My Eight Month Old

The Livster is officially eight months old. She's crawling around like a speed demon. She can get from one end of the house to the other in the blink of an eye. She's pulling herself up and even trying to stand on her own. She's not strong enough for that yet but she doesn't care. She tries anyway.

She is a major copycat. It's pretty much the cutest thing in the world. My favorite is if you pucker your lips and make a kissing sound, she will do it right back. Same with clicking your tongue and spitting. I love it.

She can clap and wave, which is also totally adorable. I can already tell she has a sense of humor and is going to be a total drama queen.

Here she is on Halloween with her handsome dad. You'll notice she's not in a costume. I hate Halloween, so sue me.

James has a love-hate relationship with her these days. It probably started around the time she started crawling and trying to take all his toys.

This isn't the best photo, but captures her personality perfectly. If she's awake and fed she's usually quite happy.

She's pretty much a total doll these days, except for one minor detail . . . she still doesn't understand that going to bed at night means you're supposed to sleep until morning! She does about three to four hour increments all night long. Ahhh! When will the torture end!? I keep hoping one night it'll just click, but no such luck just yet. Until then, if I'm cranky or totally anti-social, you'll know why. Not getting enough sleep sure takes a lot out of me.

Ch-ch-ch-Changes!

My twin sister got married last month. I don't think I've ever been happier for anyone in my life. The day was picture perfect. Andrea was radiantly beautiful. The ceremony was insightfully beautiful. The day as a whole was magnificently beautiful. The only sad thing is that she's no longer my closest relative (even though D.C. is not that close to begin with). Seattle is too far away. I don't have any pictures of the occasion yet but I will be posting them as soon as I get some.

Weddings aren't over in our family though. Two of Brian's sisters just got engaged. Holy moly. 

Being home with family is awesome. It makes coming back to being on our own feel that much more lonely and isolating though (except today when we were surrounded by thousands of Tennesseans at the UT football game) . . .

I voted this past week. It felt great. I'm terrified of Election Night though. I know even if there is a change in office, the economy isn't going to all of a sudden start booming again, though I sure wish it would.

The dang economy is making the harrowing ordeal of finding a job even more stressful. Every time we add a new city to our list it gets shut down faster than I can blink. So we're basically back at square one. Again.

Costco opens in Knoxville next week. Brian is probably more excited about this than I am since he's in pizza heaven there. The Trader Joe's that opened here last month was a big deal for me though. I love that place.

Oh, here's a fun change. In the next few days or weeks (somewhat tentative at the moment), I am going to start a new little venture in the food blogging world. I'm going to be taking over a real deal food blog called "Just Cook Already" (www.just-cook-already.com). It started several years ago by an old roommate of my younger sister. In a very random way, I was selected to manage it for the time being while the owner takes a break for awhile. Since I cook all the time anyway, I am hoping I don't end up being in way over my head. I'm excited about it. Check it out if you're a food blog kind of person.

My little boy will be three in 27 days. He'll move over to Sunbeams in Primary in January. I am kind of worried about how he'll do. Unless he has the iPad on his lap, he's not known for his skills at sitting still or being calm. Many people have told me that age three is way harder than age two. I'm already starting to see what they mean. Yikes.

My baby girl is crawling. And trying to stand. All at once. It terrifies me. But she's the cutest.

Seriously, look at the face. It's irresistible.

Let's see, what other changes can I mention? My brother moved from Sweden to Israel. Crazy. I vow to go see him sometime in the next couple years so if anyone wants to donate to the "Tel Aviv or Bust!" fund, just let me know.

The weather is changing quite a bit here. We went from the 80s to the 50s in no time flat. The leaves are gorgeous though. Tomorrow after church we're going to take one last drive in the hills to see the fall leaves in all their Smoky Mountain splendor. This is my favorite time of year and it never lasts long enough.

Technolgy Stinks

We have five laptops under our roof. Five. But not a single one of them is reliable.

