Merry Christmas To All...

And to all a good night.

It's Official

We have a kid...so we have a Christmas card. Here is a scanned replica.


If you did not receive a Christmas card, please accept my deepest apologies.


You may direct all hate-mail and disgruntled comments to mirmandy27(at)yahoo(dot)com. Please remember to include your address so we can avoid this situation in the future.

Otherwise, have a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. See you in 2009!

Wish Him Luck

Nate is defending his thesis tomorrow. He's been working so hard for so long. Azalea and I are very proud of you Nate!

Christmas Baby

Poofy red dresses and berets are pretty much the reason I had a baby in the first place.

I like to eat turkey in an old brown shoe...

We spent Azalea's first Thanksgiving in Idaho. It was a nice quiet dinner with my parents, brother, grandpa, and aunt. I loved the fact that it was like any other Sunday dinner, except it was Thanksgiving so we had to have massive amounts of food.



Luckily for Azalea, she is all about the table food these days so she got to eat what everybody else was eating. I also discovered that the majority of food we eat on Thanksgiving is pretty much baby food consistency...mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, jello...apparently we're not big fans of chewing on this particular holiday.

We decided to give Azalea a chance to manage her own portions with the mashed potatoes. She took this opportunity to cram the biggest fistful of potatoes possible into her mouth. She was not pleased with the result.

By the end of the meal however, she had figured it out and spent a good while banging her plate on her tray signaling that she would like more food to go into her mouth.

Now that we're home we realize that we have effectively trained Azalea to beg. If we sit down in the living room with food she's at our side as fast as her fat little legs can get her over to us smacking her lips and giving us the "whatcha eatin'?" look. Keep in mind that we don't allow our DOG to beg but do we allow our baby?...you betcha.

Halloween Re-visited

I've been meaning for a while now to post more pictures of Halloween. I just don't think everybody got to see the full effect of Azalea's bee costume. I mean, Rachel and I made a tutu, and flower shoes, and fuzzy antennae...well, here she is in a picture with Rachel the gypsy. See for yourself.


Also, I never told you about our costumes! Nate and I dressed up as Juno and Paulie. Because teen pregnancy is awesome.


Okay that's all. I'm happy now.

*Photos By Ben

Maybe You Haven't Seen How Adorable Our Baby is.

Nine months old. 18 lbs. 2 oz. 26 in. long.

Likes her fingers and her dad.


Yeah she's bald, but we still love her.



Pics by Carl

Golden Gate Canyon

Our friend, Ben, suggested we get off our lazy back-sides for a Saturday and come on a hike with him. We said "okay."


What! Hiking in November? You betcha. The weather was beautiful and rumored to be in the high 50s. There was a tiny bit of snow on the ground and everything looked gorgeous. I love you Colorado. (I love you too Miranda)


Azalea was a freakin' champ on the hike. She sang and talked in her carrier and didn't get fussy until it was time to turn around and go back. I thought I would be able to pack her on the hike since I carry her around all day right? right? Ummm...no. Turns out carrying her while you're walking around the house is somewhat different from walking up a rocky slope. I gave her to Nate about 10 minutes in.


Fortunately, Ben provided us with some shreds of evidence that I was actually there. Yeah, I know what you all were thinking. I sent Nate and Zayley off for a hike while I stayed home eating my homemade muffins. Well Ha! Here I am!


And here I am again!



Thanks again for the motivation and the pic Ben.

Hey Denver-ites

Have you been to Happy Cakes yet? Odds are if you've hung out with me in the last four months you've either been there with me, or received a sweet cupcake as payment for babysitting or something-or-other. Anyway, it's time to get yourselves down there again to vote for my baby's beautiful face. Happy Cakes is having a photo contest of people eating their cupcakes and showing of their "happy faces." Azalea just entered today with this picture.


Voting takes place during the month of November so don't delay. Besides the voting you can eat some of Happy Cakes WONDERFUL cupcakes. Remember, Tuesdays are $2 days! The winner of the photo contest gets TWO DOZEN cupcakes you guys. That's more than enough to share right?

Beauty

No, I'm not talking about my wife, or my daughter, although the title would be completely appropriate for a post about either one of them. This post is more about the beauty of the unseen, which is to say, my thesis, or more specifically, Figure 4.7 of my thesis. I'm not going to go into what you're looking at in this picture, partly because I know my science type posts only draw a fraction of the audience that pictures of Z get, and partly because this stuff is unpublished, hot off my computer, which means it could be stolen. However, without details and the words that used to be in the text boxes, it's pretty much useless. Plus what's life this day in age without a dose of paranoia? Anyway, here's the figure I keep rambling on about. I'd argue that it's the best one in my thesis.

Happy Halloween! (pt. 2)

Happy Halloween again!

Happy Halloween!

