Home sweet home.

This morning, I got up and looked over the balcony on the second floor of Tim's parents house to see Morella eating her morning bottle with Grandma. She noticed me and smiled. I promised her I would be down really quick after I went to the bathroom. A few minutes later I come and who should be down there holding Morella but that baby snatcher Tim! I couldn't believe it! He was sleeping when I got up, and in the span of two seconds ganked my long awaited for baby moment. What a stinker.

At church this morning I couldn't concentrate. I just stared, held, kissed, stroked her smooth skin, held her little toes, smoothed her hair back and just marveled at how lucky I am to have such a beautiful, magical little girl like Morella. I was just astounded at how much she has changed in a week. It's incredibly apparent now that she isn't a little baby any more. Her voice is a little deeper, she is much more focused on people and examining situations .... the good news is she didn't crawl or say her first real word while we are gone. The fun news is that she is inches away from crawling. She can get up onto her hands and knees and rock back and forth and by the end of the day she has road rash on her knees. :) I am looking around the living room realizing that this might be the week that we start baby proofing. She adjusted to coming back home really well, ate all five bottles and went to bed without a fuss. I do think that MIL Sharon is right though, that she is outgrowing her 6-9 mo jammies. She is definitely long!

The other exciting news is that she didn't choke on any bottles the whole week, or today while I was watching. I even gave her a couple sips of water and she didn't have a problem with it at all! I think it's time to make the follow up barium swallow study appointment. Now to just call the doctor to get the referral before calling the specialist to see when she can be fit in. I think it will be a couple of weeks. I think in the mean time I am going to cautiously let her practice with a cup with thinner milk. Ohh -- it's so exciting to think that she might be able to swallow normally...and not need all the thickeners.

But I have a lot to talk about -- I guess I'll work on dong that this week, and do pictures as well. I might just gallery that up with detailed comments explaining pictures. That might just be easier than posting about it.

I can't believe how much I love and missed Morella. She came home with four new duckies and then found mail with a new Froggie themed duckie from our friend Erika, along with a beautiful handmade dress from her Grandma Barb.

I also missed Migo. She's my sweetie kitty. Pluto missed Tim and the dog sitter even sent him home with a picture of him, the date he spent with them and a one word description that said "Insistent". I think that describes him quite well (at least when it comes to attention). Arkham and Innsmouth are their same crabby selves and I am sure will come out for attention in the middle of the night.

Okay. I should hit the hay. The one sure thing about being on vacation is that when you return from it you need to catch up on your sleep. I know that is the case for me. Once I am done pumping I will be able to have lots of glorious sleep...and time. I just know it.

My crazy idea right now is to get into the framing business. Start making frames. Tim is going to make art from dead bugs (think patterns). I need to do some research. It can't be that hard to make frames, right? I want to frame everything!

I didn't gain any weight! How awesome is that. I still need to get back into watching what we eat mode though. I would love to be back down to my college weight, which is just 10 pounds away. I went grocery shopping tonight and got some of those frosted animal crackers. Those are SO good, and also bad for you, which is why it's the only real junk food snacky thing I got. Except for my dinner of course which was a Reese's peanut butter cup, a beer and a back of BBQ chips.

One more thing. I got Morella these socks last week at the coolest baby store ever...they had SO many things I wanted to spend money on, but it was so expensive. SO expensive. But since it was vacation, I did make an exception for some baby leg warmers and these.... (Morella got at least 3 compliments on her cute socks at Church this morning...I know she is going to get a ton more as winter comes near and she'll be wearing socks more).