One is my Sony Vaio (don't ever buy one) from my college days. It's so old it doesn't even have Internet capabilities on it other than dial-up. Why we keep carting it around from place to place is beyond me. But one day James may look at it the same way I looked at my mom's old typewriter and think it's awesome.

Another is almost just as old but won't even turn on anymore, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it because it has pictures on it I want and I know that some day I will be able to afford to pay someone to get them off of there for me.

Then we have the two trusty Dells that seem like they should have died months ago but just keep on ticking, albeit incredibly slowly. I finally got one of them to resume printing capabilities the other day and that was an awesome miracle.

Finally, this here MacBook I am currently typing on has saved me during this past year. Many thanks to my dear sister for loaning it to me when she be came aware of our overly desperate situation. Because of it, I've been able to continue my terrible habit of online browsing/shopping/etc. But I've also been able to blog, Skype, email and upload pictures of my cute kids like nobody's business.

I should have known something was coming down when the cord on the computer (I know there's a more technical name for it) stopped working and I resorted to buying a cheap one off of ebay instead of the $200 version from the Apple store.

Things have only gone downhill since then. When we returned from our trip to Utah/Idaho a few days ago, I realized the battery had completely gone kaput on me. No warning at all. I thought Macs were supposed to be superior to Dells in every way, but at least my Dell warned me when its battery started dying (i.e. "Your battery is reaching the end of its usable life" every time I turned the computer on). 

To top it off, about once an hour the screen will go black, kinda like someone just pulled the plug. I'll still be able to see a vague outline of the applications I had running but I won't be able to view them well enough to do anything about it. Truth be told, it gives me the creeps every time it happens.

Dear me.

So what's a girl to do? I'm hoping this dear MacBook will at least hold out until March or April when we get what will hopefully be a huge tax return.

Until then, blog posts may be scarce, email may be limited, and Facebook is probably going to become nonexistent.

I guess that's not such a bad thing.

Miracles, book review

Since we've been out of town so much (which I will write about another day), I am way behind on these book reviews. I hope Bethany House Publishers doesn't hold it against me, because it has been an enjoyable experience. I've got two more books slated for review over this next week. For now, here's the first.

Miracles: A Journalist Looks at Modern Day Experiences of God's Power (Paperback) by Tim Stafford.

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book by Bethany House Publishers.

I have to start off by saying that I am a Christian who believes in miracles. I requested to review this book because of that. This book started off on a good note. I immediately read through several chapters in no time flat. Somewhere in the middle though, I got lost and struggled to continue. The author used the same one example of a miracle so many times that I was beginning to wonder whether or not he did any research at all for this book. It was overkill. In addition, the premise of the book was completely lost on me. I didn't feel like Stafford offered any wisdom or insight to the role miracles should play in the reader's faith, nor did he answer the questions "Should we expect miracles?" and "How active is God in the world today?" The latter of which was too broad to even ask in a book specifically about miracles. Overall, for a book about miracles, I was left completely uninspired.

And She's Off!

Well, almost anyway. This pretty girl is about 2.5 seconds away from being a full-pledged, real deal crawling baby. She's so close.

She's almost seven-months-old and is a super happy girl and an awesome napper. Now if she would just start sleeping at night like I thought babies this age were supposed to (she is horrendous--I don't even want to talk about it), she'd be close to perfect.

End of an Era

My little sister wrote about this today, so I thought I'd copy her.

In less than 48 hours, it'll be the end of an era: There will be no more Candrians living in our nation's capital.

I'm proud to say I was the first to embark on our nearly decade-long D.C. escapade. And if you knew my shy self growing up, to be the first to move that far away from home was kind of a big deal for me. I never dreamed I would be starting a sibling trend.

About two years after I moved to D.C., Rob made the cross-country trek after graduating from law school in California. We were in the same city for less than a year (I think) when I met a super cute dental student named Brian, dated long distance (a two hour drive anyway) and then got married and moved to Richmond, Virginia.

Less than a year after that, I flew to Florida to help Andrea make the move to D.C. She was leaving behind her television reporting days in the hopes of a brighter future (and more money, let's be honest).

