces that make up your house and home. So here's three little corners of our home that I love. Not necessarily *sweet* shots, but a fun little secret that I discovered as we were moving in: all our rooms are painted, but each closet still has it's old 1940's wallpaper. I like mine the best :)

*uh-oh

I'm thinking we'd better lower the crib mattress ... ...

*a couple more

Finishing up sharing pictures from this weekend as this weekend we make room for more visitors! Ben's parents arrive tonight :)

Gramma Sheila

Busy kitchen

This reminds me of when I was little and loved babies.

Can you believe how old these girls are already??

Another nephew getting the last bit of ice cream.

*an explanation

When people ask me if I ski, I don't quite know what to say.... um kind of? My whole family is big-time into skiing and I'm just not. I think I could have been given different circumstances and a little [a lot] less stubornness on my part. Here's what happened: when I was 6 or 7, my parents put my younger sister and I in the same little ski school. I think I've seen a picture of all of us and I'm at least a head taller than everyone else. So then Liz starts getting better at a faster rate than I, and the older siblings (and my dad too I'm sure) start giving me a hard time about it. That, combined with my fears of going fast, not being in control, hurting myself, looking stupid and getting snow in my gloves didn't set me up to be a die-hard skier like everyone else. I always wished I could have the whole mountain [well all the easy runs] to myself, so I could just ski and concentrate on getting better without worrying about having one of my brother's cute older friends seeing me. I also thought that if I just had some "cool" ski clothes, everything would fall into place. Usually I had to rummage through the ski drawer trying to find gloves that matched and a hat that didn't itch. So anyway, I always violently protested a family ski trip - usually all the way up until lunch in the lodge [as long as I got hot cocoa and one of those cups full of french fries...]


That all said, I went skiing on Sunday afternoon and had a pretty good time. I let Ben know ahead of time that I was only going on blue runs and that he couldn't make me do anything I didn't want to. I think I'm over the not-matching bit and wasn't too worried that I was the dorkiest skier on the hill. Granted, I only had to go for a half day [ok, at the end of every run, I'd look at the clock on the lift and think yessss that one took 30 minutes ... that much closer to going home to my baby.] No, I did have a fun time and Ben was great, telling me that I looked good and all. He's always very sweet and encouraging and would get mad if I said he just said all that to make me feel better.


Ok. I feel I've explained enough. Isn't this what a blog is for? You may have only gotten through the first half of the first paragraph, but at least I got it all out.

[Sarah, that's where we hiked this summer :) I like hiking.]

*more snow

[I wish I'd had a video of this last moment.]

*shades

Vera checking herself out in her little sunglasses. She looked so cute - I couldn't [can't] get over it.

*at home

I "get" to ski a half-day this afternoon. The past few days I've stayed home with Vera (and one day with Marie too) while everyone skies. Well and yesterday Gegi, Marie, Vera & I went on an Ikea adventure. Anyway, these are just some cute pictures from the last couple days: chewing on her toes, scooting 3 whole feet to get to her toy basket and blowing bubbles on the wall.

*the wards

This has been one of those months-long anticipated weekends: all of my family [minus Liz :( ] is here for a ski vacation/reunion. The Myers get here tomorrow and Tom's family was busy, so George and his family and my parents were here for dinner. I don't know if you know this, but I love to make dinner for my friends and rarely have the chance to for my family. That doesn't seem right, does it? Anyway, it was a fun fun night. Vera was a little overwhelmed at first but warmed up as the night went on. Actually she gets a little delirious when she's tired and thought just about everything was funny. She couldn't fall asleep fast enough though after everyone left.

*****

She got a little overwhelmed here and we had to abandon dinner for a second try later on.

Happy ♥ day!

Lots of space.

I told Tyler I was going to put this picture on the Internet for everyone to see.

This is Marie getting the last drip of ice cream. Is this what you meant, Liz, when you talked about kindred spirits?

Tyler making V laugh.



***

More pictures of the weekend to come...

*el parque

We live by a really great park and I remember walking by the playground when I was pregnant thinking how fun that would be when I could take my baby there. Today was a much needed warm, sunny day and so I took Vera to the park! So crazy - it felt like that day was ages and ages away. She loved the swing and laughed the first few times. I was sad I didn't have my camera, but did have my phone ...

*bunny

Trying to get a sweet picture with [what we want to be] her favorite stuffed animal.

*el mate

See that box on the kitchen floor? It contains about 8.8 lbs. of yerba mate and has been sitting there since last Monday. Except for once with Tamara last Christmas and once with Nieves this Christmas, I haven't had mate since I found out I was pregnant! If you know me and my addictions at all, that's pretty amazing. So Ben asked me this morning why I haven't opened it yet.... and I really don't know. Trying to come up with a theory: I think I'm scared. Scared that I won't love it as much, scared that I have to switch away from coffee [which I've come to love and need], scared that it will make Vera get a mate high ... ayayay.

*little whistler

We like to think of Vera as a scrappy little ragamuffin. [Ben can't wait for the day when she stomps her feet and tells me NO! - like he imagines I must have done.] I think this video captures her little personality. It may be boring to some [most probably], but I love watching it. After dinner she's been so funny and energetic. A little intense too - see how she tries to grab my hand to make those middle-school type fart noises*. Anyway, also notable about this video: about 50 seconds into it she whistled. I couldn't believe it, but it's something she's incorporated into her daily repertoire.

*What do you call that? I had a 7th grader do that right in the middle of a classmate's presentation last year. I was SO MAD. I sent him right down to the principal's office. I think [hope] I scared him.

