The Rest of the Truth

I've had a few days recently where I felt like I could blog. I have things to say. And I've gotten a decent amount of down time. But alas, I still haven't. How come?

*Spring (well, it feels like summer to me) is killing me over here! Lane is in full gear, busy, busy, busy all the time. She doesn't play by herself very well for very long. I am exhausted every day from chasing her all around the house, the courtyard, the playground, other peoples' homes, and so on.

*We are still waiting to hear if we will be moving. I mean, we'll be moving out of this apartment for sure, but when and to where is all still up in the air. It's really...trying my patience. I just want to know. I'm tired of living in limbo-land.

*My old computer is a pain in the rear. Yesterday I finally turned it on in order to pull photos off of it. I figured it'd be easier to just resize them and upload them from it (since I've done it a million times and know what I'm doing it'd be faster for sure). But when I uploaded them to blogger and then logged out and logged back in on my Mac, they were gone. And I'd already turned off the Dell. So frustrating. That computer is so slow compared to this one!

*We're trying to plan for a vacation in August. Can you say "exhausting" trying to work out all the details?

*Oh, and did I mention that we're expecting Scarbrough #4 in December? No? *grin*

16 Months Old

Our happy girl, playing peek-a-boo with Daddy.

At 16 months old, Lane:

*says "ssss" when asked, "What's a snake say?"
*can identify (new this month) her: feet, hands, belly button, mouth, arms, and legs.
*speaking of belly buttons, she likes to lift up everyone else's shirts to look at their belly buttons after she's identified her own.
*has 11 teeth. She got 5 teeth in 5 weeks (three molars and two bottom front teeth). She did fairly well throughout the teething insanity, but boy are we glad it's over for now!

*clasps her hands together when we say, "let's pray."

*bounces up and down (trying to nod) when we ask her a question and her answer is "yes."

Playing in the swimming pool with friends.

*loves giving kisses. She often wants to give kisses to strangers on the bus. Or pull their hair. You know, share the love.
*still just says the four words: "mama," "dada," "nite-nite," and "meow, meow." However, this month she did start babbling more...it usually sounds like "big-a, big-a, big-a..." Quite funny.

*can do most of the motions to most of the animals in Eric Carle's From Head to Toe. (I think she can't do the buffalo, alligator, or cat.)

*likes to hold our fingers to "show us how to feel" her touch-and-feel books.

Easter Sunday. Playing with plastic eggs and little baskets.

*is climbing on everything. More than last month. She can get onto our bed, coffee table, and kitchen/dining room table chairs (and therefore onto the table, too).
*can identify LOTS of objects in her books when asked where they are: frogs, ducks, owls, shoes, the moon, stars, cars, birds, mice, flowers, fish, cats, dogs, and a million more. She can't say their names yet, but she sure knows what they are.

*wants to watch TV all the live-long day. We don't let her, of course (usually she gets one 30-minute show a day, max two if it's a nasty day and we're stuck at home all day long), but she loves the television.

*sticks out her arms and kind of shrugs if her answer to a question is "I don't know."

*is getting really good at "doing her shapes": putting her shapes into her shape sorters. She always goes for the circles or ovals first, probably because they're the easiest. But she can get all of the shapes in if you give her the correct shapes for the correct side of the box (3 shapes per side).

Happy, happy, happy!

*kind of growls at us. Not when we ask her what a lion or a tiger says, but just randomly. It's hilarious.

*"rocks" her baby doll side-to-side.

*can handle a cup fantastically. She rarely spills unless she's so excited about getting a drink that she lifts it to her mouth too quickly. Or unless she dumps it over on purpose.

*puts her hand to her ear like she's holding a phone and says...well, it's hard to write the sound she makes. Think Tim-the-tool-man-Taylor noises. But she likes to talk on the phone and if daddy's on the other end she'll say, "daDA" to him.

*is finally wearing 18-month clothes. Most of her 12-month things still fit her, but she can wear a lot of her 18-month tops, and pants or skirts if they're not too wide in the waist.

