Rocking Chair

We have this tiny little rocking chair that I'm not sure where it originally came from, but Brandi and I had it as kids. It is a tiny little wooden chair that I have had sitting in the corner of Lily's room with one of my old dolls in it. Well, today Lily crawled over and took the doll out. I thought to myself that we should try sitting her in it to see what happens. She has got pretty good balance and can climb in and out of her other chair (the little infant bouncy thingy) so I pulled the chair out and dusted it off. I sat her in it and she immediately started rocking. As if she already knew that she was supposed to do that! Well, she might have known because we have a big rocking chair that looks very similar. I took this video seconds after putting her in the

seat...see how smart she is?!?!

The other picture is of me and my girls this morning. Someone from Entreprenuer magazine called me yesterday asking could I send some photos of myself for them to include with the article that they are doing for ebay magazine. I was excited before, but now I am excited AND nervous! That magazine is distributed to a hundred thousand households and it will include a PICTURE!! I put on makeup and had Ross take some shots of me and this one with Lily turned out really cute.

The other video was taken a couple of days ago while we were playing outside. Lily likes to lean up against the screen and I'm really not sure what she is trying to do here, but it sure looked funny with that disco outfit I had her dressed in.

So busy but too excited not to share

Such an exciting day! Lily took what I would call her first official steps today! She has been trying for days but tonight she put one foot forward then the other, and successfully put that foot down before falling down. I am counting that as first steps!

Ross said that he has seen her do that before, but I have only seen her try and take one step and fall down before it gets planted.

She knows just what she is trying to accomplish too and it is so sweet to see her get excited about it too.

AND, I officially opened my costume shop tonight too! I currently only have one costume stocked in it but that is because I got another shipment for Addicted to Rockabilly, and I had to work at monstertixx AND fuss over my now walking baby!

so busy......I love it!

Brat

I would never call my baby a brat, but she certainly acts like one sometimes. She has a strong personality and is very sweet and fun to play with. But, if I don't let her have something that she wants she cries. loudly. This cry is different from the cry of hunger or pain. This is an annoying little bratty kid cry. Like the one that you see big kids doing at the grocery store when their moms say 'no' to the candy. It is kinda endearing though because she is showing so many signs of Independence and is able to express her wants now and not just her needs.
We have been working on switching from two naps a day to only one and this has made certain times of the day really trying. I am now second guessing the choice to do that. She was pretty consistent for a long time but the past month she has been constantly skipping naps which is not good for any of us! So, we decided that maybe one good nap would be better than two inconsistant naps. Ross is good about reassuring me that we made the right decision, but the adjustment is hard sometimes. She is the greatest baby in the world though because it still hasn't effected her ability to sleep through the night. We are SOOOOO LUCKY!

The Remote

right now I don't need to spend any money buying toys for Lily. She has so many favorite things to play with and hardly any of them are actually "toys".
Her favorites are:

1. DVDs - she loves to pull them from the shelf and throw them around the room


2. Zelda


3. the remote control


4. the controller for the X-box


5. a can with bells inside


6. tupperware


7. diapers (clean ones of course....I'm not THAT bad of a mom!)


8. books - her books AND ours


9. Zelda's ball


10. Zelda's food

And today she figured out how the remote works! I am sitting here at the kitchen table flipping through my pictures to post and all of the sudden the TV turns on. I look over at Lily and she has the same look of suprise that I do. Then, it turns off again. Another look of suprise, then on, then off. So smart!

Lily has been standing all the time and it is so cute because she stands, looks over at us and starts clapping to congratulate herself. She'll be walking in no time.

I have included a video to show how well she and Zelda play together and another on of her cracking up and driving Zelda crazy. Zelda's favorite ball is in her toy basket and Zelds is going nuts trying to get it. Hopefully you can hear her laughing over the sound of the radio.

I think I wrote about her busted lip last week, so here is the picture.

Beach day a month or so ago

Re-aranging the furniture

by the way, we do not keep the high chair in the living room, Lily moved it there herself.

Dirty Feet

This is how I know when it is time to clean the floors! Look at this dirty dirty little girl!
Lily is so good at standing these days that she just stands and stands waiting for us to make a fuss it is the cutest thing. and I haven't yet bored of fussing over it. I love it! I can't seem to catch it on video though.
Today she took a spill and busted both her top and bottom lips. I don't even know what happened. She was just crawling along and then bang, smacked her mouth right into the floor! Poor little baby screamed and screamed.
Yesterday we took her to my boss's surprise party at the park and she was so great. She didn't mind at all when people were passing her around and dogs were licking her face. We took a little break from the action and walked over to the playground to play on the swings and she hated it! She likes the swing here but I think the ones at the park were too high. And, as soon as I find my camera I will download the pics I took and post them.
oh, and update, my loan has been bid down to 11.6% !!!!!! wahooo

Funded!!!

