Lots of catching up to do...

Hello. Do you guys remember me? Does anyone ever look at this anymore? Anyone beside the people who stumble here from Blogs of Note to leave dirty comments with links to their dirty websites.


Anyway, we have A LOT of catching up to do. Sorry about that.


So school is really winding down for me. Only 2 days this week, an exam and two clinicals next week, then the last week is an easy half day and a final test that we're required to pass but we get several tries to pass it and no grade for it, so mostly I feel like I'm done. That's an amazing feeling, two more weeks and I will be a third of the way through nursing school!!! That feels so good to say. This is the hardest I've ever worked for anything and I can't tell you the confidence it's given me. I finally believe that I may be capable of anything. This quarter was SO hard. I had to devote so much more of myself and my time. It cost me a lot of my family time, and that killed me, but Maizey barely noticed. She's very lucky to have such an amazing daddy and grammys who take such good care of her. I can't imagine doing this without them. I wouldn't.


RyRy has been perpetually sick for the last few months. It's been a bad cold, food poisoning, allergic reactions, you name it. He also lost his daddy toenail and it got really infected. I'm happy to report that I was able to heal it (well his immune system probably had something to do with it too) and apply all of my wound care knowledge. It was awesome, I knew what ointments to use, how to clean it, and how to wrap it. I felt very proud. But, back to Ryan. But, actually there isn't a lot else to say. I don't think??? He's good? He's been watching Maizey a lot lately and when he's not watching Maizey he's watching Avatar: the Last Airbender on Netflix watch instantly. God, I really hate the watch instantly option on Netflix. Who knew there were so many bad movies and television shows out there?


Now, to my star. Miss Maizey Lou is 2!!! Can you believe it? I cannot. Time is going so fast. It's so fun to watch her grow up though. I am having conversations with her now and I don't think that there is anything cooler than that. It's so exciting and HILARIOUS! I can't believe the things that come out of her mouth. Ryan and I can often be found crying we are laughing so hard about the random, silly things she says. Lately she always wants me to "move, ma" or "go way, ma!" And though that is very rude, it's still very funny. That said, she has the best manners a mom could hope for. Everytime she asks for anything she always says please and she always says "thanks ma" or "thanks gam" (for gram). She also apologizes to everyone and everything (if she bumps into the wall or chair she apologizes to them too), and she's so lovely to everyone (most of the time). She always wants be sure we're okay after we sneeze or cough or say "ow!" She goes "okay ma? okay?" It's the cutest thing in the world.


I think that's enough typing for now. I will tell you the rest through photos. These are just a few months of catching up, I don't have early April or any photos from March in this batch--that would have been too much I think.


These aren't in order. Has anyone at Blogger ever actually used the product? It's so impossible to load and arrange photos.

Getting music lessons from Uncle Foos (short for Foosball)

Celebrating their birthdays at Brion and Mistilyn's

This is all Auntie Erika. She definitely knows how to capture my Moo.

Silly girls.

As you will see, Maizey has learned to smile for the camera. She has really taken it over the top. Hammin it up... The slide is where it's at.

Maizey wearing her "lipsss." She thinks chapstick is lipstick and she has to have it at all times. I swear I really tried to be gender neutral with her. But, she's a girly girl and I love it.

On a hike with auntie. Nothing better than hikes with cupcakes.

My little outdoorsy girl. She loves to go hiking and talks about it all the time.

We're rockin the same jeans and genes.

Soul mates. And, Maizey's back-up mom.

Sassafrass. I just want to eat her up.

Modeling her new "pincess jammies" or "nitedess" from cousin Ari (they were Ari's favorite too). She refuses to wear anything beside princess night gowns. It's annoying--mostly because I only have 2 of them. Auntie and Maize love their Red Mango (so does mommy). In case you are wondering, her pin says "Herbivores Score More" Auntie keeps Maize awesome and embraces her vegetarianism (unlike other family members who think that chicken is not meat).

She kept getting ice cream headaches! I've never seen a cuter ice cream headache.She finds bars to swing on everywhere.

See? Soul mates.

Mad gym skillz.

She does not have mommy's fear of heights (but she did get mommy's fear of worms--phew!)

Her favorite past time is dancing in her bedroom, lately she's really been liking Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z. She likes the Hip Hop.

Spending Maizey's 2nd Birthday at the Aquarium then to Uvillage for lunch and cupcakes and play with Grammy and Auntie.

