semi-Wordless Wednesday

The weather got wonderfully cool last week, enough so that we were able to break out our fall clothes for a few days.

showing off her new coat & shoes

I cannot tell you how much I love this outfit.

And then we also had a few days where the weather was genuinely cold, which of course just happened to fall on the day we went to the state fair.

on the merry-go-round at the fair

I forgot my camera, so I only managed to get two pictures with my iPhone. I think Catie is still a little young for the fair. She doesn’t like the crowds (although having the stroller helped; it seemed to give her a sense of personal space), and my cautious girl was too scared to try any of the toddler rides. We only barely managed to talk her into the merry-go-round, but she still wanted to sit on the bench rather than on a horse.

But, just like last year, she loved the petting zoo and feeding the carrot slices to the baby goats and alpacas. And we got her a trumpet from one of those little overpriced toy stands. She adores it.

showing off her trumpet from the state fair

Her other new favorite toy is this tutu that my sister sent her in the mail. It has a button on the waistband that plays “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” And yes, that does get old just as fast as you would imagine.

dancing with Daddy in her new tutu

dancing with Daddy in her new tutu

But, you know, it’s also really freaking adorable, so I can ignore the tinny electronic Nutcracker theme for now.

Random Friday

I had an idea for a blog post in my head, but then Catie got this stuffy nose that woke her up (and hence, woke me up) no less than six times last night, and now I can’t remember what I was going to write about. So until I get a decent night’s sleep and get my brain back, here’s some other stuff that may (or might not) interest you.

First, I had a post published over on Aiming Low! It’s something that I wrote three years ago, back when we were trying to get pregnant with Catie. Anyway, I love the ladies who write over there, they are a freaking hilarious group of women, so I’m honored to have my little guest post featured as part of their Three Day Weekend series.

Second, since I have no brain today, here’s another round of “Cute Things My Kid Has Said/Done Over the Past Few Days.” With pictures!

1. The Fashion Consultant

rockin' the blue shades

Catie’s recently become fascinated with playing dress-up, which is something she’s typically been indifferent about in the past. She suddenly has very big opinions about what she’s going to wear each day, which is also sort of a new development. I knew this was coming eventually, but it’s still surprising when it actually happens.

And then there’s the mimicking of the things that I say. The other day, she ran her hand down my chest, and said, “Mommy, I love this shirt on you.” Like she’s my own personal Tim Gunn or something. And it’s totally the kind of thing I say to her when she gets dressed in the morning, it just sounds doubly hilarious when someone three feet tall says it back to you.

2. Halloween

This is the first year that Catie has picked out her Halloween costume. And she picked a dinosaur.

we have found her Halloween costume

I cannot say how happy this makes me. I know that she most likely will have a princess phase, and that’s fine. I’ll deal with it when the time comes. But I’m also happy to put it off as long as possible. For now, I love that she has this balance of the super-girly – like, she adores pink and purple, she picks out clothes that have butterflies and flowers and hearts all over them – with the regular kid (or stereotypically “boy”) stuff. Like, she loves Thomas the Tank Engine, she has a weird sort of obsession with lizards, and when presented with aisles full of girly Halloween costumes – princesses, fairies, and ballerinas – she picks the dinosaur.

dressed up & chatting with Mimi & Pop-Pop on Skype

(FYI, the dinosaur costume looks great over yellow flowered PJs with a hot pink hat and mittens, and furry brown winter boots.)

And for those of you keeping track, last year she was a spider.

itsy bitsy spider

And the year before that, her first Halloween…

Two kitty-cats

…she was a cat. My mom made that costume. And that picture still cracks me up to this day.

3. Social Butterfly

We’ve been going for walks to explore our new neighborhood. She likes the new playground here a lot.

She likes the tunnel at the playground

It’s about ten-minute walk each way, although it’s more like 20 minutes going at a two year-old’s pace. There’s also a pool there, which is closed for the year; it’ll be fun next summer.

What amazed me was that one day when we went out for walk, we passed a group of kids (maybe 8 or 9 of them) that were playing freeze tag in their front yard. Catie ran over and said, “Hi, kids! I Catie!” And she just joined in the game. Of course she has no idea how to play freeze tag, but she ran all over the place with them and had a great time. She found two little girls (who were both a lot older than her; I’m guessing one was around 7, the other was probably 10) and she was holding their hands as they ran within about five minutes.