Hi, my name is Zayley and I'm not a baby anymore, I'm a little girl! As evidenced by my long sleeved shirt with frilly cuffs and jeans. Before long I'll be wearing short sleeved shirts under long sleeved shirts under short sleeved shirts. I'm going out shopping for my mom and dad's costumes now and will post some picutes of my rockin' costume later.

Also, sometimes I don't like getting my picture taken.

Blog-ovations

Apparently I clean up the blog as often as I clean up my house. Okay maybe it's not quite as bad but seriously, I would think about using the bathroom somewhere before you come to our house.

Anyway, you may notice a few changes to our blog background over the next few weeks. Unless you read our blog with a feed reader which I'm assuming most of you do.

I digress.

Please don't mind the mess. And no making fun of my lack of html/css skillz.

Assessment of Traditional and Novel Membrane Processes for Recovery of Cooling Tower Water in Geothermal Power Plants

Check it out.

No really... check it out.

p.s. I stole the last graphic from a webcomic... I can't remember which one.

More Random Pictures of Azalea in Adorable Outfit.

Seriously. How do I get anything done during the day aside from dressing her up and taking her picture? I have no idea.

Cheer Up Grandma!

Apparently my mom and I both had kind of bad days yesterday. She emailed me requesting pictures of Azalea to cheer her up. Unfortunately, I received that email at the height of my crankiness and seriously contemplated quiting the blog forever because I couldn't handle the pressure of constantly keeping it updated. (so I get a little stressed...back off)

It seems like when I have bad days, I lose all ability to cope with Azalea's evening neediness. And yes, contrary to popular opinion, Zayley does cry and demands face time in the evening. I've learned that I have to consciously tell myself the morning after a bad day that "today is a new day." Otherwise, the fact that Zayley is crying first thing in the morning would probably set me off just as quickly as it did the night before. So far, it works wonderfully. Also, taking pictures of my baby's nasty cookie face helps a lot too. Seriously, how did she get the goo to look like a goatee?

So don't worry about work, mom. Come to Denver and eat cookies with Zayley instead! In the meantime, I'm taking applications for somebody to keep my blog updated. I just don't have time. The pay is...well, the pay is not good.

Azalea Loves Izzy

So, these pictures pretty much speak for themselves but you know me...I can't NOT write about how cute they are.

Azalea's mouth is wide open whenever she plays with Izzy. We're not sure if it is just because she's excited or because she actually contemplates putting EVERYTHING into her mouth. Even big fuzzy alive things.

After she had played a while, Azalea puller herself to a stand on Izzy. Yeah, you read right. I was in just as much shock as you so I didn't get a good picture of it. Oh well, it wasn't the first time anyway. The first time was yesterday in church...on her carseat. Whew...here we go.

BEST AUNT EVER.

Look what Auntie Laurel sent Azalea in the mail today! The adorableness...can you stand it? The tutu even came with a matching headband!



I couldn't be bothered with a decent setup for these photos...I had to get Z in that thing and take pictures FAST. Of course you know there will be plenty more pictures to come...in better light, with actual posing, and adorable baby tutuness.

Also, these pictures should quell any suspicions that Azalea does not in fact LOVE the camera. One flash and she's workin' it.

The card inside said the tutu came from Tiffany Wheeler at The Maddie Patch (which is a shop on ETSY). Clearly, Tiffany is a genius in the baby tutu design arena. It's highly likely that I'll be purchasing from her in the future.

Also, nobody needs to worry about buying any more clothes for Azalea. She'll pretty much just be wearing this as long as it fits.

She is going to TOWN on that mango!

My sweet friend Jaime gave me the idea of splitting a mango with my husband and giving the seed to my baby cakes. Azalea was grateful for the opportunity to suck on something so ridiculously sweet and it was hilarious watching the thing slip through her hands.


I recently gave up the rules of introducing new foods to Azalea. You know, the ones that are like,
1. Wait 2-3 days between new foods that are introduced.
2. Introduce vegetables before fruits (which Neve will tell you doesn't work anyway)
3. I don't remember the other ones that I'm not following.

I pretty much give her whatever I can grind or smash up. No don't panic...I'm not giving her peanuts, egg whites, or cow's milk...I know better than that. But since Nate and I don't have any food allergies, our pediatrician (currently one of my favorite professionals in the whole wide world) gave us the go ahead to be a little lax in our feeding habits.

I tried to drag my feet on introducing solids to Azalea, truly I did. But she was insistent. She was grabbing food off of our plates, eating peas ecstatically, and smacking her lips whenever I ate in front of her. Neve finally laid the smack down and said, "Miranda...she's ready to eat solid foods. You should feed her something." Fine.

Oh how I love sticky messy baby. No seriously, I do. I strongly believe in babies making messes.

All in all, another successful evening meal. For those of you who are curious, Azalea also enjoys eating: avocados, bananas, peas, sweet potato, plums, oatmeal, cupcake frosting, limes, paper, cell phones, and your finger.