Fairy Frenzy

As I have mentioned before, Joli, my sisters, and I, are all getting ready to go up and meet Laume to go to the fairy festival. So yesterday I went to the craft store and they were having a sale on all of there fabric. I decided to make two outfits. One I showed earlier, and I just needed wings for. So I bought some fabric for that. (Notice the baby fairy peeking out.)

Then I decided to make more of a punk fairy outfit. I found some fabric for wings, which led me to want to make a skirt, which led into going to Target and finding a few more things to complete the ensemble. I spent all day yesterday and part of today working, and this is what I've come up with.

Now all of the wings are just waiting to be lifted away to the fairy festival. Especially the little mini wings in the middle! Yay!

Lovely Day

Well I must say yesterday was simply a lovely day. Joli and I hung out at home while Joe was at work. On his way home Joe decided to stop at the grocery store and pick up some food and then came home to inform me that he was going to be cooking dinner all weekend! Last night we had steak, baked potatoes, salad, and garlic bread!! It was wonderful. Then he took me to see Harry Potter! I was so excited! I haven't been to a movie since November! We went to the 11:00 showing and although Joli watched the first twenty minutes, she slept through the whole rest of the movie!! It was awesome! The movie was just amazing as well. Obviously they left a lot out from the book, but they did a great job of getting most of the plot in. Plus the special effects where awesome. However, I don't think they did a good enough job on Umbridge. She needed to be shorter and squattier. Well, we don't have any really big plans for today, but Joe has told all his friends that he is hanging out with us today! Yipeee!!!

Social Boundries

WARNING: This post may be equal parts entertaining as well as offensive. Read at your own risk.

I find myself wondering sometimes, why it is perfectly acceptable to disregard social expectations when it comes to babies. When I look at my daughter I do not see a little baby. I see a tiny human being. She has her own thoughts and feelings, and should have her own personal space. When I go to give her a hug or pick her up and she pushes me away, I respect the fact that she doesn't want me to. So I wish someone could explain to me why it is okay for a perfect stranger to walk up to my child and start grabbing her cheeks or kissing her. I'm sorry, but if some strange person walked up to me and tried to touch me, it would be tough not to hit them. It's like people are just dumb. If she pushes your hand away, then stop touching her! I don't want to be rude to people, but just because she's a baby doesn't mean it's okay to invade her space. Some people are nice and only touch her feet unless she pulls away. Some people ask, and as long as Joli doesn't seem to mind then it doesn't bother me. But those people that walk up and start touching her without making eye contact or acknowledging in any way that I am there or even Joli's mother, those are the people looking to get hit. She is a human being. I'm not sure what life has in store for her but I'm sure it is not for strange people to touch her all day long. (I hope).

The other socially acceptable thing that people do, is to analyze her. I don't think I've had a conversation in the past seven months that hasn't including who Joli looks like and whether or not she's the right size, weight, height, etc. I'm going to make a sign and attach it to her wherever we go. It will read as follows:

Her name is Joli.

Yes, she is cute.

She is perfect; no matter who you compare her to, she is the perfect size, shape, color, height, weight, etc. for her.

She is doing exactly what she is supposed to be doing at this age.

She has beautiful blue eyes that came from both of us.

She looks like both of us!

She came from my husband's sperm and my egg.

She is a part of me and a part of him.

That is how we came up with Jo Li (Joe and Lisa).

Now you stand in the middle of the room and let us talk about your looks and your body.

Thank you all for letting me vent.

Joli's Crawling!!

I'm so excited! Joli has been trying and trying for what seems like months and she finally started crawling. For the longest time she would just rock back and forth and then lay on her stomach and cry. Then a couple days ago she figured out how to get from laying on her stomach to sitting up. That in itself was a shining moment. But tonight she just blew me away. She was whining as usual, so I got down on the floor and played like I was going to crawl towards her. She opened her mouth wide and started smiling, and then she started crawling towards me. Instead of continuing towards her I encouraged her to come to me. She smiled even more and crawled all the way across the living room to me! I was so ecstatic! I picked her up and gave her lots of hugs and praise. Then I put her down and went over to the other side of the room, and she crawled over there. Then I went and got the camera and took short video so her daddy could see. We are so proud of our little girl!!!

Creative Frenzy

I think I'm a very strange person. Sometimes I'll be sitting down nursing or trying to go to sleep and I'll start looking around whatever room I'm in. Then I'll get an idea. Some way that I can move the furniture or decorate, or even something that I can make. Then, at that moment, I will just have to do it. (Unless I'm nursing, then I wait until I'm done.) I have to do what I was thinking about, and finish it before I can do anything else. And while I'm doing this, I will also come up with a few other creative and often related things that I can do while I'm doing the first thing.