Kissing the otters. They are sososo cute!

Maize and Dad ridin' an orca.

Getting her face painted. She chose the starfish.

We have this exact same picture from almost 2 years before.

I psychotically love this photo. It would be at the top of blog if it were not vertical.

I've been watching lots of "Say Yes to the Dress" lately and had been wanting to try mine on again. Maizey was captivated and quickly asked to wear a dress too. We felt very important. She followed me all over the house.

I want to get married over again. The trouble with getting engaged at 21 and married at 23 is you don't know anything and you have no taste. I wish I could have a cool, interesting wedding dress to give to my daughter, but oh well. I like my dress, but I don't love it (I didn't even love it then). Wow, I just went off. Sorry.

Marking her growth chart with her 2 year old height. She's 35inches. They say that your adult height is about twice the height you were at 2. If that's true then she will be 5'10"!!! Tall like her daddy!

We had Moo's bday party at Little Gym again this year. She just loves it!

Playing on the bars with cousin Harper.

OMG. Cute.

She blew out her candles all by herself. Our annual mother's day hike. This one was really beautiful but a bit treacherous at times.

Nothing puts her to sleep like the backpack. Last weekend we went to the Pacific Science Center and then to what's left of Fun Forest and then onto the Center House for pizza and ice cream. She loves bugs and was super psyched to find this slug.

Cheesin it up with daddy. She's so funny.

The rides at Fun Forest were simultaneously fun and depressing.

Assembling a bug.

Frightened by a GIANT fake bug.

The cutest picture known to man kind. We're hard at work potty training and I happened to catch this moment of her playing harmonica and trying to potty in a princess dress. She likes to be alone in the bathroom and promptly told me to "go way, ma!"

We pre-funked at Auntie's before the Taste of West Seattle--lots of dancing.

Fashion diva.

We're in a real in-between hair period. She has two looks 1. homeless 2. insane. We went with insane on this particular evening.
You see what I mean?

She loves scented candles.

Here's a LONG video of us chatting tonight. It gets cute at the end.

see below...

Chat with Maize

A Post for Post's Sake

Hi. How are you? I'm good. I'm finding that I have a whole lot less to blog about these days. That's probably because it's not super interesting to sit down and blog about sitting in a class listening to lecture for about 8 hours a day. There is some interesting stuff but most of it I can't tell you because of HIPAA. Yeah, so there's that...

Maizey is moving right along. She's adjusted really well to her new routine. She's with my mom M-W, usually my mom comes and stays with us, but this week Maizey is down there (hence the free time to write this post). Thursday and Friday she goes to Ryan's mom's house. She often stays the night Thursday nights, which is also really awesome and gives Ry and I some time to go on a date or just hang out. I usually spend all Friday night and Saturdays with her. I look forward to it all week. It's kind of amazing how differently I feel about her and our relationship when I'm not with her 24/7. Being a stay-at-home-mama just wasn't for me. Sooooo hard!

So, what's new on the Maizey front? Well, developmentally she's moving right along. The girl is super coordinated. She does this thing in the shower where she grabs the bar of the little, built-in soap dish thing and then climbs up the wall (still holding on) and hangs with her head upside down. Sound dangerous? It is. Especially because after she hangs for a minute she counts to 3 and lets go, falling into the bath. It's awesome. It keeps me on my toes. She's talking a lot and can easily tell you what she wants. She's not using sentences or even really pairing words, but she is a master at the art of body language and can convey almost everything using her body and single words. She is also a master of manipulation. "Oh, here. Let me grab your finger and take you all over the house. I'll take you to the pantry and beg for 'choc' (chocolate) until you give in--and I'll cry if I have to." Also, she's a performer. My mom and I were at Starbucks yesterday morning before I had to go to school and Maizey was out in front of the bar (where people gather to wait for their drinks) dancing and jumping and talking a mile a minute to strangers. Puttin' on a show. She ran around from table to table waiting for people to look at her dancing and laughing and yelling. She then ran with all of her might to see a doggy, but wasn't paying attention and ran face-first into the side of a table. This caused her to breakdown and I'm pretty sure that I became "that mom" of "that toddler" at that point. Oh well. I think it's adorable and hysterical.

