Another Semester, Another Family Music Night

I have mentioned before, I am sure, that we have been taking our daughter to a music class regularly for a while now. It's done by semester, and we just wrapped up our fifth semester of the class. For each semester you get a CD of songs that will be sung throughout the term, each CD focusing on a different instrument. This semester the focus was bongos. It's a ton of fun, and Baby Girl seems to love it. The class we attend is actually also taught by a dear friend, so that makes it even better. At the end of each fall and spring semester, there is a Family Music Night, which is an extended session that all of the teachers and students in the program attend. They get a live band to perform the songs from the semester as well as a few other fun tunes, and everyone basically parties down. Family Music Night for this semester was this past Wednesday, so I have a new crop of photos and videos of Baby Girl being super cute and getting her groove on.

Here she is dancing it up with her shaker eggs:

She loves to see the band. So much so that she tried to sneak up on to the stage with them:

Here she is dancing with her daddy:

Here are some more moments of awesomeness for you:

Eggs?

I'll be honest, I have no idea, but so cute!

Oh, hello there.

She really dug the ceiling fixtures.

Dancing with Daddy.

Um, I may have closed the egg in the car door,
purely on accident, mind you.

Whee!

Shake shake shake!

I love maracas!

I must organize them all...

...just right!

Time to climb on Mommy!

Stealing Daddy's hat now.

What?

Family shot!

Playing with her new frog guiro, spoils of the evening.

This frog is awesome!

It was raining like nuts, which is why we are all a bit bedraggled, but it was still oodles of fun. They had an instrument "petting zoo" set up too, where you could peruse various types of bongos and chimes and other such percussion instruments. We checked it out afterwards (since we arrived a little late due to said rain) and ended up getting Baby Girl a really cool wooden guiro carved in the shape of a frog. This is awesome because she loves frogs and because we bought it at TCU.

If you are wondering about the poor mutilated shaker egg, I had it in an outside pocket of my purse and when I was getting Baby Girl out of the car, it fell out unbeknownst to me and landed just inside the door frame. So when I went to shut the door...oops. The dent doesn't really seem to be hindering its performance at all, so there's that.

Anyhoo, that's another semester of fun music and memories wrapped up. We start back up in January. I think this semester the instrument of choice is bells. I'll be curious to see what the musical selections are. I do love the CDs we get with the class--you get two copies of each album so you can play one in the home and keep one in the car, which is kind of neat. They always include a great mixture of old folk songs from lots of different cultures, as well as the "Hello" and "Goodbye" songs that we sing at the beginning of each class.

If you've got little ones and are looking for a fun developmental course to do with them, I highly recommend this one. Our class is mixed ages from zero to four years, and the program we use (Music Together), which is phenomenal, has programs designed for up to seven years old. We take ours at TCU, as I mentioned, through their Music Preparatory Division.

Birthday Week!

We have had a kind of crazy (in a good way) week over here in Cori-land. My daughter turned two on Wednesday. I have always been one to make a to-do of my birthdays, and because she is the center of my world of course we had to have a party for her, even though she is entirely too little to really realize what's going on. Since her birthday was in the middle of the week, we decided to go ahead and have her party this past weekend, on Sunday evening. I am super glad we went that route, because it allowed us to get all of the crazy work part of the celebration out of the way and then just enjoy the rest of the week basking in the glow of the aftermath.

We hung balloons and streamers, picked up some barbecue, and I made cupcakes. I got bouncy balls for all of Baby Girl's friends, and set up Duplo and coloring stations for the kiddos. There were leis for everyone in general--until Baby Girl decided that she must have them all, that is. There was also Baby Girl's slide/fort that I put together inside the house when we got it and still haven't moved outside because it's too darn hot. Add to that family and friends and it was, I must say, a rousing success. Here are some of the highlights:

Balloons and streamers!

Indoor slide! Complete with QA Cat.

Bouncy balls for everyone!

Pineapple cupcakes, with lemon or strawberry frosting.

