All about Mari and walking

Mari is walking! She had been taking small steps since December, but just in the last two weeks she has started walking everywhere. She doesn't like to ride in her stroller anymore and wants to walk 100% percent of the time. This is a problem when we are shopping, because she won't hold hands and tends to wander. When I go after her, she shrieks like we are playing the most fun game ever and moves her little legs as fast as they can go in the opposite direction of me. It's kinda cute. My solutions are:

 a) Bring lots snacks and toys and bribe her to ride in the stroller (this works really well since she loves food and will sit still as long as she has something good. We went to the mall this morning and Mari sat perfectly well for an hour clutching a french fry in one hand and a cup of puffs in the other. I was glad she didn't seem to care about eating the greasy fry. She just wanted to hold it)

b) Go shopping when she is tired and let her have her pacifier and Darcy. This only works when she is very tired.

Mari has had a couple tantrums in public, but it hasn't bothered me like I thought being the parent of a crying child in public might. It's usually happened close to lunchtime and at the end of a trip when all her patience is gone and I have a lot more sympathy than I imagined possible. I think shopping with her will get easier after the next year or so, once she is old enough to understand that she has to stay right near me.In the meantime, I am looking for ways to make going out with Mari easier that don't involve food .

On another walking related note, we bought Mari her first pair of sneakers over the weekend.

 Up until now, she only had dress shoes and soft soled leather boots. She really needed shoes better suited to wet and dirty surfaces. Thanks to an awesome groupon to Once Upon a Child, we bought her some Nikes - size 5! She loves them and I love them, and Daniel picked them out so I guess he loves them too. Mari enjoys wearing shoes. I was worried she would untie the laces, but she doesn't. Throughout the day, she'll totter up to me with an armful of shoes, hold out as far as her arms can reach, and say in baby language, "Mommy, put my shoes on NOW! I can't do a thing until you put my shoes on please, please, please."

Spray Gun

Painting as often as we do, as soon as Daniel decided to buy an air compressor, I decided to buy a gravity fed spray gun. I'm so glad to have it! Painting goes much faster than with a brush. After looking at a few different models, including a Campbell Hausfeld one, we got ours at Harbor Freight (pictured right).
 
Leaning how to use the spray gun took a little time and patience. The hardest part was figuring out what pressure to use and how much to thin the paint, because the directions were no help. I was worried about thinning the paint, because paint stores always say not to. However, we really have to because without thinning the paint goes on with a bumpy, orange peel texture. So, we usually use 75% paint and 25% water for latex paint. Mineral spirits for oil paint. I have painted a lot of cardboard learning how to use this spray gun! We have tried spraying varnish too, but being such a thin consistency it drips easily, that I prefer to brush that on.

The first item we painted was a cradle for the baby, found on craigslist for $30. When Daniel took it out of the car, I wanted to resell it right away. All I noticed were the scratches, dents and ugly bedding. After that first coat of primer and Daniel's brilliant engineering that fixed the hinges so it rocks with even the gentlest push, I am glad we kept it. Since then, we have painted the kitchen cabinets, a nightstand, a book shelf, and most recently, the changing table. I've got a changing table post with pictures in the works! That's what got me thinking about the spray gun in the first place. I really enjoy painting stuff and love the no brush strokes look a paint gun (or spray paint) offers.

I have never tried painting with a brush using thinned paint. Maybe that would help eliminate brush stokes, if I couldn't paint outside. I'm going to have to try that sometime!

GUTTERS and FLOWERS

Our house came with no gutters. The roof was new, which is way more important, but we figured gutters were pretty important too. So, I googled a bunch and got some quotes. The prices shocked my socks off. Considering that our house is a one story rectangle, I figured white, plastic gutters would cost a couple hundred dollars. Turns out they would have been a couple thousand dollars installed from Lowes or Home Depot. We ended up spending a couple hundred dollars doing it ourselves. Actually, Daniel pretty much did it himself. I strategically placed the ladder and kept him company. That was last year.

