A Little Bit Strange...

This is picture is of Noelle laying on the vacuum. She was also kissing it while I was trying to sweep last night. She is a little bit odd. :-)



A Noelle Update:
She is consistently saying DaDa now, usually at the top of her lungs. She is also saying "Baa" (her lamb) much more. MaMa is occasionally uttered, but I still don't think that she is referring to me yet when she says it. *sigh* :-) We are eating all sorts of new table food as well: chicken, cheese - she LOVES string cheese, lots of kiwi, strawberries, peas, green beans, cheerios, crackers, mandarin oranges, cantalope, honeydew. I gave her some watermelon for the first time this weekend and I don't think she was impressed with it. We haven't been able to get her to eat any red meat either, like hamburger. She turns up her nose at it. She had some pizza a few nights ago and thought it was pretty great. She is now taking two steps in a row fairly consistently. If it's more than two, she resorts to crawling. Her crawling is getting slower, though, because she usually needs to carry something now when she is going somewhere (small toy, Baa, the dog's *ick* bone, etc.) and therefore only has one hand for crawling. She's getting so big.

In other family happenings . . .

My trip to Houston is still in an on again/off again status. I emailed my friend I would be visiting and she is going to have family in town most of the time that I would be there so it's really not a good week for her. Plus, Travis's work hasn't made his reservation yet, so he didn't want to make my flight arrangements and then end up travelling at a different time than me. I don't see the point in spending a bunch of money on a plane ticket to sit in a hotel for 8 hours a day while Travis works. We had a backup week for the trip if I couldn't go the first week, but that's is now also up in the air as to whether T. will go to help with that training.

I don't like "up in the air." I like things written on my calendar so I can plan, make lists, and get excited about it. We have several things going on right now that are in various and sundry states of this. We're supposed to go on a raft trip this weekend with the youth group and I wish we could just finalize the trip plans and BE DONE WITH IT.

I also had an epiphany about part of my frustration last night. We have too much going on on the weekend and by Sunday night, I am tired because of too many "good things" that went on, and not enough just being home together time. Monday morning rolls around with no thought to what's coming up in the week, do we have clean clothes, and is there even anything in the house suitable for Travis to take for lunch? The last two weekends, we have had outings on both Friday and Saturday night, and all-day commitments for Sunday. This coming weekend looks just the same - raft trip Friday and Saturday, then Sunday is taken up with church, a lunch ministry meeting for us and then he has a band rehearsal in the evening. Then the following week we are committed to 5 day clubs every evening.

I need some margin in my life. On a whim, I looked up the word "margin" in the dictionary:

a limit in a condition or process, beyond or below which something is no longer possible or acceptable

I have reached my limit in the things that we can fit into our weekends and still be an excellent wife and mother (EW&M). (Prov. 31:10) I don't want to settle for just being mediocre at my job by giving myself to everything else and leaving T. & N. just the skimming of what's left of me. I'm going to be pondering this morning in the weeks to come and am very excited. Right now, in my role of EW&M, is clean underwear and socks for the family! :-)

Happy Monday, ya'll.