beth day

early this morning on my run, as i usually do i was thinking of all the things i needed to get done today. i was putting everything in priority order, noting the things that needed to get done for sure over others that may get put off because beth argued for my attention instead.

and as i was thinking through the day i finally decided, you know what? forget all that boring stuff. today is going to be beth day. no trying to get stuff done - we're going to play and hang out and have fun all day. we're going to do things i think i would want to do if i was 6 months old, and it were my day. other stuff? not important. (though i'd conceded to getting a few things while she was sleeping...) and beth day had been declared. just by me in my head, but so it was.

thankfully she decided this week that she was going to start sleeping for 11-12 hours at night, so after getting back home at at 6:45, i still had some time before she woke up. a quick shower and couple loads of laundry later, she was awake and i told her "beth, this is your day. you and me. we're playing all day, so like it."

we started off with a hearty breakfast, then on to a relaxing bath, complete with extra bubbles that fizzed out after about 30 seconds (awesome). lots of splashing and playing, eating of the feet (a new favorite) and a repeated lesson that no, we do not like the way washcloths taste.

we got dressed and headed out for a walk with marley. perfect timing, we got out before the heat set in (it was going to be a 96 degree day), there was lots of fellow walkers/joggers to say hello to, marley took a dip in the canal, and beth cooed and talked nearly the whole way. she loves our walks.

by the time we got home, she'd already fallen back asleep (nothing new there), so while she slept cozily in her stroller in the garage (worst mother ever???) i did the dishes in the kitchen with the door open.

not long after we'd gotten back from our walk, got this from my mom:

and that was the end of my yahoo email.

ps: for those of you that i haven't talked to, sorry if you got an ad, and please change my email address in your info to

lindsay.vanorden at gmail.com

(good call sis :) )

well she woke up 20 minutes later so we headed up to meet daddy for lunch at the park. only somehow we ended up meeting at different parks, so... it didn't quite go as planned, but eventually we all got to the same one. oops. still sorry about that one babe. it was still a good lunch, even if it was short due to our minor miscommunication.

after hank left beth and i stayed and played... we practiced sitting up on our own, ate some toys, laughed (still melts my heart), and started to doze again.

we're still working on the sitting-up-on-our-own part.

from here we made our way over to the store for some window shopping (found soooo many cute things - i will be back...)

and then over to the bookstore where we read some classics and childhood favorites. they even condensed them into baby book form now, which i think is so rad.

this one, i think, is more for the parents than baby

a mantra i've already started to tell myself...

a quick stop for a blended lemonade, and we were on our way home again where we laughed and played some more. daddy was going to be home soon, so we hung out while we waited for his arrival. after he got home, he said we could go "for reals" shopping (as opposed to just window shopping), so we went and got beth a new toy. hooray for new toy! she's still deciding how she feels about it...

her feet don't touch the ground - we may have jumped the gun on this one just a little bit. so back in the jumper she went. she's definitely got that one figured out and loves it.

but not for too long - she and hank were glued at the hip while we grilled up some burgers for dinner. he doesn't know i took this shot, but it's one of my favorite from the day. i love watching them together. perfect time for me to capture as they walked the so-close-to-being-finished deck in between checking on the burgers.

(happiness fills my soul)

we topped off the the evening with a classic:

and 20 minutes in she was done. wrecked. totally wiped out.

she crashed hard. just according to plan. :)

oh, and as of last sunday? we have a new trick. check it out.