Guttered roof

This year some gutter maintenance was in order. We had some heavy rain and wind and a couple of the downspouts came off (we hadn't got around to securing them with brackets); and the gutters filled up with leaves 'cause we skipped the leaf guards. To fix all this, Daniel chopped back some trees from the house, unclogged all the gutters, and attached a couple more downspouts. Then he re-attached the ones that fell off with brackets. We decided not to put on leaf guards, because going up on the roof once or twice a year to unclog them is super quick and easy.
Mari had a good time playing outside while we worked. The weather has been sunny and warm, in the 70's, so we've been spending a lot of time outside.

"Smell the flowers, but don't eat them"

 Crawling around outside seems to tire Mari out more than anything else. I'm trying not to complain too much, but this weather is not wintery at all. Today I nearly broke out my flip flops because it was 77 degrees!!! IN FEBRUARY!!! The daffodils are blooming. I wasn't sure they would survive when I planted them because after being dug up they sat in our laundry room for awhile. Then when we tilled up the yard last year, I was afraid we tilled them up. So seeing them come up this year pleasantly surprised me. Mari loves them too, and has learned to hold them under her nose and sniff. She likes to hold them up to my nose, daddy's nose and her baby doll's nose too.

Valentines Day

Now that I have lots of free time, I want to do a better job decorating the house for holidays and special occasions. It's a real challenge; since I am not earning an income, I don't want to spend any money on anything that is not vital to our existence. Sometimes I have a hard time deciding what is worth spending money on. On one hand, I like to buy things that enhance our every day comfort, like candles and new sheets and wine. On the other hand, my frugal side wants to save, save, save for retirement and once in a lifetime experiences (mostly involving travel). It's a tough call.
Anyway, now that our Christmas stuff is down, in an attempt to make the house look festive for February, I made some inexpensive Valentine's Day decorations.

The colors in this picture are a little off, since the pom poms on the mantle are supposed to be bright red...

 I saw a picture of a heart garland like this someplace on the internet and thought it was so cute! Joann's sells small sheets of colorful felt for about 30 cents apiece, so this only cost a dollar! Cutting the hearts out was a little time consuming, since I cut one at a time. Mari and I sat on the kitchen floor together, me tracing and cutting hearts while she contentedly played with the scraps and an extra pen. After they were all cut out, I sewed them together with the sewing machine. I also made some smaller hearts to put around a lamp shade.

Biggest Project of the Year

Here is the toy box that Daniel made last year for his sister. His parents commissioned him to make it a long time ago, but it just didn't happen until this year (2011). He created all the plans himself. I did the staining and varnishing. I am really not sure what went into the building process, although it did involve a lot of routering and sanding. This is the first real piece of furniture that Daniel has built and he really enjoyed working on it, once he finally started!

Mari's first steps

I don't know if this really counts as a first step, being so small, but it's more than she's ever done before! She will let go of stuff and stand on her own now. I am glad Daniel was taking video's, because I was asleep.My favorite part is when she waves "Hi." She's been doing that ALL the time, and not just at people. =-)

Happy Birthday Mari

I can hardly believe my baby doll is one year old! Last year, the day before Thanksgiving, our family dynamic was completely changed when Marian Emma Hoffman was born. I have such a clear memory of seeing her round head for the first time, covered in dark baby hair (I just knew that she would have dark hair), that it's hard to believe a whole year has passed since then.
Before Mari was born, I was worried that I wouldn't love her enough. I couldn't imagine adding another person to our perfect life and caring about her the way that I wanted to. Looking back, those thoughts were ridiculous, because before we even left the hospital, she had us completely in love with her. We spent hours just looking at her, watching her little movements and marveling that she really was here after all. We didn't even mind when she woke up in the night to eat, because it meant we got to see her again and hold her a little more.
When I think about those first days with her, it does seem like an entire year has gone by, because compared to then, Mari is very grown up. In many ways, she is hardly a baby anymore. She is a speedy crawler, especially when she thinks we are following her. She stopped nursing around 10 months and now eats all her meals at the table (in her highchair) with us. She says lots of words, including "HI" "Cheese" "Banana" "Mama" "Dada" and "Wolf" and "Ball," and understands even more. She knows how to make a racket when she is not happy with something. The more she is able to communicate, the better we get to know our little girl. We are looking forward to this next year so much and all the years we get to spend with her.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARIAN!