January joys

The high today is 61 and I am very excited about letting Lilly run around in the sunshine. The mildness is kind of eerie and abnormal so I'm expecting 3 feet of snow in March to make up for how nice the weather is lately.

I have been enjoying our membership to the gym. Surprisingly, my favorite thing to do is run on the treadmill! It's no longer the "dreadmill" which I avoided because I thought it was boring and difficult. Now I'm a jogging machine! Well, I was until last week when my appendix got sick and had to be removed. Soon, though, I'll be recovered and back at it.

The surgery went well and I'm just thankful for so many things. It was all unexpected, but we have money to pay for it all, I wasn't pregnant or breastfeeding, my parents were able to take care of Lil, and Matt could take off work to be at the hospital with me. Thanks, God!

She discovered dirt...and she likes it.



I love her crazy morning hair.

Lilly's appetite has picked up lately and she's loving new foods. Especially carbs and anything that Matt and I think is tasty. Matt loves a good, soggy after-dinner Oreo so he just had to let Lil into the club. Hopefully she won't become an addict like her Daddy ;)

This dog came in as I was pushing the stroller into the house after a walk. It was nice and didn't pee on anything so I offered it some Fritos and black beans. I put it back outside because I figured it had a home since it didn't eat my tasty snack. You know a homeless dog would have been all over some Fritos.

2012

Happy New Year! And Merry Belated Christmas!

Christmas was wonderful. We had a great trip to Omaha to visit the entire Schilb clan. Lilly loved seeing her cousins and Matt and I had a blast hanging out with Matt's brother and sister-in-law.

Matt and I don't typically do New Year resolutions but this year we are doing New Life resolutions!! We have our goals written out and are excited about spending time with God and each other and bringing life and health to our bodies.

We are educating ourselves on how to eat healthier so we can teach Lilly how to make healthy choices. We're working out! We are finally finishing our One Year Bible plan together.

The mysterious case of the traveling piles

Beware! They are probably lurking around in your house, too! The pile of clothes, bills, misc things that Lilly snatched from my purse...all in a pile. It starts on the floor next to our bed, then when I start to pick up the house it moves to the bed, but as bedtime approaches it hops over to the desk! Sneaky piles...

We made a trip to Home Depot to scratch off the first thing on our New Life list - organize and declutter! We really don't need a bigger home, we need to simplify. So we built some shelves and went through a closet and a drawer to defeat the sneaky pile of stuff! Go Team!

Mini Me

Parenting is fun. It's also like having a tiny mirror. Lil really watches what I do and tries to copy me. She loves to get the broom out of the closet and drag it around. She takes washcloths and cleans the couch, coffee table, bath tub, floor...

My favorite new thing that she does is make lists. I thrive on lists. I make a list for everything - things to do today, things I need to pack for the upcoming trip, things I need to buy at the store, etc. So if I'm working on a list, Lilly will fuss until she gets her very own notebook and pen and she'll waddle around pretending to write.

"I need a pen NOW!!"

Unpacking Matt's Christmas present.

Fun times with GG.

Stopping by to see Uncle Will at work. He gives her rides in the rolly chair.

Extreme Teething. Lilly snatched a frozen meal from the freezer and ran to the living room to gnaw. Her gums must hurt really bad to be that desperate.

Matt: "Where can we go have fun where we won't spend any money?"

Jill: "Pet store!"

She climbed in here all by herself. Fortunately she fit perfectly and didn't get stuck.

Mommy's hat. I accidentally threw hers away :(

Lilly helping Daddy build her play kitchen!

Christmas is driving me crazy

"F*%# You, I couldn't back up!"

This is what I heard when I walked out of Kohls the other day after some Christmas shopping. Really, people? Is that what Christmas cheer is all about? Kohls was a nightmare. Long lines of tired people holding mounds of, pardon my French, crap. I think that's when my tinsel became tarnished and the holiday lost it's sparkle.

*Sigh*

It's a good thing there is more to Christmas than gifts.

How refreshing that Jesus' grand entrance was so plain; our greatest gift wrapped up in a cloth, nestled in a feeding trough. We are very thankful for that this Christmas. It reminds us to simplify.

Poor Matt had a breakdown while we were at Target the other day and decided that instead of buying a thoughtless gift that the recipient could buy on their own if they wanted, he would donate the money to help others. I must confess, at first I was a little upset. My big plans for a day of fun holiday shopping with my two favorite people while sipping a festive Starbucks latte were fading fast. But, Matt was right and I'm so thankful that he brings new perspective to my life. Sometimes we need a little Grinchy-ness to bring us back to what really matters.

Well then I thought, what if we started doing this every year, for everyone?

Don't worry, we're not packing up to move to a commune and grow our own food, we're just trying to look at our values so we make sure we raise our daughter to see what's important...and what's not.

So we've decided officially that from now on if we have to buy gifts, we will bless our recipient with one that also blesses others. For example, some lucky family members next year will be getting awesome handmade gifts to help stop human trafficking from Not for Sale!