WAHOO!!!!

my prosper loan is 100% funded and it still goes until Sunday! Which, for those of you unfamiliar with prosper, means that I have a VERY good chance of lowering the interest rate for my loan because it is a bidding process. The company projected that my loan would be funded by tomorrow but I have already done better than expected and my interest rate has already dropped from 13% to 12.5 which equals about 20 bucks a month!!!! WAHOOOO!!!!
I am so excited and Ross thinks I am crazy because we were out earlier at my boss's 40th birthday party and I just sat down to the computer to find out I was funded and went running through the house doing the "money dance".
Ok, so the money dance might change depending on the environment. Tonight's money dance was one that most likely no one will ever witness, it is like a really bad 80's dance that you might see a comedian doing but then take that and add alcohol and really bad rhythm. The other money dance is one we do at work which is a very mild money dance like "churning butter" or something when we get a sick crazy client call wanting to buy 50 yard line seats for the super bowl and they say the magic words ...."I don't care what it costs, just get it and put it on my American express". Unfortunately no one does that for handmade swing dresses :(
How come none of you that read my blog have suggested a name for my costume shop yet?

Yay...Mother's Day!!!

Yay, my first mother's day. This is the first holiday that I get that I have actually had to EARN. I am a big holiday person and truely believe in Birthdays being your own personal holiday. This is a cool one because you don't automatically get it, it is a reward!
I told Ross that all I wanted was a day off. So, he has been playing with Lily all day while I worked on my web-stuff. Is that still a day off? Lucky for me, I really enjoy working on my web-stuff. I am getting caught up although because the USPS changes their rates tomorrow and I have to re-list all 160 ebay auctions!
But the most exciting thing is that I finally got my loan application finished.
If you would like to check it out here is where to go

http://www.prosper.com/lend/listing.aspx?listingID=136705

I would love for any of you to write an endorsement for me or even bid it you want to earn some money off me! you know I am good for it.

Talented little girl

lately Lily has learned some amazing things. She can totally stand on her own! and she can crawl down from things too. She doesn't crawl down correctly, but she is very cautious in her acrobatic stunts. I have been trying hard to get some of this on video and I have files and files of useless clips because the minute she sees the camera she darts straight for it and I end up with a video of the top of her head while she is trying to climb up my leg to get the camera. She says Da Da constantly and it is usually always accompanied by a finger point. At first we thought that she was so bright that she knew who Da Da was, but now after days of it and everything she points at being Da da and not just Ross, I think it just might be a phase. She does however say Zelda! We are sure of it. It sounds more like El-da, but there is a distinct difference between that and the da da sound. And she will actually point to Zelda when she says it too. I, of course, can't get her to do it on video.
Another thing she does is shakes her head. She started doing it when I wash her hair and I guess because she got such a good reaction to it, now does it all the time. Especially when I catch her doing something she isn't supposed to be doing.
This video shows her acrobatic decent, finger pointing AND the head shake.

Costumes

My dream is to own a costume shop. And although I am years and major funds away from ever reaching that goal, I am jumping in and opening another website.....a costume shop!
I have been doing really well with Addicted to Rockabilly and am still planning to grow with it, but now I have decided to divide my time between two sites. I have gotten savvy enough with it that my website work only takes me just a couple of hours a day and I really need more income than it is producing. (my property taxes went up $300 a MONTH!!!!)
I chose such a small niche for the first site that growth is just not coming fast enough. I have already completed my first initial costume buy in order to stock my store (although the money isn't exactly secured yet....yikes! More about that later) and now I am at a dead-lock deciding on a name.
I know that there are lots of creative folks who read my blog, so help me out.
I need a name that is short and easy to remember, preferably beginning with a letter close to the beginning of the alphabet and that has an open website.
I am just going to open up as an ebay store for now but will branch out to regular ecommerce later, but it is best to go ahead and secure the web-address.

Funding. Well, I found this really cool site prosper.com and I have been researching the hell out of it and think I am going to try to get my starting capital there. It is the world's first people-to-people lending site. It essentially is cutting out the middle man (ie., banks) and that way investors get a higher (and riskier) return and borrowers get a better rate. The way it works is that people can lend as little as $50 each so I'd be getting my loan from a number of investors. Prosper collects the money, gives it to me and then I make monthly payments to prosper and they disperse it to all the investors. I intent to try and borrow $5000. Once I get the thing set up it takes a week for potential investors to "bid" on my loan (this can actually lower my interest rate) and then I'll find out if we are a go.

I also set up a group on Prosper which actually gives me kick backs for signing folks up so I have been marketing that all over ebay...free money is free money!!!

smarts

Saturday night Tonya and I went to BeerFest in Ft. Lauderdale and I won a sweatband. Lily loves it.


I think she needs a brother or sister to play with because she is spending too much time with the dog. She growls, snarles and carrys things around in her mouth.



There are two steps in our house, one from the dining room to the play room and another in my studio. The one to the studio is easy because I just keep the door shut. Unfortunately tonight Lily finally figured out that she can get through the dog door the same way as Zelda!
The other one is always a major worry for me and I keep trying to teach Lily to turn around and scoot backwards. I can't get the backward thing through to her, but she does realize that she can't make it down forwards without hurting herself. This morning I was watching to see what she was going to do and she sat like this for about 10 minutes. She must be smart because she was spending all that time contemplating how she was going to make it down and then she scooted over and used the chair to hold on to while she stepped down.



Now that Lily has figured out how to walk around holding onto her scoot thing that Daddy bought her she is discovering that she can get around using all sorts of things. She scoots the dining room chairs, her high chair, laundry baskets and the vacuum. If you let her she will re-arrange the whole house.