Picture Friday - Facetime with Daddy!

Josh sees Noelle and spends time with her most mornings, but his schedule makes it difficult to be home before bed time most nights. So lately he has been facetiming us during dinner or just before bed. Noelle insists on holding the phone, which usually means that Josh doesn't get to see her face as much because she tends to hold the phone with her finger exactly over the camera lens. However, Noelle gets to see her Daddy - and these pictures speak for themselves!

Mama - I want to hold it...I will do it my way! 

Ooooo, iPhone and Facetime!

How did Daddy get in there?

Sooo happy to see her funny Daddy!

And... Hoppy Easter weekend everyone!!

The End!

10 Month Update!

I cannot believe she is 10 months old!  I think at this point you can say with 100% certainty that she has spent more time on the outside of the womb than on the inside, b/c technically a woman is pregnant for 10 months, though you don't know it for the first few weeks.  She only gets cuter and more fun as the days go by. Josh and I routinely are in a state of awe that we get to be her parents. She is the bees knees, the cat's meow, and the greatest thing since sliced bread!!

Favorite Food: MEAT...pork, beef, chicken - she loves it! And very recently she gets giddy when a banana is nearby :)

Favorite Toy: Any electronic apple device.  She goes into her room and makes a beeline for the ipod touch we have sitting in a speaker device. If she sees my phone she wants it immediately. If she sees my computer she is compelled to touch it. She is her father's daughter.


New Tricks: Clicking her tongue. She started doing this mid-month, and it is hilarious. It is so funny to hear her crawling around just clicking her tongue away :)

Milestones: Standing on her own!  She will get herself up and let go and just stand there for about 10-20 seconds...then she will gently sit herself down. I can't wait to see this little booger take off walking!!

Surprises: It took the 2nd tooth almost a month to arrive! I thought for sure she wasn't even going to get it this month, but then YESTERDAY I saw it had broken through. She is one of those odd children that her first set of teeth did not come in at the same time. They decided to book end this month - one on the first day and one on the last day!

Noises: She added "ttthhhh" to her vocabulary at the beginning of the month. To which I replied, "Really? You are going to go with 'ttthhh' over 'mmmm'?" And YESTERDAY...just when I thought it was going to be another month before the "mmm" sound arrived - she caught me by surprise! I was putting away some laundry and she was following me down the hall crawling and I heard "mamamamamama"!!!! I jumped up and down with delight - FINALLY! She continued to babble it on and off for the rest of the day. So cute :)

Look at this amazing 10 month old:

I dropped the Picture Friday Ball!

I'm sorry to say, no "Picture Friday" today.

We have what I like to call a family cold...all of us have the sniffles in some form or fashion. Nothing serious, just the type that slow you down and wear you out a bit more than normal.

Between blowing my own nose and wiping Noelle's yesterday, no fabulous pictures were taken. I will see if I can make up for it next week - but I have a feeling that with Easter just around the corner, we might be in a deficit next week as well!  

Happy Friday regardless, and I hope you have a great weekend!

We Bought some Peace!

As of today, the Watkins family is debt free (minus our mortgage).

Cue the trumpets, fireworks, and general merriment!

It has been a longer journey than we would have liked...but it feels good to have accomplished it!  We took Dave Ramsey's financial peace university back in the spring/summer of 2010.  We had calculated that with hard work and diligence, we could probably be debt free minus the mortgage by early 2012. Then we had a baby on the way in 2011. So it turned into late 2012. Then I cut back on my hours at work because my time with the munchkin was just too valuable and not worth the price of working more. So it became sometime in 2013...

And I am happy to say that thanks to the ole' tax return we killed that student loan debt in the first quarter of 2013!! Yay!!

We aren't die hard Dave Ramsey folks, but I do believe in living as debt free as possible. I hope that we can stay that way for as long as we can, and maybe someday, by some chance, we could actually be totally debt free - mortgage and all. That would REALLY be something to celebrate!

Picture Friday: Dinner With Noelle

Here's a glimpse into dinner on nights with Mama...

Dinner is becoming one of my favorite parts of the day. I love watching this little girl try new things and enjoy them. She eats and likes just about everything (and I am praying she keeps this trait!!)

She is even learning to self feed, which means she gets annoyed with me if I am feeding her too slowly.   Josh and I are thoroughly amused by how she chews. My sister even noticed how she seems very concentrated while eating.  It's like she is analyzing each morsel of her meal. I hope you all enjoy & happy Friday!!

Yummy! Pork...the other white meat :)

Oh Mama you did such a good job, nice and juicy!

Chewing with no molars is fun!

Mmmm...more??

Seriously...LOVE chewing!

Nothing better than adding some applesauce to go with the pork! 

We laugh alot while we eat...