The birthday girl's cake.

Lei Collector in action.

Must have more leis!

Blowing out her candles.

She wasn't quite too sure about her cupcake, though.

Hugs for everyone!

Of course, that didn't mean that we did nothing for her actual birthday. Hubby took the day off and we spent it together. There was her two-year checkup in the morning, but we got that bit of unpleasantness out of the way bright and early. It wasn't even that bad, Baby Girl was incredibly well behaved, she didn't even cry when she got her shot, or her nasal flu vaccine. The doctor was impressed with her laid-back nature. I remarked to Hubby on the way out that Baby Girl sure does have everyone fooled. In the last six months she has managed to jump from the twenty-fifth to seventy-fifth percentile in height. She also jumped up from the very bottom of normal in weight to the twenty-fifth percentile (whew). Gonna be tall and skinny. She defintely doesn't get that from me. Thank goodness she takes after her father!

After lunch we let her open the rest of her presents.

Tony tests out the trampoline.

An easel to stretch her creative muscles.

She is starting to get the hang of this unwrapping thing.

Wally checks out the stomp rocket.

3..2..1...LIFTOFF!!

Feeding her My Little Pony a bottle.

I can't stress how much she wanted me to get Elmo out
of the box RIGHT NOW as soon as she saw him.

We wrapped up her birthday with dinner at a Mexican restaurant--that kid loves her salsa. She will eat it with a fork or spoon (and did this time) if I don't pay close enough attention. Then we went home, had brownies, and played until bedtime. All in all, it was a good day.

Of course, that's not the end of Birthday Week, oh no. Because today, my friends, is MY birthday, yay! (Baby Girl's first gift to me was saving me from having to go through labor on my birthday by arriving more or less on time.) We won't be doing anything quite so elaborate as the celebrations for Baby Girl. But Hubby did take the day off again, so I look forward to spending it with him. I will also be going to the yarn store in a little bit. Tonight I'll have dinner with my friends and family (we're going out to eat this time around so I don't have to clean up), then catching Conan the Barbarian after that. I mean, come on, shirtless Jason Momoa in a movie opening on my birthday? Clearly this is one of my presents.

So I am off to enjoy my day. I hope yours is lovely. Have a fantastic weekend folks, and I'll see you back here Monday.

On The Road Again

Today I bid adieu to my mother and stepfather and head on back to Texas. It has been a wonderful visit, even if some of our plans had to be changed due to circumstances beyond our control. It is always so nice to get to see my family again.

The plan is to try to make it to Oklahoma City tonight (well, almost to OKC or just past it, I have personal reasons that keep me from wanting to actually stop overnight in OKC itself ever again in my life if I can help it, especially when I am alone with my daughter). That will make for a super short easy jaunt back to DFW tomorrow in theory.

The good old Facebook seems to be telling me that everyone down in DFW is experiencing some crazy-ass stormy weather right now (while the news up here would have us believe that the entire state of Texas is on fire at the moment), and we have had some rainy/stormy weather going on up here as well. This tells me I have a more interesting drive than I would like ahead of me today.

I did engage my limited weather-fu skills last night, however, and did a bit of research. It seems to be that these are two completely different storm cells not moving toward each other (at least along my path of travel). Looking at the major cities along my path it looked like I should expect random chance of showers until I get past Kansas City snd then for things to be pretty dry from there. A quick check again this morning shows my way to be pretty clear of rain and a mostly sunny, if windy, drive. Fingers crossed.

So that's me today. Wish me luck. Have a great one, folks! Stay safe if you're in a part of the country with the crazy weather!

You're Doing It Wrong

Well, I am, at least. Apparently.

I finally sat down with my mom yesterday and got her to explain the basic increasing stitch for knitting yesterday. (The front and back knit increase, for the curious.) It turns out that the reason I couldn't get the stitch to come out correctly based on the instructions in my knitting books is because I have been knitting incorrectly. This. Whole. Freaking. Time.

