Wow, it's been a busy week! Miss Autumn had a sore throat, I finished pretty much all my shopping, and this weekend we went to Birmingham to visit with Mike's extended family. It was, as always, a blast. If nothing else, it's worth the drive for the people watching. Ha!
One of Mike's cousins turned 40 yesterday so, of course, there was cake:
And the ritual defacement decorating of the birthday person's vehicle:
Autumn did a lot of snuggling and watching. I think the crowd freaked her out a little. :)
Here are Brad and Mr. Tyler. Tyler was little less shy than Autumn was.
Tyler and Autumn were pretty cute together. By Sunday night, Autumn was trying to rub his tummy. Which, as many of you know, means he's "in the club." :P
Well, happy Christmas week everyone! I'm sure we'll be posting again soon. Papa D and Mama Lainey are having more fun than the kids are preparing for Christmas so there will be many cute moments to share.
Well, since the Glamour Monkey post is freaking Mike out a little, I decided to go ahead and post this video so that we have a new top post. :)
We listen to a lot of music. Deezer, Pandora, and Last.fm are a few of our favorite internet radio sites, if anyone is interested. They are cool because we can build playlists and find new music--I've found some of my favorite bands through Pandora. Aaaanyway, it's not unusual to see Miss Autumn suddenly burst into wiggles and bounces and hums. It's kind of funny because she seems to have seriously eclectic taste (I guess kind of like her mama and papa).
For example, I think one of Autumn's favorite songs is Paralyzer by Finger Eleven. She will drop anything and start dancing to that one. Once we were at the mall in Collierville and walked by an outside speaker playing Paralyzer. Autumn stopped, turned around, marched over the speaker, and started wiggling and bopping.
But then, one time, we were watching Tristan und Isolde on PBS. When the lady started singing, Autumn dropped what she was playing with, came over to where I was sitting on the floor, and plopped right down in my lap. She spent the next several minutes just sitting there, staring with her huge baby eyes, and occasionally waving her hands to the music...who needs Baby Einstein, right??
So, anyway, this video isn't so much a dancing video as it is a compilation of the bops, head bangs, wiggles, bounces, finger and toe taps and flails that we see throughout the day. It was really hard to even catch this much because her dances can be either random or short or over by the time I get the camera on. :P But, I hope you enjoy this leetle snippet of some of the best parts of our days.
Got a couple of links for you. I know I've already mentioned this but if you aren't using rss feeds to read your blogs, I highly recommend looking into it. A feed reader is awesome because I don't have to keep visiting the blogs I read--I visit a page and anything new I want is right there. Google Reader is probably my favorite right now and it's pretty easy to learn.
Anyway, I bring all that up because I wanted to share a blog with you called The Bargainist. All they do is post deals, coupons, and sales. It's a pretty cool site that shares everything from free Arby's roast beef sandwiches to discounted couture clothing. Thought it might help with Christmas shopping and all. :)
And, since I think that no one reads any entry that doesn't have Autumn in it, have a short video:
We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!! Ours was pretty quiet which is a little bit of a change from the usual but change is good, right? :) We're well rested and ready to jump into the shopping/parties/carols/gifts/decorations scene. Well........I'm ready for all that. Mike maybe not so much. Ha! Yay for Christmas! Anyway, here are some photos from last month that we didn't get to post. I have a couple of videos in the works so hopefully I can get those posted soon.
First up "Pictures I Laughed At." No one else might but I at least giggled a little. This one cracked me up because they both look so...chilled. Or something. Bored? Ignoring the mama who doesn't ever seem to shut up or put down the camera? "Maybe if we don't look at her she'll go away?"
Call me a 9 year old, but that piece of spaghetti that looks like it is hanging out of her nose made my day. Can you see it? You might have to enlarge the photo...
Second set is "Helpful Baby is Helpful." We have leaf collection:
Soo...everyone knows I'm a martial artist, right? I'm training in two arts these days. One is called kali and it's a filipino weapons system. I don't really have any video of that except for this one which is way old. The other art is aikido. The aikido school recently moved to a new location (kali is also housed here) and one of the things I'm doing as the dojo administrator to promote the school is put together a couple of videos that we can send to our friends and family to stir up some interest and potentially bring in some students.
This is the highlight reel of my last aikido test back in February. I tested for 2ndkyu which means I have 1st kyu next and then black belt (2-4 years, depending). This rank was a hard one because I was still dealing with some of the aftermath of Autumn's birth (I wasn't declared completely healed until August, 6 months after this test). But happily, I didn't do that badly!
In case anyone is interested in what aikido is...short explanation: it's a defensive system consisting primarily of joint locks and throws. Slightly longer but not even remotely comprehensive answer: Aikido is designed so that practitioners can use the attacker's energy against him or herself through some type of redirection while protecting ourselves as well as the attacker. The latter is probably one of the major things that sets aikido apart and a reason why so many peace and nonviolence advocates train in aikido. There are times for strikes, and in these throws and locks there are definitely hidden strikes (and stuff like arm breaks) but by and large aikido is an art of peace and protection.
If anyone is interested in aikido, I'm probably the best person to contact. If anyone is interested in kali, I can hook you up with my instructor. Really, if you're at all interested in training, Memphis Judo and JiuJitsu is a fantastic first place to visit. I've known the owner David for several years and have trained with many of the instructors there.
Monday morning we had a super dramatic doctor's visit. Dramatic because Miss Autumn is apparently emotionally scarred by the doctor's office the same way Molly is emotionally scarred by the vet. Sigh. She took one look at the nurse who called her name to come back and immediately tried to make her escape. As long as the nurse or doctor was in the opposite corner from us, she was fine. Like a boxing match or something.
But the good news is that all is well. She's small but I don't think anyone's shocked by that. She hasn't broken 20 pounds but Autumn is about 30 inches. Well, as much as they could tell. Who knows how tall she really is. Like I said, drama. Autumn's doing really well developmentally although her physical skills seem to be progressing a little faster than her verbal. The doctor was pretty pleased with her weird little collection of words as well as her ability to understand and follow directions and that was good to hear. So, yay! Healthy, happy (mostly) baby.
Oh, something funny we talked about: Autumn licks things. A lot. It's a little, um, strange so I kind of mentioned it. The doctor laughed and said it isn't unusual for very affectionate and snuggly children to lick things in order to get acquainted with them. So, yeah. Apparently Autumn orients herself to the world through her tongue, like a snake. We'll have to make sure she stops that before her teens...
Anyway, to celebrate Autumn's year and a half-ness, I strung together some random clips from the last year or so that haven't made it into other videos. I wanted to do a "Dancing with Autumn" one but I don't have enough dance clips yet. Heee. So you can just look forward to that. And it might just be me but that photo of Autumn with her little vacuum cracks me up. Mike doesn't think it's funny--it's like his personal hope that Autumn will grow up and take over his chore of vacuuming, or maybe even raking since she seems to enjoy helping with that, too. BUT SHE WON'T. I've already claimed her for laundry. Haha!
