Even though we are only a few blocks from the neighborhood pool, we decided to get Daphne a plastic pool for the backyard. Today, she got to test it out. She loves playing in the water and I expect we will be spending lots of time in the pool this summer.

So, I have a question for you cloth diapering mamas out there… What kind of swim diaper do you use? Luckily, Daphne still fits in her Bummis Swimmi from last year, but it’s a size Medium (15-22 lbs) and I expect she will grow out of it before the summer is up. I think (maybe?) that I prefer a snap or velcro closure, as opposed to a pull on style. And before I go get lost in the confusing world of cloth diapering forums I thought I’d see if anyone had one they could recommend.

And here’s the little bathing beauty now, having so much fun.

A few posts back, I mentioned Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred. Well, I’m on day 3.

Holy crap. When are my thigh muscles going to stop screaming at me? I always thought I was getting a fairly decent lower body workout on the elliptical. Yeah. Apparently not. Today as I started into the strength portion of the first circuit I cried out “God help me!” because I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get up out of the squat. I just have to laugh about it.

Oh, and another huge, HUGE problem?! (TMI WARNING) Every time I do a jumping jack or jump rope, any bouncing move during the cardio portion, I feel like I have to pee. WTFrak!!! This has never happened before. It must be some post-childbirth thing I never noticed, since I usually do lower impact stuff. It’s really unnerving. Really, y’all. I see lots of Kegels in my future. So, until I get that sorted out I will be modifying the cardio portion. Sorry, Jillian. And my beloved Enell sports bra (the one that Oprah likes) isn’t as bounce proof as I thought. Pffftt…

I’m not giving up though. I need more energy to keep up with my Energizer bunny toddler.

Daphne turns 21 months tomorrow. How is that possible? Didn’t I just post her 20 month update? Anyway, here’s the latest-

- Daphne has started to say “cheese” whenever we take a picture of her. It’s pretty funny, but unfortunately the result is a picture like this:

Cheeeeese!!!

She also says “cheese” instead of “please.” Last night she wanted more of my water and kept saying, “more, more!” When I reminded her to say please, the result was “more cheese!!” Which is ironic, considering she won’t eat cheese.

- She is finally weaned. And to that I say woooo hooo!!!!! I never set out to do extended breastfeeding, it just happened that way. My first goal was 12 months. I didn’t think she was ready to wean at 12 months, since she hadn’t been eating baby food for very long and was still iffy on the sippy cup. So the next goal became 18 months. Of course, at that point the breastfeeding was more for comfort and to help her go to sleep quicker, not for nutrition. She was only nursing once a day since 16 months or so. I actually almost had her weaned at 18 months, but then she got sick and I let her nurse more since she wasn’t wanting to eat any solid foods. Now we are done. I was ready. But, I will say I am very grateful that breastfeeding was such an easy experience for me. I never had any pain, supply issues, clogged ducts, anything. Easy peasy.

- I’m not exactly sure where she gets her energy. She is SO ACTIVE! And for the last few weeks has been waking up at 4 or 6 am and fighting me at nap time. I’m totally exhausted, laying on the floor, while Daphne is running laps around me. Seriously.

- Her favorite toys are still her baby dolls. She carries them at least two at a time, sometimes up to four. She kisses and hugs them, feeds them, rocks them to sleep. It’s pretty cute. For Christmas, I’m going to get her an American Girl Bitty Twin set. I think that will bring the baby count up to 8, then we can call her Octo Mommy.

- I have decided to put off introducing her to potty training for at least another month or two. Daphne is not ready. She is so stubborn. My mom said that I potty trained pretty easily with the promise of cute big girl panties. Shopping for big girl panties? Done deal! Hahaha. I have no hope that Daphne will be that easy to train.

I’m still trying to figure out what to do for her 2nd birthday party. Last year, as you might remember, we went all out. Balloons, streamers, handmade banner and high chair tutu, Etsy hat. I designed the photo invitations. Heck, we even made a tiered birthday cake and baby sized tiered smash cake. I think I want to go simple this year. We’ve thought about just having a family day and taking her to the zoo or water park, but it’s so frakking hot here in August. Maybe the aquarium? I need to make a decision, so I can get the invitations to our out of town family.

Until next month…

Today we woke up early and took Daphne to the Houston Zoo. I thought she’d really enjoy it, since Madagascar is her favorite movie (and we watch it every frakking day). And the last time she was at a zoo, she looked like this (little peanut):

5 months old at Zoo Atlanta, back when she still had one blue and one brown eye

I think she had a good time this morning. She liked the fish:

Checking out the giraffes with Poppa, wearing her giraffe shirt:

And the elephants with Daddy:

She didn’t enjoy the petting area. There was no way she was getting near those goats:

We ended up spending about 2 1/2 hours at the zoo. Which I thought was pretty good, since Daphne is still fairly young. She crashed right after the children’s area and decided to spend the rest of the time in the stroller. I will say that the zoo has improved since our last visit, 3 or 4 years ago. But, I won’t go back until it’s cooler, which means maybe November, haha!

I have approximately 2 months to find the perfect play kitchen for Daphne’s birthday. I say 2 months, instead of 3, because that gives me time to have it shipped here, and con someone into putting it together. Here are the two frontrunners:

KidKraft Vintage Kitchen, $139 at Costco (which includes shipping)

and the retro Kitchenette, $199 plus shipping from Land of Nod (doesn’t include the fridge too)

Both are wood. And I like the retro and red. In fact, the second kitchen looks a lot like my kitchen in B’ham, white cabinets with red accents. I realize that Pottery Barn kids has a retro red set, but I just can’t spend $500 for a play kitchen.

Any advice from play kitchen owners out there? What features do you prefer? How long did your kids play with the set.

I also need to get started on my felt food. Any favorite patterns?