Apparently, I have been inserting the needle incorrectly during knit stitches, which has caused my stitches to all be uniformly twisted. It hasn't really been a problem for me because I have also been compensating by wrapping the yarn around the needle the wrong way when I do purl stitches. Hoo boy.

So Mom patiently sat there and checked my stitches repeatedly while I practiced doing these oh so basic stitches the right way. I sort of kind of have the hang of it now. Correcting the knitting issue seems to not be a problem for me. The purl correction is proving to be a bit more challenging to remember, however.

Sigh.

Then, once I felt I had a decent handle on that, we went back to working on increasing. Mom and I both agree that the basic increase stitch is pretty horrid (it leaves a purl-like bump in the knit-side wherever you add a stitch, not pretty), so she showed me a couple of other types of increases as well. Maybe when I get around to my next amigurumi I will be up to trying that knit puppy pattern again. We shall see. I made a little practice swatch (and, when decreasing, discovered a whole new set of behavior I need to learn), which I was going to photograph for you. But I gave it to my daughter to play with and she disappeared it. So, sorry. No photo for you.

Discussing it with my mom, I also decided to go ahead and start knitting correctly on the rest of my Doctor Who scarf. I was at a color change in the pattern anyway, so it seemed like a natural place to change up the way I knit. Overall, it is not that noticeable so far. I do see, however, that doing it this way makes the stitches a lot looser. Mom says this is because my stitches aren't all twisted up, which makes perfect sense. It does also mean that the final third of the scarf is probably going to be more stretchy than the rest. Most of me is okay with this. The scarf is for me, after all, and it is doubtful most people will notice unless I point it out to them.

There is a small part of me, however, that knows this will likely drive me just a little bit crazy (crazier?) for the rest of forever. Sigh.

Oh well. The more you know, right? Learning is always an uphill climb. At least most of the time the end result is worth the struggle. I think this will probably be one of those cases.

I hope you have a great day. I will be spending it trying to help my mom have the best birthday possible. I don't know that it gets much better than that, really.

Settling Back In

I had a blast with all of my family in town this past week, but man did it wear me out. I actually came down with a bit of a cold at the end of the week, and am finally starting to feel better from that thank goodness.


Like I said, it was a great visit. There were some aspects of it that were made (I felt) unnecessarily complicated, but isn't that how families work most of the time anyway?

Somehow, I came away from this week with a new addiction: Angry Birds

For those not in the know, that's a mobile phone game. There are a couple of different free versions available and I now have them all on my phone. I had been hearing about this game for quite some time, but managed to stay blissfully unexposed until last week. My mother was curious about my husband's iPad and while she was playing with it, she saw the Angry Birds app and asked what it was. I tried to explain but, as I said, I only knew the vague details.

So she fired it up and ended up spending a good two or three hours playing it. After watching her play for a while, I wanted to try and so I went ahead and downloaded it on my iPhone. Mom ended up downloading the game on her phone as well. We spent more time than I care to admit playing the game throughout our visit.

Later on in the week, my dad was trying to distract my seven year old nephew and handed the kid his brand new iPhone, firing up what else but the Angry Birds app. I realized my nephew was playing a different version than the one I had, and that was when I went to my app store and got the other two free versions, one a promotional version for the movie Rio (where instead of trying to take out cheeky piggies you try to free captured birds--I like that one the best I think) and one for different holiday seasons. The holiday one is hard, but the challenge is kind of what makes this game fun. So. Yeah. Totally addicted to Angry Birds now.

Here are a few photo highlights from the visit:

My nephew and sister.

Baby Girl with her cousin. She absolutely adored him.

My nephew, stepdad, mom, me, Hubby, and Baby Girl.

Hubby, me, my nephew, dad, stepmom, and Baby Girl.

Baby Girl befriends a penguin at the zoo.

Baby Girl and my nephew posing (sort of)
with the elephant statue at the zoo.

Yeah, I am pretty sure they are playing Angry Birds there.

