Dixie Lives

While browsing for a book on Greek mythology in the history section at a local Borders, my eyes were drawn to a bright green paperback with a black and white picture of a surly, odd-looking confederate soldier on the cover, bearing the obscure title; Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. Something about this book called to me. On an impulse, I purchased the book, curious to see what stories about humanity were captured between the two covers.

The South and their role in the Civil War has always intrigued me. I had gone to visit my penpal in Lousiana over spring break my senior year. I tagged along with my friend to her classes since my friend was *not* on spring break. When one of her teachers asked where I was from, I heard some snickers throughout her classroom and a boy shout out in disgust "So you're a Yankee!?!" I was very confused. We studied the Civil War in school but that is where us "Northerners" interests in the war ended. My friend then kindly informed me that some people in the South were still upset about loosing the war. In fact, some people were still fighting the war in their hearts.

I started reading the book yesterday and haven't been able to put it down. The author decides to tour the South and write sort of an ethnography about the people and situations he encounters - from attending a Daughters of the Confederacy birthday party for Robert E. Lee to marching in an authentic reinactment of Gettysburg, Tony Horwitz opens up a world that us "Northerners" could never understand.

Here is just a small taste:

The War of Northern Agression had little to do with slavery. Rather, it was a culture war in which Yankees imposed their imperialist and capitalist will on the agrarian South, just as the English had done wo the Irish and Scots--and as America did to the Indians...

Amazing how history changes with the eyes that view it.

Stylin'

Thanks to Auntie J, Uncle R and cousin Nick, Elisabeth is stylin' in her new Ralph Lauren dress and belt.  I couldn't resist the striped tights.  The nice thing about this dress is she can easily crawl in it as well.  Some of our friends insist that Elisabeth is going to be a girly-girl who likes girl things and loves to wear dresses.  I can only hope she takes after me because it is sure fun to dress her up!

When You're the Best of Friends

We love our Sofi Dog.

We love our Ellie Beth.

We love that they love each other.

Weekly Eval

Finish smocking Elisabeth's dress.  Check.

Finish sewing Elisabeth's dress.  Check minus.  (I still have to put the snaps and hook/eye on.  As soon as I officially finish the dress, I will post a picture!)

Wow.  These weekly goals really did keep me from idling my time away!

Goals for this week:

• Pick out a pattern for Elisabeth's Easter dress.
• Make Elisabeth's baby food.  (I hear it is cheaper and not to mention healthier.  I thought I would give it a try!  Thank you Mary M. for letting me borrow the Super Baby Food book and the baby-food-making utensils.)
• Update my display board with a Valentinesy display.

Eight is Great

Our little girl is already eight months old.  I get sad thinking how fast these past eight months has gone and realize our little baby won't be a baby much longer.  I am keeping a journal for her where I write down monthly how much she has grown, her developmental milestones, our feelings about her and any cute things she has done that make her unique.  

Here is a sampling of her 8 month progress report:

• Elisabeth chortles whenever she sees, tastes or does something she likes.  Our house is filled with little "Ha ha!" laughs throughout the day. 
• Elisabeth gets really excited when her Papa comes home from work and rewards him with a squeal of delight and arms that flap up and down in elation.
• She loves to read books.  She especially loves when we make sound effects for animals or change our voices with different characters.
• Elisabeth is VERY particular about her likes and dislikes.  When we have story time, often she will peer over the book we are reading at the time at another book on the floor.  This is her way of indicating to us she would rather read the other book.
• Elisabeth's play is very focused and intense, filled with curiosity.  One of her favorite pasttimes is to take the DVDs off of the bookshelf.  While doing so, she stops to scrutinize every DVD case before gently pushing it aside.  She has also figured out how to dump out her toys from their boxes - even ones that are tightly sealed.
• Sofi the Beagle is her best friend and vice versa.  Just yesterday I came into the living room to witness Sofi piling all of her squeaky toys and balls into Elisabeth's lap.  Sofi then sat next to the baby, cocked her head like she does to us, and barked at the baby to play fetch with her.  Elisabeth rewards Sofi by patting her fur and pulling on her collar. Sofi especially loves when Elisabeth will reach down her hands from her highchair after dinner so that Sofi can help her wash the baby food off.  We should really stop this but when Elisabeth giggles uncontrollably as Sofi licks her, we can't help but smile and overlook this behavior. 
• Elisabeth is already communicating in her own way.  She has said "Mama" once while looking directly at me (does this count for her first word?) and usually adds a few "mamas" in her cries, says "na na na" whenever she is done or doesn't want to do something (like go to bed) and likes to make a buzzing sound when she is playing.  
• Elisabeth is officially a crawler!  Though she prefers the "army crawl", she has started to crawl normally on all fours and is always on the move.

Productive Free Time

Lance asked me on Sunday, after a very busy weekend, if I remembered what it was like to have free time. After laughing, I tried to find an answer for him. The truth is we do have free time, though it is a considerably smaller amount than we had before Elisabeth was born. We just feel like we don't have free time becuase we are usually so exhausted by the time our "free" time rolls around that we piddle it away by either searching the web, sending emails, or watching TV.

I decided I needed to make the most of my free time in 2009 by being more productive with the time I have. Gone are the days of watching House re-runs on TV or seeing what good deals I can get on Craigslist.com or eBay. I am going to use my free time to create and organize. Hopefully, I will just be making our lives better than they already are.

To help keep myself accountable for this goal, I plan on recording on my blog my goals for the week. Maybe you will all find it interesting to see what I am up to these days and I hope these publically stated goals will encourage me to actually complete them. Here goes!

My goal this week: Finish smocking Elisabeth's dress that I have been working on since the beginning of December. I am so close!

Next week's goal: Finish sewing the dress I smocked this week.

Wish me luck!

Happy Belated Holidays!

I made a goal in 2009 to be more productive with my time throughout the day.  As a result, my time spent on the computer has diminished to a bare minimum and I have not accomplished my usual computer tasks, such as blogging and downloading pictures.  Though the Christmas decorations are long since packed away, I figured you all wanted to know of some 2008 holiday high and low lights of our small family:

HIGHLIGHTS:

• We saw both my family and most of Lance's family for the holidays.
• I lost four pounds over the holiday season and am only five pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight.
• Elisabeth loved opening presents. 
• Elisabeth was able to meet some of her relatives she hasn't met before.
• We had Andy's Frozen Custard THREE times in four days. 
• Lance as able to play his new game, Puerto Rico, a few times with his brothers.

LOWLIGHTS:

• All three of us got a stomach virus in MO and managed to pass it along to the 12+ people staying at Lance's mom's home.
  
• Elisabeth and I then managed to bring this horrible sickness to both OK and MN - leaving at least nine people vomiting in 2009, thus me earning the nickname of "Typhiod Kristi" as I no longer felt sick but got everyone sick no mater where we went.
• E.B. and I had to fly on SIX flights between Christmas day and the first week in January.  One flight took us through Chicago(which, if you didn't know, it is always a bad idea to fly through Chicago in the winter). We won't be doing that again.  Ever. 
  

Elisabeth hanging out with her Aunt Lea at Grandma Bev's home.  Before she got her sick.  :-)

SNOW BUNNIES!  Elisabeth with her cousins Tera and Adrianna.  The temperature stayed above zero while we were in MN, so that was a plus!

Elisabeth opening gifts on Christmas morning.  She loved to eat the wrapping 

paper.

Our Christmas Eve angel.  We were so thankful for the Christmas miracles in our lives this past Christmas.  For the sweet baby girl we have in our home, for the family we were able to see and for the chance to celebrate the birth of our Savior as a family.