So, I'm really loving school. It's hard and it's challenging, but in ways I didn't anticipate. The workload isn't quite as big as I originally anticipated. And, the tests aren't that hard. Really. It was a lot of hype. In actuality, I'm not working as hard as I should be. I've done well on exams and assignments (half-way through I have an 88%), but as Ryan constantly reminds me--I don't want to just scrape by. He tells me that when my patient is "face-down in the muck," I will probably be hating myself for skipping that chapter in the book. He also paid waaaaaay too much attention during orientation and politely reminds me that my goal of maintaining an 80% in nursing school is actually barely passing (in the crazy nursing-school grade scale) and always says "I don't want someone who barely passed to be taking care of me when I'm in the hospital." I love him and his work ethic, but sometimes I want to punch his work ethic in the face. This is the man that graduated college with perfect attendance. Gag.

Okay, I need to wind down here so I can prepare for the big premiere tonight!!!! Lost is back for its final season and I can't wait for the nuts-o-ness to ensue! 3 hours of crazy tonight!

Here is a random assortment of photos that I managed to scrape together...

I finally loaded up our photos from Xmas tree hunting. It's a little delinquent, but we were in between cameras at the time and used our video camera to take stills. So, it's taken me a bit to remember to do this. Anyway, Ms. Maizey was awfully tired and fell asleep in the back pack. Soooo sweet.Aww...She loved hanging out in the back. And, as always, putting on a show for all the passerbys.
Here she is trying to plead her case about why she should be able to ride in the back with the window down all the way home. Oh the drama. Needless to say, she lost.

Fabulous dahling, I love the fringe.

No, those aren't her mama's sunglasses. They're her very own stylishly oversized sunnies. For all those mornings that follow very long nights. How very young, hip Hollywood. Couldn't choose between these next two. A fun morning at Jump Planet with mommy and grammy.

Those teeth? Are you kidding?

We're in the middle of---hmm, let's call it a bad hair quarter. More than a day or even a month. This crazy strawberry-blond mop has to be controlled. Thank god for Naartjie and their cute headbands!
Post slide. That's all I hear when we go to JP "syyyyde? ma! syyyyyde?"
She's the grand master of drama. She takes lessons from her mama and auntie Erika. Here we are being obnoxious at Nordstrom's Cafe. I provoke it. I love it.

Oh, she loves her grammy.
Cute Crewcuts outfit courtesy of Auntie Erika. I wish she'd buy me cute JCrew outfits. Erika sent me some videos that she took of Maizey at my parent's last night. Here they are...

Adieu!

This is for you Aliya!

To my dear bestie who resides in a much colder land on the Atlantic ocean: see you won't miss out on an entire 2 years of Maizey's development. But, if Jessica doesn't get going on her blog, we may miss out on some years of Malina's.

*warning, this is a lengthy post. You may want to go use the bathroom and hydrate before you sit down to read this one...

Yes, I've been busy. So busy I might even miss out on some of Maizey's development (can you hear my heart breaking??). I barely see her, which is why I have so few photos to share. Well, I'm almost done with my second week of nursing school. Tomorrow is my first exam and I am totally lacking in motivation tonight. If you told me at 12noon today that at 7:45pm I still wouldn't have started studying I would have peed my pants--or vomited. But, here I am. I decided to let myself blog and then I would throw myself into my studies.

So, yeah, nursing school is pretty intense. A normal day is (in case you were wondering): up by 6am, leave by 6:45ish (Maizey is still asleep--blergh :-( ), get to school and study until 8 or 9am depending on when we start that day, lecture for 7-8hours on didactic day and 3 on lab days, get home about 4:30pm, hang with the babe and accessory persons until about 7 or 8pm, study from 7 or 8 until 10:30. Get up and start over. My carrot is my Friday nights and Saturdays with Maizey and Ryan. Seriously, it's the only way I can make it through.

That said, there is some good and even great in this situation. I do miss my baby, and my heart breaks a little each morning when I have to get out of bed and cease snuggling with her warm, sweet, little body while she is still peacefully asleep (I feel a little like I'm tricking her and worry that she wakes up wondering what happened to mama)--I digress, back to the good. I cannot tell you how much more I appreciate her. I'm SOSOSO excited to see her when I get home and every moment with her feels like a gift now. I'd be straight-up lying to your face if I told you it was like that with her before now. I loved her, but we were ALWAYS together and I longed for my private time, now I long for time with her and that feels more special. Also, I really like school. I like my instructors and I like my classmates. I have one friend in particular whom I LOVE--that's you Ms. Whitney. It's nice to have my own life. It's really nice to get to sit in a room full of really bright people who all love what you love. This week we started talking about cell pathology and I was overcome with excitement--I am giddy about this stuff. I get so excited learning about physical assessment and taking a health history. And, we're getting in a routine around here. It's feeling a little more normal and I think Maizey is starting to catch on. She's with my mom 3 days and my mother-in-law 2 days a week so she's with people who love her and as far as I can tell she is as happy as ever, albeit a little confused.