*la siesta

It's been a rough day so far - we have attempted a nap 5 times and only yielded about 32 minutes of actual sleep. I never ever thought that making a baby take a nap would be this difficult!! I asked my sister-in-law once how she put her babies down. She said, "Oh they just rubbed their little eyes or pulled on their ears and I laid them down in the crib." Please, LORD, let me have one of those babies next time!! Vera screamed her little head off every time I attempted to rock her to sleep today. [I think she had a tummy ache, pobrecita]

There's always a couple days each month where I think we've made it, that she's finally figured out that it's easier to just sleep. "Oh naps? We have that down." I took the following photos the other day after she had been taking hour-long naps consistently. I was so excited, happy and rejuvenated [and so was she]. I should have known...

[she has managed to stay asleep as I downloaded these photos and wrote these paragraphs - yay small miracles]

*praise the LORD

I know our sleep troubles aren't over yet, but last night Vera slept without a peep from 7pm to 7am!!!

*ojos azules

*el fin de semana

Erik and Heather came through for a short visit this weekend. Everyone [except me and V] went skiing on Saturday - I was bummed to miss the beautiful day up in the mountains, but if you know me at all, you'll know that I'm not the most... enthusiastic skier. Anyway, Sunday Ben and Erik went snowmobiling and then we all watched the Superbowl. I realized that I love Superbowl food - nachos, dips, beer.... yum. Anyway, we had a great time with them and want all our friends to know they are always welcome to stay [please?].

*seis meses

Vera had her 6 month check up yesterday. She weighs 16 lbs. 1 oz and is 25.25 inches long. I believe both are about the 50th percentile. She was born at about the 95th (I still can't believe she was over 9 lbs.!) so she's slimmed down a bit.

She's changing every day - sitting up pretty well now and constantly talking or blowing bubbles. The other day she actually whistled - I caught it on video. She also won't stay on her back, but rolls over to her tummy right when you set her down. Yesterday she even pulled her knees in with her little bum in the air, like she wanted to crawl. It's so much fun to see each day's new development :)

*los cater(s)

When we got married and became "the [Montana] Caters," I thought it would be clever to have that as our email address, but in Spanish. A little Spanish lesson: if you want to say "the Smiths" or "the Garcias" you say "los Smith" or "los Garcia" - there's no 's' on the end. ¿Entiendes? At the time I thought, well won't all our English speaking friends get mixed up and always spell it wrong? So I did "los caterS." Then I applied for a Master's degree in Spanish and had a grammatically wrong email address - a little embarrassing. I should have just gone with "los cater." Anyway, I know it's not a big deal [at all], but I've always wanted to send out a mass email explaining myself. So that said, the blog is now los cater(s). Like I said in an earlier post, it's fun to get to use the parenthesis add-on :)

[Also, I'm not sure if I like the new header. I kept trying to make it smaller and smaller - but no matter what, it still won't fit in the border! Also maybe there's a little too much pink? Oh well, I've already wasted one of Vera's micro-naps trying to figure it out.]

*sweet potatoes

* i love almonds - and ice cream

The past few nights I've been having vanilla ice cream (in a perfect world it would be haagen dazs) loaded with toasted almonds and just a touch of chocolate sauce. Around 5pm I start thinking about it, wishing we could just get dinner over with so I can have my dessert. Last night, Ben was saying grace and I had to ask him to start over. Instead of thanking the Lord for a wonderful day, I was thinking about how much I love almonds and ice cream and was planning how I could post a picture of it on the blog with the title "love" - is this a little ridiculous??

*the (m)other

In graduate school I had to take a class on Literary Criticism. The professor was a little crazy and very obsessed with the theories of Jacques Lacan - I can still hear his super thick accent - LacAH (how do you write out that nasal sound?) Anyway, I wrote a whole paper using this theory but I pretty much didn't know what I was talking about then and certainly don't now. What I do remember is that there is a moment when a baby sees herself in the mirror and realizes that she is herself, and that the mother is someone else: an other [or (an)other - I loved getting to write it that way]. There's some sort of split in the "self" and the result is a bunch of post-freudian junk (I really don't get it). Anyway, Vera has been fascinated with her image in the mirror for a long time - it's a sure way to get a smile out of her. I wonder when she saw her image and realized that she and I weren't one and the same?

*in action

A couple of videos - they're not terribly exciting, but they're cute and part of "the everyday life" no? When I was uploading them this morning, Vera was really excited, smiling and squealing - I'm pretty sure she knew she was watching herself :)

*ciao zia!

My sister left yesterday after staying with us since the beginning of December. She's off to Italy on Sunday for 8 months at a shoe design institute! While she was here we had lots of fun parlando italiano, stringing together as many frasi as we could [e bella la bambina? si, e molto bella e molto inteligente]. Mi piace. Anyway, she's going to keep up a blog [you have to, liz] while she's there. I can't wait to hear all about the experience - especially all the cibo italiano she gets to mangia - lucky.

*or anne

The reality is, it's most likely "or anne" who will be doing most [all] of the postings on this blog. Although the site is mostly for me to share pictures of my sweet little Vera, I'm also going to use it to ramble on about other things that interest, excite or inspire me. This is going to be difficult at first as I have a hard time sounding natural in a journal-like setting. I'm much better at writing letters - when I used to try to keep a journal, I'd have to start it off with "Dear Tamara," in order to get the writerly flow moving.

So, here's something that excites me lately: my new metal crate that I use to store all my letter-writing materials. I wish I could say that it's a flea-market find, but I actually got it at one of those stores that can charge a ridiculous amount for a metal box because they make it look so stylish and flea-marketesque. Anyway, it makes writing letters that much more fun.