In addition to all of the visiting and running around and getting addicted to random mobile games, I was also mildly productive. I did get this done:

Soft Cascades by Cori 2011.

Pattern: Diagonal Box Stitch Afghan by Sandra Petit
Yarn: Bernat Baby Sport Solid in Yellow, Mint (half skein of each), and White (two-thirds a skein), and Bernat Softee Baby in Lemon and Mint (a third skein of each).
Hook: G

I am actually crazy happy with how this baby blanket turned out, even though it definitely has some flaws. The biggest of which is that I ran out of the yellow and green yarn about two-thirds of the way through the project (which is what I get for using remnant yarn) and couldn't find the same yarn to finish, so had to substitute some which was not quite the same. It still looks pretty awesome though. Also, lesson learned.

One more baby blanket to go and then I have a quick amigurumi pattern I want to whip up before I dive into the next round of baby blankets. Then I think I have a wedding blanket to make. Sigh. Why does this happen every year? People I know need to stop having babies and/or getting married. I can't keep up. One of these days I am gonna get to work on that blanket stockpile I keep joking about. For reals.

Well, that's all I've got for you today folks. Have a great one!

Detour On Memory Lane

Go Frogs!

After I graduated from college I didn't stray too far from my dear alma matter. I live, in fact, about a fifteen minute drive away from the TCU campus. Now, because that little corner of town is pretty much all dedicated to the campus, I don't really go over there unless I have a specific reason to. This means that from about a year after I graduated (when the last of my close friends from school also graduated) until just a few years ago, I rarely saw the campus. Occasionally I would drive through heading to the nearby bars if my husband or another local band I like had a gig. Some of our best friends got married at the university's chapel. I went to a few homecoming games.

But mostly, I would just drive down University on my way from here to there and only catch one little glimpse of the campus. When my daughter was about eight or nine months old, we enrolled her in TCU's music preparatory program, however, which has resulted in my being on campus quite a bit over the last year. Her music class is held in a building right next to the dorm I lived in for two and a half years, and that dorm was actually remodeled while I was still at school. So walking around that little corner of campus is just like strolling down memory lane. It's more or less just as I remember it, as is the bit that you pass when you drive down University. But since my daughter has started doing her music classes, we have, on a few occasions, needed to walk through that other part of campus. The part that has changed completely since my own school days ended.

Yesterday TCU held their annual Easter egg hunt, and we attended for the first time (Baby Girl was just crawling last year so we decided to sit it out). Strolling around campus with my family (myself, Baby Girl, Hubby, my mom and my stepfather) was a little bit of a surreal experience. So much has changed. In many ways it feels nothing like the place where I went to school, and yet...turn a corner and I'm right back there to ten years ago. I have to admit, as cool as the improvements they have made to the campus are, there is something to be said for walking those same paths I used to walk with my husband and daughter beside me. I have no intention of dictating where my daughter goes to college when she gets to that point in her life, but I will confess, a small part of me hopes she chooses TCU. Her daddy and I are both horned frogs, and the idea of keeping the tradition going with her is quite appealing. Still, that's a long way away, so for now, I'll just enjoy the memories being there brings back, along with the new ones we make each time we visit this strange new campus I don't remember.

The Easter egg hunt was a blast, by the way. I think my mom and stepfather had fun and enjoyed getting to see the campus and share in one of Baby Girl's firsts. Having them here has been wonderful.  Here are a few of the highlights for you.

Baby Girl isn't quite too sure about Mrs. Easter Bunny.

Hubby, me, and Baby Girl in front of Frog Fountain.

Baby Girl with her Nana and Papa in front of Frog Fountain.

Hubby, Baby Girl, and an appropriately festive frog statue.

Gathering eggs...

Got another one!

Super Frog, me, and Baby Girl.

Hubby and Baby Girl in line for a balloon animal.

Tuckered out on the way home.

As you can tell from the photos it was, of course, incredibly windy. But a good time was had by all.

I hope you are having a fantastic Monday!