It’s just astounding to me, I don’t know that I was ever that brave when meeting new kids when I was little. I hope she keeps that ability and doesn’t get shy as she gets older. Because I think it’s awesome.

cute girl in her hoodie

I think she’s pretty awesome, too. You know, not that I’m biased or anything.

changes, and a couple of questions

I’m going to be doing a little tweaking on the ol’ blog here over the next few weeks. Nothing major, just changing up some of my sidebar stuff. Ads will be different – Google ads are gone because they’re useless, and I might try out some different ads instead. Hopefully it won’t be anything too annoying or intrusive, but I trust that y’all will let me know if it is.

Oh, and I’ve dropped my blogroll from my sidebar because I have about 100 or so blogs in my RSS reader, and just highlighting about 1/4 of them over there seemed sort of pointless and unfair. Also, now trolls can no longer use my blog as the launching point to go attack on someone else’s site. Which has happened a few times. But no more. Suck it, trolls.

And while I’m talking about bloggy/techie stuff, I do have a couple of questions for you lovely people:

1) Do any of you know anything about RSS feeds? Because my feed went from partial, to full, and back to partial again and I never did anything to change any of it. I can’t figure it out. I’m using WordPress, I’ve upgraded to the latest version, and on the Settings > Reading screen, I have it selected to show full text. Why is it still showing up as partial? Any ideas? Help?

2) After seeing some of the gorgeous photos that were taken at Type-A Mom last weekend, and after suffering from camera-envy for a while, I’ve decided it’s time for an upgrade. My little point-and-shoot (it’s an Olympus Stylus 790 SW) is an ok camera, but I end up with an awful lot of blurry pictures, or pictures that are too washed out and grainy. Also, the delay on the shutter speed is so slow – and toddlers are so fast – that I miss an awful lot of really great shots.

So, as soon as I can figure out how to afford it, I want to upgrade to a DSLR. I’ve heard good things about the Canon Rebel, but I know Nikon makes some really great cameras too. Any of you photography pros have advice for a beginner who’s never used a DSLR before? I’ll take whatever tips I can get.

a hacky photo entry that requires no real forethought or editing

Catie & I doing downward-facing dog
A little toddler yoga. (Catie’s request, it’s her new favorite thing.)

Catie
At the top of the stairs.

Catie playing with "Britty's Bear"
Playing with “Britty’s bear.”

Catie loves her PB&J sandwiches
It’s peanut-butter-jelly time!

playing dress-up in Mommy's new shirt
Want a sneak preview of one of the shirts I bought for BlogHer? Here you go. Catie thought it’d be fun to play dress-up in it.

I love the contrasting hair colors
Contrasting hair colors.

Catie says "CHEESE!!"
Catie says, “CHEESE!!!”

More about the weekend later; I gotta get to work.

photo entry

I’m just now getting around to uploading a whole slew of pictures that have been on my computer for a while.

First, Lizard (plus her hubby and her own baby Catie) stopped by for a visit. She has more pictures than I do over on her site.

Liz, me and our two Baby Caties

Also, there are a few that I’ve taken recently of Cate (the “Month 12” set is here, such as it is – more pics will be added later). I love this one of her standing up on her own, even though she’s decided that she doesn’t like the flash on the camera so she won’t look at me when I’m trying to take her picture. But seriously, how cute is that outfit?

standing! not holding onto anything!

Finally, back in November, we went to the Sears Portrait Studio and had some professional photos taken of Cate (and a couple of family shots too). If you got a Christmas card from me this year, you’ve already seen a couple of them.

family picture 1

portrait 1

Originally I wanted to set up a photo session with Starr, who did our wedding photos and who I just adore. We ran into her at Scott and Cara’s wedding last summer and talked about how great it would be to do some baby pictures with her. But when we tried to set it up, we just couldn’t make it work with our schedules. I do want to get her to take some pictures of Cate at some point, probably this spring when everything is blooming again. (She does amazing outdoor photos.)

As it turned out, the Sears pictures weren’t nearly as cheesy as we thought they’d be. And I made a little photo album out of them, which was a nice Christmas gift for all of the grandparents. You can see the rest of the set here, if you’d like.