Inspired by Amy

Trying to crawl. Not quite there though. My visiting teacher predicts that she'll crawl within the week.

Toboggan ride

A couple weekends ago, Lillian and I braved the wild mountain snows with the young men and young women of our ward. Tyler had work and school and such, so he stayed home. It was so much fun, but equally hard as Lillian is developing stranger aversion, and here's 15 or 16 very loud, very "helpful" strangers in her face. She did well, though.

Eating habits

Foods Lillian likes:
Pears, apples, bread, crackers, waffles, bananas in the mesh thing, yogurt

Foods Lillian despises, i.e. she cries upon tasting:
Sweet potatoes, rice cereal, oatmeal, bananas out of the mesh thing, apples with anything mixed in (like apples and bananas or apricots), peas, green beans, any kind of baby food dinner

Foods Lillian tolerates:
rice, kiwi, tofu, cheese

I'm secretly Kathleen Turner

The Ball household, Lillian excepted, has been taken over by the common cold. We've both had sore throats and coughs for a full week now.
The problem is when I get up with Lillian at night, she thinks my coughing is funny and laughs, which is the exact opposite of going back to sleep. So last night, I put a cough drop in my mouth before I went into her room. Upon waking this morning, it was still in my mouth after 4 hours of sleeping. Maybe not the safest thing, but hey, I got four hours of sleep.

Expect the Unexpected

March Madness is in the air. Starting on Thursday, all productivity will cease in the Ball household, and the trash talk will start. March Madness is so much more than college basketball... My involvement started four years ago. It was all so innocent; I hadn't even really heard of March Madness. Claire invited me to be in their family's pool. I was hooked. The desperation of the players facing single elimination, the unrestrained arbitrary attachment to teams with names like Gonzaga, Villanova, and Syracuse (who aren't even in the tournament this year). And the trash talk, which is why filling out a bracket so important. All of a sudden, my split second decision of picking Virginia over Tennessee (because George Washington was from Virginia) is life-or-death.

Tyler and I set up a Challenge on ESPN.com, where you upload your bracket and it keeps track of who's winning for you. If you want to join the fun, leave a comment, and we'll send you an email.

Flying Lillian

Checking for Teeth

Score: Tyler 28, Lillian 0

Favorite Andrew memory

My favorite Andrew memory is when we were little, and we had the white metal bunk beds. He would ask me to tie him up to the bed, and he'd try and get out. I would think and think and try to come up with the most impossible knots and weave the rope through the slats underneath the bed. But, somehow, 5 minutes later, he'd come and get me and ask me to do it again.

Happy birthday, Andrew.

It's always fun when Grandma comes!

Mom came to visit over Presidents' Day weekend, so these are a few weeks old. Mom, using her new fangled camera phone.



Remember this?

Cure Autism Now

My nephew Tyler is autistic. Amy (his mom and my sister) set up a walking team to participate in the Autism Walk. I'm really excited to walk with her and show my support. However, just walking won't cure Autism, or help Tyler. What we need is donations. If you would like to help out, and really, five dollars will help, go to the Walk Now website and click on Los Angeles, April 28th from the list on the left. You can search for my name, Amanda Ball, or you can poke around and donate to Team Tyler. Thanks.

It's February!!!

I opened up my eyes this morning to a beautiful day, more beautiful than I had seen in months, or maybe a week. I walked outside, threw my head back, and laughed; it's February and 70 degrees outside. I am going to be sad when we have to leave this place, but I'm even more determined to enjoy it while I'm here.

Celebrity Look-alike

Lillian looks like these celebrities, apparently.

Irish Hills Natural Preserve

Irish Hills Natural Preserve is just to the west of San Luis. I had never been there before, but was told it was beautiful. Which is true, it is. It gave us a chance to try out our new hiking backpack, graciously donated by my wonderful sister Amy. While I thought it was great, and still do, Lillian was a little less than thrilled with the whole set up. Even after my suggestion of pretending we were pioneers working to cross the Rockies, she was still screaming. I thought it was a fun game.


These mountains (even though people from elsewhere insist that they aren't mountains, yet the definition of mountain is just an area that is noticeably taller than the land around it) are called the Seven Sisters (even though there are officially nine of them). They are volcanoes, which I think is cool, and they string all the way from San Luis to Morro Bay, Morro Rock being the last in line.

We went with our friend Liz, who is an avid biker, both road and mountain. Here she is pretending to be on her bike like in the Citi Bank commercial.


By the end, Lillian reconciled herself to the back pack. Maybe because when I was wearing it, she could pull my hair.

New skills

Tyler taught Lillian how to blink. But, while he was trying to get the point across that he was blinking, he kept opening his mouth, so Lillian thinks that's how blinking works.


She can also, sort of, do helicopter lips. Actually, she just spits, but it's cute anyway.




She's so cute in the outfit mom got her for Christmas!!!