- Did you hear they were remaking the 80’s series V with Elizabeth Mitchell? I wonder if they will have someone giving birth to a lizard baby, because that’s pretty much all I remember from the original series.

- I saw an ad in one of my parenting magazines for Pop Tarts and they had a recipe for a Pop Tart ice cream sandwich. Aren’t Pop Tarts bad enough for you, without adding ice cream? Next thing you know they’ll put it on a stick, batter it, deep fry it and call it a carnival treat.

- I hear they are discontinuing the Nikon D300. Didn’t that just come out? I can’t keep up with all the body releases. They must partner with Adobe (who is constantly releasing new Photoshops) in an evil scheme to keep us all poor. We actually skipped the D300 body, so we might be interested in the replacement. Just not sure if that’s a good investment, or if we should buy more pro lenses.

- Tree roaches suck. We’d get similar bugs in our basement when we lived in B’ham, but they seem to be bigger and more aggressive here. If we can get close enough to them, without them flying in our face, we can whack them with this little electrified tennis racket and that pretty much does them in. I hate bugs. My least favorite household pest were the camelback crickets we’d get in Missouri. That’s another bug that likes to jump at you. *Shudder*

- During my hiatus I saw a few good movies, including The Namesake with Kal Penn. It also stars Jacinda Barrett (anyone else remember her from The Real World season 4?) and Zuleikha Robinson (who has been on Lost this season). And I thought Tabu, who plays Ashima, did an amazing job.

- My husband posted this Calvin & Hobbes cartoon to his Flickr account recently, which immediately reminded me of a few other pics-

Here’s my husband in Mobile a few years ago, with his signature pose-

And Chris with his brother at his HS graduation-

I guess it’s only a matter of time before Daphne picks this up.

Last summer I got an email from FamilyLife about their Weekend to Remember marriage conferences. I’d heard great things about them and forwarded the email on to my husband with a brief note saying that all I wanted for our anniversary was to attend the Sugar Land, TX conference on May 15-17. I’m so glad we went!

As my longtime readers know, we’ve had a pretty stressful year. The layoff, the move, the frakking house in Alabama that won’t sell, the crappy economy, parenting a toddler. And all that stress has lead to us both being more irritable and not treating each other as well as we should. Plus, I think we are still adjusting to having a kid. That might sound silly, but since we were together for 11 years before she was born it’s been a hard adjustment to go from 2 to 3. We’ve found out we have completely different ideas on how to raise her and aren’t always very good on compromising. Last week, we had so many things thrown at us, we were so stressed and as a result we argued all week. About incredibly stupid stuff. Heck, we were still arguing 10 minutes before the marriage conference started. I was afraid the people sitting around us were going to overhear and think to themselves, “It’s a good thing that those two are here!” On Thursday, I was so irritated with my husband that I wasn’t even interested in the conference anymore. I was just going to get a three day break from Daphne (which was like a VACATION, let me tell ya).

Like I said, I’m glad we went. It was a really nice opportunity to refocus, get a refresher course on communication and conflict resolution, and just relax after such a tense week. I was also reminded of the awesome responsibility I have as a parent. I mean, Daphne will learn what it’s like to be married from watching us. We can show her what a good marriage looks like, or what a dysfunctional marriage looks like. My parents divorced when I was little and I hated going back and forth between houses, feeling like I had to choose sides. I don’t want that life for Daphne. Right now we are giving her the values, priorities and memories that she will take when she ultimately leaves our house to live her own life. Gosh, that’s a scary thought. I need to get my act together so we can leave a legacy we can be proud of.

Anyway, I highly recommend the conference. For those of you not familiar with FamilyLife, they are a parachurch organization (started by the same people as Campus Crusade for Christ) based out of Little Rock and have tons of resources out there, including books, radio shows, etc. We enjoyed our weekend so much that we plan on going again, if not next year than at least in 2 years, and hope to take a few other couples from our church.

After a brief blogging hiatus, I’m back! I’m feeling better, more refreshed. Thanks, everyone, for the well wishes.

I have a few posts rattling around in my head, but those will have to wait. I have a pinched nerve in my neck/back (ouch!!) and had a battle of wills today with Daphne. I’m pretty sure I said “NO!” at least 4,236 times. So, I’m just going to call it a night. ‘Til tomorrow…

Gosh, it’s been a hard week. Extremely stressful. So, I’m unplugging for the rest of the week. I might check my gmail a few times, but otherwise no internet for me. See you Monday!

So, you know I was excited about seeing the new Star Trek movie. I sat in the theater tonight, watching the ads go by, waiting for the main event, while asking Chris for the time every 5 minutes. I was like a kid ready to open Christmas presents. And let’s just say the movie didn’t disappoint. I thought it was GREAT! My favorite Star Trek movie ever. And just to prove how much I liked it… I have officially forgiven JJ Abrams for “killing” off Vaughn on Alias. That’s big for me. I was livid when Vaughn got killed and didn’t even watch the rest of that season. Then Alias went downhill, so I guess it was for the best. Kind of like The Matrix. Loved the first movie (LOVED), wish I had never seen the second or third.

Since most of you probably haven’t seen it yet, I won’t discuss the plot too much. I thought the casting was brilliant. And everyone was so attractive. Except maybe Scotty. Sorry, Simon Pegg (I did love him in Shawn of the Dead). The movie did deviate a little from the previous movies/shows, but I didn’t care. Of course, I’m also not a Trekkie.

As we were leaving the theater I asked my husband if it was better than Khan. He looked at me and said, “Hell no.” He liked the movie, but had a hard time with the timeline and some of the changes. Of course, he watched the original series, saw all the movies, read the books (yet somehow missed TNG completely, how is that possible?).

For those of you who have seen the new movie, what did you think?