Several days later Amy graduated from BYU and landed an internship in none other than the good old District of Columbia. I don't think Amy ever intended on staying for very long and, in the grand scheme of things at least, two years really isn't long. It was then that she "re-met" her BYU crush turned dental student John, dated long distance (a two hour plane flight) and then got married and moved to Oklahoma.

Andrea, now a big time press secretary on Capitol Hill, stayed behind in D.C. for two more years. But she is currently packing up her belongings. On Saturday, she'll get in her car and pull away for the last time, the Washington Monument and Capitol Dome in her rear view mirror taunting her already with feelings of homesickness, amazing memories, and perhaps just a little anxiety about what lies ahead. You see, about a year ago she "re-met" an old BYU "acquaintance" (we'll just leave it at that) now turned radiology resident, dated long distance (a five hour plane flight) and will be moving to Seattle after they get married next month.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Every Candrian girl's dating experience gets even more "long distance" than the last but the end result is the same. We all end up in totally different cities than we ever imagined, married to doctors. I promise it wasn't our intention. But it wasn't a bad result, I'd say.

I couldn't be happier for anyone. But my heart is also kind of sad with the realization that she's the last one to leave my beloved city. No more ties there (I'm holding out hope that Rob will go back some day), no one left to visit, no one to give me updates, live vicariously through, etc.

So what's the big deal about living in D.C., you may ask?

There is something so special about living and working in Washington: crossing the muggy Potomac River every summer, seeing the White House poke through the cherry blossoms every spring, gazing at the Capitol Dome surrounded by orange and red leaves every fall, and watching the city come alive with Christmas decorations, the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse and Capitol lawn every winter. It's magical. Sure, our nation's a political mess right now. But the city those politicians reside in has never been better.

I guess unless you've experienced it, it's hard to describe, but that dang city totally stole my heart (maybe more for me than my other siblings, but I know it got a hold on them as well). I feel like I did my growing up/coming into my own there. It was there where I made some of the best friends of my life and I really figured out who I am and what I want with my life. Sure, most people figure that out years before--I was a little late in the game but it was my life and it was perfect for me. For that reason, among others, part of me considers D.C. more my home than anywhere else and I'll always treasure my experience there. I love that my sisters, brother and I all have that in common now (when really there might not have been much else--we're all so different).

My mom always taught us to leave things better than we found them. So, here's to my sister and to the Candrian's near decade in Washington. I'd like to think we're leaving it better than we found it.

Growing Up

I wish kids didn't have to grow up so dang fast. Last night I was telling Brian that in the blink of an eye James went from saying "Geeee!" (his favorite thing to say at five-months-old) to walking around saying "I like you, Mom! You're my best." He used to tell us we were his "best friends" but in the last few weeks it has been shortened to simply "my best." Maybe that's the hip slang among two-year-old circles now days? 

Anyway, James is a hoot. I need to learn to write down more of what he says because we have daily comedic routines around here.

Sometimes he insists on holding his sister. And then he realizes how heavy she has become and insists on her sitting next to him instead.

Here's our little chunkster. She goes in for her six-month doc appointment in two weeks. Holy smokes.

Here she is trying to talk to us. She is definitely an "ooohh" girl. She has also mastered the art of whimpering like a puppy to get our attention.

Speaking of puppies, James likes to ride his pillow pet puppy and pretty much do anything with it but use it like a pillow.

This one's for Andrea. She bought this outfit for Livy months and months ago and it finally fits her.

She's almost sitting up on her own. She could totally do it if she wouldn't try to straighten her legs every time I put her down.

The not so fun goings on around here are 1) Livy has refused to take a late afternoon nap lately (I'm pretty sure she's too young not to have one though, right?) and 2) We're trying to ween her off her swaddle. I have no idea at what age you're supposed to do this but she breaks free of it every night anyway (even those dang Woombie things everyone swore by are no obstacle for her. I bought the "houdini" one that is supposedly the toughest to break through and her arms are out of it within 5-10 minutes). So bedtime with her has been a blast lately. Fingers crossed that we all get more sleep soon!