This is what happened tonight. I started thinking about how little time Joli spends in her crib. Which led to me thinking about how cramped it is in our bed. Which then led me to the idea that I could put her crib next to our bed. Since I don't think that she will sleep too well being separated from us, I thought I would take off the side bar, since that is one of the four ways the crib is made to be used. After that I could put the crib between the wall and our bed, so that she would still be close to me. So I proceeded to do this. In the process I had to move all kinds of things around to get the crib in, which meant that after I got the crib all set up, then I would have to rearrange our room, naturally. Once I did finally get the crib in and adjusted to the right height, I had to figure out a way to make sure Joli couldn't fall in between our beds. They were pushed up against each other pretty close but I shoved some pillows in there for good measure. So our room was finally done.


But then there was this space in the living room, so I rearranged the living room. All done with that. Next I needed to put away the side bar to the crib. All the other crib stuff is in Joli's closet. So I rearranged the closet. Now I'm working on washing all the sheets. Being creative is exhausting!

Fairy Girls

I am so excited! In a a couple weeks I am taking Joli and my sisters up to Oregon to meet Laume at a Fairy Festival! It's going to be so much fun. We've all had so much fun already just getting our outfits ready. My sisters talked my mom into taking them to thrift stores to look for things. I, on the other hand, had to find things around my house. Joli was easy. She already has a set of wings and a couple of fairy-looking dresses. Plus Laume bought her some stuff too. However, coming up with a costume for me was very difficult. I wanted to go with a Peter Pan, woodsy kind of thing. I had some tights that I don't really wear that often so I sewed a bunch of strips of fabric on them. I stayed up all night working on that. Then this morning I made a headband out of fabric and some fake flowers from mine and Joe's wedding. I threw in a few finishing touches and this is what I've come up with.
Laume suggested that I make my strips more pointy. So I'm currently cutting the ends, and then Joe actually showed me how to fray the edges. Who knew he knew anything about fabric? I'm also planning on getting much bigger wings. Those are actually Joli's wings that I just attached to my shirt for the picture. Otherwise I think I'm pretty sexy!

Busy Bee

I realized today that I haven't been taking as many pictures or blogging as much as I would like to. So here are a few things that have happened in my day.

Joli was playing on the floor this morning when Joe decided to through his shorts at her. I don't think she minded.

Then later I changed Joli's clothes to go to the store. She just looked so cute I had to take some pictures. She enjoyed the photo shoot, but I think maybe she was hungry. Of seven shots she had her mouth wide open in five. Here are a couple of them.

Tiny Projects

Well I haven't done a whole lot since we've been home, but here are some of the small things that I've done the past couple of days.

Joe had a dentist appointment on base on Tuesday. So Joli and I went down to the beach while we waited. We discovered that there are a ton of sand dollars on the beach at 8:30 in the morning. I just happened to have a basket with me and we filled the whole thing. We could have spent more time there but I soon discovered that Joli had pooped. Which wouldn't be a big deal except I had cleaned out the car the night before and only had a diaper. No clothes. No wipes. So we went into the beach bathroom and I washed her off in the sink. She seemed okay with it until I put her under the dryer, because there were no paper towels. Oh well, life goes on I guess. When we got home I put the sand dollars in a tub with some bleach to make them all white, like they are at the store.

This is how Joli helped. She sat in mommy's other tub with her toys while I took care of the sand dollars.

When Laume came down a couple of weeks ago she brought me this pane less window. I wasn't quite sure what to do with it at first, but I decided to put it up against the mirror in the hallway. Now it looks like we have an extra window!

This is a bowl that Laume also brought me. I bought some potpourri at the Dollar Tree and thought it looked like the perfect place for it.

My mom brought my turtle back, and I came up with this wonderful idea to put him in the window in the living room. With the photo albums and sewing stuff up there, it almost looks like a little library!

My last little project was this headband I threw together for the 4th of July festival. I made Joe a patriotic quilt a couple years ago and I had some left over fabric so I just put it together and put it in my hair.

We're Home!!

After a fun day of boating we decided it would be a good idea to drive nine hours to my mom's house. With all the stopping for the bathroom and to get energy drinks it ended up being closer to eleven hours. Which normally would be a difficult drive, but we decided to make it interesting and drive it in the middle of the night. We finally arrived at 6:00am!! Joe and I switched around 1:00am and I drove the rest of the way. Good thing I wasn't tired I guess!


We then spent a day with my family before finally making the last little drive home. It's so nice to be back in our own house. We love to see people but there's nothing quite as good as your own bed. We got to relax for a day and then it was Independence Day! My family came down for the day and we went to a festival on base. Then we watched the fireworks over the bay. It was very beautiful. We all had a good time.