It's one small way we can simplify (no more trips to Kohls!!) and serve others while we remember the real reason for the season...Jesus!

One year

Our baby girl is a year old. Crazy! I can say that parts of this year flew by but the first part really was slow. It's been a year of joy, tears, laughter, learning, and tons of love and kisses.

We've watched our tiny baby grow into a beautiful, fun little girl. She's so smart and happy and she loves her mommy and daddy!

We had a great birthday party on Saturday. Friends and family were there even though it was Thanksgiving weekend. We'll probably have to have parties a week later from now on! Lilly seemed to enjoy the party and somehow knew it was for her :)

We were a little nervous about the birthday cupcake. Lilly can be really weird about food sometimes but she took several bites of that cupcake like a pro! It was so fun to watch! She opened presents and ran around the room after her cupcake sugar-high.

She has an owl theme in her nursery and I wanted to do the owl thing one more time before she gets an opinion and wants everything to be Elmo! So we had owl cookies, cute plates and cups, and handmade owl ornament party favors. (Matt helped, too!)

*The party was at our neighborhood clubhouse. We do not have a huge cow hide up on our wall ;)

Our baby girl is a year old. Crazy! I can say that parts of this year flew by but the first part really was slow. It's been a year of joy, tears, laughter, learning, and tons of love and kisses.

We've watched our tiny baby grow into a beautiful, fun little girl. She's so smart and happy and she loves her mommy and daddy!

We had a great birthday party on Saturday. Friends and family were there even though it was Thanksgiving weekend. We'll probably have to have parties a week later from now on! Lilly seemed to enjoy the party and somehow knew it was for her :)

We were a little nervous about the birthday cupcake. Lilly can be really weird about food sometimes but she took several bites of that cupcake like a pro! It was so fun to watch! She opened presents and ran around the room after her cupcake sugar-high.

She has an owl theme in her nursery and I wanted to do the owl thing one more time before she gets an opinion and wants everything to be Elmo! So we had owl cookies, cute plates and cups, and handmade owl ornament party favors. (Matt helped, too!)

Flannel sheets and Halloween pictures

If you don't have flannel sheets for the winter months, stop what you're doing right now and go buy yourself some!! For about 5 months every year we use flannel sheets. They make the whole bed feel squishier and softer AND it eliminates that shock of cold sheets when you get into bed at night.

Onto Halloween. Better late than never, I always say! We had a great time with our friends. It's always a blast to see the creative costumes. We were farmers with our little cow. My original idea was for Lilly to be a sheep and we would be Austrian sheepherders, but the only costume I could find was a German beer girl. Matt thought that would be an awesome costume, but it didn't seem family friendly ;)

Thanks to Melissa for all the pictures!

Potato sack race. Pictures speak more than words here.

And they're off!

Mike takes the lead but Matt's a close second!

And the winner is...Mike!

The girls race, too. The crazy cavemen wrestlers from Nacho Libre dominated!

11.11.11

Our girl is having a growth spurt. She's been eating so much better. And chugging her bottle like never before. I gave her a Gerber arrowroot cookie the other day and now it's her favorite thing. We have to spell c-o-o-k-i-e at times otherwise she'll whine and reach for the counter where I usually have the bag. We had to start breaking them into small pieces because she got so excited about it the other day that she stuck the entire cookie in her mouth. I guess she's been watching Mommy and Daddy when there's a bag of Oreos around :)

We had a great trip to Branson last weekend. Bought some clothes at Tanger and had the ultimate winter comfort food, homemade chicken pot pie, from Andy William's restaurant. Heavenly.

"Um, Dad? This bear is freaking me out..."

Being in a hotel with a baby can be scary at times because you're afraid you'll wake everyone up, but Lilly did great. She loved running around the room trying to get into trouble. Her favorite thing was the air/heat unit under the window. She would turn the knobs and put her face over the vent. I loved watching her goofy, snaggletooth grin when it blew her hair everywhere.

She's been very fun lately. We like to play hide and seek where Matt and I will jump out and scare her. She is very sneaky about putting things in random places. Today I started the dryer and heard a lot of banging around considering I only put soft clothes in it. I opened it up to find a wooden puzzle piece from her new puzzle in there. She put a sticky note in Daddy's shoe. I found her hair-rinsing cup from the bath in my shower.

( She has 6 beautiful teeth now!!)

Necklaces and purses are all the rage over here. She knows how to put on necklaces and when Aunt Lisa brought a huge sack of them to me Lilly had the time of her life digging through the bag and inspecting them all.

I had a profound realization yesterday that Lilly can understand what we're saying! She brought me her shoe which means she wants to go outside. So I said, "If you want to go outside bring me your other shoe because you need two before you can go outside." Well she marched right out of the room, found that shoe, and brought it straight back to me. I was so shocked and proud. We went outside right away!