Okay, enough with the blab, the blab that you probably just skipped over to get to the pics. I don't blame you. I'm pretty sure you didn't come here to be my therapist. Well, maybe my cousin Kate did. She is, after all, a therapist. A gorgeous therapist who twilights as a fragrance model at Neiman Marcus. It goes without saying that she's cooler than me, and probably you.

Also, if you don't know Miike Snow, get to know him! His song Animal is definitely my first fav of 2010!

Here are my amazing instructors. Both lecture and my clinical instructor is Shannon, on the left. Shannon recently spent time in--wait for it--------Tahuya! Small world, huh??

This is my class of 32. I'm in the back poking out on the left. The yellow hats? Well, they're a long story...

Here are some Xmas Eve photos that Erika recently sent me...

My angel. My cousin Sarah. Another woman whom I admire enormously. The least pretentious, least judgmental, most loving person in the world. The girl also knows how to have a good time...

Just a couple of nerds... She's so animated. She keeps me laughing non-stop.

My daddy-o

Toddler+no nap+Christmas Eve=very tired baby girl and one VERY stressed out Grinchy mom.

OMG, Maizey loves her some Lou Lou! This pictures looks bad for two reasons: firstly, Louise's teeth look like they're lacking in dental maintenance--this is entirely true. Second, this is Lou yawning, not a shriek of pain or discontent. Maizey's shriek is, however, one of total, utter discontent, or joy. Obviously.Ryan and I pooled the money we got from his parents for Christmas with some of his extra earnings he made while in Dubai and spent a good, reliable, used Honda amount of money on bedroom furniture. It's quite lovely though, cedar drawers, oak, and hand made. Probably shoulda cleaned off the piles of laundry for its blog debut, but who has the time?

Here's the headboard and nightstands. I guess now that we used up all of our furniture funds the cheap Ikea lamps and bedding are going to have to suffice for a while. We also need to get some photos up on those walls! That headboard is so comfortable and soft, I can't tell you!!

Here's Maizey's first foray into painting. Medium: bathtub washable paint.

It's so much more fun to fill the potty up with treasures and push it around then to sit on it!

We did some shopping at Baby Gap and here she is showing off her new outfit. Auntie hit up Crewcuts last weekend, we'll be putting up some photos of those outfits asap!!Okay. Now I just want to take a moment to sing some praise. Costco online doesn't let you write reviews so I need to tell the world how glorious this product is via my blog. So, we're on our third King mattress in probably 4 years or so. All 3 of our mattresses got giant dents on either side, with a mountain running medially. I kept thinking that something must be wrong, some of the mattresses were not cheap and they were good brands, we were even able to return one after 2 years because it was so damaged. Anyway, we hypothesized that king mattresses should be on a platform, not a box spring. King box springs come in 2 halves so it would make sense that they could cause the medial mountain. Well, we were right. We found this amazing product at Costco and it solved the problem. No box spring needed and no big, bulky bed frame!!! It's this mesh network that supports the mattress evenly, with rubber feet so your doesn't slip away from the wall. It's so great. If you have the same problem, it will be the best money you've spent!

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Productgroup.aspx?prodid=11474949&whse=BC&topnav=&cat=2131&hierPath=2131*&lang=en-US

I had a video of Maizey and Louise being silly (and me being annoying and pushy--as usual), but it's taking forever to load. I will put it onto youtube and load the link here asap. Check back...

Teeth and 'Tails

I don't have anything to say. But, here is a photo of pure joy. She was so delighted with her appearance. Aren't we all???

Also, here is a link to a loooong video that I uploaded to YouTube. It's the only place that you can load videos that long. Anyway, it's worth the watch if you ask me. She was really enjoying Loulou's company tonight. Don't mind the messy room or the messy toddler...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm0jDmdkO0E