Look everyone - you can see my tooth has gotten taller!

That was a successful meal. Thanks for joining us!!

Slow going!

Well, for the few of these that tune in to the blog to actually read something - sorry it's been slow! Life hasn't been slow, it's actually been really busy. But the really busy means the bloggy part of blogging gets slow!

Work has been super busy (and sadly very frustrating)...the munchkin has been teething/all up in my business for all hours of the day...we've had lots of visitors for the first half of the month...and I've had lots of little projects and things to research along the way.

I don't have too much to say even now - other than that time seems to keep going faster and faster these days.  I feel like I mostly measure time by Noelle. She grows and changes right before your eyes and it makes you realize how quickly time is passing.  It seems like her hair grows suddenly or she learns a new skill to the point where it is a noticeable difference with each passing day.  I don't want to jump ahead of myself, but it seriously feels like I will sneeze and then she will be 1 year old. Sneeze again and watch out - she's two!

I find myself all too often in a "hurry up" and "slow down" frame of mind. On the one hand, I want to "hurry up" so I can see her walk, hear her talk, get to do things with a child that can express herself with more than just crying. And then on the other hand I want to desperately "slow down" during this baby phase and hold on to every little moment of snuggles and each cry where the only thing that will make her feel better is me.

One thing I know is that no matter what stage she is in - I will love it. I was talking to someone recently and they confided in me that whatever stage their kiddos were in - it was their favorite. They loved every age and stage along the way...And that makes me excited - even for the the challenging teenage years we might have! 

So right now I will pick to enjoy it all. The crazy teething, the getting into everything, the snuggles, and all the laughs. And all the while I will look forward to the next day when everything could change :)

Picture Friday: Days with Mama...

Here's some pics from the full Tuesdays and Thursdays I get to spend with this little munchkin. They are some of my favorite days of the week and I always try to snap a few pics with the fancy camera :)

She truly is changing every day - there is always a new skill that she seems to acquire, or she takes a skill already learned and bumps it up to the next level. It is truly astonishing how quickly these kiddos change!

And be sure to note that we finally captured an up close shot of the first tooth. It took about a week for it to get high enough to photograph and it was very difficult to get her to show it, but with teamwork we made it happen!

Mama, I want that thing you are holding!! 

She can destroy a room so quickly these days :)

More trash!

I'd like to teach the world to sing...

Not the good camera, but such a cutie before bed 

TOOF!!!

Noelle's worst day ever. So far...

Well...if you looked at my 9 month update post you will have seen that as of February 27, 2013 there were still NO TEETH.

That changed on February 28, 2013... 9 months and 1 day was how long it took for the first tooth to break through!

Now, this was no awesome day - exciting as it may sound (hope you can pick up on the sarcasm.) Noelle had been having some rough nights this week, but nothing extreme. And then on Wednesday she started pooping constantly. She wasn't ill, she was just pooping all the time. Very uncharacteristic of her. And she was cranky - even more uncharacteristic. And then she got the worst diaper rash I have ever seen on her. Since we use cloth diapers 85% of the time rashes are very uncommon for us.

I was so fortunate to have my mom in town, because honestly without her I think I might have slightly lost my mind. Noelle was so needy and so not like herself - and the diaper changes were constant and very upsetting because my poor baby was wailing in pain (and she never does that.)

Well around 5pm it all became worth it - when I decided to check and see if there was any more tooth progress. And lo and behold - I was shocked and delighted to feel a real tooth! I think I let out a pretty loud shout. Then my mom and dad cheered a little too excitedly which made her start crying (even more unlike the "normal" Noelle). The excitement was just all too much after such a challenging day.

Now you can barely see this thing, as it has just reached the surface, but you can definitely feel it. Finally...all the difficulty of the past 2 days actually produced something. It was really neat to know that I had been checking all day, and there had been nothing and then suddenly there was!

So JUST like her Aunt Meagan - she got her first tooth at age 9 months and also got a horrible diaper rash to go with it. Gee, thanks Aunt Meagan. Can you pass down something a little more pleasant next time?

My mom and I spent most of the day entertaining and distracting a very fussy 9 month old. We probably spent about 1/3 of the day in the bathroom with a naked baby in hopes of drying out the rash and getting some healing happening on that little sore bottom. And I have to say that I am very impressed that Noelle only peed on my mom once.  I got out pee free!

In honor of "Picture Friday" I will post some for your amusement. Please excuse my tired face - it had been a rough couple of days!

Here we are trying to make the best of things...

But this is how we really feel. Tired and worn out.

It's fun to get dry with a hair dryer! Yet another reason to love our hair dryer!

Cutest kid in the whole world!

A rough day to say the least, but we will always remember the day of the first tooth!