Cheryl's Visit

Cheryl and I were friends in Santa Barbara. She got married and moved to Utah, and I thought I'd never see her again. Until, she came to San Luis with her 7 month old daughter, Ashby!!!

New CD I bought

Buying new music used to be one of my favorite pastimes, but it got expensive and so I scaled way back in an effort to save money. However, every once in a while, I indulge. I bought the CD pictured above: "Sing You Sinners" by Erin McKeown, and I'm so happy with my purchase. She's redone music from the 30's and 40's-ish, and it's so fun to listen to! I put it on and dance around with Lillian. Some of the tracks I already knew pretty well, including 'Get Happy,' 'Paper Moon,' and 'Something's Gotta Give.'

So, if you're looking for music to clean the house to, you should buy this CD. I like the track 'I was a little too lonely (you were a little too late)' which is available on iTunes (along with the rest of the CD.)

Sorry to sound like a commercial, but it's so great!

Someone has to be in the 3rd percentile

Little Head, Big Head

We saw the doctor, and turns out, Lillian just has a little head. He'll continue to keep an eye on it, but the most important thing is that she meets her developmental milestones, which she is perfectly on target. Some people just have little heads, as seen above.

Naps

Here is Lillian's sleep schedule that I've been keeping for the past two days. She has decided that napping is not for her, she's not interested in it, and wonders why I keep trying to get her to nap. Various sources say that a 6 month old baby "should" be taking 2-3 2 or 3 hour naps a day. Huh. They say that they'll let you know their schedule, so I noticed that she slept around 10 and 3. So I made that nap time. Last week, she decided that no longer worked for her, so I thought I'd just let her do her own thing and see if she has any better ideas. Here's what she came up with:

Tuesday

7:00 - up
8:50 - fell asleep nursing
10:20 - up (total time asleep 1.5 hours)
12:50 - fell asleep in stroller while on walk
12:57 - transfered to crib
1:35 - awake
1:45 - fed & rocked in futile attempt to lull back to sleep
1:52 - up (total time asleep .63 hours)
4:30 - fell asleep in car
5:15 - after sleeping in car seat, up (total time asleep .75 hours)

Total sleep time: 2.88 hours

Wednesday

7:30 - up
10:00 - fussed to sleep
11:00 - up (total time asleep 1.0 hours)
2:00 - zoning out
2:10 - asleep in crib
3:15 - screaming in crib
3:30 - up (total time asleep 1.08 hours)
6:00 - last ditch effort on my part to get her to take a nap; futile

Total sleep time: 2.08 hours

The thing is that she is the happiest baby in the world. She is obviously getting enough quality sleep. I am the one that needs her to get more sleep.

Reservoir Canyon Natural Preserve

For our anniversary, Tyler got me a book called Best Family Adventures of San Luis Obispo and our first adventure was to the Reservoir Canyon Natural Preserve. It's only a couple minutes away from our house, and I had no idea that it was here, and as far as I can tell, no one does.

Except for the people that built these creepy tee-pees and other junk art. I mean, I'd be ok if it was just 'art' but there were about 6 or so of the little tripods all set in a sort of "animal sacrifice" pattern and it was on top of this mountain. In the main tee-pee, pictured below, there is a little stove and a pot, like someone lived here. I kept expecting some sort of derranged mountain man to jump out from behind a bush and attack us. They creeped me out big time. But the view was pretty.

Decision Matrix

In case there was any doubt as to whether Tyler and I are nerds, let me clear it up for you. Tyler was trying to decide between two classes, one was within his major, but was going to be counted as elective units, something about Controls. The other was geology. The only reason he needed to take another class was to have enough units to qualify for financial aid. After discussing the pros and cons for a couple minutes, I offered to make a decision matrix for him to aid him in his decision making. It worked; the controls class scored a 69, while geology scored a 94.

I know. We're nerds.

Mt. Hood

Tyler's an expert skiier, but has never snowboarded, and I've never done either, so we decided to take beginning snowboarding lessons with our friend Stephanie. Brian, Stephanie's husband, decided to ski.

These hats are somewhat of a skiing tradition in Brian's family. Pictured are the moose and bear hats, at home was the skunk and some other animal. While they look silly, they are very functional. For starters, they are very warm and come down over your ears. Secondly, they are useful in locating people on the slopes, just look for the antlers. Brian's mom told us about a time when Brian was young and got lost on the mountain. When she asked the lift operator if he'd seen a little boy, he said that her son had got on not too long ago. She was confused about how he knew it was her son. He said, "he's the bear right?"

Tillamook Cheese Factory

As a Christmas present to ourselves, Tyler and I took a trip to Oregon. While there, we visited the Tillamook forest, and the Tillamook cheese factory and creamery. So good. They had an experimental flavor of garlic cheese that I'm going to buy pounds and pounds of as soon as it comes up for sale.




As we were watching them work, a small boy next to us whispered to his dad, "I hear they get paid in cheese!!!!"


She's just happy to be out of her car seat.




Lillian's first ice cream cone; she wasn't quite sure what to think.