Happiness: No Artificial Sweeteners

YAY!

There really is nothing else to say except that we have one HAPPY girl filling our lives with pure joy! Throw a little bit of this in your coffee:



A treasure trove of photos coming tomorrow! EEE can't wait!

Doin' The Messy Boogie

Toddlers are messy. Halle has started dancing much like I imagine Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes) dances. Here is a perfect marriage of those two ideas:Gettin' messy before gettin' down!

I would also like to introduce you to Harriet, the rabbit. Harriet is a tiny brown rabbit that lives in our/our neighbors' front yards. She is our current object of fascination (and by our, I mean myself and our cats). She's so little and itty-bitty and CUTE!

Greensboro Children's Museum

In a word, the Greensboro Children's Museum is overwhelming. That's not necessarily a bad thing. There's so much to take in when you walk through those doors: the loud hum of all chatter, squealing and laughter, the sound of the flip-flop pipes (which gets old FAST), the lights, the colors, the flashes, the smiles, the tears and wails of toddlers being taken out of the museum against their wills! It's no wonder Halle was a little... disconnected from it all.

Random Photo: Halle's new guitar! Rock on, girl!

Oranges

Just a quick note today. Brad was feeding Halle breakfast, part of which were Mandarin oranges. In an effort to keep her from getting distracted or trying to stand up in her high chair, Brad sang a song about oranges. Halle was HEADBANGING to it. So cute! Anyways, tomorrow should be an adventure. Halle is coming to work with Mommy for half an hour or more. Yay, fun!

Ricky Gervais + Elmo = Hilarious

This is an outtake from Sesame Street in which Ricky Gervais, a British comedian and creator of "The Office", has a funny chat with Elmo. The puppeteer never breaks character which makes this clip SO entertaining and endearing. Don't worry, it's free of bad language and raunchiness.

Halle's First Injury

Poor baby's got a busted lip and a scratched chin after taking a slight tumble on the front steps. And this is what's so awesome about her: she's resilient and fearless! She's still not afraid of stairs and forgot about her woes after three or four minutes. That's our little munch!

ALSO, I read this news snippet about Sandra Bullock being a stepmom that was SO sweet. I hope that she has children of her own if she wants them - though adoption is angelic and selfless!

Sandra Bullock is happy to play mum to her husband Jesse James' daughter Sunny - even though it hurts not to have children of her own.

The Proposal actress is stepmother to James' two children from his first marriage, and Sunny from his second wife, porn star Janine Lindemulder.

She is playing mum to Sunny while Lindemulder is serving a six-month jail sentence for tax evasion - and is loving her new role because it gives her a taste of what she's missing.

Bullock says, "I may never hear that word ‘mom'. But being a parent is not about breeding. It’s about caring. And it’s easy to say, but it’s harder to do.

"When you don’t have that title, you flounder and it hurts. But this is the best test of being a parent. And I just have to keep reminding myself I don’t care what I get. I care what I give.”

The Greensboro Zoo

Aren't the meerkats just darling?

Halle turned her back to the animals frequently to watch the little kids surrounding her. She sometimes tried to chirp back at them in her cute jibberish.

Hand to glass to paw, paw to glass to hand.

Amazingly enough, I couldn't get Halle OR the iguana to be still for one snapshot!

Halle thought these ropes were hilarious. She's touch them and crack up. Her sense of humor is developing in very interesting ways!

Toto Gleeks

This is pretty much my favorite song, so I was made for lovin' it.
It's lame, I KNOW! Still! Africa! Toto!
!

Holden Beach Video Round-Up

This video is about six minutes long. There are some shots of Halle dancing to the iPod, playing on the beach in the sand, getting tickled by Daddy, and combing through seashells. It's sort of long, but trust me, this is the edited version.

Coming Soon: Pictures from our spontaneous family field trip to the Greensboro Zoo!

Holden Beach Pictures Vol 2: Here Nor There

If there is a cubby to be found, Halle will crawl into it.
Our view of the beach by day was spectacular. There were picturesque fences propped at an angle just before the dunes reach the beach. This view was particularly breath-taking in the moonlight, when the waves look like icing on cake.
Everybody's cups with their names labelled. They were all lined up and in the back of my mind, from a dark corner, I heard myself saying "you will take a cheesy photo of this!"
My favorite part of the house were the staircases. Two of them wound up (this one has a BIG spider in it, but aside from that it's really very quaint) to the main floors and this white-washed one had an almost ethereal feel to it, like walking onto the set of a play. Life's just not real at the beach, you know.

Interesting places, beach houses. They usually have strange or cutesy names. Some sentimental, some homely and inviting, some playful. I just adore looking at the placards naming the houses along the main drive. Some of the ones at Holden Beach:
Seattitudes (ours)
Whimseagull
Holden Aces
Bee Holden
A Shore Thing
A Dune Deal
Mullet Over
Sea'z the Dream
How U Dune?

Groan. Oh to be rich and only slightly imaginative! =) Which brings me to a new DADA-ism!

"Whoo! Is there some junk in your trunk? Some bunk junk in your trunk? Some skunk junk in your trunk o'bunk?"

(He was talking about her dirty diaper, fyi)

Holden Beach Pictures Vol.1

We're having a fabulous time already! More details to come soon!