*weighs 10 kilos (22 pounds) according the the vegetable scale at the bakkal across the street.

***Thanks for hanging in there with me while I'm on a blogging break. I have more photos for this post, but they didn't save for some reason, so...maybe tomorrow I'll get them in here.***

I'm a Bad Blogger

But I just don't really care right now. I'm sorry to all of you who do check in regularly and hope for updates and/or photos. I'll give a quick summary of why I'm not updating right now (although I will do a post for Lane's 16-month birthday next week, at least):

1) Shannon was out of town this last week leaving me and the girlie girl all by our lonesomes.

2) In that time period I had two meetings and a doctor's appointment.

3) In that time period I proofread/edited a friend's final paper of graduate school.

4) I'm enjoying the fact that my Mac turns on and off in less than 5 seconds so much that I don't want to turn on my old computer (which takes about 8 minutes to turn on and 8-10 minutes to turn off) in order to get our photos from Ephesus and Cappadocia off of it so I can do a fancy-schmancy post over here.

5) We're trying to make some big decisions about our future, hopefully most of which will be made by the end of this week.

6) The weather has been bee-yoo-tee-full these past few days so we've been spending a good amount of time outside.

7) Lane cut her fifth tooth in five weeks (and a day, if you want to count it) today. She's been a crank. It's been wearing me thin.

And 8) I've decided to spend some "chill" time with Shannon instead of writing blog posts.

So there ya have it. I will be back. It just might be a couple of weeks until I feel like our lives are "settled" and "normal" (whatever those mean for us) and I'm up to spending regular time blogging. Until then. =)

A Quilt from Joyce (part III)

A few months ago I asked my stepmom, Joyce, for a favor. She made us a beautiful quilt that we absolutely love, and it adorns our bed most of the time. However, I haven't been able to find pillow shams that look right with the color scheme. So I asked Joyce if, if she had some leftover fabric from when she made our quilt, if she thought she could make us a couple of pillow shams. She said that she'd have to look at how much fabric she had and see, since the fabric was specially dyed and she knew she wouldn't be able to find more.

Fast forward...months. I don't really remember how long ago I asked her if she could make us pillow shams, but after initially asking her I didn't hear anything from her. I figured that she didn't have enough fabric and while I was a little bummed, I knew there was nothing I could do about it.

A few weeks ago when I was talking to Shannon's mom she mentioned that Joyce had sent her a bag with a couple of books for Lane in it for them to bring when they came over. "How sweet," I thought.

And indeed, it was sweet. But what was even sweeter was that she had made us two pillow shams to match our quilt and wanted it to be a surprise. So she sent them to Alabama (not being willing to risk them getting lost [or stollen] in the mail) and my in-laws brought them with them.

Beautiful, no?

Thanks, Joyce, for the pillow shams! We love them and they look fantastic with the quilt!

I'm Back!

My in-laws left on Thursday morning and after a couple of days of laundry, housecleaning, another house guest, dealing with a climber named Lane (I found her on the kitchen table yesterday...), and just getting our feet back under us, I think I'm back to the blogging world.

Kind of.

I was hoping to have some grand ole photos to go with this post, but I'm on my new Mac and quite frankly, still learning my way around. Any help that any of you would like to offer would be much appreciated!

1) How do I make photos a smaller size? Most of my photos are in the 5-6 mb range, which is just too large to be uploading to blogger, facebook, or an email. I've managed to get some photos into iphoto...I just don't know what to do with them now! iphoto help doesn't seem to be much help here, either.

2) Shortcut keys. Do they exist on a Mac? I miss "control+c" for copy and "control+v" for paste, and so on. Help!

3) Any other helpful...helps...that might make this transition from PC to Mac smoother? So far I'm completely happy...just not enjoying having to learn new territory, you know?

Well, that's it for now. Until I can figure the photo thing out there won't be any photos of our vacation spots (Ephesus and Cappadocia) or of the beautiful pillowcases my stepmom made for us to match the quilt she made. So...help, help, help! Please!